In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.

…

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

- Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (1967)

This is an article about images that move, in the broadest sense of the word. Images that literally move (videos, films), images that move within spaces and networks (online, in print), and images that move people (to action, to feeling). 

A defining aspect of the modern world is the mass proliferation of images. Social media in particular exemplifies this, allowing us to experience a deluge of information and images from an innumerable number of sources. However, it would be shortsighted to assume that this is purely a product of social media. Images have long shaped how we think, contemplate, and experience the world. TV news and photo reports long predate the digital era; this manner of proliferation, mediated by images, is worth investigating.

Asia, in Western discourse, has historically been subject to the influence of images (Said 1979). The portrayal of the “exotic” Orient once justified waves of imperial expansion and consumption in Asia. This legacy persists. The fundamental issue of representation remains the same. No matter how high the resolution of our cameras, images always exclude as much as they include.

Perhaps most subject to the domination of images, particularly in Western media, is the state of North Korea. This “rogue state” (Kim and Aggarwal 2025) sporadically enters the news cycle with reports of a missile test, an international incident, or an alleged bizarre policy. Indeed, the “secretive” nature of North Korea means that most of our knowledge is constructed from images and representations.

If we are caught in the tangles of representation, can we ever get a true view of North Korea? More provocatively: does the North Korea of our discourse exist at all?

Virtual Insanity

Let’s start by looking at some of the theory of representation.

Guy Debord famously argued that consumer society is dominated by the Spectacle, a “social relation among people, mediated by images” (Debord 1967). Here, the way we relate to other people, and even to society itself, is through the consumption of images. News, entertainment, and social media; all create a world of images with a degree of autonomy from our direct lived experience. They take on a life of their own and shape society accordingly.

We generally assume that images convey some truth, yet they certainly have no obligation to do so. The vast world of symbols produced informs and constructs how we relate to the world, regardless of their exact truth. From this mediating role, the image takes primacy, it becomes social reality. What we see, post, and consume are truly how we socialise. Instead of interacting with reality, we engage with streams of representation. These representations shape how we relate to the world and others. Watching K-Dramas really does shape how you relate to the concepts of relationships, South Korea, wider society, and the elements that are represented therein.

In this way, images gain power over us. There is no conspiracy to construct “propaganda” or “disinformation”. This is an issue that emerges from consumer society itself. The Spectacle is a false unity, a shared experience of consuming and viewing that conceals the distance it creates between people mediated by images. Even our actual social relationships become influenced by this extra relationship to streams of images.

Jean Baudrillard (1981) later expanded on these concepts. He argues that the autonomy and production of signs, images, and symbols create a self-referential system of meaning. As these become more and more essential to our everyday lives, images take on a kind of reality of their own. The “virtual” world of images and symbols is made entirely self-referential, and can even replace actual aspects of lived experience. Baudrillard argues that in a media-saturated world, representations of events can feel more ‘real’ than the events themselves. Our ways of living, perceiving, and acting within the world are thus fundamentally transformed. 

In our inquiry into North Korea, it is important to note the importance of the image. Our perception of North Korea exists within this system of representations. The country we see is a North Korea of images, a virtual state.

To understand the wider effects of these visual worlds, we must examine how they shape North Korea itself.

Spectacular Conflicts: Is North Korea at War?

North Korea exists in a peculiar state of “war without war”. It is officially at war with South Korea, yet there are no direct military engagements. Is this war?

The war instead takes place through a media spectacle. It is fought through the generation of symbols, statements, and postures that shape the world around them. Spectacular displays of missile launches, images of military parades, and government actions justified by such images, such as Suk Yeol’s failed coup in South Korea, have become the dominant forms of warfare. Battles are fought through the eternal state of posturing that shapes the dynamics of both countries. This form of conflict is qualitatively different from traditional war. 

Indeed, here we see similarities to Baudrillard’s (1995) later thesis that war is no longer a movement from the virtual to the actual (the build-up of tensions into open conflict). War is now a form of conflict that moves from the actual tensions to the virtual (from actual conflicts and crises to an infinite state of deterrence). The infamous 2016 missile tests are a perfect example of this. The tensions played out internationally through posturing, international attention, and images of missile tests that served as the main basis of the conflict. Our definition of war has become strained by the mediating power of the image that alters all kinds of relations and tensions.

North Korea’s war is of a new kind. It is a spectacular conflict fought in the realm of the virtual. Although it always holds potential to actualise, this hyperreal war is the playing out of tensions embedded within the antagonistic social relations between North and South Korea. Perhaps, in this realm of representations, this expresses a more fundamental contradiction between North Korea and the current world system itself. 

Do North Koreans Exist?

People are living in a territory we call North Korea. But there is a simultaneous reduction of these lives into a kind of abstraction, an easily consumable image of “North Koreans” that flattens lived experience into a homogenous representation. 

There are numerous portrayals of North Koreans, and few are favourable. A common trope is the notion of “brainwashing” (Kennedy 2020), a discourse in which all North Koreans are simply oppressed, unthinking victims of a regime. In this sense, they are denied all agency and reduced to a population of passive victims of propaganda and state violence. Footage of the public mourning at Kim Jong-Il’s funeral in 2011 provides an interesting example of this. Western representations allege that citizens were coerced into crying, while also suggesting a fanatic devotion to their leader caused such outbursts (Geoghegan 2011). The truth is likely more complicated than this and is rarely explored.

The reductionist view is not just a failure of accuracy; it is a form of dehumanisation. The reduction of people’s actual lives and struggles within North Korea to a representation removes the humanity of an entire population. Yet these are the images that are dominant in Western portrayals, and thus partially constitute our relation to North Koreans.

Even acknowledging this, schemes based around “enlightening” ordinary North Koreans implicitly accept this premise, notably the Flash Drives for Freedom project that aims to smuggle banned Western content into North Korea. The direct lived conditions of North Koreans have transformed into representation. Here, we can see these representations impacting not only relations to, but also actions towards North Koreans.

This is not to deny that there is repression in North Korea. But moreso, North Koreans must be recognised as human beings with full lives, subjectivities, and complexities. A reduction into an image that excludes complexity approaches a form of virtual violence. The tensions between the West and North Korea make the generation of such images inevitable, yet it is still important not to accept these at face value. 

State Secrets: Does the North Korean state exist?

In a similar manner, there is undoubtedly a state apparatus in North Korea. There is a government, a head of state, and various offshoots that manage everyday life. But as with its people, the state is caught in a web of representation.

There is a sense that the North Korean state is inherently unknowable. Sometimes called “the Hermit Kingdom”, North Korea is portrayed as a place of secrecy and contradiction. The exact actions of this state appear to defy explanation. The state is represented both as an effective monarchy under the Il-Sung dynasty and a Juche-fuelled relic of the Cold War (Jacobson 2018). 

The images associated with this state; rigged elections, military parades, and displays of power, are all common in authoritarian states. Why, then, does North Korea appear as uniquely unknowable?

The idea that North Korea holds a secret that motivates it, whether as a rogue monarchy or a failed socialist state, is central to its dominant representation (Haarink 2015). An inherent difference is assumed between North Korea and other states, one that assumes an unknowable, dangerous process behind the state system itself. The real secret is that there isn’t one. Our relations with North Korea, mediated by images, construct the alleged secret themselves. Remembering that images mediate social relations, we must look to the formation of images and narratives within our own societies that construct this secret. 

The actual workings of the North Korean government are subsumed into a kind of ideological flattening of the state. It is assumed that, in contrast to “rational” liberal states, North Korea is possessed by a kind of ideology and system that prohibits rational action. The exact nature of the state and governance are thus lost. The production of images here once more strongly governs our relationship with a state, and what can even be seen as possible. 

Conclusion: Does North Korea exist?

In conclusion, can we say that North Korea exists? There is certainly a place called North Korea that has a government, people, and a society. But there is also the North Korea of images. It is this North Korea that, in all its contradiction, does and does not exist. It is the ideological state that still shapes the world.

This article is not about uncovering the “real” North Korea, or “debunk” perceptions of the state. Rather, it is about recognising the power of images. Representation is inescapable, Even this article itself is a contribution to the mass of representations. The imperative remains to look a little closer at what, and how, we perceive. 

Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean. 1995. The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Indiana University Press.

Baudrillard, Jean. 1981. Simulacra and Simulation. University of Michigan Press.

Debord, Guy. 1967. The Society of the Spectacle. Critical Editions.

Geoghegan, Tom. 2011. “How Genuine Are the Tears in North Korea?”. BBC News. December 20th. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16262027  

Haarink, Steve. 2015. “North Korea Does Not Exist: Human Rights in Asymmetry” phd Diss.  Mcmaster University. http://hdl.handle.net/11375/18244 

Jacobson, Gavin. 2018. “Keeping Up with the Kims: Inside North Korea’s Communist Monarchy”. New Statesman. June 6th. https://www.newstatesman.com/world/asia/2018/06/keeping-kims-north-korea-s-communist-monarchy 

Kennedy, Dana. 2020. “How the Kim Dynasty has Brainwashed North Koreans for Generations”. New York Post. May 30th. https://nypost.com/2020/05/30/how-the-kim-dynasty-has-brainwashed-north-koreans-for-generations/ 

Kim, Stella, and Aggarwal, Mithil. 2025. “North Korea criticises Marco Rubio for calling it a “Rogue State””. NBC News, February 3rd. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/north-korea-criticizes-rubio-calling-rogue-state-rcna190391 

Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. Vintage Books.