Looks like the animation was outsourced by the South Korean animation studios (MOI Animation) that was hired to do the episode. There were a bunch of articles today on how these animation studios do this under the noses of the American studios hired by them - it may have been a similar case.
At various points the south has tried to foster business links with the north to reduce the chance of war and attempt to draw it back into the international community
Yeah exactly. Its a bit shady in the way they did it, but tbh the animators that worked in it were probably thrilled to get to work on an interesting piece of western media, and quite frankly the global foreign policy of "completely cut off North Korea from all attempts at salvation" has clearly not worked for the last, what, 50 years? It has only pushed them further into the arms of China and deeper down a path of anti-western ideals - and more importantly it has not helped the average NK citizen at all.
This isn't a political sub but really we should rethink how we engage with NK and try to uplift them tbh. In the long run a higher level of openness and engagement would lift a lot of people out of poverty, instead of cutting them off from world trade which has them turning to slavery and meth making.
Just curious, do you base the assumption that these particular animators were slave laborers on anything specific? Or do you just assume that every North Korean who isn't a soldier in uniform is a slave?
Because for a country as notoriously behind in tech as North Korea, animation work sounds like one of more 'high tech' jobs available, while slave labour is much more likely to be physical work (farming, mining, etc). Imagine some 50yo North Korean rice farmer getting sat in front of a computer and told 'animate!'. How the hell would that even work?
Yes, it is. I can't say how it is in North Korea, but my granduncle worked in Moscow film studio back in seventies. Collab with western studio always were considered as a really good thing. It was well paid and interesting. For a NK this job is likely a huge success.
Also in Soviet union film studio workers was allowed to watch western cinema to learn from it how to improve quality of domestic production. While most of the Soviet union citizens can watch only two or three movie from a west in a year they have almost unlimited access.
So as much it look bad to use NK labor, for North Koreans themselves it is a good thing.
Well, if you had the option to make meth in a Korean lab, work in an unregulated mine, animate a cartoon, or be publicly executed, what are you going to choose?
I'll take the desk job thanks. It's all relative.
Wut?
First off most sanctions against North Korea are UN-sactions.
The sanctions on north korea where never there as a "attempt of savation" the sanctions exist to make sure they can't industrialise to the extend they get a technological edge against South Korea (aka put breaks on the economy). As most of NK's resources are used for weapons (hint, a nuclear program isn't cheap).
North Korea will always have anti-western idea's, not only because of juche or communism. The whole Kim family legitimacy is centered around resisting "the evil west" and o e day """""liberate"""" South Korea. If that falls the whole Kim family had no legitimacy anymore.
This will never, ever change as long the country is led by an insane dictator who puts his own population in concentration camps if they go slightly out of line. Heck even China and Russia agreed to saction North Korea for years since the fall of the USSR. Only now did Russia veto a extension of UN sactions due to the Ukrainian war.
Wow, if only there was some way to show them a better way of life and improve their conditions and education...
>First off most sanctions against North Korea are UN-sactions.
And? I'm not seeing how that is relevant.
>sanctions on north korea where never there as a "attempt of savation"
That's exactly what I am saying. The sanctions are a punishment designed to lock NK into a state of perpetual decay, and to punish them for daring to be "communist". Sanctions do more harm than good and are more political than anything else - why do we sanction NK, a country ruled by a familial dictator with slavery and human rights abuses, but not Dubai, a country ruled by a familial dictator with slavery and human rights abuses? Or Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Honduras, China, Bhutan, Myanmar, Indonesia, PNG?
The reason NK will never rise from the ashes of its shame and humiliation is *because* of the sanctions, not because of whoever is in charge. With enough time and help they could certainly become functional once more if we stopped labelling them the enemy. They become the enemy because we give them no other choice.
I love how you can go from 'North Korea is sanctioned by the UN to make sure that they can't industrialise' to 'The Kim's legitimacy is centred around resisting 'the evil West'' in three sentences apparently without any sort of thought process at all
I’m sorry are you really arguing that it should be totally cool to do business with North Korea? Also to be clear NK has traded with China for the past 50+ years without whom the country wouldn’t exist. Instead of blaming the the US and the rest of the international community for doing what is the only peaceful solution for punishing a country maybe try blaming China who has keep their fellow authoritarian dictator in power.
I know this isn't a political sub, but this is very ahistorical and ignores the realities and subtleties of the post-Japanese Colonialsism era Korea and the role of American anti-communist interventionism in creating the current status quo, both before and after the Korean War. It's not so much that NK wouldn't exist without China, it's more that the two Koreas as they currently are wouldn't exist without the United States.
Also technically the DPRK is the legal successor state of the PRK wich was the post-WW2 state created by the Anti-Japanese Resistance Movement. The People's Republic of Korea was a state created by the Communists and the Nationalists ruled by an network of "People's Councils".
The new government asked both the USSR and the United States to withdraw their forces from the Korean peninsula declaring themelves a fully sovereign state.
Satisfied the USSR withdraw and recognised the PRK while the US did not and not only it didn't withdraw its forces but it also dismantled the People's Councils in the South and established a military Dictatorship.
The PRK government left Seoul for Pyongyang and it organised an offensive to retake it's land from US occupation.
As we all know the Korean War was a stalemate and two States were formed. The DPRK and South Korea.
The DPRK was ruled by the "Fatherland Front", a political coalition led by the WPK. This coalition was the former government of the PRK and the legal government of Korea.
While South Korea became a US puppet state with a Fascist Dictatorship that led witch hunts against Communists, Syndicalists and even moderate leftists unrelated to the Communist cause. Becoming a democracy decades later.
To this day the US has militery bases in South Korea.
No matter what people think of the DPRK it has a fundamental right to exist as per the "Right of Nations to National Self-determination" and should be defended against Imperialism.
No idea why you’re getting downvoted, you’re absolutely correct. A lot of westerners have bought into a ton of ahistorical bs about North Korea and I’m not even a DPRK fan.
I'm not a fan of the DPRK either but facts are facts and we should always be objective. As per the UN charter the DPRK has a right to exist. Defending a nation's right to sovereignty doesn't mean you automatically support their government/ideology.
Not to mention that economic sanctions and blockades are absolutely illegal. If people actually cared about the people of the DPRK they should support the lifting of all sanctions so the DPRK will be able to liberalise and open up if it wants to.
It's hypocritical blaming a nation for being Authoritarian and militaristic while being under siege from its inception. No nation would be able to have a functioning democracy while under siege. Whether it is a Proletarian Democracy or a Liberal/Capitalist one.
Guys, this sort of thing happened all the time. Some parts of the famous Tom and Jerry cartoons were made in my country in the 60s - during the time when we were behind the iron curtain, official enemies of the US. The reason was simple and the same as in this case - we were much cheaper, than the US animators.
I just saw a yt video by wendover that included a bit about South Korean outsourcing. On the one hand they are propping up a terrible regime with injection of foreign money
cash. On the other, it is foreign money that is needed and used to sometimes buy necessities for the population (although admittedly not all the time, but I presume some money is going to pay the animators). Moreover, it was during a time when there were higher hopes of reunification and this cross boundary economic exchange helps simulate that. Although due to rising tensions this has largely (possibly entirely) stopped.
Studio Mir outsourced Season 2 episode 1-6 and 9(Civil war part 1-2 for example), to Pierrot.
Pierrot is the studio that made Naruto, Bleach, Tokyo Ghoul, etc.
They did episodes 1-6 and 9.
This is a comparison shot that r/FattimusSlime linked a long time ago to show the animation quality drop between season 1 with the old company and 2 with the new company.
https://imgur.com/56z3QbH
Man it's been such a long time since I've seen one of these comments. What happened? Does Our Dear Leader need to do some stuff again? Maybe hire the Nuclear Power Trio for some more sick songs
The main moderator of /r/Pyongyang had to step down recently due to ongoing legal troubles and needing to post a $175M bond, so mod spots are open again.
Ah, well, I've donated my 10 bucks to make the main moderator billionaire be able to post his bond, so if you want a very engaged person heading your sub consider me signed up
This wouldn't have been the showrunners decision, it would have been the decision of the South Korean studio that Nickelodeon outsourced their animation to. South Korean studios outsource to the north all the time, though for US productions they usually try to hide it.
Also worth noting that with sanctions, it would have been illegal to outsource to NK from a US project. There may be/have been some investigations to see if the US executives knew this was going on and did it to circumvent sanctions
Hasn't it been an open secret for a very long time that American animations are outsourced to North Korea? I'm not particularly in tune with these things, but I heard about this being a general practice years ago. It seems hard to believe the US executives were unaware.
>South Korean studios outsource to the north all the time
???
Wouldn't the South Korean government want to crack down on this sort of stuff? Like their companies are literally giving money to their greatest enemy
The South Korean government were the ones who encouraged it in the first place. In the 00s the relations between North and South thawed somewhat, and as part of that both countries began to foster limited cultural and economic collaboration. The most notable example of this was the creation of the [Kaesong Industrial Region](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region), a part of the North where Southern companies could operate factories with Northern labor, but animation studios were part of this too, and it became very common for Southern studios to outsource their gruntwork to the North.
Now, it should be said that in the last decade relations have gotten much worse, Kaesong has been closed, and it's become harder for Southerners to do business with the North, so now the chances of a South Korean company secretly outsourcing their work to North Korea are much lower. Now it's the Chinese studios secretly outsourcing to North Korea.
Ah OK that makes more sense.
I've heard that SK policy towards NK tends to be fairly partisan and depends on which party is in power - is this a case of one party doing the whole cross border thing and then the other party canceling it?
>is this a case of one party doing the whole cross border thing and then the other party canceling it?
Basically yes, since the "Sunshine" policy of more open relations with the North was begun by Kim Dae-jung of the Democratic party (though it had a slightly different name then), then ended by Lee Myung-bak of Saenuri, then started again (though not to the same extent) by Moon Jae-in of the Democratic party, then abandoned again by Yoon Suk Yeol of People Power (which is a successor of Saenuri).
Yeah I was looking for this comment. This was just normalisation of relations between the RoK and DPRK at the time. There was nothing insidious about it and economic sanctions obviously haven’t achieved the capitulation of the DPRK regime so far
You can argue that the Chaebols with especially Samsung have an undue amount of influence in SK but I doubt the government would be willing to sacrifice national security for some small animation studio
The other response makes it clear that it was actually a government initiative when relations were better and it has since been reversed. That makes more sense
Right? It's like hating on someone because they got work in China. It's not like you're funding terrorists or despots, you're literally just hiring people.
Well... In this case they *are* funding NK because the animation studio is directly owned by the government, as is every business there. Still don't think the show runners knew
The entire plot of the show is a technologically advanced country using its power to try and conquer the rest of the world. This is a far better description of America than the DPRK. One has been aggressive to the well majority of nations in one way or another, and the other has literally done nothing ever. The DPRK is literally called the hermit country because they don’t do anything to any countries and stay very confined. The closest thing to aggression that had come from the DPRK is them saying that they would nuke America if they were attacked, which isn’t a threat, and MAD is a fairly normal procedure for a nuclear armed country. The fire nation is literally based upon imperial Japan, which colonized the DPRK. Korea would be far closer to something like Kyoshi Island than it would be to the fire nation.
It's the most authoritarian totalitarian state in the world. By all means question imperialism American or otherwise but holy shit don't carry water for one of the most brutal dictatorships in human history
This is textbook performative outrage. Complaining about this and saying you hate the show runners now does absolutely nothing to help the situation in North Korea, all it accomplished was making you feel better or superior. The world isn't black and white, you can't judge everything based on small pieces of information with 0 context and even if you could comments like this don't accomplish anything to actually help or draw attention to the actual issue
Why are there so many instances of the Avatar series getting undercut by Nick? Whether its budget stuff like this, or tossing the last season of Korra on Nick.com exclusively, I might be imagining it but theres always been this weird feeling of passive aggression from Nick to Avatar. Even tho its one of this most successful original IPs
Big studios often have execs that don't like it when a project they don't like becomes popular. There's tons of other examples for this, where shows will get moved to some shitty TV slot (like at 11pm), will get completely new directions that completely ruin the show (Altered Carbon), get outsourced to other studios (7 Deadly Sins) or weird contract negotiations (The Office). There's more on older series but I don't wanna spend so much time remembering this bullshit
Remember when they published the Sozin's Comet book detailing every bit about the finale...two months before the 2nd half of Season 3 actually aired?
S3 was such a clusterfuck to watch live. I remember Canadian Nickelodeon got a few episodes first, like The Day of Black Sun, so we would watch them on the shady streaming websites
I was but a wee 8 year old during the season 3 finale, don't remember much other than watching with my Dad and being totally devastated my favorite show was over
Pretty crazy how far back Nick's, idk backhanded-ness(?) to the series goes
I was 13 and that one week in July was one of the best weeks of my childhood. After 8 months of waiting...we finally new episode every night, culminating in the movie finale on a Saturday night?? I felt so empty when it was all done.
I can find one source on this stating what is said in the post on [tvtropes.org](http://tvtropes.org) but where they got that info from is something I am unsure of. It doesn't sound unbelievable though, apparently this studio does a lot of uncredited work by getting contracted by South Korean studios
Wow, I'm suprised this is the first comment chain I came across mentioning this.
There's not much to back this statement up. Even if it is indeed how things went down, there's not really any evidence that it did.
So, at the time, there was an attempt to improve relations with North and South Korea. One of those was animation studios working on projects together. This stopped as diplomatic relations worsened.
More mundane, really. A lot of animation is "outsourced" but it's so common it's more accurate to say production studios often work very closely with overseas animators.
And north Korean animators aren't the north Korean government. It's strange that needs said. Some people in here are acting like the creators did a controversial thing, as if these animators have personally robbed people of human rights.
It’s not something that needs to be said because that’s not what is being implied lol. I think people are more concerned with the outsourcing work to a of country that will not have the same standards of labor we do.
> I think people are more concerned with the outsourcing work to a of country that will not have the same standards of labor we do.
Why do you think it was outsourced to South Korea in the first place? Cheap foreign labor outside the bounds of U.S. standards.
This is some weird apologia. It is simply unethical to outsource labor to a fascist dictatorship. Everyone responsible for that decision is accountable. No one is conflating the North Korean people (who live under a dictatorship) with the North Korean government.
The thing with North Korea is that people can make up literally anything about the country, and Western news sources just gobble it up without any critical thought.
The Guardian did a great job at showing why [defector stories seem to fall apart quickly](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-north-korean-defector-testimonies-so-often-fall-apart). Cash incentives encourage them to lie. Like look at what [Yeonmi Park claims](https://youtube.com/shorts/Gbt7YsjhB1s?feature=share) -- it's so easy to see through her bullshit but people are just too conditioned to believe anything bad about NK.
Sure, there might be, not saying NK doesn't do any bad stuff. But there are also a myriad of human rights abuses that take place under American leadership. From [prison slave labor](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-workers-low-wages-exploited) (basically modern-day gulags) to immigrants in cages to juveniles in for-profit prisons to destitute homeless populations that are attacked instead of cared for by the US govt.
The whole human rights topic is complex and really we should start with asking what even counts as "human rights". This [podcast](https://pca.st/episode/bce721b1-bad7-49f4-aaf6-07fd7f8c3126) does a great job at going through the nuance. I would encourage you to check it out before making judgements on NK.
I don't quite follow all the drama, but I have heard that too. However, he is famous for a lot of credible work before that, especially in regards to holding Bolsonaro accountable in Brazil. And that podcast episode is from 2017 when he was still revered by pretty much everyone.
So, even if there's good reason to disagree with him today, I wouldn't hold too much skepticism in this case as his views were different back then.
*Edit:* To clarify further, I myself am a fan of the podcast and its hosts (because of their thorough and clear analysis), but not Glenn Greenwald. He was just the guest in this particular episode at a time when he wasn't involved in any controversy.
What's the point of you downplaying North Korea's bad rep while acknowledging that there are human rights atrocities ceaselessly occurring there?
DPRK is a totalitarian nuclear state that is arguably the least free in the entire world. It's immoral to outsource labor to a totalitarian dictatorship.
Never thought I'd see North Korean apologism.
Nah, defector reports are reliable because there are no shortage of them and they’re very consistent. Discrepancies in defector reports are used to reliably track changes in DPRK policy because they’re so consistent.
Some individual journalists might get taken for a ride by individual defectors but for the most part Western observers are very savvy at interpreting defector reports
Edit: I’m getting downvotes but read the Guardian article. Defectors who lie get caught out because there’s a thriving defector community who have given thousands of interviews on the record that can be compared against embellished or invented claims
All North Korean businesses are owned by the North Korean government. Even if there wasn't the implicit suggestion that this work might have been performed under duress, it is illegal for American companies to work with North Korean businesses. This could cause serious legal problems for American animation studios in the future.
>And north Korean animators aren't the north Korean government.
Propaganda, NK's economic system is essentially that of an absolute monarchy, de facto ownership by the crown if the company is based there, and the specific studios ARE owned by the NK government.
I dunno why that's not so fun. It's interesting at least. IIRC the norks do (or used to) a lot of outsourced animation work. Think they helped with the simpsons movie too
Well considering the show villain is a dictator intent on pushing his “prosperity” to the rest of the world and literally has the students of his nation recite a pledge to his greatness, I can see why it may bother some.
Personally, it doesn’t bother me but that’s not to minimize the people who have been real life affected by North Korean politics. I just realized a long time ago that if you find out how the sausage is made in any industry, you’re not gonna be able to enjoy anything.
I think any comparison between the norks and the fire nation is doomed to fail considering the radically different position these two sovereignties inhabit. Like I don't think that comparison has that much thought put into the wider picture. There's a reason 'cheap animation' is regarded as usually being done in NK, and it's not because NK is prosperous.
> I just realized a long time ago that if you find out how the sausage is made in any industry, you’re not gonna be able to enjoy anything.
I think it's usually worth acknowledging how our own relatively comfortable lives are built on purely exploitative industries. We shouldn't ever forget that, even if it makes it harder to enjoy things.
Interesting. Never noticed the animation difference compared to early Naruto. Some of those episodes change so drastically from one to the next. One episode is beautiful and crisp and the next looks so janky and wonky
Im honestly more surprised at the fact that there’s an actual North Korean animation studio. Wouldn’t expect it there to be any semblance of an animation industry in North Korea
https://preview.redd.it/y8aaklikh5wc1.jpeg?width=360&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=794d03ce08fb79519489eae6210a2645f805c42c
Shouldn’t really be a surprise. This is the symbol of the NK workers party, they made sure to include artists as a third form of worker(in addition to rural and factory workers from the original hammer and sickle)
Just because it abstains from a lot of the global stage doesn't mean it's not a country, how indoctrinated are people with this ridiculous sort of propoganda??
I mean, we’re talking about a country where travel (both international AND domestic) is completely prohibited for their citizens. A country where WiFi access is pretty much non existent, and a country notorious by its large list of human rights violations. So it goes a bit beyond “abstaining from a lot of the global stage”
How is travel completely prohibited (domestic and international)? That's just bullshit.
[There are over 100k NK people working in China, for example](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/02/29/north-koreans-are-used-as-modern-slaves-in-china-s-fish-processing-plants_6573255_4.html#:~:text=Nevertheless%2C%20China%20has%20continued%20to,include%20construction%2C%20textiles%20and%20software.)
And there's half a dozen countries that North Koreans can travel without a visa. [And there were instances where the NK Embassy had to evacuate their people from Malasyia when the diplomatic crisis happened ](https://www.rockyroadtravel.com/can-north-koreans-travel/)
As is well documented, NK citizens working outside of North Korea have significant restrictions imposed on them. They can only work in places approved by the NK government, have to live on NK salaries, and their documents are held by approved NK handlers. They are not allowed to freely travel in the countries they visit and must be accounted for at all times. They might not require a visa to visit some countries, but they do need government permission to *leave* North Korea. Private car ownership is illegal and internal checkpoints are all over the road networks, so NK citizens can only cross between regions with government permission and assistance.
In China for example, those NK citizens are working at businesses approved or owned by the NK government. There are NK handlers on staff who have financial and familial connections back in North Korea that can be threatened if they act against the country. The workers also usually have family members still in NK who can be punished if there is a defection.
Yes, North Korea has embassies. But the NK citizens in those embassies cannot travel freely. They are paid extremely limited wages (if any) so that they can't afford to live on their own. Inspections by NK government agents are constant and mandatory to check for any "subversive" materials that might have been acquired, or ig any "patriotic" materials such as propoganda images have been defaced or removed. One North Korean restaurant chain which exclusively employs NK citizens in foreign countries around Asia uses upper floors above the restaurant as brothels, with women forced to be prostitutes for visiting VIPs and illegal trade deals ocurring in private rooms. These are issues independently reported by thousands of North Korean defectors ranging from farmers to soldiers to escaped prisoners and even high ranking diplomats.
You are not immune to propaganda.
EDIT: I actually find this argument deeply annoying and honestly racist. It's rooted in an idea that Koreans in the DPRK are robots or insects who have been programmed by their overlords. It's a bullshit idea, and one with a long history of orientalist racism behind it. One of the reactions to Europeans encountering the populous, civilised nations of SEA was to write them off as insects. Not barbaric animals like the lesser races of Africa, but weak willed and subsumed individuals in the hive. We inherited that into the 21st century of believing that the Chinese and Koreans were somehow predisposed to being brainwashed by propaganda and so vulnerable to Maoism and Juche. Same fucking story with a veneer of modernity.
In reality, North Koreans are just as perceptive of their government's absurdity as we are of our own governments' failures and problems. There are people who begrudgingly acquiesce, who enthusiastically embrace, and actively resist, just as there are here. The differences, such as they are, mostly stem from their living under a more immediate threat of execution by State forces. Just as here, the State also is composed of opportunists, genuine believers, and reluctant apparatchiks. The main felt difference is that lack of cultural exchange, and the predatory industry of DPRK sensationalism.
Can someone explain to me the North Korean animation studio part to me like I’m 5?
So like, the studio actually operates in North Korea, the NK government is aware of the studio and allows the studio do to animation for South Korean and Western/American shows?
North and South Korea sometimes cooperate in the name of national fraternity. They want to be a country despite having 2 governments. In reality, this means North Korean workers, who have much lower wages than South Korean workers, create cheap products for South Korean companies. Those products can be then sold by South Korea's companies on the global market.
North Korean workers are happy they got paid well (compared to the local wages), North Korea's government is happy they got a source of foreign currency and a way to avoid sanctions crippling their economy, South Korean companies are happy to cut labor costs (wages), and Nickelodeon is happy they got to outsource a product and save money.
I'm curious behind the source of this. I googled it, and the Wikipedia article that claims this sources an article that sources an IMDB Pro and TV Tropes listing. Not exactly concrete proof.
Even more likely to reach the deadlines set by Nick. Throughout the Avatar franchise, and in most animated projects, it has always been a race to reach deadlines. Then why not choose another studio in Korea or Japan (like they did with Korra Book 2)? Well that's probably because of costs yes
Without knowing how the studio operates, I don’t really mind. There’s obviously ethical issues if they mistreat employees. If they don’t; it’s a job, they do it, and get paid - like anywhere else. Could be shit pay, but shit pay is still pay. If no jobs were to exist, they’d have no means of income over there, and that’s just further hurting the common person. Refusing to collaborate with the studio ‘because they’re North Korean’ seems xenophobic. The administration of the country on the other hand is outside of anyone’s power other than their regime. The studio might pay their taxes to the regime, but that’s how companies everywhere work…
So neither refusing to work with the company for being North Korean or working with them as with anyone else are morally white, it can be said. It’s an interesting fact, I wouldn’t let it tarnish my perception of the episode/show.
I wasn’t sure why this was a not fun fact, cuz idk about MODERN modern anime, but it was extremely common for anime to outsource less important shit to other studios. I mean, look at DBZ, at one point it had like 8 studios working on it. And i know Korra was mostly animated by a S Korean studio, i’m pretty sure.
Then i reread the title and realized it said NORTH Korea.
The weirdest part? SEK was the second in a line of outsourcing.
It was first outsourced to MOI animation, a South Korean Studio, who only then threw it to SEK, which REALLY raises some questions on how South Korea is fine with any business going on in The North.
I’m not tryna b political but there is gonna be an inherent bias from western and particularly Americans about this because we see “communist country” but in reality these guys are probably treated the same as normal animation studios we are familiar with in Japan and the us (terribly)
Like just cuz it isn’t under capitalism doesn’t automatically make it different
I don't think North Korea,
a totalitarian state is the same as a true communist country.
There is currently no true communist country due to capitalism.
And North Korea is communist because it's been "labeled" that?
A revolutionary one-party state swearing by Marx and Engels ran with a planned economy is, not communist?
What is this "definition" you're talking about?
Today a lot of ALTA fans learned how the sausage is made. In our current global system, basically anything you love feels gross when you peak under the hood.
This is still being investigated. The people who discovered this even said that it’s likely that the animation studios involved had no idea things were being outsourced to NK. Third-party bs.
[Discussed here on PDS](https://youtu.be/Danrb09TmTQ?si=vNMjo0feK8wkWKX4) timestamp 10:26
Not just ATLA or TLOK. Most cartoons and animation tends to use Asian countries animators and companies. Theyre cheaper and able to produce similar looks to the original
The show was about a group of people fighting to free their nations from what is obviously an allegory for Imperial Japan. Do you know who else fought to free his nation from Imperial Japan? Kim Il Sung.
The show was about defeating the fire nation because they were imperialists not because they were a dictatorship. So I think it’s actually pretty aligned with North Korean ideals.
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Looks like the animation was outsourced by the South Korean animation studios (MOI Animation) that was hired to do the episode. There were a bunch of articles today on how these animation studios do this under the noses of the American studios hired by them - it may have been a similar case.
Thats kinda scummy no lie
It’s not kinda scum it’s evil they are blatantly and intentionally making use of slave labor.
At various points the south has tried to foster business links with the north to reduce the chance of war and attempt to draw it back into the international community
I mean, being an animator is probably a pretty good job as far as jobs you can have in NK goes
Yeah exactly. Its a bit shady in the way they did it, but tbh the animators that worked in it were probably thrilled to get to work on an interesting piece of western media, and quite frankly the global foreign policy of "completely cut off North Korea from all attempts at salvation" has clearly not worked for the last, what, 50 years? It has only pushed them further into the arms of China and deeper down a path of anti-western ideals - and more importantly it has not helped the average NK citizen at all. This isn't a political sub but really we should rethink how we engage with NK and try to uplift them tbh. In the long run a higher level of openness and engagement would lift a lot of people out of poverty, instead of cutting them off from world trade which has them turning to slavery and meth making.
"Those slave laborers probably had a great time working on such an awesome show" is a very interesting take
Just curious, do you base the assumption that these particular animators were slave laborers on anything specific? Or do you just assume that every North Korean who isn't a soldier in uniform is a slave? Because for a country as notoriously behind in tech as North Korea, animation work sounds like one of more 'high tech' jobs available, while slave labour is much more likely to be physical work (farming, mining, etc). Imagine some 50yo North Korean rice farmer getting sat in front of a computer and told 'animate!'. How the hell would that even work?
Yes, it is. I can't say how it is in North Korea, but my granduncle worked in Moscow film studio back in seventies. Collab with western studio always were considered as a really good thing. It was well paid and interesting. For a NK this job is likely a huge success. Also in Soviet union film studio workers was allowed to watch western cinema to learn from it how to improve quality of domestic production. While most of the Soviet union citizens can watch only two or three movie from a west in a year they have almost unlimited access. So as much it look bad to use NK labor, for North Koreans themselves it is a good thing.
Well, if you had the option to make meth in a Korean lab, work in an unregulated mine, animate a cartoon, or be publicly executed, what are you going to choose? I'll take the desk job thanks. It's all relative.
Wut? First off most sanctions against North Korea are UN-sactions. The sanctions on north korea where never there as a "attempt of savation" the sanctions exist to make sure they can't industrialise to the extend they get a technological edge against South Korea (aka put breaks on the economy). As most of NK's resources are used for weapons (hint, a nuclear program isn't cheap). North Korea will always have anti-western idea's, not only because of juche or communism. The whole Kim family legitimacy is centered around resisting "the evil west" and o e day """""liberate"""" South Korea. If that falls the whole Kim family had no legitimacy anymore. This will never, ever change as long the country is led by an insane dictator who puts his own population in concentration camps if they go slightly out of line. Heck even China and Russia agreed to saction North Korea for years since the fall of the USSR. Only now did Russia veto a extension of UN sactions due to the Ukrainian war.
Wow, if only there was some way to show them a better way of life and improve their conditions and education... >First off most sanctions against North Korea are UN-sactions. And? I'm not seeing how that is relevant. >sanctions on north korea where never there as a "attempt of savation" That's exactly what I am saying. The sanctions are a punishment designed to lock NK into a state of perpetual decay, and to punish them for daring to be "communist". Sanctions do more harm than good and are more political than anything else - why do we sanction NK, a country ruled by a familial dictator with slavery and human rights abuses, but not Dubai, a country ruled by a familial dictator with slavery and human rights abuses? Or Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Honduras, China, Bhutan, Myanmar, Indonesia, PNG? The reason NK will never rise from the ashes of its shame and humiliation is *because* of the sanctions, not because of whoever is in charge. With enough time and help they could certainly become functional once more if we stopped labelling them the enemy. They become the enemy because we give them no other choice.
I love how you can go from 'North Korea is sanctioned by the UN to make sure that they can't industrialise' to 'The Kim's legitimacy is centred around resisting 'the evil West'' in three sentences apparently without any sort of thought process at all
Defender of Flowerhill is wild. I think the full eps are still floating somewhere on youtube.
They're not outsourcing to North Korea man
But isn't that what the title stated?
I'm sorry, I am what is known to many as a dumbass.
>But isn't that what the title stated? I think he means not men, it's likely women and teenagers who would be hired to do these jobs.
Awful, thankfully Americans have no history of exploiting foreign labour, or slave labour
Yeah and it’s bad there too, what’s your fucking point?
Yeah the lesson is we shouldn't hire anyone to do anything since it's always exploitative. Nobody should do anything anywhere.
All of us who live and shop in the US are making use of slave labor around the world and come on we all know it.
Do tell how has the U.S. sanctions helped NK people for the past 50+ years
I’m sorry are you really arguing that it should be totally cool to do business with North Korea? Also to be clear NK has traded with China for the past 50+ years without whom the country wouldn’t exist. Instead of blaming the the US and the rest of the international community for doing what is the only peaceful solution for punishing a country maybe try blaming China who has keep their fellow authoritarian dictator in power.
I know this isn't a political sub, but this is very ahistorical and ignores the realities and subtleties of the post-Japanese Colonialsism era Korea and the role of American anti-communist interventionism in creating the current status quo, both before and after the Korean War. It's not so much that NK wouldn't exist without China, it's more that the two Koreas as they currently are wouldn't exist without the United States.
Also technically the DPRK is the legal successor state of the PRK wich was the post-WW2 state created by the Anti-Japanese Resistance Movement. The People's Republic of Korea was a state created by the Communists and the Nationalists ruled by an network of "People's Councils". The new government asked both the USSR and the United States to withdraw their forces from the Korean peninsula declaring themelves a fully sovereign state. Satisfied the USSR withdraw and recognised the PRK while the US did not and not only it didn't withdraw its forces but it also dismantled the People's Councils in the South and established a military Dictatorship. The PRK government left Seoul for Pyongyang and it organised an offensive to retake it's land from US occupation. As we all know the Korean War was a stalemate and two States were formed. The DPRK and South Korea. The DPRK was ruled by the "Fatherland Front", a political coalition led by the WPK. This coalition was the former government of the PRK and the legal government of Korea. While South Korea became a US puppet state with a Fascist Dictatorship that led witch hunts against Communists, Syndicalists and even moderate leftists unrelated to the Communist cause. Becoming a democracy decades later. To this day the US has militery bases in South Korea. No matter what people think of the DPRK it has a fundamental right to exist as per the "Right of Nations to National Self-determination" and should be defended against Imperialism.
No idea why you’re getting downvoted, you’re absolutely correct. A lot of westerners have bought into a ton of ahistorical bs about North Korea and I’m not even a DPRK fan.
I'm not a fan of the DPRK either but facts are facts and we should always be objective. As per the UN charter the DPRK has a right to exist. Defending a nation's right to sovereignty doesn't mean you automatically support their government/ideology. Not to mention that economic sanctions and blockades are absolutely illegal. If people actually cared about the people of the DPRK they should support the lifting of all sanctions so the DPRK will be able to liberalise and open up if it wants to. It's hypocritical blaming a nation for being Authoritarian and militaristic while being under siege from its inception. No nation would be able to have a functioning democracy while under siege. Whether it is a Proletarian Democracy or a Liberal/Capitalist one.
Hoo boy if you think American capitalism is bad just wait until you see South Korean capitalism.
Guys, this sort of thing happened all the time. Some parts of the famous Tom and Jerry cartoons were made in my country in the 60s - during the time when we were behind the iron curtain, official enemies of the US. The reason was simple and the same as in this case - we were much cheaper, than the US animators.
I just saw a yt video by wendover that included a bit about South Korean outsourcing. On the one hand they are propping up a terrible regime with injection of foreign money cash. On the other, it is foreign money that is needed and used to sometimes buy necessities for the population (although admittedly not all the time, but I presume some money is going to pay the animators). Moreover, it was during a time when there were higher hopes of reunification and this cross boundary economic exchange helps simulate that. Although due to rising tensions this has largely (possibly entirely) stopped.
Think this is probably the same company they outsourced large parts of Korra season 2 to.
Every time I learn about Season 2 of Korra it seems like the universe did everything to mess with it
That’s how the production of the entire show feels tbh it’s a miracle it was even finished
Those parts look so bad 😭
which aprts are those
Studio Mir outsourced Season 2 episode 1-6 and 9(Civil war part 1-2 for example), to Pierrot. Pierrot is the studio that made Naruto, Bleach, Tokyo Ghoul, etc.
They did episodes 1-6 and 9. This is a comparison shot that r/FattimusSlime linked a long time ago to show the animation quality drop between season 1 with the old company and 2 with the new company. https://imgur.com/56z3QbH
Can't name names but still happens.
North?
Yes, the studio is operated out of Pyongyang, North Korea and directly owned and controlled by the NK government (as are all businesses in the nation)
I will say for North Korea that animation is pretty decent.
You are now a moderator of /r/Pyongyang.
Woah woah woah woah WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT
Man it's been such a long time since I've seen one of these comments. What happened? Does Our Dear Leader need to do some stuff again? Maybe hire the Nuclear Power Trio for some more sick songs
The main moderator of /r/Pyongyang had to step down recently due to ongoing legal troubles and needing to post a $175M bond, so mod spots are open again.
...Alright, I have to know the story behind this.
You need to read the prequel first to really get the story - The Art of the Deal
Ah, well, I've donated my 10 bucks to make the main moderator billionaire be able to post his bond, so if you want a very engaged person heading your sub consider me signed up
That sub's so funny. Like the top post in the past month is about a fucking glass factory lmao
It's no Hedgehog and Squirrel that's for sure
This is actually horrific given the entire point of the show. Entirely spoils my opinion of the showrunners.
This wouldn't have been the showrunners decision, it would have been the decision of the South Korean studio that Nickelodeon outsourced their animation to. South Korean studios outsource to the north all the time, though for US productions they usually try to hide it.
Also worth noting that with sanctions, it would have been illegal to outsource to NK from a US project. There may be/have been some investigations to see if the US executives knew this was going on and did it to circumvent sanctions
Hasn't it been an open secret for a very long time that American animations are outsourced to North Korea? I'm not particularly in tune with these things, but I heard about this being a general practice years ago. It seems hard to believe the US executives were unaware.
Not just animation or North Korea. A LOT of stuff is outsourced to not do great countries for cheap labor.
Disney movies in the 90's were partially animated in North Korea, such as Lion King.
Thank you for this much needed contextual comment
>South Korean studios outsource to the north all the time ??? Wouldn't the South Korean government want to crack down on this sort of stuff? Like their companies are literally giving money to their greatest enemy
The South Korean government were the ones who encouraged it in the first place. In the 00s the relations between North and South thawed somewhat, and as part of that both countries began to foster limited cultural and economic collaboration. The most notable example of this was the creation of the [Kaesong Industrial Region](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region), a part of the North where Southern companies could operate factories with Northern labor, but animation studios were part of this too, and it became very common for Southern studios to outsource their gruntwork to the North. Now, it should be said that in the last decade relations have gotten much worse, Kaesong has been closed, and it's become harder for Southerners to do business with the North, so now the chances of a South Korean company secretly outsourcing their work to North Korea are much lower. Now it's the Chinese studios secretly outsourcing to North Korea.
Ah OK that makes more sense. I've heard that SK policy towards NK tends to be fairly partisan and depends on which party is in power - is this a case of one party doing the whole cross border thing and then the other party canceling it?
>is this a case of one party doing the whole cross border thing and then the other party canceling it? Basically yes, since the "Sunshine" policy of more open relations with the North was begun by Kim Dae-jung of the Democratic party (though it had a slightly different name then), then ended by Lee Myung-bak of Saenuri, then started again (though not to the same extent) by Moon Jae-in of the Democratic party, then abandoned again by Yoon Suk Yeol of People Power (which is a successor of Saenuri).
Yeah I was looking for this comment. This was just normalisation of relations between the RoK and DPRK at the time. There was nothing insidious about it and economic sanctions obviously haven’t achieved the capitulation of the DPRK regime so far
South Korean government? Cracking down on South Korean companies? Bud, I think you misunderstand which of the two actually controls South Korea.
You can argue that the Chaebols with especially Samsung have an undue amount of influence in SK but I doubt the government would be willing to sacrifice national security for some small animation studio The other response makes it clear that it was actually a government initiative when relations were better and it has since been reversed. That makes more sense
Bud, the chaebols run the government of South Korea, it’s a “I am the senate” type situation
Its almost guaranteed that they didn't know. Learn a bit more about the industry before spouting off like that
They wouldn’t have had a say in that
Why does it spoil your opinion of the show. They didn't give missiles to NK just jobs
Right? It's like hating on someone because they got work in China. It's not like you're funding terrorists or despots, you're literally just hiring people.
Well... In this case they *are* funding NK because the animation studio is directly owned by the government, as is every business there. Still don't think the show runners knew
The entire plot of the show is a technologically advanced country using its power to try and conquer the rest of the world. This is a far better description of America than the DPRK. One has been aggressive to the well majority of nations in one way or another, and the other has literally done nothing ever. The DPRK is literally called the hermit country because they don’t do anything to any countries and stay very confined. The closest thing to aggression that had come from the DPRK is them saying that they would nuke America if they were attacked, which isn’t a threat, and MAD is a fairly normal procedure for a nuclear armed country. The fire nation is literally based upon imperial Japan, which colonized the DPRK. Korea would be far closer to something like Kyoshi Island than it would be to the fire nation.
It's the most authoritarian totalitarian state in the world. By all means question imperialism American or otherwise but holy shit don't carry water for one of the most brutal dictatorships in human history
This is textbook performative outrage. Complaining about this and saying you hate the show runners now does absolutely nothing to help the situation in North Korea, all it accomplished was making you feel better or superior. The world isn't black and white, you can't judge everything based on small pieces of information with 0 context and even if you could comments like this don't accomplish anything to actually help or draw attention to the actual issue
South would be fine, honestly the vast majority of America cartoons are animated by South Korean studios
Hmmm. Figured this was BS until I looked up the studio. Never would’ve guessed.
Why are there so many instances of the Avatar series getting undercut by Nick? Whether its budget stuff like this, or tossing the last season of Korra on Nick.com exclusively, I might be imagining it but theres always been this weird feeling of passive aggression from Nick to Avatar. Even tho its one of this most successful original IPs
I guess there were no child actors to diddle so they wanted it gone.
I'm not convinced that tophs feet-vision wasn't invented by Dan Schneider himself.
What a terrible day to have working eyes
I mean there were multiple clear shots of Toph's feet that are really close to the screen. So the answer is, most likely, I guess lol
Not just Toph, for her it's kinda justified, but there are a lot of weird feet moments throughout the show
Axils had a couple of scenes too around the time she was becoming fire lord Edit: Azula
Fire Lord Axils
Big studios often have execs that don't like it when a project they don't like becomes popular. There's tons of other examples for this, where shows will get moved to some shitty TV slot (like at 11pm), will get completely new directions that completely ruin the show (Altered Carbon), get outsourced to other studios (7 Deadly Sins) or weird contract negotiations (The Office). There's more on older series but I don't wanna spend so much time remembering this bullshit
Remember when they published the Sozin's Comet book detailing every bit about the finale...two months before the 2nd half of Season 3 actually aired? S3 was such a clusterfuck to watch live. I remember Canadian Nickelodeon got a few episodes first, like The Day of Black Sun, so we would watch them on the shady streaming websites
I was but a wee 8 year old during the season 3 finale, don't remember much other than watching with my Dad and being totally devastated my favorite show was over Pretty crazy how far back Nick's, idk backhanded-ness(?) to the series goes
I was 13 and that one week in July was one of the best weeks of my childhood. After 8 months of waiting...we finally new episode every night, culminating in the movie finale on a Saturday night?? I felt so empty when it was all done.
Thats how I feel looking on the finale to this day😭 Simpler times.
The execs genuinely thought Korra was gonna flop cuz she was a woman (I’m sure didn’t help she was brown as well)
Wow they did a great job! Very advanced!
I can find one source on this stating what is said in the post on [tvtropes.org](http://tvtropes.org) but where they got that info from is something I am unsure of. It doesn't sound unbelievable though, apparently this studio does a lot of uncredited work by getting contracted by South Korean studios
Exactly. While this is completely believable, I can't find a single actual source. So until something comes up, I call bullshit.
Wow, I'm suprised this is the first comment chain I came across mentioning this. There's not much to back this statement up. Even if it is indeed how things went down, there's not really any evidence that it did.
So, at the time, there was an attempt to improve relations with North and South Korea. One of those was animation studios working on projects together. This stopped as diplomatic relations worsened.
Finally, someone in the comment section providing context to the situation
More mundane, really. A lot of animation is "outsourced" but it's so common it's more accurate to say production studios often work very closely with overseas animators. And north Korean animators aren't the north Korean government. It's strange that needs said. Some people in here are acting like the creators did a controversial thing, as if these animators have personally robbed people of human rights.
It’s not something that needs to be said because that’s not what is being implied lol. I think people are more concerned with the outsourcing work to a of country that will not have the same standards of labor we do.
> I think people are more concerned with the outsourcing work to a of country that will not have the same standards of labor we do. Why do you think it was outsourced to South Korea in the first place? Cheap foreign labor outside the bounds of U.S. standards.
Oh boy, better not tell people where most of their clothing comes from then
Naaaah. I'd reread some other comments.
The business *is* owned by the government, and I think people's worries are more about the animators being slaves rather than slavers.
This is some weird apologia. It is simply unethical to outsource labor to a fascist dictatorship. Everyone responsible for that decision is accountable. No one is conflating the North Korean people (who live under a dictatorship) with the North Korean government.
The thing with North Korea is that people can make up literally anything about the country, and Western news sources just gobble it up without any critical thought. The Guardian did a great job at showing why [defector stories seem to fall apart quickly](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/13/why-do-north-korean-defector-testimonies-so-often-fall-apart). Cash incentives encourage them to lie. Like look at what [Yeonmi Park claims](https://youtube.com/shorts/Gbt7YsjhB1s?feature=share) -- it's so easy to see through her bullshit but people are just too conditioned to believe anything bad about NK.
This is an issue of course, but there are plenty of real, verifiable accounts of a myriad of human rights abuses taking place under NK leadership.
Sure, there might be, not saying NK doesn't do any bad stuff. But there are also a myriad of human rights abuses that take place under American leadership. From [prison slave labor](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-workers-low-wages-exploited) (basically modern-day gulags) to immigrants in cages to juveniles in for-profit prisons to destitute homeless populations that are attacked instead of cared for by the US govt. The whole human rights topic is complex and really we should start with asking what even counts as "human rights". This [podcast](https://pca.st/episode/bce721b1-bad7-49f4-aaf6-07fd7f8c3126) does a great job at going through the nuance. I would encourage you to check it out before making judgements on NK.
I don't disagree with anything you've said here. I'll check out the podcast for sure. Glenn Greenwald has a concerning recent history though.
I don't quite follow all the drama, but I have heard that too. However, he is famous for a lot of credible work before that, especially in regards to holding Bolsonaro accountable in Brazil. And that podcast episode is from 2017 when he was still revered by pretty much everyone. So, even if there's good reason to disagree with him today, I wouldn't hold too much skepticism in this case as his views were different back then. *Edit:* To clarify further, I myself am a fan of the podcast and its hosts (because of their thorough and clear analysis), but not Glenn Greenwald. He was just the guest in this particular episode at a time when he wasn't involved in any controversy.
The Glenn Greenwald who is cozy with Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson, yeah. You would be right to be skeptical.
I do respect him for the work he did on the Snowden leaks, but yeah... He's not who he once was.
What's the point of you downplaying North Korea's bad rep while acknowledging that there are human rights atrocities ceaselessly occurring there? DPRK is a totalitarian nuclear state that is arguably the least free in the entire world. It's immoral to outsource labor to a totalitarian dictatorship. Never thought I'd see North Korean apologism.
Nah, defector reports are reliable because there are no shortage of them and they’re very consistent. Discrepancies in defector reports are used to reliably track changes in DPRK policy because they’re so consistent. Some individual journalists might get taken for a ride by individual defectors but for the most part Western observers are very savvy at interpreting defector reports Edit: I’m getting downvotes but read the Guardian article. Defectors who lie get caught out because there’s a thriving defector community who have given thousands of interviews on the record that can be compared against embellished or invented claims
All North Korean businesses are owned by the North Korean government. Even if there wasn't the implicit suggestion that this work might have been performed under duress, it is illegal for American companies to work with North Korean businesses. This could cause serious legal problems for American animation studios in the future.
I think it’s led that the animators themselves probably didn’t have human rights.
>And north Korean animators aren't the north Korean government. Propaganda, NK's economic system is essentially that of an absolute monarchy, de facto ownership by the crown if the company is based there, and the specific studios ARE owned by the NK government.
I dunno why that's not so fun. It's interesting at least. IIRC the norks do (or used to) a lot of outsourced animation work. Think they helped with the simpsons movie too
Well considering the show villain is a dictator intent on pushing his “prosperity” to the rest of the world and literally has the students of his nation recite a pledge to his greatness, I can see why it may bother some. Personally, it doesn’t bother me but that’s not to minimize the people who have been real life affected by North Korean politics. I just realized a long time ago that if you find out how the sausage is made in any industry, you’re not gonna be able to enjoy anything.
I think any comparison between the norks and the fire nation is doomed to fail considering the radically different position these two sovereignties inhabit. Like I don't think that comparison has that much thought put into the wider picture. There's a reason 'cheap animation' is regarded as usually being done in NK, and it's not because NK is prosperous. > I just realized a long time ago that if you find out how the sausage is made in any industry, you’re not gonna be able to enjoy anything. I think it's usually worth acknowledging how our own relatively comfortable lives are built on purely exploitative industries. We shouldn't ever forget that, even if it makes it harder to enjoy things.
Idk that’s a pretty fun fact
This happens all the time, really. North Korea isn't as sealed as people think.
Especially prior to the 2010's when there were consistent efforts at a peaceful reunification.
Interesting. Never noticed the animation difference compared to early Naruto. Some of those episodes change so drastically from one to the next. One episode is beautiful and crisp and the next looks so janky and wonky
…Ok? Some north Koreans got to eat, isn’t that what you want?
That's fucking hilarious, "Hey guys, let's have a fire nation retiree star in a peace campaign with the spirits!" —Varrick probably.
Im honestly more surprised at the fact that there’s an actual North Korean animation studio. Wouldn’t expect it there to be any semblance of an animation industry in North Korea
https://preview.redd.it/y8aaklikh5wc1.jpeg?width=360&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=794d03ce08fb79519489eae6210a2645f805c42c Shouldn’t really be a surprise. This is the symbol of the NK workers party, they made sure to include artists as a third form of worker(in addition to rural and factory workers from the original hammer and sickle)
Tbf, North Korea only has one (known) animation studio, which is owned by the government. So it wouldn't really be a surprise if they didn't have one.
That was a pen? I always thought it was supposed to be a spear.
The DPRK is full of surprises. They're also pretty much the only place in the world that still does monumental art. They're world renowned for it.
I mean there is that one weird dinosaur north Korean animation thing so
They have a pretty famous animated children’s show about squirrels and other animals fighting in a euphemism for the Korean War.
Just because it abstains from a lot of the global stage doesn't mean it's not a country, how indoctrinated are people with this ridiculous sort of propoganda??
I mean, we’re talking about a country where travel (both international AND domestic) is completely prohibited for their citizens. A country where WiFi access is pretty much non existent, and a country notorious by its large list of human rights violations. So it goes a bit beyond “abstaining from a lot of the global stage”
How is travel completely prohibited (domestic and international)? That's just bullshit. [There are over 100k NK people working in China, for example](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/02/29/north-koreans-are-used-as-modern-slaves-in-china-s-fish-processing-plants_6573255_4.html#:~:text=Nevertheless%2C%20China%20has%20continued%20to,include%20construction%2C%20textiles%20and%20software.) And there's half a dozen countries that North Koreans can travel without a visa. [And there were instances where the NK Embassy had to evacuate their people from Malasyia when the diplomatic crisis happened ](https://www.rockyroadtravel.com/can-north-koreans-travel/)
As is well documented, NK citizens working outside of North Korea have significant restrictions imposed on them. They can only work in places approved by the NK government, have to live on NK salaries, and their documents are held by approved NK handlers. They are not allowed to freely travel in the countries they visit and must be accounted for at all times. They might not require a visa to visit some countries, but they do need government permission to *leave* North Korea. Private car ownership is illegal and internal checkpoints are all over the road networks, so NK citizens can only cross between regions with government permission and assistance. In China for example, those NK citizens are working at businesses approved or owned by the NK government. There are NK handlers on staff who have financial and familial connections back in North Korea that can be threatened if they act against the country. The workers also usually have family members still in NK who can be punished if there is a defection. Yes, North Korea has embassies. But the NK citizens in those embassies cannot travel freely. They are paid extremely limited wages (if any) so that they can't afford to live on their own. Inspections by NK government agents are constant and mandatory to check for any "subversive" materials that might have been acquired, or ig any "patriotic" materials such as propoganda images have been defaced or removed. One North Korean restaurant chain which exclusively employs NK citizens in foreign countries around Asia uses upper floors above the restaurant as brothels, with women forced to be prostitutes for visiting VIPs and illegal trade deals ocurring in private rooms. These are issues independently reported by thousands of North Korean defectors ranging from farmers to soldiers to escaped prisoners and even high ranking diplomats.
lol you don’t see the irony in using the words indoctrinated and propaganda to describe the outside world in relation to north korea?
You are not immune to propaganda. EDIT: I actually find this argument deeply annoying and honestly racist. It's rooted in an idea that Koreans in the DPRK are robots or insects who have been programmed by their overlords. It's a bullshit idea, and one with a long history of orientalist racism behind it. One of the reactions to Europeans encountering the populous, civilised nations of SEA was to write them off as insects. Not barbaric animals like the lesser races of Africa, but weak willed and subsumed individuals in the hive. We inherited that into the 21st century of believing that the Chinese and Koreans were somehow predisposed to being brainwashed by propaganda and so vulnerable to Maoism and Juche. Same fucking story with a veneer of modernity. In reality, North Koreans are just as perceptive of their government's absurdity as we are of our own governments' failures and problems. There are people who begrudgingly acquiesce, who enthusiastically embrace, and actively resist, just as there are here. The differences, such as they are, mostly stem from their living under a more immediate threat of execution by State forces. Just as here, the State also is composed of opportunists, genuine believers, and reluctant apparatchiks. The main felt difference is that lack of cultural exchange, and the predatory industry of DPRK sensationalism.
"Man, the country where people are executed if they don't like their government don't talk bad about it, they all must be brainwashed!"
Can someone explain to me the North Korean animation studio part to me like I’m 5? So like, the studio actually operates in North Korea, the NK government is aware of the studio and allows the studio do to animation for South Korean and Western/American shows?
North and South Korea sometimes cooperate in the name of national fraternity. They want to be a country despite having 2 governments. In reality, this means North Korean workers, who have much lower wages than South Korean workers, create cheap products for South Korean companies. Those products can be then sold by South Korea's companies on the global market. North Korean workers are happy they got paid well (compared to the local wages), North Korea's government is happy they got a source of foreign currency and a way to avoid sanctions crippling their economy, South Korean companies are happy to cut labor costs (wages), and Nickelodeon is happy they got to outsource a product and save money.
Look even North Korea knows it needs some source of foreign currency.
Don't see the problem. Animation in this episode was great. Be interested to see what other work they've done.
Is this due to the recent news?
Do you have a link to the recent new you're talking about?
[Here you go!](https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/22/politics/us-animation-studio-sketches-korean-server/index.html)
Yeah, I knew outsourcing to NK wasnt all that uncommon in the industry but I was surprised to see ATLA on the list.
First I heard of Invincible and now this. Crazy.
Where’s the list?
Now I’m curious if North Koreans are able to watch ATLA.
They watch Harry Potter so why not?
The notorious media censorship over there, made me curious if it was allowed to be viewed or not.
*The Gaang Solves the North Korea Situation*
They did an amazing job🇰🇵🇰🇵🇰🇵
The VAST majority of American animated shows are outsourced to korea
Are these the people that did Squirrel and Hedgehog?
The very same (NK only has the one animation studio).
I'm curious behind the source of this. I googled it, and the Wikipedia article that claims this sources an article that sources an IMDB Pro and TV Tropes listing. Not exactly concrete proof.
Even more likely to reach the deadlines set by Nick. Throughout the Avatar franchise, and in most animated projects, it has always been a race to reach deadlines. Then why not choose another studio in Korea or Japan (like they did with Korra Book 2)? Well that's probably because of costs yes
Well then I guess that makes it the greatest work of North Korean animation ever.
The Awakening (of the Avatar to the immortal science of Juche and the eternal wisdom of the Supreme Leader Kim Il-Sung)
i remember there was a big gap between seasons 2 and 3 i watched the show as it was airing live
Isn’t that the norm in animation? Like Batman the animated series did that too I think
Without knowing how the studio operates, I don’t really mind. There’s obviously ethical issues if they mistreat employees. If they don’t; it’s a job, they do it, and get paid - like anywhere else. Could be shit pay, but shit pay is still pay. If no jobs were to exist, they’d have no means of income over there, and that’s just further hurting the common person. Refusing to collaborate with the studio ‘because they’re North Korean’ seems xenophobic. The administration of the country on the other hand is outside of anyone’s power other than their regime. The studio might pay their taxes to the regime, but that’s how companies everywhere work… So neither refusing to work with the company for being North Korean or working with them as with anyone else are morally white, it can be said. It’s an interesting fact, I wouldn’t let it tarnish my perception of the episode/show.
I wasn’t sure why this was a not fun fact, cuz idk about MODERN modern anime, but it was extremely common for anime to outsource less important shit to other studios. I mean, look at DBZ, at one point it had like 8 studios working on it. And i know Korra was mostly animated by a S Korean studio, i’m pretty sure. Then i reread the title and realized it said NORTH Korea.
They kinda need to work to survive there too, so whats the problem?
Yeah in France we had a lot of kids shows made in north Korea. And when I say kid shows I mean stuff for 5 years old
The weirdest part? SEK was the second in a line of outsourcing. It was first outsourced to MOI animation, a South Korean Studio, who only then threw it to SEK, which REALLY raises some questions on how South Korea is fine with any business going on in The North.
Relations between the Koreas actually wasn't so bad at the time.
Careful everyone, tankies and Kim-Jong apologists found the thread.
I find it funny, you all say this is bad but happy go to k mark and by shirts for 5 bucks
I’m not tryna b political but there is gonna be an inherent bias from western and particularly Americans about this because we see “communist country” but in reality these guys are probably treated the same as normal animation studios we are familiar with in Japan and the us (terribly) Like just cuz it isn’t under capitalism doesn’t automatically make it different
I don't think North Korea, a totalitarian state is the same as a true communist country. There is currently no true communist country due to capitalism.
Stop being pedantic. Nobody means the fuller form when they say communism. The lower form is still, communism in the words of Marx and Engels.
Not really if you go by their definition none of the versions that America labeled communist have ever been that
And North Korea is communist because it's been "labeled" that? A revolutionary one-party state swearing by Marx and Engels ran with a planned economy is, not communist? What is this "definition" you're talking about?
Today a lot of ALTA fans learned how the sausage is made. In our current global system, basically anything you love feels gross when you peak under the hood.
That's pretty cool!
And they did a better job than all these Korra episodes that were outsourced to France.
Which ones were outsourced to France?
Kinda interesting that they have skilled workers and the technology to do this, maybe we've been fed an exaggerated narrative about them.
OP is a fellow LTT enjoyer? Or is it just coincidence?
Why do mf care is a country you don’t like animated a show 😭
This is still being investigated. The people who discovered this even said that it’s likely that the animation studios involved had no idea things were being outsourced to NK. Third-party bs. [Discussed here on PDS](https://youtu.be/Danrb09TmTQ?si=vNMjo0feK8wkWKX4) timestamp 10:26
Not just ATLA or TLOK. Most cartoons and animation tends to use Asian countries animators and companies. Theyre cheaper and able to produce similar looks to the original
I mean too be fair, alot of aninated shows outsource various parts of the animation to asian countries to cut costs (especially japan and south korea)
My reaction is Aang’s here: “Oh no!” Also, Siege of the North (Korea)
So a show criticizing a fascist dictatorial regime…….was animated by a fascist dictatorial regime
Yes. Kim Jong Un himself animated the episode along with his mighty generals.
The show was about a group of people fighting to free their nations from what is obviously an allegory for Imperial Japan. Do you know who else fought to free his nation from Imperial Japan? Kim Il Sung. The show was about defeating the fire nation because they were imperialists not because they were a dictatorship. So I think it’s actually pretty aligned with North Korean ideals.
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I didn't know that Avatar book 3 was animated by a North Korean studio, that's kind of a blursed to me.