Revolutionary heroes ranging from John Brown to Kim Il-Sung are isekai'd to a fantasy world that parodies shows like 'the rising of the shield hero' to break the chains of slavery in all forms once more and liberate the fantasy workers and the peasants from the yoke of feudal oppression while hunting down so-called "heroes" summoned by the feudal lords who intend to use them as tools to preserve their power and the economic base of their feudalistic slave economy.
Show me Stalin riding a chocobo or some shit leading a calvary charge against slaver caravans!
Show me Marx, Engels, and Lenin working together in the cities inspiring the proto-proletariate to take up arms against the feudal robber-barons and their land-leechs that bleed them dry
Show me Mao, Tito, and bonus character Jan Žižka, on a rural bro-venture with the three in a competitive rivalry to see who can organize the greatest peasant rebellion between the three!
The DPRK has been working on animation programs since the late 1980s, if I'm not mistaken. I'm pretty sure they've worked on an episode of Avatar, several episodes of Invincible, Iyanu (Some design documents were leaked, which made some Redditors and US diplomats angry, as they don't want the North Koreans to get paid due to sanctions), several Italian Catholic and magical girl shows (The Original Winx and Angel Friends or Warriors, something like that), some Japanese anime and the Simpsons and Futurama movies.
Not to mention the fact that they make animation for the state television. Most of them seem to be fantasy shows related to Korean history, but the best-known show is probably Squirrel and Hedgehog and its 2005 remake (it seems they announced a new remake for it this year).
You think the embassy would mail DVDs od their shows if asked nicely?
I doubt they would be able to give the foreign stuff they worked on. But the domestically made shows and movies are usually sold by Mokran Video (the main dubbing/localization and media company in the DPRK). The embassy staff will probably just tell you buy the licenced international versions (usually some Italian, Chinese or French company owns the copyright to it and have some generic english dub with the usual VAs for anime and video games) or watch it online, since those can easily be found on youtube and some other video hosting site.
Most of these DVDs are sold on Mokran Video stores that exist in most of the country, I think there some videos on youtube with people buying these dvds.
Can't hurt to try and it'd be a cool flex, if they do you should upload it for torrenting or put it on tankietube
Do you have sources for this? Very interesting! And specifically, wdym with catholic shows?
Due to US sanctions against the DPRK, most American/Japanese stuff that SEK Studios worked on was uncredited saved for some animators names. But you can easily find them on the credits of European shows. I think CNN recently reported on how Italian TV stations and studios didn't care about the sanctions and paid fines so they could continue working with SEK Studios.
Marcelino Pan y Vino (or just Marcelino in Japan) is a catholic animated show made produced by Italy, France, Spain and Japan, though most of the animation was outsourced to Japan and the DPRK (due to sanctions they had to remove the SEK Studios credits from the english version, but you can find them on the Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese versions). You can easily find most episodes on youtube, and most of them have SEK Studios credited with the animation, specially from season 2 on.
CNN: Documents found on a North Korean server suggest US studios may have unknowingly outsourced animation work
CNN: Italian animation company agrees to $538,000 penalty for ‘apparent violations’ of US sanctions on North Korea
finally some cool italians. it's been a while.
The graphic memoir Pyonyang: A Journey in North Korea by the Canadian Guy DeLisle details the author visiting a studio working on a French-produced cartoon. Fair warning: I read it as a liberal teenager and even then I clocked that it was racist and insane. Like just this white moron wandering around on guided tours, seemingly unaware of the history of the country he was visiting going "everyone here is a brainwashed automaton. everything is so oppressive. if only i could liberate these poor mindless drones from their shackles."