North Korean Design
Sunday, 18 March 2018
◄ At the House of Illustration – 2 Granary Square, King’s Cross – behind King’s Cross Station in London, England, there’s an exhibit of Graphic Design from North Korea: Made in North Korea: Everyday Graphics from the DPRK. The exhibit is open until 13 May.
The exhibit features everything from propaganda posters to tourist postcards, Air Koryo air-sick bags to cigarette packs, comic books (reminding you that ‘Yankees are Wolves in Human Shape’) to phrasebooks (lots of ways of saying how great the great leader is).
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There’s also a book – Made in North Korea – documenting the exhibit. The collection belongs to Nick Bonner who is also the author of the book. Through his Beijing based travel company Koryo Tours, Nick is the man with the keys to the door to North Korea. When I visited North Korea way back in 2002 (time flies!) Nick was the man who held the door open and ushered me in. North Korea remains the weirdest country I have ever been to although I must admit Turkmenistan, which I visited last year – 2017, certainly runs it a close second in the weirdness stakes. ►
