Collective rituals such as festivals have long been understood as powerful mechanisms for the production and consolidation of collective identity. North Korea, in particular, has staged mass performances and state-sponsored festivals of such extraordinary scale and technical perfection that they often appear “unreal” to outside observers, eliciting both awe and disorientation. This article conceptualizes political festivals as a distinctive mode of state self-representation engineered by North Korea as a “theater state,” and investigates how their representational logic has been reconfigured in the Kim Jong-un era. Focusing on three analytical dimensions—media, space, and subject formation—it traces the transformation of political spectacle in relation to technological change, urban restructuring, and shifting popular sensibilities.
First, new forms of self-representation have emerged through the mediatization of spectacle. Following the debut of The Glorious Fatherland in 2020, which incorporated advanced digital technologies, the iconic Arirang mass games have effectively receded into the past. The lighting festival Harmony of Light, which visualizes nationalist ideology and technological modernity through illumination effects, has saturated Pyongyang’s nightscape with media-facade projections and the ubiquitous participation of spectators’ mobile phones. This shift signals a transition from the labor-intensive, bodily mobilization characteristic of earlier mass gymnastics—where ideological unity was materialized through disciplined collective choreography—toward technologically mediated events that privilege visual immersion and digital coordination. In short, the political festival has moved from corporeal mass mobilization to new media–based spectacle.
Second, changes in festival form correspond to the emergence of new types of subjects with distinct cultural dispositions. Recent New Year’s celebrations have evolved from solemn, leader-centered rituals into more open and participatory events that encourage active engagement by the populace. The transformation of these celebrations into “media events” is closely connected to the rise of the so-called jangmadang generation, whose everyday lives are shaped by marketization and smartphone-based media environments. The socioeconomic shifts associated with marketization have consequently reshaped not only material life but also affective orientations and modes of participation, producing subjects who relate to state rituals less as passive spectators than as mediated participants.
Third, the spatial configuration of political festivals has shifted from enclosed and centralized venues to open, urbanized sites. Since 2018, outdoor performances have increased significantly, with newly redeveloped districts of Pyongyang—rebuilt under Kim Jong-un as models of a “socialist paradise”—serving as stages for state spectacle. New media shows such as Harmony of Light thus function not merely as cultural performances but as spatial practices that re-signify the city itself. By erasing visual traces of backwardness and projecting images of technological sophistication, these events participate in the symbolic production and international branding of Pyongyang, aligning urban space with the regime’s developmental and propagandistic objectives.
Taken together, these developments indicate that political festivals in the Kim Jong-un era constitute a rearticulated regime of self-representation: one characterized by intensified visuality through new media technologies (especially lighting effects), evolving participatory practices shaped by the formation of a new generation of subjects, and the relocation of spectacle to open and symbolically charged urban spaces. Political spectacle, in this sense, no longer relies primarily on the choreography of disciplined bodies but increasingly operates through the orchestration of images, spaces, and affects.