Contrary to popular belief, North Korea does indeed boast a bull market. Pyongyang’s Mansudae Art Studio, which employs/imprisons 4,000 North Koreans, is considered the world’s largest and most productive "art" factory.
Churning out paintings, murals, posters, billboards, and monuments, all with the singular purpose of mythologizing the family of brutal tyrants that has ruled the country for decades, Mansudae is a boon for the Nork economy.
Since the 1970s, when the Mansudae Overseas Project Group of Companies was founded to open its propaganda apparatus to foreigners, North Korea has pulled in millions in export orders from countries with such sterling reputations as Egypt, Syria, and Zimbabwe.
Nork Strong.
Before Mansudae engineers began accepting foreign contracts, the factory’s sole directive was to apply lipstick on the pig that is life in North Korea.
According to a profile in the latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek:
The impoverished country, in which 28 percent of children under 5 suffer from malnutrition, according to the United Nations, spends much of its budget on Kim family deification. According to a recent statement by North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly, "44.8 percent of the total state budgetary expenditure for the economic development and improvement of people’s living standard was used for funding the building of edifices to be presented to the 100th birth anniversary of President Kim Il Sung."
One thousand Mansudae workers are hand-selected artisans officially commissioned to deify the Great, Dear, and Supreme Leaders. Coming soon: the #BAMF Leader.
Nations who’ve contracted with the Norks for monuments have run into some pitfalls. The figures portrayed in Senegal’s African Renaissance Monument, a 164-foot tall structure higher than the Statue of Liberty and Rio’s Christ the Redeemer, had to be redone because at first they looked too Korean. On top of that, the statue’s scantily clad female figure didn't go over so well with Senegal’s Muslim population. North Korea, of course, has a flair for edgy fashion.
No one knows who in North Korea profits from sales of this stuff, but it isn't too hard to guess. A Nork blogger speculates that Dear’s entrepreneurial younger sister Kim Kyong Hui runs the plant because of her presence at various plant functions and an essay she wrote about the "Merited Sculpture Production Company."
Kim Jong-Un's aunt running his bullshit machine? Family values.