North Korea’s ‘Pink Lady’: How Ri Chun-hee became the voice of a nation
From abject poverty to universal recognition, the story of North Korea’s most famous broadcaster shows the remarkable power of state loyalty.
In coverage of all of North Korea’s affairs, from its numerous nuclear missile tests to the deaths of its revered leaders, there is a single woman who often takes centerstage. She is as close to being a celebrity as any one person can be in a country which reveres communism and cracks down on any trace of Western influence, such as the notion of fame. Her short frame behind the desk can be misleading at first glance. But on every occasion, her presence is firmly cemented when she opens her mouth and speaks.
You may know her because of her iron voice — a bellicose and percussive swell of words that demand the attention of the listener, full of scorn or sentimentality depending on the subject matter. Perhaps you might recognise the sprawling artwork of Korea’s famous Paektu mountain that frames her, utilised in almost every aspect of the North’s iconography. But if none of these things ring a bell, you will certainly recognise her thanks to her now emblematic pink hanbok, a traditional Korean dress, which she wears on many of her appearances and has amalgamated into a definitive part of her identity as North Korea’s “Pink Lady”.
This woman is Ri Chun-hee, a 78-year-old newsreader and one of the most universally recognised members of North Korea’s totalitarian regime, besides the revered members of the Kim dynasty. In times of national strife or gleeful celebration, citizens can depend on her to be sitting resolutely in front of the Paektu mural speaking emphatically, praising the leadership as gods walking among us or spitting venom against the enemies of communism. Her forceful voice and constant presence at the forefront of North Korean media has been, to some observers, the grease on the wheels of a struggling regime that has fought to maintain a convincing cult of personality across various generations, with each successive leader seemingly less qualified than the last.
Looking through the lens of Ri’s fifty year career in television, we can catch a rare glimpse inside the North Korean propaganda machine and how a single woman, both a mother and grandmother, has influenced the politics of (and all but secured the continuity of) the world’s most brutally repressive government.
Humble Beginnings
The year is 1943. The vast nation of Korea, ruled by the epic Joseon dynasty for over 500 years, has been living under harsh Japanese control since the country’s annexation in 1910. In two short years, Korea will be freed from the strict rule of their oppressors — only to be thrust into further crises thanks to the impending ideological tug-of-war between the capitalist democracy of the USA and the communist dictatorship of the USSR.
That same year in the small eastern county of Tongchon, a girl named Ri Chun-hee is born into abject poverty. Her family, whose livelihoods have been decimated by the cruel actions of their occupiers, welcome the expulsion of the Japanese from the Korean Peninsula in 1945. Before the year is through, however, the young nation is torn apart by the world’s largest superpowers and fashioned into two new states which bear the likeness of their creators.
The communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, led by military veteran Kim Il-sung, takes its cues from its Soviet allies and seeks to build a nation based on the extreme left-wing principles of Marxism-Leninism. Ri and her family, now comrades in this new proletariat-powered nation, find their life improving under Kim’s leadership. Meals, once few and far between during the black days of occupation, become more regular. Industry ramps up, factories and expansive apartment blocks are erected and North Korea looks as though it is pulling ahead of its southern arch rival.
However, as the economy grows and standards of living slowly lift, Kim takes the somewhat inevitable step towards replicating the influence of leaders like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong by intensively developing a cult of personality across the nation. He paints himself as the hero of Korea, the one who snatched it from the greedy imperialist jaws of the Japanese Empire almost single-handedly. Statues are erected in his honour and titles such as “Great Leader” and “Sun” are publicly adopted. Then the purges begin.
By the mid 1960s, North Korea is firmly under the iron fist of Kim Il-sung and the ruling communist party. From her lowly beginnings born into a poor family, Ri Chun-hee’s loyalty to the party grants her the ability to attend university in Pyongyang — a privilege reserved only for those who have proved themselves trustworthy and useful to the regime. Under the Kim family’s rule, there is no better litmus test of fealty than an individual’s own background — abject poverty means dependence on the state, and that dependence can be a staggeringly powerful tool for justifying the existence of the regime and reinforcing its strict policies.
Ri enrolls as a student at the city’s university of theatre and film and studies, rather unsurprisingly, performance art. After completing her studies, she is hired by Korea Central Television (KCTV) in 1971 as a newsreader and begins her epic rise to journalistic stardom within North Korea.
Thanks to the dramatic instruction she had picked up during her college education, Ri knows how to command an audience and utilises this in her daily news bulletins. Her ability to make the most banal of regime propaganda seem like essential, life-changing information soon attracts the attention of then second-in-command Kim Jong-il and his ministry of information.
Knowing the importance of propaganda to maintain the illusion of power, Jong-il recognises her impact on the media landscape of the country, describing her voice and manner as “transfixing” and valuable to the regime. He names her the “People’s Broadcaster”, the highest honour for a North Korean announcer and remarkable achievement in a regime with hyperbolic titles so plentiful that they begin to mean absolutely nothing at all.
A Symbol of Censorship
Since her meteoric rise to the top of DPRK media, Ri and her pink hanbok have become a focal point for the North Korean regime and she is now synonymous with the image of a totalitarian state, much in the same way that the omniscient Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984 is a symbol of the people’s oppression. Whether she is aware of what goes on outside of North Korea’s borders, and a world history that has not been distorted by her overseers, that is unclear.
Regardless, Ri and her reporting have certainly helped maintain the status quo in North Korea and contributed to the internal distortion of information, consumed wholeheartedly by the nationals who watch her on state TV. She is in her element, so it seems, when she announces the success of innumerable missile tests launched by the regime’s leader — many videos of these performances ultimately go viral in the West thanks to her almost tangible enthusiasm.
But what is difficult to question is her complicity in the proliferation of very real “fake news” and its propagation in the wider community. Inside North Korea, news reports often paint an unrealistic picture of the country’s position on the world stage, building a Potemkin village of false achievements and fabrications about other world powers. State media portrays North Korea as a nuclear-armed nation on par with the wealth and status of the United States of America, and during humanitarian crises, will often falsely propose other nations are suffering even worse. Whether Ri is aware of the reality of the situation, it is not known. Regardless, she diffuses such ideas throughout the population with chilling efficacy.
Outside the borders of North Korea, Ri has become, despite the pointed fascination with her pink outfits and tempestuous cadence, a figure that people associate with censorship and suppression of information. As such, her duty as a broadcaster and journalist is seen to contradict the information which she provides to the people of the nation. Living through the reign of Kim Jong-il and experiencing his gross mismanagement of the country’s self-sufficient economy, Ri was surely aware of the widespread famines that affected the country throughout the 1990s. But her job as a regime mouthpiece permitted her a large home in Pyongyang, a Mercedes-Benz car and surely enough foreign luxury food to keep her looking healthy in front of the cameras.
Her work around this time considerably altered the narrative inside North Korea of the humanitarian disaster that was engulfing the country — dubbing the era as the ‘Arduous March’ and claiming that all citizens were suffering equally in this hardship which would apparently ‘unite the nation’. During this state campaign, words such as ‘hunger’ and ‘starvation’ were banned and anyone caught blaming the government for the situation were severely punished. Those famines are estimated to have killed up to 3.5 million people, or about 15% of the population.
According to North Korea Leadership Watch, she has “seen many of her colleagues and supervisors dismissed, demoted or sent for re-education.” Her consistently stellar performance in the highest echelons of North Korean government sets her apart from the scores of people whose faith or behaviour has faltered in the merciless eyes of the regime. It is curious, however, how someone can have the taste of such a luxurious life, see the strife of other so-called proletariats, then help actively maintain an absurdly hypocritical system. Though, preservation of the self is a powerful idea and perhaps Ri only seeks to keep her and her family safe from persecution from a government who she knows will execute detractors, especially ones with notable public profiles.
Perhaps the most defining moment of Ri’s career was the announcement of the death of leader Kim Jong-il in 2011, during which she donned a black outfit and spoke with an audible tremble to millions of Koreans watching at home. Her stoic attitude was viewed as being in stark comparison to the manic and oft unbelievable reactions of her fellow citizens who screamed in grief and wept openly — reactions which were somewhat intensified by a close proximity to any nearby television cameras. Many commentators dubbed the emotive performances as orchestrated and carried out in fear of retributive punishment.
Since then, through her work at Korea Central Television, Ri has been instrumental in constructing a new cult of personality around current leader Kim Jong-un — a task made all the more important by Kim’s evident lack of leadership qualities such as military experience. Through the cultivation of origin myths and the spreading of falsified evidence of greatness, Ri and the communist establishment have successfully turned Kim Jong-un from an unqualified second son into an iron-willed leader with the power to lead Korea into the modern age.
The End of an Era
Following a 50-year career in television, Ri announced her retirement from the news desk in 2012, having served the state loyally from start to finish. Her remarkable impact on the lives of millions of North Koreans and the oppressive system which they live under is hard to deny.
Despite her retirement, Ri occasionally returns to the news desk to report on military and governmental affairs, such as missile tests and youth rallies, appearing as recently as January 2022. North Koreans now know that when Ri is sat behind the news desk, something important is happening. Due to her widely-lauded style of reportage, Ri now trains upcoming news anchors on proper on-air etiquette and adherence to the journalistic principles of the state.
Ri Chun-hee cannot be blamed for all of the evils of the North Korean regime — all of these cruel decisions lie in the hands of men far above her in the pecking order. But analysis of her position certainly allows for reflection on how these totalitarian states operate on an unspoken rule of ‘unknowing’. The horrors, hate and hypocrisies are witnessed then forgotten — sealed in a vault deep in the subconscious for the purpose of survival. Like Aldous Huxley said in the foreword of Brave New World: “The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. ‘Great is the truth’, but still greater…is silence about truth.”
North Korea’s dictatorial government will eventually collapse. Like every dynasty in the past, the scales will eventually tip in the favour of change and it will disintegrate. Whether Ri Chun-hee will be around to report on the revolution, that is not known. But one thing is for sure: the Kim family would certainly not have gained such unwavering internal obedience (or leering external attention) without her characteristic undying loyalty to their vision for North Korea.
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