Monuments of power

Scattered across southern Africa, impressive North Korean monuments celebrate the rise of young, independent nations. Freed from the shackles of colonialism or white settler rule, many southern African states are loyal customers of the North Korean state-owned enterprise Mansudae Art Studio, a firm responsible for the propaganda of the reigning Kim dynasty. In an extraordinary fashion, this mode of Afro-DPRK cooperation merges African nationalism with North Korean socialist realism. Monuments of Power compares the National Heroes’ Acres of Namibia and Zimbabwe to the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery in North Korea, thus providing a window to explore the largely unknown support offered by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to African liberation movements. This historical background is paramount to understand the influence of the DPRK on post-colonial public history in Africa.