“Cunnilingus in North Korea” by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries

This piece places a purported text by Kim Jong-Il in conversation with Nina Simone’s “See-Line Woman” in perfectly sexy YHCHI fashion. Whether the text is real or not is beside the question (I would like to believe it is) because the “Dear Leader” of North Korea provides a speaker and frame of reference that shapes how we understand the text particularly when juxtaposed with the music and lyrics sung by Simone. The text displayed on the screen is mostly by Kim Jong-Il, interspersed with some “Oh”s by Simone, creating a dialectic where male and female, communism and capitalism, North and South Korea, East and West, meet. Consider how the contrast between the seductive, commodified sexual politics sung by Simone’s and the political propaganda of sexual liberation offered by Kim Jong-Il’s text come together to help us rethink the granting or denial of sexual favors as a type of currency.