How A Poet Gets Crushed By Propaganda

One historical example:

In the early 1960s, Kim Chul was one of the foremost poets in North Korea. He was renowned for his lyric poetry and wrote often about love. The people even dubbed him “the Pushkin of Korea.” But no matter how beautiful, his poems could not be published unless they promoted Party ideology. One such poem, “A Military Jacket Button,” depicts a soldier returning home after the Korean War. He takes in his arms a motherless baby. The baby wakes up and sucks on a button on the soldier’s military uniform, mistaking it for his mother’s nipple. It is a poignant elegy about the misery of the Korean War. … [Kim Chul] depicts the Koreans as a war-weary people, and the Korean War as a tragedy for the nation. The work was considered seditious in its realism, and banned.

via The Dish http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/05/12/how-a-poet-gets-crushed-by-propaganda/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Dish%29