The human "LED" screen @ Arirang Mass Games North Korea

It looks like a LED screen, but look closer and you see 'the human factor'. 20000 young people form this screen during the Arirang Mass Games in Pyongyang North Korea.
Great to see!!! And it was the second-last time of the Arirang Mass Games. They started to renovate the Mayday stadion, but the Mass games did not come back.
PS: you are not allowed to take big cameras and Tripod, so the video was shot with a handheld zoomed photocamera.

[@Wawazipata]

4:11 I can imagine how nervous I would have been. Sitting and thinking about not to drop the leader's front tooth.

[@lilpuro2152]

I saw that ad

[@m3m3lina47]

Anything is impressive when your only options are perfection or death.

[@surendramumgai631]

Wow ....never knew threat of death could lead to such perfection and not a heart attack...

[@aolearymusic]

5:11 when you open a pack of gum in class

[@soundeupho]

A.O.LEARY lol

[@flow2fly]

Amazing, they even got subpixel rendering :O

[@lammy1234567890]

And then they have some areas which do re-use cards from one scene to the next, e.g. at 1:56 watch the white area just below the bottom-left character. Each location has its own customised book of scenes. But the books are not completely pre-assembled in order as you can sometimes see the kids swapping the 'pages' about between scene-changes. Also for the change at 3:28 you can see numbers on the covers of the books as they are changing them, but they all seem to say '500', maybe we are only seeing half of the number. The cards look a bit worn out close-up, they've obviously been used many times in practice and at the annual show.

[@abcd123906]

flow2fly Omg yes!!! I noticed that too, but you worded it perfectly

[@rockerseven]

it's amazing what you can accomplish when forced to do the work normally done by machines, and the punishment for missing your cue is life in a labor prison camp.

[@lucaswa]

If you believe that how is done then I have a a bridge in Brooklyn I'd love to sell you😉 I wonder how the run of the mill NPC in North Korea thinks how things get done in good old US of A🤔😄

[@lazergurka-smerlin6561]

@@lucaswa How do things get done?

[@petergilkes7082]

​@@lazergurka-smerlin6561With help from China?

[@petergilkes7082]

Do you have machines that do this? You are more advanced than I thought about America!

[@surendramumgai631]

Jealous comment from an anti north korean troll whose own country can't accomplish anything without a machine..

[@marajoyrosolify]

these kids were amazing.

[@jamesdrolet1176]

When I went to North Korea, one of my tour guides said he was one of those picture mural kids when he was a middle schooler. He was a cool guy, funny, personable. I miss him.

[@lucaswa]

@Five O Mahalos for the reminder NPC -- now fuck off.

[@WolverineDevotee]

He’s probably dead

[@Jet_Threat]

What did you go to North Korea for? And what was his humor and personality like? Did it seem scripted? In other videos I’ve seen, individuals don’t seem to express themselves or share personal thoughts. They are more like an extension of the propaganda-driven hive mind. Makes me wonder if you were seeing his real personality or if it were scripted to make him seem happier. After all, everything a westerner sees in N. Korea is carefully chosen and planned out, down to every individual you interact with.

[@Renwoxing13]

​@@Jet_Threat How can you "miss" a tour guide ?¿¿? Does that even make logical, rational sense ?¡,? T'would seem quite indicative of - as you alluded - a fake personality and behaviour meant to enthrall causal tourists & leaving a lastibf positive impression. Seriously. How does one end up "missing" some rando you don't know, only met once, and hung out with for like 2 weeks tops?¿¿? Probably the only person who could make you "miss them" - after such a brief meeting and casual encounter - would be a guy with a shotgun pointed to his head and forced to be the friendliest, most enthralling person possible ! Chosen, literally hand picked, out of thousands [ tens of thousands ?¿? ] For his smile, and ability to engender positive feelings !¡! ★ [ I Don't meant a literal / real gun 2 the head, but you know what I mean ] ★ I can't help but be hung up on that choice of words : *"I Miss Him"* ... Am I the only one who finds, not only rhe word choice ; but also the sentiment, nonsensical, implausible, and unnatural ?¿? ★◆★◆★ *!¡! ¡!¡ !¡! High Strangeness In North Korea !¡! ¡!¡ !¡!* ★◆★◆★

[@Saladass2]

@@Renwoxing13oh shush now your the one that’s weird by overanalysing that statement, everyone one is different and if someone left a really impressionable image on you, like how I assumed that tour guide was to OP, then it makes sense also I assume the tour guide was with them all the time since they have tight security in North Korea. So they probs spent a lot of time together, which even if the tour guide was putting on a very artificial facade you can still appreciate them and their company which is another thing OP might’ve missed about the guide

[@minhuc9545]

I used to do something like this in the opening of National Olympics Games which was held in my hometown 3 years ago ( i was a High school student in Vietnam at that moment ) . Actually, it is not so negative as many people think. On that time, we didn't need going to school in 2 weeks. instead, we were paid to be subpixels like what you think. It's the most interesting experience ever before. We are very proud to contribute a little to the success of that event. I made many new friends and found my girlfriend as well :)))

[@davidbadura7369]

Minh Đức I think North Korean kids aren't paid for it.

[@comradecracker447]

I don’t know why people think that you will die if you don’t do it right. It’s like they think they didn’t practice, let alone that’s not how the dprk really works. What do you think about the dprk since you are from Vietnam?

[@ghostfox2473]

This is one of the few things about North Korea that I find amazing and intriguing and wishing I could see in person

[@snizzlefrazzy]

I read that once these kids are in their seats they’re not allowed to get up no matter what and a boy died when his appendix ruptured

[@gla9322]

Lies

[@WiWillemijn]

Thanks for zooming in, it shows how it works and how many people are behind it literally

[@Germania9]

First question in mind when seeing this isn't "How did these kids do this?" but more like "How did these poor kids hold their pee for more than 90 minutes?!"

[@gavcom4060]

It's pretty easy to hold your pee for 90 minutes

[@TheMinotaur70]

+Zedfinite like it or not, it' s perfect. show some respect.

[@aaron4820]

By not having easy access to drinking water...

[@RT-qd8yl]

You'd be surprised what you can do when you train and practice constantly, as if it's as critical as breathing. Having your life literally depend on your performance helps, too.

[@AriyaHomes]

Amazing the beauty such an ugly dictatorship can make... Kim- “you think your tv is big, you should see mine, each person is a pixel” 😎

[@RadagonTheRed]

Apparently the human display consists of 14,000 kids (though it looks like more) and over 300,000 are in the stadium in total.

[@kumis.8375]

Life is fucking insane. We were somehow born as us and not one of these people who have to be pixels

[@funkypunkypine]

I'm truly dumbfounded. I watched the 20 min. video of the mass games, thinking the entire time that it was a led screen. Like, an electronic one. I can't wrap my head around how bizarre and sad and scary this is.

[@brunoqueiroz2759]

How is this scary?

[@brunoqueiroz2759]

Its not bizarre dude, most countries did this in the past

[@msinanozeren6733]

we used to do this (with much less sophistication in terms of the images) in Turkey during my high school time

super interesting video, first one that shows what exactly they do. It's looks so unreal... team work at it's best

[@elsaishere4084]

they are disturbingly synchronisd.

[@Princey2k24]

Bless em. The practice and time and effort they put into that must be sublime

[@snizzlefrazzy]

They don’t exactly have a choice if they expect to keep living a “privileged” life in the DPRK

[@blankwavemessiah]

this shit is absolutely insane........ Are they all just creative geniuses that simply cannot grasp human individualism? Before anyone answers that TOO literally, just remember there is a team of people who have ZERO regard for any of these THOUSANDS of performers, yet them somehow orchestrated this entire thing for many years... I mean, HOW!? how in the actual fuck can you even write this?

[@marykerley9191]

A real beehive society.

[@Jolar70]

Supposedly, Busby Berkeley was a nightmare to work for too, but it's hard to deny the visual impact of this incredibly precise choreography! Martial theater is a really weird thing that humans have made throughout history! And we do it pretty well!

[@kummer45]

Yes it's amazing and sad at the same time but here is the interesting part. Can you imagine the design process of the folding, picture construction, coordination and the set of instruction to arrive at such performance? It's nice to know that programs like Grasshopper and many parametric algorithms makes these things trivial. However the mind behind them and the set of instructions, math, is perplexing. The idea of a folded notebook with the images and the team coordination answers a lot of what is truly a technology. Yes that word again, what is a "technology"....

[@nohshaikma05]

Wow... Amazing works human "LED" ^^

[@mickobrien3156]

I'd be the one guy with the unchanging black card.... representing a dead LED. It would add realism.

[@khoa2kin297]

Child abuse at its finest

[@taxsi]

focusing on the pixel heads is a brilliant idea.

[@UntrashThePlanet]

taxsi if you’re interested in seeing the 2018 version of the mass games I just got back from North Korea and shot some footage. kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z3bZk4Kemr10Y6c

[@supersporkspank]

So this is what it must have been like to be one of the human card-carrying picture elements at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow!

[@engtimofeev]

My girlfriend's dad was a pixel in Olympic Bear's tear.

[@Sixflat1]

zooming in like this defeats the wholw fucking sceptical

[@Renwoxing13]

I am skeptical of the spectacle you have made of your sentence structure

[@Sixflat1]

@@Renwoxing13 sentence structure? Although I do appreciate learning about spelling mistakes from 6 years ago. Sceptical = spectacle and wholw = whole. Hopefully no one will be stumped by this enigma sentence again, thank you for bringing this to my attention

[@Renwoxing13]

@MrBroKlee I was just being an alliteration nerd with the "sentence structure" part. I was on a roll with the §'ṣ, but went too far lol. Welcome. It's nice to know your still alive after 6 years because ppl disappear off KZbin all the time ! 😁

[@florin-titusniculescu5871]

somebody should hack in the message "the great leader is the greatest idiot" on this display.

[@thefrench8847]

Its 100% impossible

[@mylesgarcia4625]

FABULOUS coverage of a nothing-on-earth-like-it event!!

[@chairmanofrussia]

It’s so creepy the way their heads pop out. The pixels, the building blocks, look deformed and rotten, but make up a perfect image. A good metaphor for the regime itself.

[@makeship]

1:01 moth: what are they doing????

[@ninotunovic3290]

ovo je fenomenalno ! ! !

[@randomperson7861]

Are they sitting there for an hour? God, what if you feel the pee coming out?

[@ronnienestor]

So beautiful.

[@GingerWaters]

I would like to see more footage about ’Human Mosaics’.

[@declanmacmanus9367]

Pause at 3.58. It's the best they'll ever be.

[@mikoro88]

WHY, is almost the entire clip filmed zoomed all the way in? We are missing the entire effect;(

[@cutecat6325]

they dont have the money for a real led screen

[@jackiemartell7412]

Oh the gov. does, they just choose to limit electricity unless it's displaying billboards of him. The city at night is dark-- only lit up on Kim Jung Un's face

[@juanjoseespillco4014]

lol. imagine how much cost to feed, to move, and the training of 20,000 human who were doing that. it would be cheaper a Giant led i think. But its a culture matter

[@ronik330]

Juan Jose Espillco Nah, NK doesn’t feed this children. They’re forced labour. A real LED screen that size is almost impossible to make and would be way too expensive.

[@LOL60345]

it wouldnt even be half as impressive even if it was the biggest screen in the world

[@MabelAmber]

Okay, so I really wonder HOW exactly this human LED screen is achieved, technically speaking. Like who gives the kids the signal to change cards? There must be some sort of central coordination. And how does each one know which card to hold up for the next image? Does anyone have any inside knowledge about this set up?

they have the music.... listening to it every day they prob know when to change and what to change

[@MabelAmber]

You think so? Such a huge number of different scenes... Well possibly. They seem to train for it some five hours a day, for many months or even a full year, I read somewhere. I am also very curious to know how the layout is designed.

[@stephhhie17]

Mabel Amber They know when to change it from cues in the music or performance (look at how they peep out after they have flipped it). As to how they know which scene to do... practice, practice, practice. Sort of like how you memorize how to play the piano without looking at the keys, they learn which pages in the binder to open to without looking at it. You could use your fingers to feel out the pages and count them and have your finger "bookmarking" the next page to flip to.

[@MabelAmber]

@Steph K Thank you for your response. Yes, that must be the way. But still a remarkable feat. Not to mention the entire planning! I mean, the creators must have designed on scale the various colour sections, handing out different colour instructions for each individual player, like which player has to show white and when, and when they should show blue etc. And then this is for... twenty thousand individuals!!

[@aitrus21]

They could all have tiny screens in front of them which are synced up to display which color panel to hold up at which moment.

[@gp2779]

That’s like nothing. The Soka Gakkai Malaysia did one way back in 1998 during the Commonwealth Games.

[@El26213]

The children that do the cards would be practicing for hours at a time with no break and would be forced to urinate in their clothes.. it’s so sad

[@antwerpheist1359]

Source on that?

[@El26213]

@@antwerpheist1359 I forgot about this comment lol so there are many sources out there about what goes on truly in North Korea but I was lead this direction through reading “The Girl With Seven Names”

[@poisonthrax]

What if there is one kid flipped the page wrongly?😂😂😂

[@florin-titusniculescu5871]

the kid in the middle at 0:43 held the plank rotated. he must have been made to say the Great Leader Worship 1000 times afterwards. ... and IF the koreans below the 38th or the japanese ever do such a thing, they would do it at 60 fps, by just holding LCD displays fed and synced by wifi 😏

[@njng3682]

many kids are there...

[@janethopper6750]

N. Korea's highest theater is thousands of young girls waving fans and bouncing in synchronized adulation for an hour and a half? Passing strange.

[@golddropper2747]

We live in 2019 North korea lives in 2096

[@danielholowaty2648]

This is cool! I want to get forced to flip those cards too!!

[@alexcole99]

lol did Mathew Barney direct this?

[@cqign5544]

So cute kids , show is WOW

[@BrokeNerfing]

That os so impressive though

[@dzula-qp2rl]

3:03 what's name of that music?

[@BrokeNerfing]

Propaganda lol

[@patn7029]

kinda mad this is north korea but gotta give credit where its due

[@markjureicalde7441]

should zoom it out all throughout the video.. i cant see the whole thing

[@travisyayes6343]

They should have told them to keep their freaking heads down lol. They look like ticks in snake scales.

[@OAS15]

oh wow, that's cool

[@jimdimt1627]

how they get the signal?

[@NovemberCrystal]

I think the signal are the music cues. That's the only way they can be so precise.

[@jimdimt1627]

yes, maybe , but maybe they look someone across... but propably from usic.. ;)

[@ulfvonweimuller4433]

Distances are so great, that it cannot be musical signal. It would cause an evident wave effect to the picture, because of limits of sound velocity. I think the signal is visual.

[@nehemiahpouncey3607]

Kim jung un gives this a 1/10.😂

[@sayafujimoto8199]

why the heck its zoomed in?!!!

[@Fumi007]

The whole point was to show that's it's kids making the whole backdrop. Read the title.

[@matijak6456]

ja super

[@34Gw]

북한넘나 불쌍하다..North Korea is so poor......(I am south Korean)..

[@marincorp27]

Crazy country

[@Quarkshell]

Great to see?? This is so fucking sad :-(

[@kimberleyspaapen9154]

Question; do you enjoy the World Cup? iPods? It only is sad when it happens on the other side of the fence, right? People think it takes torture to be able to do this, but the people doing this show usually are about 5 times better off than people not in this show. Please do not feel too sorry for people in Pyongyang. It takes each man one easy task, not torture, to get this result. When parents push their 5 year old to play violin people think it's amazing and talent. When (this select group of) North Koreans practice daily and are in the mean time fed by the state it is torture and ooooh. Actually North Korea was quite prospering until they had no allies to rely on anymore. It was not North Korea that did not want any allies anymore all of the sudden; it was 1989, fall of the wall and Soviet. The Soviets were quite good at sustaining North Korea. Please look in the own plate first before demonizing other countries. No country is paradise on Earth, but we can all enjoy the beautiful aspects, I hope. Finding things sad never changed anything. This whole show may be dedicated to the split up of Korea, but the entire message during the show is that wish to be one with the South again. You think North Korea brainwashes people with propaganda? Funny, North Koreans think that about other governments. And frankly I think we're both right about that.

[@Quarkshell]

So these children's parents have volunteered to be part of this show. I see. Yeah, the same as when they push their children to play violin in the Western world. Please stop praising this dictatorship. North Korean people deserve better. Don't insult them.

[@kimberleyspaapen9154]

Quarkshell Please don't act as if you care. It makes you look fake. I'll never deny what is wrong with this country, but this is not it. If you think THIS is what is wrong with this country, I have news for you; you're looking at the wrong kind of wrong.

[@Quarkshell]

Kimberley Spaapen Oh, and you care? Justifying the regime in North Korea in any way? What happens with this kids is just a consequence of an atrocious, heinous dictatorship. Full stop.

[@kimberleyspaapen9154]

Quarkshell Waw, a simplification based off simple emotions on a situation you don't follow; you must really care.

[@dannyong1324]

Arirang 翰Guo

[@tigerjonn]

whats with the stupid close ups by the cameraman, you realize in close ups like that all you see are people holding signs...

[@malcolmsilvey5070]

kil koh Thats what i was thinking..

[@yaboyvyri220]

the point in the close ups is to show how the kids operate then thingy

[@ronik330]

That’s the whole point of this video.

[@wieszo2112]

And almost all of us when mentioning North Korea think about nb. Sometimes i think they are opressed Just because they Good 🤔

[@julienmercier285]

why did you zoom in the entire video when the point is to see the whole thing?

[@DiegoWeissel]

it's the capitalist way to see everything, excessively individualistic... Or maybe the cameraman hoped to capture any hint of a korean suffering with this slave work, as they were brainwashed to believe

[@jackiemartell7412]

Because if whoever posted this said something like "please help we're suffering", they would kill he/she

[@forestschoenrock3040]

This camera man zooming in totally missing the point. Ffs zoom out

[@Renwoxing13]

3:29 ★☆★ *!¡! NORTH KOREAN LCD !¡!* ★☆★ ★ *L* = Leaven / Liveliness ☆ *C* = Cardboard ★ *D* = Displays ★◆★◆★ *!¡! ¡!¡ !¡! North Korean LCD Is THEE BEST LCD !¡! ¡!¡ !¡!* ★◆★◆★

[@engtimofeev]

Leaflet Cardboard Display

[@MobySlick]

What a country.

[@Sarah.Riedel]

This is actually terrifying

[@LiterarischeAktion]

lol

[@lovealwaysange]

worst cameraperson ever...

[@WiWillemijn]

ange no this is better

[@ronik330]

You don’t get the point of this video then.

[@funnyvines4560]

603

[@JoeyBullet222]

How does this person not know to film at full zoom? It doesn't look impressive if you are zoomed in all the way Einstein.

[@tiny_toilet]

3/10 Anti-aliasing needs work. Also, kept seeing little brown dots appearing sporadically. Defective child labor bus interface, maybe? Check all pin connections.

[@user-mp3gm2rf2f]

저 카드색션 책자 무게만 엄청 나다는데....저 아이들은 뭔죄고...이건 감탄할게 아니라 안타까워해야 할 일이다....쟤들은 저거 목숨걸고 하닌거다..

[@user-no7ww2dt9p]

그렇게만생각하면 안되죠

[@bisstudreu8]

Amazing choreography, but what a waste of time, money and energy!

[@R3DLiFE]

Fun side of communism 😂😂😂

[@Connipple]

Alright back to the Joe Rogan pod cast with ric flair