SEOUL, South Korea — A well-dressed younger girl toured a shiny, brightly lit grocery retailer in Pyongyang, the place high-heeled girls browsed cabinets and fridges stuffed with drinks, sweets, candies and different snacks.

International reviews of potential panic shopping for in North Korea had surfaced, and she or he was there to search out the reality. She requested customers and clerks if any items have been out of inventory; they weren’t. She requested if costs have been rising; simply imported merchandise, which North Koreans shunned anyway.

“I think the fake news is the last thing we need in such a fierce battle time with Covid-19,” she instructed her 32,900 viewers in English on her YouTube channel,Echo of Truth.

The younger girl, Un A, is the brand new face of North Korean propaganda, an try and create a extra benign and fashionable picture of an remoted dictatorship most related to famines, ​​human rights abuses and nuclear stockpiles.

Designed for a international viewers within the social media period, the state-sponsored message within the prime quality, slickly produced movies is straightforward: North Koreans, they’re identical to everybody else. They play sports activities of their free time. They scream on curler coasters. They store in malls and eat pizza.

It is the extremely curated and deeply deceptive model of North Korea that its chief, Kim Jong-un, needs the world to see as he pushes his agenda at dwelling and overseas. Mr. Kim has repeatedly referred to as on his folks to aspire to extra “international” and “modern” requirements, whereas on the identical time attempting to steer different nations that North Korea can reside in peace, so long as they let it maintain its nuclear weapons.

The social media marketing campaign is a far cry from the previous, grainy propaganda footage of his father and grandfather’s technology the place North Koreans toiled underneath pink flags or cheered at army parades stuffed with anti-American slogans. Its official propaganda at dwelling has lengthy helped cement a picture of an omnipotent regime able to tackle its rivals, replete with patriotic songs, xenophobic diatribes and pictures of goose-stepping troopers and missileshovering via smoke and flame.

The best-known practitioner within the style is the North’s legendary anchorwoman, Ri Chun-hee, a “labor hero.” She melts with feelings whereas ​delivering information about Mr. Kim and his forebears who dominated earlier than him, however can launch into strident spiels when attacking her nation’s enemies with what North Koreans name her “steel-grinding voice.”

Despite the brand new, upbeat packaging, it nonetheless has the undercurrent of reverence to the regime. The girls, neatly wearing crisp blazers with the air of tv journalists, normally put on the lapel pin — that includes photos of Mr. Kim’s father and grandfather — that every one North Koreans should put on to point out their loyalty.

In an episode uploaded final Friday, younger folks have fun “Youth Day” in Pyongyang, dancing and singing alongside in an out of doors live performance. Under blinding beams of sunshine that think of western rock live shows, performers show Ok-pop dance strikes as they sing about “the fatherland” and “our dear general,” Mr. Kim.

“The idea is to create North Korea’s image as a normal country​, make foreigners believe that it is another country where people live ordinary lives,” mentioned Kang Dong-wan, an skilled on the North Korean media at Dong-A University in South Korea.

The new propaganda follows Mr. Kim’s efforts to modernize his nation and function on the world stage with leaders like President Trump. Abandoning custom, Mr. Kim ditched the Mao jacket and the podium and delivered his annual New Year’s tackle final 12 months from a membership chair in his book-lined examine, sporting a Western go well with and tie. Two months later, he instructed his propagandists to cease “mystifying” him, saying that he wished to attraction to his folks as “a human” and “comrade.”

Mr. Kim has additionally diverged from his predecessors in management fashion, encouraging extra business actions to nurture a small and burgeoning center class. For the brand new moneyed class, smartphones have turn out to be a must-have, though they aren’t linked to the worldwide web. They store in fashionable malls and take their kids to water parks, ski resorts, horse tracks and dolphin aquariums. Many reside in high-rise residences.

North Korean state tv has additionally turn out to be a lot livelier.

Not lengthy after he took energy, Mr. Kim was proven on state TV giving a thumbs as much as an arts efficiency by the Moranbong Band. The nation’s premier music group is normally identified for its panegyric operas devoted to the “great leaders” from his household. This time, a lady group, sporting mini skirts and electrical guitars, performed the theme tune from the Rocky motion pictures whereas characters who seemed like Mickey and Minnie Mouse pranced on the platform.

Mr. Kim’s altering propaganda technique can also be pushed by the invasion of outdoor information and leisure — primarily South Korean motion pictures and TV dramas which have turn out to be more and more in style regardless of the federal government’s crackdown on such exhibits. In latest years, human rights activists and North Korean defectors dwelling in South Korea have discovered methods to get USBs stuffed with applications throughout the border by smuggling them or flying them in balloons.

“In the past, the North Korean strategy was to establish layers of so-called mosquito nets around its society, letting in what it needed but keeping out unwanted outside news,” Mr. Kang mentioned. “Now, Kim Jong-un favors a more aggressive approach, creating contents that can compete with outside entertainment.”

The new spin is the product of the Propaganda and Agitation Department.

The division controls all propaganda to shore up the persona cult surrounding Mr. Kim. It can also be the regime’s enforcer of an Orwellian management of data, censoring what’s printed or broadcast at dwelling whereas blocking its folks from the worldwide web.

During a social gathering assembly in December, Ri Il-hwan, considered one of a new technology of officers favored by Mr. Kim, was promoted to move the division. Mr. Ri has since begun deploying “tailor-made propaganda” for international audiences, together with episodes on Un A’s Echo of Truth, mentioned Kim Byung-kee, a South Korean lawmaker, who was briefed by the National Intelligence Service final month.

Until not too long ago, North Korea’s important mouthpiece to the surface world had been its Korean Central News Agency. North Korea created a modest batch of government-run web sites, however their attain was largely confined to analysts, journalists and different North Korea aficionados.

Now, social media is giving North Korea a “low-cost and effective means” to disseminate its propaganda, mentioned Cheong Seong-chang, a longtime North Korea researcher on the Sejong Institute in South Korea.

Dozens of channels on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and different social media, in addition to on Chinese platforms like Weibo and Bilibili, carry North Korean propaganda footage. Many of the channels are considered operated by Mr. Ri’s division. In the Twitter account linked to the Echo of Truth YouTube channel, (and later banned)​, Un A portrays herself as an “antiwar, peace advocate” who supplies “unbiased news” about North Korea.

These channels dutifully replay previous propaganda footage made for the house viewers within the North, just like the on-line model of the memoirs of Kim Il-sung, Mr. Kim’s grandfather and the founding father of North Korea. But in addition they offered uncommon peeks into how Mr. Kim’s modernization drive has modified the approach to life and cityscape of Pyongyang. The elites dwelling there go to Western-style cafes and fast-food eating places, perusing menus on digital tablets. They pay with money playing cards and use home-delivery providers.

In latest years, Google has shut down a few of these propaganda websites on YouTube, citing sanctions guidelines. Washington has blacklisted the North’s propaganda division since 2016.

But new channels rapidly pop up carrying comparable content material, like Echo of Truth. Created in 2017, the channel now has 24,800 subscribers.

Her movies are as a lot about what’s left unsaid about North Korea.

In an episode final November, she visited the Taesong Department Store whereas on her approach dwelling after work, perusing home manufacturers of kimchi on the spot noodles and soju, a Korean liquor. She stuffed her cart with chocolate and cheese-flavored cookies and yogurt — a in style breakfast for younger Pyongyang employees late for work.

“I really enjoyed shopping,” she mentioned, strolling out of the shop, the place some costs have been blurred out.

Such abundance isn’t out there exterior the capital. The United States estimates that about 60 p.c of North Koreans don’t have sufficient to eat this 12 months.

In My Hero, a section about Un A’s grandfather, a veteran of the 1950-53 Korean War, she identifies herself as “an ordinary Korean girl from an ordinary family.”

Then she launches into a monologue hewing relentlessly to the grand theme of all North Korean propaganda — how the Kim household liberated Koreans from the yoke of Japanese colonialists, repelled American invaders within the Korean War and made North Koreans protected as soon as and for all by creating a nuclear deterrent.

“We don’t have to wander around in search for a shelter, we don’t have to bend knees pleading for peace, and we don’t have to run from gunfire,” she says.

She doesn’t point out that the battle was began by the North’s invasion of South Korea and was halted in a stalemate after costing hundreds of thousands of lives.

“She is another parrot repeating the messages from the Workers’ Party,” mentioned Shim Jin-sup, a retired psychological warfare officer of the South Korean army.