Why South Korea is banning a song that recently went viral on TikTok

CNN —

A North Korean propaganda song extolling Kim Jong Un as “a great leader and a friendly parent” has gone viral on TikTok, with mashups and dances racking up millions of views, leading to South Korea banning the tune due to “psychological warfare.”

Seoul’s media regulator on Monday announced it was blocking access to versions of “Friendly Father,” the cheery propaganda hit that became an unlikely social media sensation.

The song was unveiled in April during a nighttime concert to mark the completion of a housing project in the capital Pyongyang, according to North Korean state-run Korean Central News Agency.

Its lyrics praise Kim – the third-generation leader of one of the world’s most autocratic nations – as “a great leader and a friendly parent,” and the music video depicts North Koreans enthusiastically belting out the orchestral song proclaiming that Kim “takes care of us with affection.”

While North Korean propaganda is nothing new, the difference this time is that “Friendly Father” was posted on TikTok – whose owner is Chinese internet giant ByteDance. The song went viral after content creators around the world used it to make their own edits of the music video adding dances and unserious captions to their own short one-minute clips on the platform, garnering over 2 million views.

But it wasn’t necessarily a propaganda coup for Pyongyang.

“This isn’t Gen Z suddenly declaring allegiance for the regime,” said Alexandra Leonzini, a Cambridge University scholar conducting research on North Korean music.

“They’re laughing at the regime not with the regime.”

Nonetheless, South Korean security officials came down on the parodies. The Korea Communications Standards Commission decided to block 29 videos of the