[April Fools] North Korean Ren'Py Game

[PyTom]

I have a couple of different ways of finding news about new Ren'Py games. Probably the most useful are my google alerts for "Ren'Py" and "Renpy", which email me every time google indexes a page with one of those words. Anyway, last night, I found a link from a site that appears to be a list of packages from the Red Star Linux distribution, which is a North Korean linux distro.

Now, apart from the simple fact that there is a North Korean linux distro, this isn't terribly newsworthy. Ren'Py is part of Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and I believe it is going into Fedora at some point. But what was really interesting was that there was a package that depended on Ren'Py (other than the demo game). And when I clicked on the link to that package, this is what I found.

The game's title appears to be "연애 사무 총장의 령도자 김정일", which google-translates to "General Secretary Kim Jong Il's love". That's right, it appears that somebody in North Korea managed to use Ren'Py to make a propaganda game about Kim Jong Il.

I have mixed emotions about this. On one hand, I'm not a huge fan of North Korea or Kim Jong Il, a destructive police state run by a self-glorifying madman. On the other hand Ren'Py is licensed in a a way that means that there are no restrictions on what one can create with it... and this shows it quite well.

[Cironian]

Some interesting points about the plot, too:

Ahahaha! I love the extremely short sprite for Kim... Is it wrong that I now want someone to really make that game as some kind of comedy?

[tigerkidde]

I'm not sure how I would feel about this if I saw it happen to something I created.

On some level, I imagine it's like a manga author who finds their characters in an H-doujinshi format. Or finding out a neat logo that you made has been adopted by a hostile group.

[Deviot]

I bet the makers are rotting in jail right now!

[sake-bento]

I had a friend of mine in Korea snatch this up for me. Ugh...it's really hard. =_= Or maybe it's just difficult to get a good end because I don't actually understand most of the text (I know like zero Korean). I wonder if I'm subtly being indoctrinated right now...

[dizzcity]

Err... actually, is it propaganda or is it subversive satire? The moment I saw it, I was thinking that it was a quiet slam on Kim Jong Il, doing some sort of snide commentary on his love life, rather than a propagandic piece promoting him. Can anyone tell from the script?

-Dizzy-

[backansi]

Really- interesting. (as you can see from my profile, I am the guy who live in South Korea, so can read Korean script on that two screenshots.)
Here is my idea.

(ROFL)

[Jake]

Censorship, in a thread about North Korea? How ironic.

[PyTom]

For the record - yes, this was an april fool's joke. The Kim Jong Il sprite was by mugenjohncel, while the rest of the game was taken from the iichan eroge project. (Who have my apologies.) The Korean was run through google translate, so it's not the highest quality.

Red Star Linux is real (and the screenshot is based off a real screenshot), but as far as I can tell, it doesn't include Ren'Py.

[tigerkidde]

I fell for it... I was April Fools' ready everywhere else except here. Can't believe meself.

After the man marries pillow thread, I thought anything was possible. heheh.

[Deviot]

tch. that girl looks okay tho


Just for the record, what does the korean words there mean?

[backansi]

Deviot///

The first sentence is a little bit weird(as PyTom said, because The Korean was run through google translate)
anyway it means,

Shall we go to my bedroom?

and the second one

General Secretary, that se* was good, let's try again.

ROFL viva April fool's day

[luminarious]

Ha, I didn't suspect a thing..

[Samu-kun]

I kinda suspected the game was a joke, but I didn't think Pytom would be in on it too. XD

[LVUER]

I kinda suspected the game was a joke, but I didn't think Pytom would be in on it too. XD

That's why he could trick us and lots of other people... don't judge book by its cover.