North Korea just celebrated liberation day with a terrifying concert of Sound of Music covers

(Image credit: Jure Makovec/AFP/Getty Images)

published 19 August 2015

Last night, the Slovenian group Laibach — which has penned such heartwarming lyrics as "Europe is falling apart" and "We dance with anarchy" — helped North Korea celebrate its 70th anniversary with a special performance. However, the crowd of 1,500 who gathered in the Ponghwa arts theater gave a "slightly muted" reception, Agence France-Presse reports.

Maybe it was because Laibach was covering hits from The Sound of Music as a medley? (Really!) After all, Laibach was responsible for the grossest misunderstanding of "Sympathy for the Devil" possibly ever, so a fascist reinterpretation of "Edelweiss" can't exactly be ruled out:

Point is, there might have been a fairly understandable reason why the North Korean crowd wasn't exactly rocking out. "Everyone sat in their seats the whole time and there wasn't really any clapping along or singing along," Simon Cockerell, the general manager of Koryo Tours, which arranged for foreign tourists to attend the show, told AFP. He added, "Then, that's the norm at concerts here anyway."

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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