"From Cold War-era films to contemporary sensationalist media coverage, external images have been powerful in representing North Korea in various roles. North Korean film itself is often assumed to be "unwatchable," in terms of both quality and accessibility. This first handbook on North Korean cinema contests this assumption, refusing to reduce North Korean cinema to political propaganda and focusing on its aesthetic forms and cultural meanings. By connecting the worlds of North Korean cinema to broader questions in world cinema studies, this book explores the complexity of a national cinema too often reduced to a single image"--