What if the world’s most secretive regime wasn’t just a dictatorship—but a movie set?
Welcome to The Kingdom of Smoke, where every citizen is an actor, every fact is a prop, and every scene is directed by a family that believes its own mythology.
From the myth-making of Kim Il-sung to the cinematic delusions of Kim Jong-il and the baby-faced brutality of Kim Jong-un, this is the untold history of how a regime turned lies into law—and made the whole planet flinch.
You’ll discover:
Why North Korea built fake grocery stores and empty cities
How a South Korean director and actress were literally kidnapped to make movies
What really happens inside its secret prison camps
How starvation, spectacle, and fear keep the illusion alive
And why the rest of the world keeps buying tickets to the show
Part history, part exposé, part mirror test—The Kingdom of Smoke is a grenade lobbed into the heart of one of the most dangerous lies of our time.
Pages: 37 Est. Reading Time: 21 Minutes
What if the world’s most secretive regime wasn’t just a dictatorship—but a movie set?
Welcome to The Kingdom of Smoke, where every citizen is an actor, every fact is a prop, and every scene is directed by a family that believes its own mythology.
From the myth-making of Kim Il-sung to the cinematic delusions of Kim Jong-il and the baby-faced brutality of Kim Jong-un, this is the untold history of how a regime turned lies into law—and made the whole planet flinch.
You’ll discover:
Why North Korea built fake grocery stores and empty cities
How a South Korean director and actress were literally kidnapped to make movies
What really happens inside its secret prison camps
How starvation, spectacle, and fear keep the illusion alive
And why the rest of the world keeps buying tickets to the show
Part history, part exposé, part mirror test—The Kingdom of Smoke is a grenade lobbed into the heart of one of the most dangerous lies of our time.
Pages: 37 Est. Reading Time: 21 Minutes