Upside-Down Propaganda: The Art of North Korean Defector Sun Mu

Sun Mu, trained by the North Korean army as a propaganda artist, managed to escape in 1998 via China, Laos, and Thailand to South Korea. He uses the officially sanctioned painting style of socialist realism, inspired by propaganda posters from the Chinese Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong, to create images filled with criticism and irony in the style of American Pop Art and Soviet Sots Art. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.