North Korea stages Disney show [VIDEO]

• Tweet

How small is the world after all?

Kim and other party officials clapped as Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger danced across the stage in a concert in Pyongyang Friday. Clips from "Snow White" and "Beauty and the Beast" ran in the background.

North Korea's official news agency said that Kim "appreciated" the "demonstration performance given by the newly organized Moranbong band," a group the news service claimed Kim formed himself.

According to the BBC, the Korean Central News Agency also reported that the so-called Dear Leader had a "grandiose plan to bring about a dramatic turn in the field of literature and arts this year."

Though North Korean children might be familiar with a few Disney characters thanks to clothes and toys imported from China and translated into Korean, Western pop cultural icons do not appear in official concerts or events.

The unauthorized Disney concert has led analysts to wonder whether the younger Kim is more interested in opening North Korea up to the rest of the world than his father.

According to Korea's Yonhap news agency, current leader Kim "has called on the reclusive communist state to try to catch up with "global trends" in upgrading the country's industries."

One of the late Kim Jong Il's other sons Kim Jong Nam--once thought to have been his successor--embarrassed his father after traveling to Tokyo with a false passport in 2001. He claimed he wanted to visit Tokyo's Disneyland.

The UK's telegraph has a subtitled version of North Korea's official video of the concert.