Korea Art Exchange Society.

The Korea Art Exchange Society was founded on August 30, Juche 69 (1980) with the purpose of giving wide publicity to the developing art of the country and vitalizing art exchange with other countries.

The society has sponsored the April Spring Friendship Art Festival and ensured its successful performance.

The April Spring Friendship Art Festival raised its curtain with the friendship concert of artistes from many countries around the world to celebrate the 70th birth anniversary of President Kim Il Sung. It has been held 31 times, drawing over 1 100 famous art troupes, including overseas Koreans’ art troupes, from over 100 countries in five continents, and delegations of cultural and international bodies and over 18 000 artistes such as prizewinners of international contests and people’s and merited artistes. Among them were the Oriental Song & Dance Ensemble of China, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra of China, the State Dance Company “Beriozka” named after N. S. Nadezdina under the office of President of the Russian Federation, the M. E. Patnitski State Academic Folk Choir of Russia, etc.

The society has successfully organized over 690 rounds of overseas performances, art festivals, fine arts exhibitions and performances of foreign art troupes in the DPRK. The Mansudae Art Troupe gave performances in China and Russia in the 1980s and staged the immortal classic work “The Flower Girl” in China in 1998 and the opera “Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai” in China in 2011, and the Pyongyang Circus attended the China Wuqiao International Acrobatics Festival in 2019.

It has organized more than 100 rounds of lectures of singing, dancing and instrumental playing for overseas Korean artistes from the Kumgangsan Opera Troupe of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon), the Art Troupe of Korean Residents in China and the Art Troupe of the International United Confederation of Koreans.

It invites famous professors and professional musicians of vocal and instrumental music and conduct sectors from abroad and organizes short courses for the artistes of the State Symphony Orchestra, Pyongyang Kim Won Gyun University of Music and other art troupes and teachers and students of art education institutions.

It makes efforts to promote various activities for developing art exchange with its counterparts in a more diversified way.

The society has run its homepage “Korean Art” (www.korart.sca.kp).