Are you looking for work? Do you need a steady position in which you’ll always have something to do? Do you mind traveling to Pyongyang to interview?
A team of agency creatives based in South Korea partnered with a charity serving refugees from the North along with a twitter jokester and an easily fooled social media platform to create a spoof campaign in which Kim Jong Un, supreme leader of North Korea and certifiable criminal mastermind, seeks applicants for a new job offering: slave labor.
Here’s the video.
The creatives behind this effort also created a LinkedIn profile for Mr. Kim as both an individual and a business along with a full job listing that includes an explanation of why he’s hiring now:
“Due to a series of recent defections, deaths, and disappearances that were in no way suspicious, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is proud to announce a hiring drive available to everyone in the world. Vacancies are opening every day.”
The job perks items include “living in the second-richest country on the Korean Peninsula” and, more importantly, “permanent employment until death at the job of the government’s choice.”
All Kim Jong Un wants in return is loyalty, respect and more child laborers.
North Korea is also more inclusive than our beloved advertising industry. It only asks that applicants be “between the ages of 12 and 55” and that they’re able to “work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week with one lunch break (rice provided, famine permitting).” This might be what Donald Trump means when he references “stamina.”
The effort comes from a creative group calling itself Part Time Lab, which is led by Miami Ad School grad and art director/BBDO Hong Kong veteran Tomic Lee. Lee tells us, “Recently, we saw a slew of articles about more and more people escap[ing] from North Korea and it caught our attention. We [wondered] what it would be like for Jongun Kim to see North Koreans escape from their home country … of course we’ve never been to North Korea, but we have what they call ‘imagination.'”
Lee collaborated with three Miami Ad School students (two based in the U.S. and one in Hamburg) as well as the unnamed American behind this two-year-old Kim Jong Un Twitter parody account. He tells us that the campaign will soon have a corresponding “Greatest Recruit” website as well.
I held a debate once.
It was just me talking on a stage by myself for 90 minutes while everyone agreed with me.
I won by a landslide.
— Kim Jong-un (@_Kim_Jongun) September 27, 2016
Great news! I’m hiring. Warning: Only apply if you want the greatest job on earth in the greatest country on earth.https://t.co/SmIc4qdMw3
— Kim Jong-un (@_Kim_Jongun) September 27, 2016
Lee and his partners started the effort as a pro-bono campaign for LiNK or Liberty in North Korea, a legitimate charity based in California and South Korea that works to “fund a modern day underground railroad” with the goal of helping refugees escape, assimilate and hopefully lead normal lives.
“With this project, we hope to raise an awareness of people from North Korea and refugees who have to run away at the risk of their life,” Lee writes. “At every touch point, we direct people to LiNK’s landing page to let people learn about genuine stories of North Korea and how they can help.”
No, the production values are not as impressive as those in your agency’s latest auto campaign. But we liked it, so we posted on it.
CREDITS