According to the Daily NK the answer is simple: they won’t get the joke teller in trouble. For as the article states, “A short tongue can lose a long neck.”
For many years I have been on the lookout for North Korean jokes. Economic theory tells us that if the penalties are high, then only hysterical jokes will circulate. The higher the “tax” on jokes, the higher their “quality”. Kind of like the effects of prohibition on alcohol or drug use.
In the past, I have posted some North Korean humor. Here is the equivalent of a North Korean stand-up routine (which no South Korean has been able to translate for me yet). Here are a bunch of jokes that supposedly circulate in the DPRK, though most of them were also told throughout the socialist world.
I know there is humor in the DPRK; I have seen it first-hand. Every time I have asked a North Korean for examples, however (defectors and those still on the inside), I get nothing. If any North Koreans or friends of North Koreans are reading, please send in some North Korean jokes.
Chu Song-ha over at the Tong-a Ilbo has a page on NK humor on his personal blog
It’s not exactly clear to me if these are jokes circulating in North Korea or just about NK. One example:
A professor at Kim Il Sung University asks his students, “Students, how many economic systems are there in the world today?”
One student answers, “There is our Juche economic system, capitalism, and the Chinese mixed model, so altogether three.”
“And of these three, which shall gloriously vanquish the others?”
“Well…” the student replies, “that’s kind of hard to answer.”
The professor exploded in anger. “What! What kind of answer is that? There can be only one answer to this question! Our singular Juche economic system will ride to glorious victory over all the others.”
Stammering, the student replies, “I know that’s what we’ve learned…but…if that happens then who will supply us with food?”
There is an old Soviet/Russian joke can be transferred to DPRK. It has to do with a Government proclamation something like…”due to increasing power shortages the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off”.
I would suspect that most NK jokes are derivative of former Soviet era jokes and do not originate from within NK.
No apostrophe needed in the title, no?
I don’t have any jokes, except to say that North Koreans typically smile and laugh when one says the phrase “American imperialism,” that is, having already established some kind of bond, however temporary.
East German joke (works for any command economy):
Woman calls plumber: “I need my toilet fixed. When do you have time?”
Plumber: “In three years and two weeks.”
Woman: “Sorry, that won’t work. The electrician is already coming that day.”