Drawing fire: The line from Asia's animation industry to North Korea

Studios worry about risk of unintentionally outsourcing work to regime through China

An image found in a North Korean server from a Chinese anime project billed as China's first animation produced with AI. (Image provided by the Stimson Center)

RYOHTAROH SATOH and CISSY ZHOU, Nikkei staff writers

May 27, 2024 11:37 JST

Updated on June 13, 2024 12:29 JST

TOKYO/HONG KONG -- In 2023, a staff member of one Japanese studio working on an anime series to be broadcast this July was feeling a little suspicious. When studios collaborate on a series they normally communicate closely, but the representative of a Chinese company responsible for one part of the project had been unusually quiet.