Sea of Blood
The first revolutionary opera in North Korea, "Sea of Blood", was premiered at the Pyongyang Grand Theatre in July 1971, with Kim Il-sung credited as the author and Kim Jong-il credited as producer. The opera is seen as the primary example of North Korean revolutionary opera, with many North Korean texts referring to revolutionary opera as ""Sea of Blood"-style" opera. "Sea of Blood" was adapted from a 1969 film of the same name. Kim Il-sung claimed to have written it with his comrades in a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) guerilla unit while fighting against the Japanese in occupied Manchuria, and performed it on a makeshift stage in a recently liberated village as a form of anti-colonial propaganda. However, the veracity of this claim is disputed due to the difficulty of finding accurate information about Kim Il-sung's early life and guerilla career.