Despite North Korea's firing two missiles and threatening to "sink" Japan over the past three months alone, Kim Jong Un's regime appears to have quite a few fans there.
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PHOTOS: Inside Japan's all-female North Korea fan club
Its leader is a freelance illustrator from Japan's Kanagawa prefecture known as "Chunhun."
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Toru Hanai, a Japanese photographer with Reuters, took some photos of a Tokyo club dedicated to the North Korean regime. Some of the fans are so fervent that they formed an all-female band, known as the "military-first girls," to perform North Korean pop songs.
Scroll down to learn more about them.
These are the members of sengun-joshi, a Japanese phrase meaning "military-first girls." They're practising a dance by North Korea's all-female Moranbong Band.
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Here's a famous song by the real Moranbong Band, whose members were personally selected by Kim Jong Un.
This is the group's leader, a freelance illustrator from Japan's Kanagawa prefecture known as "Chunhun."
Chunhun isn't her real name, the Japan Times reported earlier this year.
Chunhun — pictured here at a dress rehearsal — says listening to the Moranbang Band's songs helps her "switch into a very aggressive mood" on bad days.
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"Even if I have a really tough day coming up, I can easily switch into a very aggressive mood when these songs [by Moranbang Band] encourage me to 'annihilate enemies' or assure me that I have the 'Great Marshal' on my side," she told the Japan Times, referring to an honorific title typically given to North Korean leaders.
In fact, she listens to the group "for the same reason many Japanese women listen to K-pop or Taylor Swift," she said.
Chunhun's love for North Korean culture extends beyond the Moranbang Band. Dance practice takes place in a room full of books about North Korea in the Japanese language, as you can see below.
Portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il — North Korea's late leaders, and Kim Jong Un's grandfather and father — also loom over the group during practice.
Despite her apparent approval of the Kim regime, Chunhun claims that her interest in North Korea is purely cultural. Here she is putting on North Korean makeup.
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"By introducing North Korea’s culture, like its fashion, music and arts, I want the Japanese public to realize there are good people living there and that they can't be blamed for what the government does," Chunhun told the Japan Times.
Chunhun's fascination with North Korea started in the form of the country's propaganda, she told the Japan Times.
According to Chunhun, she and other North Korea aficionados get together from time to time for a joshikai — or "women-only party" — to chat about things from their love lives to North Korea.
An unnamed, 23-year-old Tokyo housewife said she changed her mind after visiting Pyongyang last year.
She told the Japan Times: "I'd always thought they [North Koreans] were kind of cold and emotionless.
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"But when one of them, as part of their security check, searched my smartphone to make sure I had no anti-Pyongyang images on it, he came across some lovey-dovey pictures of me and my husband... And then he cracked a very cute grin. It was at that moment that I realized they were human, too."
Sometimes the North Korea fan club gatherings include men, too. Here are two of them wearing shirts with the North Korean flag, with the caption: "See you in Pyongyang."
Some fans even dress up for the gatherings — here are two of them dressed up as North Korean soldiers. In the background is a portrait of Kim Jong Il.
Chunhun has had to pay a price for her love for North Korea — she says she regularly receives hateful messages over the internet, and has been prevented from getting jobs because of it.
Anti-North Korea sentiment isn't rare in Japan, and it's exacerbated since Pyongyang began testing its nuclear weapons around ten years ago, The Guardian reported.
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Around 600,000 ethnic Koreans live in Japan, of which 150,000 claim loyalty to the North, The Guardian reported.
Many of them are descendants of people who fled to Japan during the 1950-53 Korean War, while others are descendants of Koreans brought to Japan to serve as "comfort women" in the early 1900s.
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