MOSCOW (REUTERS).- Chubby-cheeked, hard-working and joyous but also ready for military action is how North Korea presents its people at a major show of official art from the secretive state in Moscow. “And Water Flows Beneath the Ice” exhibits 40 works by 39 state-commissioned artists which have never been shown abroad and span 25 years of tight North Korean rule. Hardy women in overalls with windswept ponytails wade in rubber boots beside their male comrades in Pak Tong Chol’s “Pioneers of Taming the Western Sea,” from 2009. Sharing an innocent joke, the youths look happily ahead into the future. Dozens of smiling steelworkers smelt and haul sheets of metal in a red flag-draped factory in Kim Su Dong’s “Front Workers of the Age of Songun,” also from 2009. They appear to be having the time of their lives. All the art comes from Pyongyang’s Mansudae Art Studio, set up in 1959 and whose 1,000 artists are at the core of