Abstract
Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, by Guy Delisle. Drawn and Quarterly, 184 pages, 2005, $19.95.
Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Prop from the Hermit Kingdom, audio CD by Christiaan Virant. Sublime Frequencies, 2005, $14.
North Korea dipped its toe in the global capitalist free-for-all some years ago, offering foreign animation studios the labor of its skilled-and very cheap-artists. Part of the idea was that a handful of outside experts would sojourn to Pyongyang for a short time, get the local animators up to snuff, and then depart. The North Koreans didn't know that Guy Delisle would be one of the outside experts. Delisle, a French-Canadian cartoonist, had already turned his 1997 experience supervising an animation studio in China into a French-language graphic novel, Shenzhen (2000). So it's perhaps no surprise that Delisle made the most of his sterile, two-month stay in North Korea by doing what nearly every foreign visitor wants to do: finding a way to acquaint the outside world with a place that surpasses all others in its relentless, unabashed, but ostensibly sincere Communist fervor. The result was Pyongyang, a hilarious graphic novel that is lighthearted yet serious, sober and sad by turns, and true to life in Pyongyang throughout.
In summer 2001, Delisle arrived in North Korea with 7984 tucked under his arm-the George Orwell classic was, needless to say, unknown to his ever-present guides. When he recognized the portrait of Karl Marx displayed in Pyongyang's central square, Delisle's guides congratulated him-“not many capitalists” have heard of Marx, they claimed. Meanwhile, portraits of Kim II Sung and Kim Jong II, father and son, the departed Great Leader and the current Dear Leader, adorn every room of every building–“except in the shters,” Delisle wryly observes. The North Korean regime would have the world believe that, in a land of 23 million, it has produced only two people worthy of adulation, the two Kims-whose every action, attitude, and attribute are to be extolled. As Delisle depicts in his black-and-white panels, North Koreans are constantly drilled with mundane details of the Kims' lives-Kim II Sung told female soldiers how far their hems should hang down; Kim Jong II scored an “A” on every exam.
Like every other foreigner, Delisle tours the “Children's Palace,” where he copies a sign: “We Have Nothing to Envy in the World.” It's the same sign I saw in 1981, when I was on my first chaperoned visit-except back then, the lights were on. He tours a 50,000-square-meter exhibition hall, nestled into the side of a mountain, which displays 211,688 gifts to the Great Leader from 174 countries-the kind of worthless detail on Kim-worship that his hosts constantly dish out. Every day of Delisle's trip, a question burns on his lips: “Do they really believe the bulls–t that's being forced down their throats?”
I remember looking at goldfish in a Pyongyang restaurant's aquarium 25 years ago and thinking, At least they don't have to wear Kim lapel buttons, a requirement of all North Koreans that is still in effect today. Delisle reacts to the stifling atmosphere by wafting paper airplanes over the city from his hotel window, a modest stab at nonconformity. And he relieves the tedium by listening to the radio. Thanks to Christiaan Virant's Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Prop from the Hermit Kingdom, a CD compilation of patriotic pop and odd music from North Korea, anyone can take a listen. (Be forewarned, the songs are in Korean.) Virant, a Beijing-based American expat and experimental musician, collected material for the tracks from various sources-everything from store-bought tapes (which are actually available in Beijing and Seoul) to recordings he made as a tourist. The entertainment value of the CD depends on your tolerance for hortatory, patriotic music. Listeners get the idea from the track titles (bestowed by Virant, who edited the pieces), such as “Motherland Megamix,” “Start ‘Em Young,” and “Pride of the Nation.” As in Delisle's pages, in the music one can hear playing the ever-present tune of full-volume Kim-worship, blasting metaphorically. The CD is a slightly amusing novelty, but if you want a taste of Pyongyang, pick up the book.
Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, by Guy Delisle. Drawn & Quarterly, 184 pages, 2005, $19.95.
Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Prop from the Hermit Kingdom, audio CD by Christiaan Virant. Sublime Frequencies, 2005, $14.
“To what extent can a mind be manipulated?” Delisle muses. “We'll probably get some idea when the country eventually opens up or collapses.” That is, if it ever does. That Delisle's brilliantly rendered experience was so close to my own (and probably many other foreigners'), despite more than 20 intervening years of economic disintegration and famine, suggests a regime mired in never-ending repetition, spinning its wheels in ritual obeisance to the Kims for fear of going anyplace else.