Movies:
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Shiny Morning (part 1) |
Shiny Morning (Part 2) |
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Cartoon- A Kum Rang |
Creepy |
KFA:
Also, Alejandro Cao de Benos has published his own book in Thailand. According to the KFA web page the book, Korea, the Songun Citadel, was recently published in Bangkok, Thailand. With 148 pages and first edition of 500 volumes.
I am not sure when volume 2 of 500 will be published.
AIR KORYO:
And finally, Skytrax has ranked Air Koryo as the world’s only 1-star airline.
Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 09-9-4-1
9/4/2009
The latest issue of the Kim Il Sung University newspaper (2009, no. 2, April) acknowledged the international society’s sanctions against North Korea, and in a bid to encourage a self-determinant resolution to the country’s economic problems, the paper called for “the utmost circulation of dormant cash,” emphasizing the role of the bank.
The paper stressed that strengthening the role of the bank was a crucial part of ensuring the country’s socialist system continued to operate. It also stated that elevating the position of the bank and circulating currency were essential elements of ensuring that North Koreans were not reliant on foreign assistance, and that they were able to solve their problems independently.
In the article encouraging currency circulation, it was stated that “the oppressive isolation policy of the imperialists grows worse every day,” but that by maximizing capital circulation, domestic economic problems could be resolved and the North could complete its bid to create an economically strong nation even more quickly.
The article reflects the DPRK government’s attempt to encourage spending of Won, Dollars, and Euros by institutions, enterprises and even individuals in an attempt to ease economic woes even in the face of international sanctions. Jung Yeon-ho, a researcher with the Korea Development Institute (KDI), reported in 2003 that North Koreans were sitting on as much as 600,000-1,000,000 USD. Since 2003, North Korean authorities have been trading US dollars for Euros due to sanctions from Washington, so now many in the North also have considerable amounts of Euros stashed away, as well.
Kim Il Sung University, through its paper, insisted that banks needed to strengthen their role in currency circulation and lending, and to ensure that their services were in line with the demands of the times. It noted that banks were taking note of the needs of individuals and enterprises, and catering to their demands in order to more appropriately respond to their issues and not only meet their needs, but to encourage their continued use.
Some North Koreans have had bad experiences with banks, not being able to withdraw previously deposited funds or not earning expected interest. This has led some to avoid banks in order to guarantee their savings.
After the North’s July 1st (2002) Economic Management Reform Measure, an attempt to make policy reflect reality in the North, the government began selling 10-year ‘People’s Lifestyle Bonds’. In early 2006, North Korea’s banks began offering savings accounts, loans, and other services to individuals and enterprises in order to encourage spending.
UPDATE: It seems the painting represents the struggle of DPRK to keep itself independent and the strength required to do so.
There is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal this week analyzing the rather tacky painting in the background of the above picture of Bill Clinton and Kim Jong il.
On the one hand, a run-of-the-mill seascape, the kind of visual elevator music one finds in public spaces the world over, where the aim is to decorate but not offend. Yet there was something about the picture that wasn’t quite right and that kept drawing me back to it. For one thing, there was its vast internal scale. The waves were bigger, even, than the figures posing for the photograph, and they so dominated the foreground as if ready to break out and drown the assembled dignitaries.
Then there was the picture’s bizarre disunity. Two opposing visions of nature are combined, a benign one (the luminosity and fluttering birds), and an angry, violent one (the heaving seas and crashing waves). Just as strange, the painting’s various elements seem at war with each other. For instance, the rhythm of the breaking waves leads our eye from left to right, yet at the bottom right-hand corner—just to the right of the woman in the official party wearing a white jacket—a flock of birds, facing to the left, abruptly halts and reverses that momentum. A more accomplished artist would have found a way to integrate the various elements more harmoniously and lead our eye around the canvas more smoothly.
Then I realized: This is no ordinary painting but art with a purpose. What seem to our eye as limitations are the result of deliberate intent. It’s a piece of political propaganda. As such it belongs to a subspecies of kitsch known as totalitarian kitsch, where art’s sole raison d’etre is to bolster a dictatorial regime and glorify its leader.
The message of the painting, located in what appears to be the presidential palace [NKeconWatch: I think it is actually the Paekwawon Guest House], is a simple one: Kim Jong Il’s regime as a force of nature. The painting has a split personality because it aims to convey two distinct messages simultaneously: The soft light and gamboling birds conjure up thoughts of a natural paradise, an allusion to the “paradise” such regimes believe they are creating for their subjects. The crashing waves are a metaphor for the overwhelming power of the state and its Great Leader ready to crush all enemies.
No surprise there as to the painting’s purpose, but the author went on to elaborate on the style and its origins in the Soviet Union, borrowing heavily from Art Under Control in North Korea:
Totalitarian kitsch puts those ideas in the service of the state. It is the official art of authoritarian governments, aimed at extending state control through propaganda. Totalitarian kitsch exists to glorify the state, foster a personality cult surrounding the dictator and celebrate ceaseless and irrevocable social and economic progress through images of churning factories and happy, exultant workers. It does so using the corrupted language of academic realism—heavily muscled supermen and women and colossal scale. Pyongyang’s “Monument to Party Foundation” consists of three hands each emerging from a circular platform and holding, respectively, a hammer, a hoe and a brush. The hands alone are over 150 feet tall.
Such art isn’t produced by the proverbial starving artist in a garret but on an assembly line, like Mansudea Studio in Pyongyang.
“Mansudea is an ‘art-creation company’ as they call it, and it has over 3,000 workers in it,” says Jane Portal, author of “Art under Control in North Korea” and chairwoman of the department of Asian, Oceanic and African art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. “They create with great speed. Artists at the Mansudea produce on average two paintings a month.”
Totalitarian kitsch got its start in the Soviet Union in 1934 when the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers ratified the principles of what became known as Socialist Realism. The first decades of the century saw the greatest innovations of modernism through Europe, and in Russia, artists such as Kazmir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko made seminal contributions to the language of Cubism and abstract art.
But under Stalin, the Party decreed that art must serve the cause of revolution, and it could only do so with imagery that was universally and easily understandable and possessed of a didactic purpose. So in 1934 modernism was banned as bourgeois and reactionary (Malevich, who died the following year, spent the remainder of his days painting bland pictures of peasants) and artists began churning out heroic images of Stalin and the proletariat, a classic example of which is Vera Mukhina’s 1937 “Worker and a Kolkhoz Woman.” A statue some 80 feet tall (currently being restored), it shows two strapping figures, a man and a women, breasting the wind as they surge forward, hammer and sickle held high.
In the decades following, Socialist Realism became the style of choice for dictatorships. The Nazis adopted it, as did Mao Zedong and Saddam Hussein. Mr. Hussein’s main artistic legacy is the 1989 “Hands of Victory” in Baghdad, consisting of enormous hands emerging from the ground holding swords that cross. It’s a classic of totalitarian kitsch, part personality cult—the hands are based on casts of Mr. Hussein’s forearms—and Orwellian doublespeak. They were erected to commemorate Iraq’s “victory” in the Iran-Iraq war, which, after eight years and hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides, in fact ended in a draw.
According to Ms. Portal in Boston, while North Korea’s version of Socialist Realism is typical—“The Kim cult is based on the Mao cult and the Stalin cult—personality cults where they’re regarded as gods,” she says—there are differences.
“One of the interesting things is women,” she says. In Soviet and Chinese art, women are shown shouldering as heavy a burden as men. In North Korean art, women aren’t shown working, and they wear makeup and dresses. “You never see them in pants,” says Ms. Portal. “This comes from Neo-Confucianism, which is traditionally Korean and very male chauvinist,” she says.
To an artist in a democratic country living the customary hand-to-mouth existence, working as a state employee might seem like a boon, even if it does mean doing the same thing day after day. But it too has its perils. Dictators fall and regimes go out of business. Worse than simply being unemployed, the artists might find themselves outcasts, symbols of a discredited ideology.
Some years after the collapse of Communism, I asked a Russian art critic what had happened to all the Socialist Realists in his country. He said they were still earning a living making other kinds of art, but that the transition hadn’t always been seamless. He cited the case of a painter whose stock in trade had been portraits of Lenin. The man was now earning his living churning out religious subjects. But, my friend added, so ingrained were his earlier habits that every time he painted the face of Jesus, he wound up with a likeness of Lenin.
Read the full article here:
Why Dictators Love Kitsch
Wall Street Journal
Eric Gibson
8/10/2009
1. Nick Bonner, founder of Koryo Tours and producer of three documentaries filmed in the DPRK has given a recent interview to World Hub. Mr. Bonner is currently working on a new film–a North Korean romantic comedy:
“We are hoping to start shooting in December. If that does not kill me then nothing will. We will keep people updated on Facebook and our newsletter and I think the making of the film will be one heck of a ride. Think revolutionary coal miner who wants to become a trapeze artist. But how does she accomplish this? With a script like that how can we go wrong!”
2. Kim Yong Sik was born in 1949. Having lived in Seoul all his life, he discovered his unique talent about 15 years ago; when others started to notice he looked like North Korea’s “Dear Leader.” Since then, Kim Yong Sik has made a living, part time, imitating Kim Jong Il in movies, television commercials, weddings and Japanese TV dramas.
3. Paul Romer’s TED talk: How can a struggling country break out of poverty if it’s trapped in a system of bad rules? Economist Paul Romer unveils a bold idea: “charter cities,” city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations. Could Guantánamo Bay become the next Hong Kong? Watch the presentation here.
Though quite familiar to veteran DPRK-watchers, the “colorful” language that fills North Korea’s official news was the subject of a humorous story in the BBC last week.
According to the article:
A government official recently claimed that North Korea’s official state media has insulted the South Korean president more than 1,700 times this year alone.
That is an average of 10 insults a day.
He is variously called “a lackey”, “a stooge”, “a dictator” and the leader of “a gang of traitors”.
The official admitted that the jibes were sometimes “downright silly”.
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At times of extreme hostility the language turns flamboyant, even poetic.
America sank so low in 2003, according to state radio, that even the “piles of manure in the fields” were “fuming out the smoke of hatred.”
It is strong stuff, no doubt, but sometimes the outside world can be tempted to analyse too deeply.
And why do the insults sound so antiquated?
Joo Sung-ha, the defector turned South Korean journalist, says there is an easy explanation for North Korea’s use of seemingly antiquated words like “brigandish” to refer to its opponents.
“They’re using old dictionaries,” he says.
“Many were published in the 1960s with meanings that have now fallen out of use, and there are very few first-language English speakers available to make the necessary corrections.”
So, while North Korea’s rhetoric is certainly worthy of analysis, perhaps we shouldn’t be too alarmed by every outburst.
Further thoughts:
1. For those interested, I posted a copy of Let’s Learn Korean which I bought on my last trip to Pyongyang. It contains many linguistic gems. Download it here.
2. All of these colorful metaphors can be easily found using the invaluable STALIN search engine which helps readers search the KCNA for specific stories. This is especially useful for researchers who need to count the number of times someone’s name is mentioned in the North Korean media. The STALIN search engine also has a humorous Random Insult Generator and Juche/Gregorian calendar converter.
3. Joshua has also invented the KCNA drinking game.
4. And let’s not forget the entrepreneurial individual who posts KCNA headlines to Twitter.
From GPI Consulting:
In the current financial and economic situation, companies face many challenges. They must cut costs, develop new products and find new markets. In these fields, North-Korea might be an interesting option. Inspired by the economic successes of its neighbouring country China, North-Korea has since a few years opened its doors to foreign enterprises. It established several free trade zones to attract foreign investors and there are several sectors, including textile industry, shipbuilding, agro business, logistics, renewable energy, mining and Information Technology, that can be considered for trade and investment.
North-Korea is competing with other Asian countries by offering skilled labor for very low monthly wages and by offering tax incentives. Last year, North-Korea’s exports rose with 23 percent and its imports with 32 percent. Do you want to explore new business opportunities for your company? Then join us from 19 – 26 September 2009 on our trade & investment mission to North-Korea. The program includes individual matchmaking, company visits, network receptions and dinners. Furthermore, we will visit the annual Autumn International Trade Fair in Pyongyang (see photo). We will also meet European business people who are working and living in North-Korea.
The mission is meant for entrepreneurs from various business sectors; tailormade meetings will be arranged by our local partner, the DPRK Chamber of Commerce. The program of this unique mission has been attached and we can be contacted for further details. In case you want to participate: please register as soon as possible, so we can start the visa-application procedure.
With best regards,
Paul Tjia (sr. consultant ‘global sourcing’)
GPI Consultancy, P.O. Box 26151, 3002 ED Rotterdam, The Netherlands
E-mail: [email protected] tel: +31-10-4254172 fax: +31-10-4254317 Website: www.gpic.nl
N.B. some examples of investment opportunities in North-Korea:
http://www.gpic.nl/invest(hungsong).pdf and http://www.gpic.nl/invest(clock).pdf
GPI’s marketing flyer is here.
North Korea Uncovered version 18 is available. This Google Earth overlay maps North Korea’s agriculture, aviation, cultural locations, markets, manufacturing facilities, railroad, energy infrastructure, politics, sports venues, military establishments, religious facilities, leisure destinations, and national parks.
This project has now been downloaded over 140,000 times since launching in April 2007 and received much media attention last month following a Wall Street Journal article highlighting the work.
Note: Kimchaek City is now in high resolution for the first time. Information on this city is pretty scarce. Contributions welcome.
Additions to this version include: New image overlays in Nampo (infrastructure update), Haeju (infrastructure update, apricot trees), Kanggye (infrastructure update, wood processing factory), Kimchaek (infrastructure update). Also, river dredges (h/t Christopher Del Riesgo), the Handure Plain, Musudan update, Nuclear Test Site revamp (h/t Ogle Earth), The International School of Berne (Kim Jong un school), Ongjin Shallow Sea Farms, Monument to “Horizon of the Handure Plain”, Unhung Youth Power Station, Hwangnyong Fortress Wall, Kim Ung so House, Tomb of Kim Ung so, Chungnyol Shrine, Onchon Public Library, Onchon Public bathhouse, Anbyon Youth Power Stations.
UPDATE: From Timeout (Vietnamese English publication):
The largest collection of paintings from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) ever shown in Southeast Asia was put on display at the Nha Trang Sea festival last week.
The paintings were produced by more than two dozen artists with recognized artists – so-called Merited artists – and emerging talents all contributing.
The exhibition included a series of beautiful paintings in a variety of styles and materials – prints, watercolour, oil, pencil drawings and “jewel-powdered paintings”, a Korean specialty art.
With little exposure to the outside world, North Korean art is considered very pure. North Korean artists are loyal to their country and adhere to the country’s political philosophy.In the absence of influences by contemporary art trends from the rest of the world the painters have, in a unique manner, developed their own techniques and the use of colors in an original style.
The displayed paintings include, among other things, a variety of beautiful sceneries of nature and of North Korean daily life. These pieces of artwork give a rare insight into the lives and thoughts of the people of this country.
Some of the most impressive pieces are the products of the veteran artist Han Gyong Bo and the emerging artist Han Song Il, a precocious 24-year old who has won many top prizes at national and international exhibitions.
Han Gyong Bo is famous for his watercolour paintings of wistful and fanciful landscapes created in strong, deep and bold brush strokes. Meanwhile Han Song Il bewitches viewers with his romantic yearnings and smooth style. With refined and flowery strokes, Il’s paintings express the beauties of his country’s natural landscapes.
The painting collection belongs to Swiss businessman Felix Abt and his Hanoi-born wife Doan Lan Huong, who lived and worked in Pyongyang for seven years, where they got to know and love North Korean arts.
At present Abt and his family mostly stay in Nha Trang, Vietnam where they manage their own website Pyongyang-painters.com, one of the very few on-line galleries outside North Korea permitted to sell art and to represent the country’s leading artists as well as new talents.
“Much to our surprise we noticed that (artistic) talents are identified very early in a person’s life and systematically fostered thereafter. As a consequence a high number end up as painters with extraordinary skills. Unfortunately this is largely ignored by the outside world,” says Felix Abt.
Together with the Korea Paekho Fine Arts Company in Pyongyang, Felix and his wife prepared last year the systematic launch and promotion of North Korean paintings on the world wide web and through other marketing measures.
Famous painters from North Korea as well as promising new talents, including young female painters, are now being introduced to a wider public. Abt’s website has been up and running since the beginning of this year and orders are coming from all over the world.
During his time in Pyongyang, Abt and his wife Huong had the opportunity to get acquainted not only with the country’s institutions involved in fine arts but also with numerous artists across the country.
“We learnt that the Koreans were not merely transmitting Chinese culture but also assimilating and adapting it and creating a unique culture of their own while also influencing neighbouring cultures for thousands of years,” says Abt.
But Abt knows that a good website alone is not sufficient to introduce North Korean paintings to a larger public. The paintings need to be physically closer to potential buyers.
“The Sea Festival in Nha Trang, where both Vietnamese and foreigners spend holidays and may want to shop in a relaxed atmosphere was a good opportunity for us to ‘test the market’ in Vietnam,” says Abt.
“In addition, since Nha Trang is a beautiful place with a highly promising potential for tourism, we intend to operate this business out of Nha Trang for both the domestic and international arts markets.”
Talking about their future galleries in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Abt shares that making beautiful North Korean paintings available in these cities is a good idea since there are certainly a sufficient number of people in both cities who would love to have such paintings and can also afford them.
But instead of setting up their own galleries they would prefer to build up a close partnership with a couple of existing galleries in these cities that meet their expectations. Moreover, “this business model which we start in Vietnam could then be applied to other major cities in the region such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.”
Read the Press Release below:
The Art Newspaper published an interesting piece on how artists are trained and art is produced in the DPRK.
On artistic training:
All DPRK artists are members of state-run studio complexes where the art is actually created, and every artist has a formal ranking. These start at level C, move up through B and A, followed by “Merited Artists”, then “People’s Artist”. There are around 50 “Merited Artists” still working today and perhaps 20 “People’s Artists”, the best known being Son U Yong, Kim Chun Jon, Jong Chang Mo, Li Chang and Li Gyong Nam. Almost all artists working in oil and brush-and-ink are men but there are exceptions—for example Kim Song Hui, well known for her brush-and-ink work, is also a People’s Artist. There is also the Kim Il Sung Prize but artists normally have to be at least over 50 to receive this highest accolade, the most famous recipient being Jong Yong Man.
The top art institute is the Pyongyang University of Fine Art with various sections: brush-and-ink, oil, sculpture, ceramics, mural painting and industrial arts. Young artists are selected from around the country and if they are judged sufficiently skilled they will study here. Pyongyang University requires a minimum of five years study: at the moment there are 7-10 students studying oil painting and around 20 studying Korean brush-and-ink painting. In total there are around 150 students a year in the fine art department. Students enjoy class outings to local factories and much time is devoted to object and life drawing although not with nude models but, for example, girls in swimming costumes.
After finishing university the students are selected by various art studios—the Paekho or Central Art Studio, the Songhwa established in 1997 for retired artists, and the most active studio-compound, the Mansudae in Pyongyang.
On artistic style:
The art itself looks like classic Social Realist propaganda, that Beaux Arts technical tradition received through Russia, maintained by the Soviet Union and now, with the transformation of China, only being practised in North Korea, unchanged for more than 50 years. Abstract painting does not exist as it is deemed bourgeois and anti-revolutionary, and if some representational art can be purely aesthetic without political overtones, many landscapes do portray places of the revolution or of political significance.
Obedience to the ideology and excellence in its clear communication to others are what matter rather than any individual glory. This ensures an anonymity to much DPRK production that only its cognoscenti can penetrate. Experts can not only assign an artist’s name to a work, they can also determine whether it is an “original” or one of endless “copies” of an image.
Ever since the founding of the state in 1948, certain themes have maintained their place in the officially approved iconography of the “Fatherland” and it is hard to establish which artist first produced a specific image and when. These same images can be reproduced countless times over the decades. Thus much detective work is required to trace the origin of an image, the only real source being the annual “Yearbook” cataloguing official production.
As [Nick] Bonner explains: “The skill level is very high in academic drawing and painting, but the production is massive and it’s hard to find ‘pure’ pieces, you have to know the provenance or where things were first found.” Indeed, even the museums display copies, ostensibly to “preserve” the quality of the originals kept in storage.
More information on the Mansudae Art Company:
Here visitors, especially foreign tourists, are welcome to see the artists working in their small studios, watch the instructional video on the operation of the company, and buy some work from the large gift shop. Prices at the very top end for a “People’s Artist” can reach as high as €15,000, the favoured currency for all foreign transactions.
Woodblocks are a North Korean speciality, though nowadays they have been almost entirely replaced by lino prints with an attractive rich ink finish. The first ever exhibition of such prints in the United States, loaned from Bonner’s collection, opened last year at New York’s Korea Society, which is currently touring through the country. Initial editions are often very small, less than ten, but if the image proves popular the lino is either re-cut by the same artist or by a “copy” artist and signed by him.
At Mansudae there are also small-scale ceramic sculptures available, naturally of a propagandist nature, as well as more classical ceramics. There is even a startlingly realistic sculpture, reminiscent of Duane Hanson, of North Korea’s most famous ceramicist Uchi Soun (1919-2003) and examples of his widely-exhibited work for as much as €10,000 a pot. There are also striking large-scale figurative watercolours on paper and the highest-quality work, local ink paintings called “Chosonhwa”, some of which will be “thematic art” on revolutionary themes, as each artist will produce at least one a year for the state to show his support for the country. Mansudae employs some 150 of these ink-artists, compared with perhaps 60 oil painters. With some 1,000 members Mansudae produces at least 4,000 top level original works a year, though it also has a factory-style section producing copies for western hotels. Employees, who work a five day eight-hour week, are paid, dependent on level, at a similar rate to the national average, €35 a month for a worker and €70 for a technician.
More information on art in the DPRK:
1. The Paekho Art Studio has partnered with Felix Abt to sell their art internationally. Their web page is here. The Mansudae Art Studio also launched a web page (click here).
2. Nick Bonner has a huge collection of North Korean art. I have seen quite a bit of it, and it is impressive. He also sells North Korean art through the Pyongyang Art Studio.
3. There are a couple of books on North Korean Art. They are very different: North Korean Posters: The David Heather Collection and Art Under Control in North Korea.
4. (h/t Werner) The Mansudae Overseas Development Group, which has been building monuments and buildings across the developing world (mostly in Africa) is part of the Mansudae Art Studio.
Read more below:
Inside the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea
The Art newspaper
Adrian Dannatt
3/18/2009
I was looking at the Koryo Tours web page and found the following information on North Korea’s revolutionary operas:
In the DPRK there are five revolutionary operas, all created in the early 1970s, which have been termed in North Korea as ‘immortal classics’. In order of production date these are; Sea of Blood, The Flower Girl, A True Daughter of the Party, Tell O’ the Forest! and The Song of Mt. Kumgang. These operas are still performed to this day and on the occasions that performances take place it is even possible for tourists to attend the shows, the performing language is of course Korean but when foreigners are in attendance English language supertitles are beamed onto a wall beside the stage so that the narrative can be followed by visitors. All operas are full-scale, large cast efforts with amazingly high production values and these 5 shows have sustained their popularity over the decades. All of them of course contain strong political messages that reflect the issues concerning the country at the time of their writing up until the present day and people of all ages attend the shows frequently. For complete information on what comprises and constitutes a Revolutionary Opera and what characteristics and values it must have then there is only one book to read; On the Art of Opera by Kim Jong Il.
I have posted descriptions of the five operas below (each also from the Koryo Tours web page):
