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North Korean film update

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

The Korean Film Council in Seoul analyzed North Korean films and TV dramas recorded between 2000 – 2006. As discussed in an earlier post on this topic, initial findings indicate North Korean films made during this period differed tremedously over earlier years in that they portrayed real-life situations including husband-wife conflicts and generational differences (see A School Girl’s Diary).

In the 1970s, films depicted the achievements of the two leaders. In the 1980s, works portrayed the happiness of citizens living in ‘our socialist society’. The first kiss appeared in the 1980’s film, Snow Melting in the Springtime (봄날의 눈석이). After Kim Il Sung’s death, films began to reemphasize the revolutionary tradition. The works focusing on the Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il revolutionary achievements were produced in order to strengthen the spiritual training of citizens.

Read more here:
No Love Scenes or Love Triangles in NK Dramas
Daily NK
Yang Jung A
6/19/2008

Posted in Art, Film | 1 Comment »

DPRK embraces comparative advantage to strenghten foreign economic relations

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 08-6-17-1
6/17/2008

According to an article run in the June 10 issue of the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the North Korean Workers’ Party, economic independence “is not closing the doors and solving everything 100 percent on our own,” and stressed the fundamental rule of ‘selling what is present and buying what is missing’, otherwise known as comparative advantage*, as the key to advancing overseas foreign economic relations.

The newspaper article, titled, “The Main Principle for Maintaining the Basic Path Toward Construction of a Powerful Economic State,” explained, “In every country there are limited resources, and at the level of advancement of the economy as well as science and technology, and on the principle of trading based on what is available and what is necessary in each sector, it is normal to give what one has and receive what one does not in order to advance the economy.”

This fundamental rule of strategic trade can also be seen in the July 2005 agreement reached at the 10th meeting of the South-North Economic Cooperation Promotion Committee. At the time, the two Koreas agreed to mobilize natural resources, funds, technology, and more as much possible, based on what was available in each state, in order to advance joint national projects.

The newspaper stressed that “not mobilizing domestic preparations and possibilities and relying entirely on outside [powers] to advance the economy is, in the end, putting the fate of the economy in someone else’s hands…by fully mobilizing in-country forces and potential as a base, resolving necessary issues through foreign economic relations is just secondary.” The article added that the country “must stand by this principle to build a strong economy with an independent strength that would not waver even if there were global economic waves,” and that this would, “increase and guarantee the physical livelihoods of the people.”

The article closed by noting, “the important, fundamental issue as [North Korea] maintains the basic path toward the construction of a powerful economic state…is keeping the economic structure’s distinctive qualities alive while technically reviving the people’s economy,” and furthering the development of heavy industries and national defense industrial sector.

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*North Korean Economy Watch: “This is not the definition of comparative advantage. Click here for wikipedia.”

Posted in Domestic publication, Institute for Far Eastern Studies, International trade, South-North Korean Economic Cooperation Forum | Comments Closed

Lim Dong Won book published

Thursday, June 12th, 2008

Today, the Daily NK publishes a review of Peacemaker: South-North Relations and the North Korean Nuclear Issue over the past 20 years, by Lim Dong Won, “evangelist of the Sunshine Policy” and former director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.

The book (not available in English) publicizes dialogues between Kim Jong Il and the author when he visited Pyongyang for the first Inter-Korea Summit in 2000 and as a South Korean delegate in 2002.

Actually, the Daily NK’s article is not so much a review of the book as it is a series of interesting excerpts:

[Kim Jong il speaking] Joint Security Areais a good movie. I showed it to the generals of the military and cadres of the Party.’ All of sudden, [KJI] asked [the] general of the People’s Army Lee Myung Su and secretary Kim Yong Soon how many series of a South Korean historical drama, “Petticoat Government” they had watched. [KJI] said that ‘South Korea produces historical dramas well. I’ve instructed the Director of the Propaganda Department of the Party to learn the South Korean way of making historical dramas.’

Lim Dong Won also revealed that at the Inter-Korea Summit in 2000, Kim Jong Il agreed with Kim Dae Jung’s comment, “Even after the unification, the U.S. military presence in South Korea will be needed.” The former president Kim asked him “Why are you insisting through your media on the withdrawal of the U.S. military from the South?” and Kim Jong Il replied to him that he wanted President Kim to understand it was just to soothe the peoples’ feeling.

When Lim asked Kim Jong Il to visit Seoul in April of 2002, Kim Jong Il said that “In fact, I tried to visit Seoul in the spring of 2001, but the situation was changed due to George Bush, who looked on us as an enemy, being elected President of the U.S. Furthermore, the situation of the South was such that the leftists demanded that the North apologize to them for the Korean War and the explosion of KAL, and my visiting Seoul would have deteriorated the relations between the North and the South. Therefore, my close associates held me back from going to the South.”

According to his book, Lim revealed that a hot line has been set up since the first Inter-Korea Summit in 2000 and has been used when crises happened between the South and the North. In June, 2002, when a battle occurred in the West Sea, the North sent an urgent telephone-notice, saying “I heard with regret that it happened accidently.”

Read the full story here:
Veiled Dialogues with Kim Jong Il Revealed
Daily NK
6/12/2008

Posted in Communications, Film, Inter-Korean summit, Political economy, Telephones | Comments Closed

China seeking to outsource animation to DPRK…

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

The article is badly translated, but [seemingly] according to the People’s Daily (h/t Go East) China is looking to outsource programming/animation services to North Korean workers in Dandong:

The main reason to select Dandong city as the China-North Korea animation game service outsourcing base is aimed to draw North Korea’s animation game talents to Dandong. Xu Aiqiao, chairwoman of the Hangzhou national animation game public service platform limited, said that North Korea has become the global animation industry processing “plant”.

With a total staff of 2,500, the base will not only reduce at least 5,000 yuan per minute for the production costs of animation companies, but inject more energy into the creative plans, original scripts, and other areas of China’s high-end animation talents of the animation game.

Read the full article here:
Hangzhou game service outsourcing base to make up 80 pct of domestic animation production
People’s Daily
4/29/2008

Posted in Animation, Computing/IT | Comments Closed

High maintenance personality

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Last August I posted an excerpt from Andrei Lankov’s book, North of the DMZ, on the preservation of Kim il Sung’s body in Kamsusan Memorial Palace. This year, the Daily NK (here and here) provides some new information on Kim il Sung’s imposing presence on the North Korean landscape.

First some statistics:

1. There are approximately 70 Kim il Sung statues in North Korea (large statues a la Mansu Hill in Pyongyang).

2. There are approximately 30,000 plaster busts.

3. There are approximately 140,000 monuments and memorials

4. There is allegedly one Kim Jong il statue in Pyongyang (although the Daily NK is the only source I have ever heard make this claim).

5. The first Kim il Sung statue was at the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School on 10/24/1948. The second was in front of the Changjeon School in 1949. The most recent is at Kim il Sung University in 1996.

Apparently all of the statues are made of bronze, but are coated in a gold paint every two years to prevent them from corroding. The gold paint is allegedly imported from Germany (Can any German readers/speakers find out which German company supplies the paint? How much? And at what cost? ).

All of the likenesses of the Great Leader are exclusively constructed by the Mansudae Art Studio’s “Number One Works Department” in Pyongyang. The workers in this group are tested annually by a deliberation committee so they can be certified to work on Kim statues, etc. These individuals are the only ones legally allowed to reproduce the leader’s image in North Korea.

Once a Kim statue is completed, it is transported by numerous agencies (security, party, and artists) to its destination where it is erected. Lamps are supposed to shine on the statues from 10:00pm until 4:00am. Local citizens are charged with keeping the area around the statue tidy (which can be verified on Google Earth). In the event of an emergency (such as a war), many statues allegedly have dedicated bunkers in which they can be stored.

Posted in Art, Germany, Mansu Art Studio, Political economy | Comments Closed

Kim Jong il Statue?

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

The Daily NK is running a couple of interesting pieces on Kim il Sung monuments and statues in the DPRK. Both articles are worth reading (here and here), and I will comment on them more extensively in the near future, but the first article made a startling claim that I had to put to NKeconWatch readers: That there is a Kim Jong il statue in Pyongyang.

In contrast to the many Kim Il Sung’s statues, there stands only one Kim Jong Il statue. This is located in on the lawn of National Security Agency office building at the foot of Mt. Amee in Daesung district, Pyongyang. It was erected on Kim Jong Il’s 46th birthday in 1988 and is constructed not of bronze, but of gold.

In addition to the one standing statue of Kim Jong Il, all Colleague Kim Il Sung Revolutionary History Institutes, which are located in each major local office or agency, showcase plaster busts of the Kim son, and at the International Friendship Museum in Mt. Myohang, a large sitting statue was constructed.

I have spent about 20 days in the DPRK. I know many people who have spent many many more, and I have never heard of any Kim Jong il statues. Can anyone confirm this? Any photos out there?

Posted in Art, Political economy | 2 Comments »

A School Girl’s Diary at NKIDP

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

I just returned home from a screening of the North Korean film, A School Girl’s Diary (ASGD), hosted by James Person at the North Korean International Documentation Project (NKIDP) and Suk-Young Kim from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Although times have changed significantly in North Korea since the famed Sea of Blood was released, the purpose of the cinematic arts within the North Korean system has not. In short, film in the DPRK is meant to be regime enhancing—reinforcing official social and political norms. What is interesting about ASGD compared with previous North Korean films, however, is the muted use of propaganda and tacit admission that things are not perfect in the Workers Paradise. Is it possible the change in communications tactics is the result of changing attitudes within North Korean society?

Sea of Blood is as subtle as a pulp comic. It offers action, intense feelings, flat characters (clear protagonist/antagonist), and a simple “us vs. them” plot line. In the film, Koreans are the victims of brutal Japanese imperialism and Kim il Sung is the savior who delivers them from oppression. At the time Sea of Blood was released, however, the first generation of revolutionaries was in control of the country, memories of Japanese colonialism were fresh, and people were more enthusiastic about their country’s future.

Today, the North Korean government is struggling to indoctrinate its “third generation (3G).” The 3Gs have no memories of Japanese colonialism or of the Korean War. Children, who have likely never met an American, do not hate the “American Imperialists” like their parents and grandparents. 3Gs have seen many state institutions collapse; they have seen the social contract broken; they have seen economic decline; and they have survived a famine. Additionally, they have grown up buying and selling in markets and are more familiar with South Korean and Chinese culture than their parents could have imagined at their age.

Given these huge demographic changes, it seems probable that the style of ASGD represents the regime’s most recent efforts to socialize this new generation of comrades. A School Girl’s Diary makes only one explicit reference to the leader and portrays life as less than ideal. After sixty years of revolutionary struggle, people fight with each other, express their egos, and feel jealousy. In short, the film portrays characters, locations, and motivations that many contemporary North Koreans could probably identify with. As was noted in the discussion following the film, Mickey Mouse made a cameo on a backpack (likely imported from China and bought at a market), there was a veiled reference to sex, or lack thereof, and the star of the film complained about her absentee father (the metaphorical Kim Jong il).

You can read a professional review of the film in Variety here.

You can read academic discussion of the film here. (h/t Werner Koidl)

Posted in Art, Civil society, Film | 4 Comments »

Logistics of filming in North Korea

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

My friend Paul at Knife Tricks recently interviewed the producers of Crossing the Line about the logistics of filming in the DPRK. Here are some excerpts:

Gordon and his crew brought their own equipment to North Korea because local film technology was not compatible with the needs of a modern documentary shoot. “As far as equipment goes, they film on 35mm, and we were filming on DigiBeta for the first two films and hi-def video for Crossing the Line,” says Gordon.

“I used standard Canon lenses,” notes Bennett. “When I needed to light, I used Kino Flos, but much of the film was shot with available light.” Gordon adds, “In North Korea, the electricity isn’t necessarily on, and when it’s on, it isn’t necessarily constant, so we tried to use available light wherever we could.” He carried batteries at all times and hooked into mains when possible.

In addition to Gordon, Bennett, soundman Stevie Haywood and co-producer Nicholas Bonner, the crew included one or two North Koreans assigned to the shoot by the Ministry of Culture. Gordon notes, “Your immediate suspicion is that they’re government plants — security people pretending to be film people. But the longer you work with people, you tend to find out what they are and what they’re not, and the people we worked with day by day were absolutely film people.”

“They basically took it upon themselves that they were going to work for us and get us the access that we wanted, whatever that took and whatever personal risks that took on their part,” he continues. “Had it all gone wrong, there would have been quite nasty consequences for everyone involved.”

The filmmaking process involved many nights of discussions with the North Koreans about access or other issues concerning the next day’s shooting. The topics to be discussed with Dresnok were provided to the North Koreans in advance, with the understanding that new topics would arise over the course of the interview. The minders occasionally reviewed the dailies. “There was never an occasion when they said, ‘No, you can’t shoot that,’” Bennett recalls. “There were lots of occasions where they’d hem and haw as to whether they wanted us to film something, and we shot it, and they had a look at it afterwards and said, ‘Yeah, it’s fine.’ You’re not always aware of what they’re looking for.”

“No footage was ever taken away from us,” adds Bennett. “We came away with everything we shot.”

The North Koreans had no hand in the edit, either. Gordon says the final cut was not shown to North Korean officials until after it was screened at the Busan Film Festival in South Korea.

Read the full article here:
Documentary filmmakers are granted rare access to shoot a project that provides glimpses of life in the closed-off society.
American Cinematographer
Paul Karl Lukacs
March 2008

Posted in Film, Ministry of Culture | Comments Closed

An In-depth Look at North Korea’s Postal Service

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

Daily NK
Moon Sung Hwee
4/8/2008

April 8th is Postal Service Day in North Korea. Each province has a branch office of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and Communication Maintenance Bureau. The postal system manages the distribution of letters, telegrams, telephone calls, TV broadcasts, newspapers and magazines. Additionally, they mint stamps and also operate an insurance agency in name only.

In the late 1990s, the national postal system was completely ruined

In North Korea, postal service offices are set up in each “ri”—a small village unit–, of each county to deliver letters, parcel posts and telegrams. Following the March of Tribulation in the late 1990s, the delivery system was completely destroyed and its formal structure was left in tatters. Even in the 1980s when the North Korean economy and people’s lives were relatively stable, it took around 15 days to two months on average to deliver a letter from Pyongyang to a rural village.

In the case of a telegram, it took generally 3 or 4 days to reach a postal office in a rural area. In the late 1980s, to guarantee efficiency within the telegram delivery system, the authorities supplied the offices with second-hand bicycles from Japan.

After the March of Tribulation, letters disappeared due to train delays and frequent blackouts, and the telegram service was virtually incapacitated due to the lack of electricity.

Telephones were restricted to control the outflow of national secrets

North Korea uses a separate electricity supply for its telephone system. Even if there is a power blackout in a village, villagers can still use the telephone network. In 1993, fiber-optic cables were installed and the use of mail and telegram services began to decline. North Korean people call fiber optic cable a “light telephone.”

North Korea built an automatic telecommunicates system by developing multi-communication technology with imports of machinery and by inviting engineers from China in 1998.

In 2003, authorities allowed cadres to use telephones in their houses and in 2005, they also allowed people to use the telephone at home as long as they paid 2,000 North Korean won (approx. USD0.6) a month (a monthly salary is 1,500 won per laborer).

In August, 2007, the government tightened regulations regarding the telephone system. People could make calls only within their province. Authorities said the reason was to prevent the outflow of national secrets.

The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications controls TV and other broadcasting. There is no cable TV in North Korea. Authorities set up an ultra-short wave relay station in each county to relay television broadcasts.

North Korea signed a contract with Thailand for satellite broadcasting and installed U.S.-made transmission and relay facilities in 2000.

People can now listen to “Chosun Central Broadcasting,” but in rural areas, it is difficult to recieve signals because the broadcasting facilities and cables have already begun to deteriorate.

People sarcastically say a “newspaper is not about news but about “olds.” The authorities pay special attention to the successful delivery of the Workers Party Rodong Shinmun bulletin. To deliver Rodong Shinmun from Pyongyang to each province or even to each city and county by train, it normally takes 4-5 days. Sometimes, it takes more than a week.

People also say they use an “oral-paper” to get information because rumors are faster than the Rodong Shinmun.

Postal service workers were dragged to prison camps

In 1992, the Minister and all related officials of Posts and Telecommunications were fired, and the Minister, the Vice Minister and their families were sent to political prison camps for having wasted national finances for the import of factory machinery to produce fiber-optic cables from the U.K.

They submitted a proposal to Kim Jong Il to buy factory machines in order to earn foreign currency through the production and export of fiber optic cables. However, in the end they eventually bought worn-out machines from the U.K. and failed to earn profits. In addition, they embezzled some of the funds.

In 2001, in Lee Myung Soo Workers-District of Samjiyeon, Yangkang Province, two office workers and a manager of a relay station broadcasted Chinese TV programs that they were watching to residents by mistake, so they were sent to a political prison camp and their families were expelled to a collective farm.

Agents of the National Security Agency are stationed at the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in order to scrutinize mail, parcels, to tap telephone wires and to supervise residents.

The Ministry regularly dispatches professional engineers to the 27th Bureau, to the airwaves-monitoring station, and to the 12th Bureau, which was newly established to censor mobile phones.

On Postal Service Day, Chosun Central Agency often delivers praise for the development of North Korea’s postal system and facilities under the General’s direction.

However, most ordinary citizens will not be able to watch or read about it in time, for the lack of paper, electricity, infrastructure, and delivery systems.

Posted in 1990s Famine, Arduous March, Bicycles, Communications, Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, Radio, Railways, Telephones, Television | Comments Closed

Film Screening: “The Schoolgirl’s Diary” (2006)

Monday, April 7th, 2008

(NKeconWatch: “I hope to see you there”)

April 09 2008, 4:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
6th Floor Auditorium
Woodrow Wilson Center
One Woodrow Wilson Plaza
1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20004

Learn more and REGISTER here.

The Schoolgirl’s Diary (Han Nyeohaksaengeui Ilgi-2006, in Korean–no subtitles) is the story of a self-absorbed North Korean teenager, Soo-Ryeon, who yearns to move to an apartment from her home in the countryside and questions the values of her father and mother; a scientist and a librarian at the academy of sciences who put the good of the nation before that of their family. Soo-Ryeon realizes how selfish she is only after her mother falls ill and her father makes a major breakthrough in his research. The film’s screenwriters reportedly received guidance in drafting the script from North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Following the screening: Suk-Young Kim will discuss the film and offer comments. Suk-Young Kim is assistant professor of theater and dance at the University of California at Santa Barbara and an expert on North Korean propaganda. She is currently completing a book project titled Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea, which explores how state produced propaganda performances intersect with everyday life practice in North Korea. Another book project, Long Road Home: A Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor (coauthored with Kim Yong) is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

Sponsored by: North Korean International Documentation Project

Posted in Art, Civil society, Film | 1 Comment »

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