North Korean Economy Watch

Yonhap
Kim Hyun
6/26/2007

Trying to reach out the highly commercialized South Korean art world, a group of North Korean artists who defected to South Korea launched an organization Tuesday aimed at setting the stage for the communist state’s little-known style of artistry.

“However good they were in the North, they can’t show it alone in the South. They are alienated,” said Kim Yong-nam, the president of the association who was a composer in the North before he defected in 2002.

“They have no ground to stand on, so we decided to find it step-by-step,” he said.

The General Association of North Korean Defector Artists represents about 100 musicians, singers, choreographers and other artists from the North who have had few chances to share their artistic skills since they left home.

Many members were well-known in the North. Kim Young-sun, 71, one of the few surviving choreographers who trained under legendary dancer Choe Sung-hi, hoped she could transfer what she learned from her mentor to young dancers in the South. Choe, who created the first modern Korean-style choreography after studying abroad and is still revered in the South, died in a North Korean political prison camp in 1969.

“North Korean art should never be considered low, because it’s where master Choe took root,” Kim said, before presenting her artistic skills on stage at the launching ceremony at the Press Center in central Seoul.

“People in the South have such good bodies and good physical frames to dance. But they have never seen her. I hope Choe’s talent can be transferred to them and our young members (of the defectors’ association) so that they can know her not just in theory, but know her enough to take it to the world stage,” she said.

Reflecting the sense of alienation that many defectors here have, only a few South Koreans attended the launching ceremony, and legislative and government officials who were invited or sponsored the event did not appear. The participants hoped the launch could help them reach out to the unfamiliar South, even though future projects still need to be worked out.

“Today’s launch seems small now, but it will be recorded in history,” Hong Sun-gyong, a senior defector, said.

“Art in North Korea is used to maintain the dictatorial regime. In contrast, South Korean art, while it is called fine art, has been ailing with indescribable corruption and failed to contribute to the healthy development of South Korean society. We hope our organization will do something to break the dictatorship and develop healthy commercialism here,” he said.

Library of Congress John W. Cluge Center

Suk-Young Kim
June 27, 2007
12:00 noon
LJ-119, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress,
10 1st Street S.E.
Washington, D.C.

This event is free and open to the public; no reservations are required.

Communist regimes are often described as “drab,” but North Korea is highly fashion conscious – a place where style and politics go hand in hand. For decades, North Korea’s political leaders have been preoccupied with designing uniforms for almost every sector of society. Fashion, especially women’s fashion, is seen as a national project, meant to promote group identity and ideology. Like many authoritarian regimes, North Korean designers have been drawn to masculine, military styles that seem to embody revolutionary spirit. But women’s fashion in North Korea also openly allows for a contradictory sense of traditional femininity. This talk explores the representation of ideal body in North Korean visual media, such as theater, film, magazine illustrations, paintings and posters.

Daily NK
6/25/2007

It was known that Kim Jong Il received Percuteneous Transarterial Coronary Angioplasty (PTCA), a heart malady treatment by German doctors.

Early last May, Japanese weekly “Shukan Gendai” reported that Kim Jong Il suffered from a myocardial infraction and received a “percutaneous transluminal coronary recanalization bypass” surgery at the Kim Man Yoo Hospital in Pyongyang. “Bonghwa Treatment Center, through the Kim Jong Il family, is in charge of treating top North Korean officials and of course, the Kim Jong Il family, but due to the lack of surgical equipment in the ancient city, surgeries related to heart diseases are treated at the Kim Man Yoo Hospital, which has the top of the line materials and technology from Germany,” reported ” Shukan Gendai.”

However, upon inspecting the hospital system where the ranking system is actively used, there is possibility that he received treatment from the Bongwa Treatment Center, not at the Kim Man Yoo hospital. At the Bongwa Treatment center, “the top treatment facility,” for use by Kim Jong Il, can be found.

Lee Young Kook’s (45), a former guard of Kim Jong Il who defected to South Korea, memoir “I was Kim Jong Il’s guard” (Zeitgeist) introduces in detail North Korea’s hospital ranking system. According to the book, North Korea divides the civilians into 10 ranks by class and implements a “hospital ranking system” which treats members of each rank separately.

The place where North Korea’s top-level officials, including Kim Jong Il, receive treatment is the Bongwa Treatment Center, located in Shinwon-dong in Botong River-district. It is a hospital where heads of government (general-level) and the Party Committee chiefs’ immediate family members are treated. The Bongwa Treatment Center has a general department and a special department. The general department treats the medical needs of chief-level leaders and the special department treats Party Political National Committee Members, committee member candidates, Central Party Committee Secretary, and Vice-Premier of the Cabinet and above.

The reason for the high possibility of Kim Jong Il receiving treatment at the Bongwa Treatment Center is that this hospital has a “Number 1 treatment center,” which treats Kim Jong Il and his relatives. It is known that the treatment center is known to be overseen 24 hours by the Ministry of Security, which is in charge of Kim Jong Il’s security.

The hospital, which is ranked second, is the Namsan Treatment Center, which is adjacent to the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital in Daedong River-district, Munsu-dong in Pyongyang. It also oversees the Assistant-Chief (Vice Minister) of the Cabinet and the Central Party Committee’s Vice-Head, Lieutenants General of the People’s Army, and the immediate family of Foreign Ambassadorial Talks’ dispatched delegates. The resident diplomat in Pyongyang also receives treatment at this hospital

The third-ranked hospital is the Pyongyang Medical College Hospital and the Chosun (North Korea) Red Cross Central Hospital. The treatment departments of this hospital are in charge of Central Party Committee’s Department Head, Assistant Department Head, and the immediate family of the Cabinet’s middle management.

Hospitals ranked immediately below are the Kim Man Yoo Hospital and Pyongyang’s No. 1 Hospital. The members of the Central Party Committee and superintendents, the department chiefs, and their families can be seen at this hospital. If the rank of Kim Man Yoo Hospital, which “Shukan Gendai” reported as the place where Kim Jong Il received his surgery, is to be classified, then it would fall into the 4th rank.

Besides this, there is the No. 2 Treatment Center and the Staff Treatment Center, which treats the members of the People’s Army and their families. Average laborers and farmers receive treatment at the factory treatment centers or at the dong (neighborhood) or li (village) treatment centers.

North Korea is a society, which absolutely protects the safety of Kim Jong Il. It has not clearly revealed whether or not Kim Jong Il received surgery, what kind of a surgery he had, and where he received it. Subsequently, one cannot exclude the possibility of him having received surgery, not at a hospital, but at the Workers’ Party’s office building, which is located at Kim Jong Il’s oval office, at a mansion located in Pyongyang City, or at a third location.

Joong Ang Daily
6/23/2007

In a landmark ruling, a court in Seoul yesterday cleared the way for North Korean defectors who left spouses in their communist homeland to remarry in the South.

The Seoul Family Court accepted requests by 13 defectors to divorce their spouses in North Korea.

Married North Korean defectors have so far been legally barred from remarrying in South Korea because they are already married in the North.

Under a new law on the protection of North Korea defectors revised in January, people who have obtained South Korean citizenship after defection now can file for divorce “if it is unclear whether their spouse lives in the South.”

The test case is the first of 429 lawsuits that have been lodged with the same court on the issue since 2003.

Judge Lee Heon-yeong said North Koreans have a legitimate reason for being unable to continue marriages formed in North Korea, since the current inter-Korean division is unlikely to change in the near future.

The ruling is expected to speed up the process and to increase the number of similar applications.

The number of divorce suits has grown since March, 2003 as the defectors were required to report the name of their spouse for census registration.

Daily NK
Kim Min Se
6/22/2007

It has been reported, colourful clothes and accessories such as gold rings are current hot trend among North Korean women, unlike their conservative dressing ritual in the past.

This transformation has been clearly revealed by Daily NK’s recent encounter with North Korea-China traders and their main importing goods for North Korea.

On the 18th, Choi Myong Hee (pseudonym), who has been trading the indispensable from Dandong, China, to North Korea, talked about this new trend in North Korea as meeting one of our reporters at some place in downtown Dandong.

Choi said “Recently white-based yellow and red floral prints have been going very well” “And also animal prints with puppies or ducks have been good,too. On the other hand, human-figured prints have not been doing well”

According to Choi, colourful looks have been the latest mode among North Korean women in big cities like Pyongyang. In particular, accessories have been a big trend.

Currently, Choi has been selling light industry goods such as clothing. However, it is accessory trading she has made a sizable profit nowadays. The accessories she has bought in Shenyang or Dalian, China at 5~8 Yuan (US$ 0.6~1) have been sold at 10~15 Yuan (US$ 1.3~2 ) in department stores and markets in Pyongyang.

Choi admitted “Accessory trading requires less cost and makes greater profit. Especially, I have never had a problem transporting them because of their efficient size.” we were told, she normally imports 10,000 various kinds of accessories to North Korea, mainly necklace and hair clips, and her major clienteles are women in Pyongyang.

Choi declared that necklaces, rings and hair clips have become common accessories for most of North Korean women. In fact, she has been trading accessories quite a few times on the sly.

“Still, necklaces and bracelets with religious symbols such as a cross or charms are prohibited” she remarked. In addition “Too much dazzling or abnormal looking necklaces are also forbidden.. So, it is crucial to import most favored design and colour.”

It is considered this radical change of North Korean women has resulted from increasing flexibility of the population because of the stimulated market as trading has been the only way to provide maintenance due to the fall of rationing system.

Besides, the influence from Chinese accessory fashion is observed to be one of the major factors as growing numbers of North Koreans have been visiting China.

Moreover, this changing trend of North Korean women, who have begun to dress up with colourful clothes and accessories, is perceived as a reflection on women’s natural desire, admiration on beauty.

Daily NK
Kim Min Se
6/20/2007

It’s been reported South Korean English dictionaries have been sold almost double the market price in major North Korean cities like Shinuiju as North Korea – China trade invigorates and greater learning of Chinese and English

”Mt. Baikdu Store” has been in business in Dandung, China targeting North Korean merchants and North Korea officials their main customers, have been selling “Essence Korean-English Dictionary” published in South Korea by Minjungseorim at 420 Yuan (US$55). The same dictionary sells around at 37 dollars in South Korea.

North Korean merchants are purchasing these dictionaries by order directly from upper class North Koreans. The dictionary mentioned above has traded at 210,000 North Korean won (approx. US$69).

The proprietor of Mt. Baikdu Store said “Among South Korean dictionaries, Essence Korean-English Dictionary, 2005 special edition, published by Minjungseorim, has been a bestseller.” “They are 2 or 3 times more expensive than Chinese counterparts but North Koreans are very keen on them for their well-written layout.”

”Dictionaries published in South Korea have gained popularity among the North Koreans for they are well –written so that anyone could study easily. In particular, upper-class parents have been throwing money around to educate their children.”

Park Myong Cheol (pseudonym), a North Korean, engaged in North Korea–China trade stated “Recently Pyongyang and Shinuiju have seen a sizzle for learning English and Chinese.”

Park reasoned that the overwhelming trend has been derived from recent stimulation on North Korea–China trade. Accordingly, he specified that many have noticed the highly-required needs of language skill for overseas trade and employment.

Besides, increasing popularization of computer is one of the factors. Learning English has been considered a must to gain computing skills for technical terms which contain English.

Park admitted “In the past, it caused a big trouble reading South Korean publications. However, this has not been a problem any more just for studying material like a dictionary. It was out of discussion before.”

According to him, currently an increasing number of the Chinese, who have been preparing North Korea-China joint ventures in Pyongyang and Shinuiju, have hired the North Korean as a translator.

Chinese employers prefer local employment for bringing Chinese translator over cost fortune because of the expense covering entrance and staying. In addition, it requires complicated document procedure. For example, it cost 300 Yuan (US$43) per day excluding accommodation and meals.

Park reported that it is natural for North Korean young adults, fluent at foreign language, to eager to be a translator of Chinese businessmen in the rise of unemployment in North Korea.

Evidently, it is observed that upper-class North Koreans have devoted to educate their children hiring private English tutors with dictionaries from South Korea. Moreover, this craze has been interpreted as a display of the people’s desire on opening of North Korea.

Asia Times
John Feffer
6/15/2007

The North Korean film projectionist is thinking back on her earlier life. When she was younger, she tells the camera, she dreamed of acting. She wanted to play a heroic role on the screen. Her eyes take on a wistful look. And there is a hint of pain in her voice. In any other country, this would be an ordinary show of emotion. In North Korea, however, the ordinary is extraordinary, for outsiders catch a glimpse of it so very rarely.

The North Korean woman, Han Yong-sil, is one of four film projectionists featured in a new documentary, Comrades in Dreams. Directed by Ulli Gaulke, a young German filmmaker, the documentary ties together the lives of cinema lovers from four countries: the United States, Burkino Faso, India and North Korea.

While all the footage is fascinating, the material from North Korea is unique. Films from and about North Korea rarely pierce the carefully constructed surface that the country and its citizens present to the outside world. Yet here, captured by Gaulke, Comrade Han reveals an individual personality behind the ritualized propaganda that she initially offers the camera.

Film has played an unusually prominent role in North Korean culture and history. Although it opens an important window on to a closed society, North Korean film has been a singularly overlooked subject. North Korean films are almost never shown in the United States. They rarely appear in international film festivals. Few articles have been written on the subject.

That all may change soon, however. A French company has just bought the rights to show the North Korean film A Schoolgirl’s Diary, reportedly seen by 8 million North Koreans, more than one-third of the population. Scholars are beginning to comb through North Korean films for clues about how the system ticks. And documentaries like Comrades in Dreams and the latest effort from Dan Gordon and Nicholas Bonner, Crossing the Line, are attracting attention at film festivals around the world.

The US and North Korea are inching closer together as a result of ongoing nuclear negotiations. With normalized relations on the agenda, information about North Korean society becomes ever more valuable. But do North Korean films ultimately reveal or conceal the reality of the country?

Bring up the subject of North Korean film and most people would be hard pressed to name a single title. But nearly every article about North Korean leader Kim Jong-il mentions that he’s a film buff with one of the largest film collections in the world. In fact, Kim started out in the cinema world. The rise of the “Dear Leader” to political leadership is linked inextricably to his film career.

“Kim Jong-il used film to prove that he was the legitimate guardian of his father Kim Il-sung’s legacy,” explained Kim Suk-young (Speaking at the Library of Congress Next Week), a specialist on North Korean theater and film at the University of California-Santa Barbara. “Kim Il-sung was very keen on protecting his legacy as a national father. So Kim Jong-il in the 1970s used film to prove that he was the legitimate heir.”

These films helped solidify his father’s personality cult and demonstrated that Kim Il-sung’s successor, unlike Deng Xiaoping in China or Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, would avoid any iconoclastic reforms.

Kim Jong-il was not the first person in North Korea to recognize the political uses of film. The regime early on realized the revolutionary potential of the medium. When it took control over the northern half of the Korean Peninsula at the end of World War II, the North Korean Workers’ Party under Kim Il-sung relied heavily on Soviet assistance. The Soviets, having pioneered film technique in the early days of the Russian Revolution, offered cinematic help as well.

From the very start, however, North Korea showed its independent streak by not following the Soviet model. “Even at its very beginning,” writes historian Charles Armstrong, North Korean cinema “was diverging from its Soviet sponsors’ aims by creating a distinctive cinema rooted in melodramatic emotionalism, a sentimental attachment to the Korean countryside, and the alleged values of peasant life, and a nationalist politics centered around the person of Kim Il-sung”.

To merge Soviet communism with North Korean nationalism – all rolled into the package of Kim Il-sung’s personality cult – film was the ideal medium. As Kim Suk-young explains, it is much easier to send films throughout the country as a propaganda tool than, for instance, relying on traveling theater groups. More important, Pyongyang could control the form and content from beginning to end. Political speakers sent to deliver propaganda to the masses might succumb to improvisation. Theater actors might give an unintended interpretative spin to their lines of dialogue. But movies allow for total control – or as close as the regime could get to total control in the cultural sphere.

Re-imaging history
Unlike Josef Stalin, Kim Il-sung often clothed his political instruction in narrative form. His multi-volume autobiography, for instance, is full of stories and parables. But nothing could compare to the power of film to create resonant images and stirring nationalist messages.

For instance, in the 1960s film On the Railway, set during the Korean War, the train-engineer hero infiltrates the territory held by US and South Korean forces and pretends to be a defector driving his train over to the other side. He is, like Kim Il-sung, a trickster who achieves victory despite overwhelming odds. He doesn’t do so on behalf of the workers of the world, however. He is fighting for the Korean fatherland and against the foreign aggressor.

Other movies, such as An Jung Gun Shoots Ito Hirobumi and Star of Chosun, dramatize moments of Korean history such as the 1909 assassination of a Japanese colonial official and the life of Kim Il-sung. Like the 1915 US film The Birth of a Nation, these films present a rewritten history that can replace authentic memory and balanced scholarship. A government can censor books. But film has the appearance of reality and can more seductively change how a citizenry understands its past.

Kim Jong-il put his stamp on North Korean filmmaking with his involvement in productions such as Sea of Blood and Flower Girl. These films, adapted from revolutionary operas credited to his father Kim Il-sung, established a cultural vocabulary similar to the opera productions that Madame Mao (Jiang Qing) unleashed on the Chinese population during the Cultural Revolution (so memorably described in Anchee Min’s memoir Red Azalea).

The language of these operas-turned-films, which both describe the atrocities of the Japanese colonial period, defined the parameters of acceptable cultural discourse. The images became iconic, like the Biblical tableaux that appeared in classical painting and formed the visual vocabulary of pre-modern European culture.

By the late 1970s, having established his bona fides with his father, Kim Jong-il perceived that North Korean film had hit a dead end. At that time, he already possessed an extraordinary collection of world cinema. He understood the widening gap between the international and the national. To bridge the gap, Kim Jong-il sought help from outside.

Revolution lite
One of the most popular films in Bulgaria in the late 1980s was North Korea’s Hong Kil Dong (1986). A classic tale of a Korean Robin Hood, the film introduced Hong Kong-style action to the Soviet bloc. The ninja moves and soaring kicks dazzled East European audiences. “Hong Kil Dong attracted hundreds of thousands of people to the cinemas across Bulgaria,” writes Todor Nenov. “It was almost impossible to get tickets for it, unless you booked them two or three days earlier!”

Borrowing from Hong Kong action movies was only one of the ways that the North Korean film industry revived itself in the 1980s. Kim Jong-il borrowed more directly from outside when he arranged for the abduction of South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee in 1978. Six months later, Kim abducted her estranged husband, famous South Korean director Shin Sang-ok.

Before the pair managed to escape in 1986 during a stopover in Vienna, Shin Sang-ok introduced many new innovations into North Korean film. His most famous films during this period – a North Korean version of Godzilla called Pulgasari and a retelling of the famous Korean folk tale of Chunhyang called Love, Love, My Love – added science fiction and musical romance to the North Korean repertoire.

It is difficult to know whether the entertaining aspects of Hong Kil-Dong and Shin Sang-ok’s movies distracted North Korean moviegoers from the political messages or made those messages easier to absorb. The historical and fantastical settings allowed for greater leeway in presenting stories. Although the screenplays nod in the direction of the People, the writers needn’t lard the narrative with adoring references to the country’s leader or address the tasks facing contemporary North Korean society.

The contemporary love story in Traces of Life (1989) is by contrast entirely subordinate to the political message of building a utopian society. The movie tells the story of a grieving widow. Her husband has died in a suicide mission that blows up an invading South Korean ship. Guilty about arguing with him on the night he left to make the sacrifice, she exiles herself to the countryside, where she becomes a farmer and eventually raises rice production to unprecedented levels.

She thus transforms her love of husband into love of country. When Kim Il-sung himself comes to her farm and praises the collective’s success, her love achieves its apotheosis. The love of the hero leader has absolved her of the guilt she felt about not living up to the ideal of her hero husband.

Romance in North Korean films tends to be of the revolutionary not the bourgeois variety. As Ri Hyang, the character in Urban Girl Comes to Get Married (1993), explains to her friend, she wants “a man with perfume”. Her friend, surprised, replies that “a man is not a flower”. Ri Hyang continues: she is looking for “a man who creates his life with great ambition, a man who is respected by people”.

Although Urban Girl has a much lighter touch than Traces of Life, the message is the same: love should be reserved for those who want and can build “paradise on earth”. If that means partnering with the fellow on the farm who spends night and day working on a better breed of duck, as urban girl Ri Hyang ultimately does in the film, so be it.

Utopian dreams
Films in North Korea do not simply carry messages. They model behavior. Han Yong-sil, the projectionist in Comrades in Dreams, explains that the audiences for her films learn about new agricultural advances. And indeed, Urban Girl features information about livestock breeding and rice transplanting, and Traces of Life provides information on microbial fertilizer.

But the films don’t just supply technical content. They model revolutionary virtues. Kim Suk-young points to the popularity of amateur contests in which average North Koreans learn the lines of famous movie parts and then compete for the honor to present their monologues at the finals in Pyongyang. “It sounds very oppressive to us,” she says, “but there’s comfort in identifying with those heroes.” In this way we see that North Korean films don’t simply reveal or conceal reality. They actively construct North Korean society.

As a projectionist on a model farm, Han Yong-sil also struggles to live up to the examples set in the films she shows. Her husband is far away on an assignment to beautify Mount Paektu, the reputed birthplace of the Dear Leader. This is an important mission and, like the heroine of Traces of Life, she knows that she should subordinate her personal loneliness to the good of the nation. Still, it is clear that she finds this task very difficult.

Her display of emotions reveals the normalcy of North Koreans. Ironically, it is this very normalcy, because it falls short of the revolutionary ideal, that the North Korean government is loath to reveal to the world. And so the outside world tends to perceive North Koreans as slightly unreal, as mere mouthpieces for government propaganda.

In the 1960s and even into the 1970s, the utopian themes in North Korean cinema went hand in hand with the rising expectations of the population. After the devastation of World War II and then the Korean War, North Korea rapidly rebuilt itself. The government prided itself on the various industrial and agricultural advances that put it on par with and even ahead of South Korea. By the 1980s, however, North Korea was stagnant. It had fallen behind not only South Korea but even its own previous standards.

It is interesting that Kim Jong-il perceived that North Korean film, too, was stagnant at this time. A kind of cognitive dissonance must have begun to emerge among the North Korean population. The government and the films were portraying an ever-improving society and yet the population must have been noticing that reality was stubbornly not keeping pace. In the Soviet Union, during the years under Leonid Brezhnev, people could get their entertainment elsewhere – foreign films, books, samizdat publications. But North Koreans, until very recently, did not have any alternatives. And so the North Korean film industry turned to escapism, like romance stories.

But even escapism has its limits, for there is a utopian quality to Urban Girl and Pulgasari as well. Perhaps in response to the growing cognitive dissonance, the North Korean entertainment industry has begun to address new themes: divorce, love triangles, the double and triple shifts of women. “These dramas dealing with failure suggest that people are craving something different,” observes Kim Suk-young.

Reaching out?
The North Korean government boasts of its world-class film industry. But since a devastating loss in an international film festival in Czechoslovakia in the early 1970s, North Korea hasn’t tried very hard to promote its films abroad.

Pyongyang has, however, hosted its own international film festival since 1987 and allows visitors to its film studio. “North Korea has never been shy about propagandizing its grand achievements, and the film industry is not something secretive,” said journalist Ron Gluckman. “You can visit the studios as part of a tourist itinerary.

“I did so on my first visit to North Korea back in 1992. I visited again in 2004, and the equipment shown off was definitely ancient. I suspect they have been unable to keep up to date due to the economic situation, and film has suffered as a consequence.”

More recently, the government has allowed outside directors to make films inside the country. Pyongyang Crescendo (2005) follows the story of a German conductor who spent 10 days in the North Korean capital teaching music students. Dan Gordon and Nicholas Bonner have produced three documentary films: on the North Korean soccer team that made it to the World Cup quarterfinals in 1966, on two girls training for the mass games in Pyongyang, and most recently on the US soldier James Dresnok, who defected to North Korea in 1962.

The Game of Their Lives, the 2002 soccer documentary, showed that films could be made in North Korea, said Nick Bonner. However, the country isn’t exactly issuing a general invitation to the film world. “It is still very difficult to film in [North Korea] and is certainly a case-by-case situation,” Bonner added.

With A Schoolgirl’s Diary, the North Korean film industry will try once again to break into the international market. In this 2006 release, a teenager complains that her scientist father is too busy to pay attention to her. It is, according to reviews, a “humorous drama about a rebellious teenage girl”. It offers a picture of the North Korean elite that, in the film, uses computers, carries Mickey Mouse schoolbags, and eats good food.

It shows a few flaws in the system, such as deteriorating housing stock. But these are, according to Bonner, the “day-to-day flaws that fit the story line of struggle during this time when great sacrifice is needed to build a strong country”.

Regardless of whether A Schoolgirl’s Diary attracts an international audience on the merits of its story and its filmmaking, it will be an important document of North Korea’s evolving society. It will also show what kind of model behavior the government now wants to inculcate in its citizens.

“We might have to imagine the world with North Korea for another 25 or 50 years,” Kim Suk-young concludes. “We should look at film in order to understand and co-exist and to have a glimpse of North Korea instead of reducing it to a one-dimensional propaganda tool.”

Daily NK
Kim Min Se
6/19/2007

Having received permission from North Korean authorities, North Korean restaurants that are operating in China or in Southeast Asia are making fixed payments of $10,000 to 30,000 to North Korea.

The portion of payments made to North Korea by North Korean restaurants operating in China or Southeast Asia is a known reality, but this is the first time that the amount that these restaurants made to North Korea became known.

Kim Myung Ho (pseudonym, 59), who has experience running a North Korean restaurant in China under the auspices of a North Korean foreign currency-making activity organization, met our reporter in an unnamed quarter of Dandong in China on the 13th. He said, “Under the influence of each ministry in the administration or a money-making business, North Korea is trying to competitively establish restaurants abroad.”

According to Mr. Kim, the amount remitted by the restaurants is decided according to the number of waitresses and employees.

He said, “The amount sent back to the North is $10,000 if the number of employees is less than or equal to 15, but if it exceeds 20, then the amount of remittance is $20,000, and over that, the amount is capped at $30,000.”

Mr. Kim said, “Every year, the sum total is counted at the business headquarters in Pyongyang, but if there’s even a small default or lack of results, then the threat of evacuation is given.”

Currently, there are over a hundred odd restaurants which are known in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In the case that $10,000~30,000 is sent to North Korea every year, it can be calculated that North Korea is earning approximately several tens of thousands of dollars through overseas restaurant operations alone.

Mr. Kim revealed, “North Korean restaurants are receiving the limelight as main foreign currency-making activity businesses. Because they are pursuing business competitively, they have had to shut down operations one after the other due to the inability to manage internal affairs, such as employees breaking away.”

The shutdown of two North Korean restaurants, named “Pyongyang Moran Restaurant” and “Pyongyang Restaurant,” for several months due to the running away of waitresses was a confirmed fact of Daily NK’s investigations.

Presently, there are special trade companies who try to achieve the foreign-currency making activity plans issued by each ministry of the North Korean government. Most of North Korean restaurants that are operating overseas right now are associated with these trade companies.

Mr. Kim said, “Foreign currency collected in these ways is used as operating capital of superior offices Party and as a portion of the Party. Anything besides this, higher than that, is hard to say.”

The reason for the expensive price of food at North Korean restaurants is due to these remittance amounts. They exceed the price of food at surrounding restaurants by three times. In Dandung City, nangmyeon (Korean buckwheat noodle), which can be obtained for 6 Yuan at a high-class Chinese restaurant, is two times pricier at 10~15 Yuan at North Korean restaurants.

The price is expensive, but what makes these restaurants popular, which cannot be found at no other restaurant, is the performances accompanied by song and dance of North Korean waitresses. Performers are usually 20~25 young women who draw customers by singing North Korean songs and even Chinese songs.

Mr. Wang, a Chinese patron seeking a North Korean restaurant in the evening of the 14th, confessed, “I like the fact that I don’t have to seek out a karaoke, because I can sing and dance with the ladies of Pyongyang.”

Further, he expressed contentment that “I can receive high-class service which is difficult to receive at a Chinese restaurant, so it is good for entertaining business partners.” North Korean restaurants are drawing popularity by its unique business method of simultaneously providing food and amusement. Recently, they have tried to actively rouse regular customers by not only providing performances, but dancing with the customers.

A person of Korean-Chinese descent, who is pursuing North Korea-Chinese trade in Dandung, expressed, “It’s disappointing to see the sight of restaurants multiplying when trade is not sanctioned normally due to the lack of foreign currency. Businesses are operating with food and entertainment due to a lack of good income sources; in Dandung alone, there are over 10 restaurants.”

Daily NK
Yang Jung A
6/19/2007

“North Korean government has employed movies to propagate superiority of the regime and Su-Ryeong (supreme leader) absolutism. However, North Korean movies have seen a new wave recently.” John Feffer, co- director at Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), an Institute for politics & diplomacy in the U.S, declared through his article on the web on 12th.

Feffer remarked “North Korea was quickly recovered from World War∥ and Korean War. From the 60s to 70s, North Korean had had a great expectation on Utopia” “However, it has been stagnated since then.”

He was interested in the fact that even Kim Jong Il himself perceived that North Korean film was stagnant the same time of North Korean stagnation. Additionally, “The government and the films were portraying an ever-improving society and yet the population must have been noticing that reality was stubbornly not keeping pace” he explained.

◆ People noticed North Korean reality

He appraised “During the reign of Brezhnev (1965 ~1983), people in the former Soviet Union could get their entertainment from foreign movies, books and samizdat publications. On the other hand, the North Korean had no other alternatives” Thereafter, North Korean film industry has gone for a romance for escapism, he explained.

The most representative film is “the family” series. This series of short film, 9 episodes in all, pictured a struggle of the family caused by the couple’s divorce and their troubled children.

Feffer also said that North Korean movies, which haven’t opened to the public, have released to the world audience one after another.

Currently a film titled “A Schoolgirl’s Diary” portraying a story of a North Korean girl, has been expected to be released in Europe by a French distributor. Also, Daniel Gordon British director, have produced documentary films “A State of Mind (2005)” and “The Game of Their Lives (2002)” gaining permission from North Korean government.

Feffer pointed out “Since Film has played an prominent role in North Korean culture and history, scholars are beginning to comb through North Korean films for clues about how the system ticks.” However, he doubted whether North Korean films ultimately reveal the reality of the country or not.

He continued “We should look at film in order to understand and coexist and to have a glimpse of North Korea instead of reducing it to a one-dimensional propaganda tool.” “Besides, Kim Jong Il made most of movies to manage his political agenda.” He added.

He said that media have often said Kim Jong Il is a huge film buff.” “Therefore, the rise of the “Dear Leader” to political leadership is linked inextricably to his film career.” He explained.

• Bulgarian audience fascinated by “Hong Kil Dong”

He continued to observe “North Korean movies would play a role to idolize Kim Il Sung. And Kim Jong Il, unlike Deng Xiaoping in China and Gorbachev in the former Soviet Union, was able to escape from criticism against the hereditary succession of power.”

Feffer noted. “In the 70s, Kim Jong Il, having established idolatry cult on his father, Kim Il Sung with movies, realized North Korean film hit the dead end.“ At that time, Kim, who is a remarkable film collector, had clearly understood the widening gap between national and overseas films.”

” ‘Hong Kil Dong’ was the most popular movie in the late 80s in Bulgaria and this classic tale, Korean version of Robin Hood, introduced Hong Kong style action to the East European for the first time.” “The brilliant action footage of the film dazzled the East European audience. It was part of the plan to revive North Korean film adopting Hong Kong style action.” he specified.

Kim’s passion on film reached the peak as abducting Choi Eun Hee , South Korean actress, in 1978.

Feffer mentioned “He also abducted Shin Sang Ok, the estranged husband of Choi Eun Hee, and made him to produce movies. This couple had brought a new wave on North Korean film industry until their escape in 1986.”

”The most renowned movie among Shin’s production is “ Pulgasari,” North Korean version of “Godzilla” and “Love, Love, Oh my Love,” revived Chunhyang, classic romance in Korea. Shin Sang Ok adapted Romance and SF to Korean style story line,” he assessed.
However, he pointed out “It’s difficult to know whether entertaining aspect on “Hong Kil Dong” and the new wave on Shin Sang Ok distracted the North Korean audience from political messages or made those messages easily absorbed.”

Indeed, Feffer appraised Kim Jong Il is not the first individual who recognize the political uses of film.

He explained that North Korean regime have recognised the evolutional potential of the media. Korea Workers’ Party, under the Kim Il Sung’s lead, was able to occupy Northern Korean Peninsula after the World War ∥ relying on the support from the former Soviet Union. The Soviets had already pioneered film technique in the early days of the Russian revolution.

However, North Korea already showed its independent streak not following the Soviet model .

Feffer said “Film was ideal means to adapt Russian Communism to North Korean Nationalism, which is solely manipulated for idolatry on Kim Il Sung.” “Leaders in Pyongyang was able to control over all the context. Government can manipulate publications. Still, film can be more powerful maneuvers of the past for it reflects reality.”

Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
6/17/2007

Keeping up appearances: this is how the official North Korean policy in regard to the city of Pyongyang, the cradle of revolution, can be best summed up. Being a Pyongyang dweller is a great privilege in itself. Until things began to fall apart in the mid-1990s, this meant that your food rations would consist largely of rice (not barley and corn, as in the countryside) and that your children would be entitled to a small glass of milk in school. But you also had to follow the rules, and participate in the grandiose symbolic performance that Pyongyang actually was _ and to an extent still is.

Many laws which dealt with the daily life of Pyongyang’s residents essentially served the purposes of presentation. Take, for example, the case of Pyongyang bikes. East Asia has a well-deserved reputation as a cyclists’ paradise. Nonetheless, North Korea used to be different. Until the early 1990s bicycles were outlawed in Pyongyang. Obviously, the North Korean authorities saw bicycles as decisively low-tech _ and hence inappropriate for the “capital of revolution.’’

Foreigners were not exempt from this charade. When in the mid-1970s a visiting Norwegian diplomat brought his bike to Pyongyang, he stirred up a diplomatic controversy. After painful negotiations he was granted permission to ride his bike… on weekends only.

Another example is a strict dress code imposed on the female dwellers of Pyongyang and some other cities. Women are not supposed to wear trousers outside their work. Actually, police turn a blind eye to such inappropriately dressed women in winter. Older halmoni also can walk in trousers with impunity _ at least if they do not stray outside their neighborhood. But for other women in summer time, skirts are obligatory, and until the late 1990s an attempt to walk the street in trousers would result in a fine and a probable report to police.

There are other restrictions as well: a certain tradition or institution may not be outlawed but should not be mentioned in the press. A phenomenon could exist in the real world, but it is not permitted to enter the world carefully constructed by Pyongyang propaganda.

My favorite example is the pram. North Korean women carry their children like women in East Asia have done for centuries: on their backs. This is probably a very good way: at least, Russian Koreans, arguably the most de-Koreanized of all overseas Korean communities, still sometimes follow this custom after some 150 years of their life in Russia. Perhaps, it makes sense: a baby feels so comfortable on a mother’s back!

But the North Korean authorities decided that this age-old habit of carrying children on the back should not be too widely advertised. Hence, you cannot find pictures of women carrying kids on their back. Instead, on the glossy pages of the North Korean propaganda monthlies, readers frequently encounter pictures of impossibly happy mothers who are moving their children about in prams. In real life one has to spend several weeks in Pyongyang before chancing on a pram-pushing lady. The politically incorrect tradition of carrying children on the back should not be mentioned in official publications or depicted in visual arts (unless they employed as a reference to the bad old days before the coming of the Kim dynasty).

Nowadays, the rules have been somewhat relaxed, but back in the 1970s or 1980s a foreigner took some risk by taking a picture of a mother with a baby on her back. There were chances that, if spotted, the film would be removed from the camera and exposed to the light.

The same fate could easily befall somebody who dared take pictures of Korean women moving heavy loads on their heads. Such scenes are increasingly rare in Seoul these days, but in Pyongyang this is still a commonplace sight. Nonetheless, in the ideal world of the official propaganda, Korean women do not carry large weight in such an archaic way, and no media is allowed to break the censorship of such subversive information.

Actually, I think that there are good reasons why the North Korean officials are afraid of such scenes. They likely know little about Edward Said’s writings on “Orientalism’’: after all, Leninist regimes were always very suspicious about non-Leninist brands of leftist ideology, so people like Gramsci, Althusser, or Said were never much loved in Moscow, Beijing, or Pyongyang. But they obviously grasped some of Said’s “Orientalist’’ ideas instinctively. For most Western readers, pictures of women with children on their backs or of old ladies moving heavy loads on the top of their heads do hint at “exoticism’’ and also, by implication, “underdevelopment’’. And the North Korean state does not want to present itself as underdeveloped.

But all these efforts to impress the world appear quite strange when we remember how small the target audience actually was. North Koreans knew the truth anyway, and foreigners in Pyongyang were very few in number. In most cases their positions and experiences made them very skeptical of all these propaganda exercises. But the North Korean officials tried hard nonetheless.