Page 1 of 2 BOOK REVIEW North Korea's no Mozambique North of the DMZ by Andrei Lankov
Reviewed by Sunny Lee
If you happen to be in North Korea and have a medical emergency, what number
should you call? The answer: 113. If you are in Pyongyang and want to have the
best cold noodles in town, where should you go? Okryugwan or the Jade Stream
Pavilion. Do you know how many North Korean males smoke?
The answer: at least 90%, and most of them are chain-smokers.
Andrei Lankov's North of the DMZ answers all these questions and more.
At first glance, his book reads very much like a Lonely Planet guide. It
details many features you will find when you are in that "less traveled" corner
of the planet. Just like a Lonely Planet in-depth city guide, it feeds
you with much historical background and social undertones, in addition to
restaurants, hotels, and places you may be interested in.
But as a guide, Lankov doesn't have many flattering things to say about the
place. He writes: "Recently, North Korea has been much talked about in the
international media. Actually, it is probably talked about much more than it
should."
Lankov continues: "After all, North Korea is nothing but a small and grossly
underdeveloped dictatorship,
whose population size and major economic indicators are roughly similar to
[those] of Mozambique."
To put it bluntly, according to the author, North Korea normally wouldn't make
any more world headlines than Mozambique does if it weren't for its
nuclear-weapons program. "One would not expect to become a best-seller writer
by writing a book about Mozambique," Lankov quips. But in fact North Korea
often does make headlines in the international media, and people write about it
with great zeal and enthusiasm.
So what makes North Korea different from Mozambique? We all know: its nuclear
weapons, its geopolitical volatility, and its leader's behavioral
unpredictability regarding what he might do with those nuclear warheads.
The country's mysterious and exotic leader has also drawn considerable
psychological profiling, both professional and amateur, and this is not to
mention his uncanny skill of nuclear brinkmanship that has received great
attention from many political analysts and pundits around the world.
So Lankov chose not to write about North Korea from that much-exploited angle.
Instead, he does what he promises on the cover of the book: to talk about daily
life in North Korea. He believes the non-political aspect of human experience
in North Korea is underreported and underestimated. And the scholar, who has
researched North Korea for more than 20 years, does a superb job of it.
Notably, Lankov's well-researched book comes across almost like a work of an
"insider" from the secretive country. But there is no secret about how he did
it.
In writing the book, Lankov interviewed many North Korean defectors who had
fled the country and currently live in South Korea. Lankov himself lived in
North Korea as a Soviet exchange student at Kim Il-sung University.
The book includes North Korean arts, media, dating, transportation, and
favorite pastimes, as well as the stories behind the Kim Il-sung badge,
cheerleading squads, the secret police, and education that includes ideological
indoctrination and anti-Americanism.
Lankov is particularly good at explaining the evolution of the society through
different periods. For example, he describes the history of communism's
development in North Korea and the historical rivalry between northern and
southern regions of the peninsula, tracing it back all the way to Koguryo, a
Korean kingdom that existed about 2,000 years ago, to make the story more
relevant.
Eerily enough, its comprehensive nature and high factual fidelity make the book
a good candidate for a US Central Intelligence Agency primer on North Korea.
Certainly the book contains a large amount of information with intelligence
values. For instance, it tells you that a Chinese mobile-phone signal can reach
10-15 kilometers inside North Korean territory. It also tells you about the
country's secret intelligence services - both of them.
The day after
In the book, Lankov tries to refrain from speculating on how and when the two
Koreas will unite. Yet in many pages he ends up revealing that he actually has
some very strong opinions on the topic as well as what would happen after
unification of the two Koreas, even though he stops short of elaborating on
this. So an interview was arranged with the author to fill the gap.
Lankov sees the unification of the two Koreas as a "sooner or later" matter.
But "as the hope for the dismantling of the communist regime looms larger, so
is the resulting disappointment during the transitional period, which will be
tough
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whose population size and major economic indicators are roughly similar to
[those] of Mozambique."
