BOOK REVIEW All the world's a stage Illusive Utopia, Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea
by Suk-young Kim
Reviewed by Michael Rank
North Korea is a performance, an illusion, a show. From the tour guides who
insist that their country is led by a dynasty of infallible geniuses to the
Arirang pageants designed to beat spectators into a state of stunned awe, it's
all a meticulously choreographed spectacle aimed at ramming home a single
political message, that the Kim regime is here to stay and will ruthlessly
suppress any challenge to its rule.
It's hard not to miss the theatrical aspect to any visit to North Korea, and
it's all part of a show in which Western visitors are complicit. No tourist to
Pyongyang can avoid laying flowers in
false tribute to Kim Il-sung and few if any would take the risk of seriously
disagreeing with their minder that this is paradise on Earth, or if not quite
paradise, very nearly.
This impressively researched book examines performance in North Korea in great
detail and in its widest sense, from theater and film to visual art and
literature and even fashion, and is based on a huge range of North Korean
source materials in the Library of Congress and the US National Archives.
The author supplements these raw materials with extracts from extraordinary
secret recordings of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il discussing his hopes for North
Korean cinema made by the abducted South Korean film director Sin Sang-ok and
his actress wife Choe Eun-hui in 1983.
Departing from his usual public bombast, Kim told his two reluctant visitors
that "we lag behind in filmmaking techniques" and implored them to come to his
aid. They did Kim's bidding, with enthusiasm it would seem, making films
drastically different from previous North Korean films, including a
Godzilla-type movie Bulgasari, and an innovative musical Love, Love, My
Love, which represent "the most experimental moment of filmmaking in
North Korean cinematic history ... ironically echoing the artistic vision of
Kim Jong-il, who sought to appropriate various motifs and styles of each
performance medium to create a culminating total art in which cinema was the
backbone."
The book includes a comprehensive history of North Korean cinema, which had
priority over theater from the beginning and from its foundation had as its
main purpose the glorification of the leader and instilling an intense sense of
nationalism in its audience.
Suk-young Kim notes how North Korean cinema has relied on a "process of
blurring the boundary between performed illusion and social reality by
transforming spectators into performers ... on two fronts", with actors
striving to emulate the virtues of revolutionary citizens and spectators aiming
to become like the film characters who are their role models - a theory
propounded, needless to say, by arch-director Kim Jong-il.
North Korean cinema is almost totally unknown in the West, so virtually
everything the author has to say on the subject is fresh and informative. She
finds that films set in the countryside tend to be livelier than those set in
the city, providing "more room for artistic flexibility to explore humor,
failure, and even sexuality - a long-standing taboo subject in North Korean
public discourse".
This is also reflected in dramas of the 1950s and 1960s (but not in current
drama, apparently) which explore "the liminal realms of political correctness
and surreptitious moments of human sexuality", in which, transposed onto images
of nature and farmland labor, couples "charge their relationship with erotic
tension, defying our conventional wisdom about socialist subjects whose
intention should be to 'produce', but not so much to 'procreate'."
In her discussion of North Korean painting and illustration, the author
considers the relationship of the Kim cult to traditional patriarchal authority
and notes how Kim Il-sung, the father of the nation, overshadows the authority
of traditional parents, especially the father figure in the many paintings of
him with children.
The author says the overpowering authority given to the two fathers of the
state results in traditional fathers being "deprived of masculinity and vigor",
although she does not go as far as B R Myers in
The Cleanest Race in discerning maternal qualities in the Kims.
(Asia Times Online, April 10, 2010.)
North Korean fashion is as little-known as North Korean cinema. The author
describes North Korea as "a fashion-conscious nation where political leaders
strive to dress its people through rigid regulations, imposing uniforms on
various social sectors and systematically recommending certain designs to
civilians".
Kim restricts her discussion to female fashion, claiming, "While some other
socialist and authoritarian states glorified masculine clothing as a preferred
means to represent revolutionized women, North Korean fashion has continuously
explored and expressed degrees of femininity, seemingly contradicting the
astringent revolutionary spirit often identified with masculinity."
This is seen in North Korea's positive attitude towards traditional Korean
clothing, known as joseonot, not hanbuk as it is called in the
South. Nationalist undertones are present in fashion as everywhere else in
North Korea, with a magazine article claiming that joseonot is "designed
to suit the special physiological needs of our Korean women".
But while the author's account of the North Korean fashion industry is
fascinating, she surely goes too far in claiming that women's fashion in North
Korea "is as diverse as anywhere else in the world".
This is a highly knowledgeable account of the arts in North Korea, with
fascinating illustrations taken mainly from the official magazine Joseon Yesul
(Korean Arts) that are not available elsewhere. The amount of detail is
sometimes a little overpowering, and the author occasionally lapses into dense
academic jargon with references to "a heteronormative gender binary" and
"corporeal and ideological fulcra".
There are also some rather surprising omissions: I was surprised that Myers'
pioneering Han Sorya and North Korean Literature (1994) and Art Under
Control in North Korea (2005) by Jane Portal are not mentioned, and the
author seems to be unaware of Daniel Gordon's remarkable film A State of Mind
(2004), about the ultimate in North Korean performance art, the Mass Games.
But this book is full of valuable insights into North Korean culture and is an
indispensable addition to the growing literature in English about this bizarre
and impenetrable country.
Illusive Utopia, Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea by
Suk-young Kim. University of Michigan Press (March 11, 2010). SBN-10:
0472117084. Price US$65, 400 pages.
Michael Rank is a former Reuters correspondent in China, now working in
London.
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The author supplements these raw materials with extracts from extraordinary
secret recordings of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il discussing his hopes for North
Korean cinema made by the abducted South Korean film director Sin Sang-ok and
his actress wife Choe Eun-hui in 1983.
