North Korean Cinema: A History 9780786465262, 2012026839

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NORTH KOREAN CINEMA

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NORTH KOREAN CINEMA A History Johannes Schönherr

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

LIBRARY

OF

CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Schönherr, Johannes. North Korean cinema : a history / Johannes Schönherr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-6526-2 softcover : acid free paper ¡. Motion pictures — Korea (North)— History. 2. Motion picture industry — Korea (North)— History. I. Title. PN1993.5.K63S35 2012 791.43095193 — dc23 2012026839 BRITISH LIBRARY

CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

© 2012 Johannes Schönherr. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Front cover image: Vintage propaganda poster; design by David K. Landis (Shake It Loose Graphics) Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 6¡¡, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

To Tomoko

Acknowledgments It would have been impossible to do the necessary research and the actual writing of this book without the dedicated support of a small number of very helpful people. I want to thank all of them profusely. Mark Siegmund in Seoul should be mentioned here first for providing me with invaluable contacts, translations and all forms of practical help throughout the entire writing process. At any moment, he was ready to go to extraordinary lengths of support. Lee Myung-ja, researcher at Dongguk University in Seoul, was always ready to answer the questions I had concerning the details of North Korean cinema. She also quickly and reliably provided me with video copies of many of the films that I needed to see for this book. Kwon Eun-kyoung of the defector-run internet news site Daily NK (http:// www.dailynk.com/english/) arranged and translated the interviews with the North Korean refugees at the end of this book. Finally, I would like to thank Scott Burgeson in Shenyang for all of his help in finding and obtaining digital copies of North Korean films in China. Much additional assistance was provided by Jouni Hokkanen. Christian Karl offered strong support in the initial stages of my North Korea research. Many more people helped with translations and in many other capacities. A big thanks to all of you! You know who you are. This book partly grew out of my text “A Permanent State of War: A Short History of North Korean Cinema” published in Matthew Edwards, editor, Film Out of Bounds, McFarland, 2007. Parts of chapter 6 were previously published in Social System Studies, no. 22, Ritsumeikan University: The Institute of Social Systems, Kusatsu (town), Shiga (prefecture), Japan, March 2011. An earlier version of chapter 12 was published in Film International, no. 18, vol. 3, no. 6, November 2005. A modified version of the same text was published online by the Daily NK in May 2010. All are used by permission.

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Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface Introduction 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

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At the Pyongyang Film Festival The Early Years The Korean War (1950–1953) The Establishment of Juche Kim Jong Il Enters the Scene Shin Sang-ok Active in North Korea (1983–1986) Shin Sang-ok’s Influence on Concurrent North Korean Cinema (1984–1986) The Post–Shin Sang-ok Years (1986–1993) Famine and the Death of Kim Il Sung (1994–1999) The Sunshine Years (2000–2008) Post-Sunshine: The Most Recent Films (2009–2011) Ten Zan, an Italian Coproduction: Ferdinando Baldi’s Ultimate Mission Audience Perspectives: Interviews with North Korean Defectors

Appendix: Original Korean Film Titles Chapter Notes Bibliography Index

9 26 32 35 43 72 91 99 124 143 169 175 189 201 205 210 211

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Like the leading article in the Party paper, the cinema should have mass appeal and should keep ahead of new developments, thus playing a mobilizing role in each stage of the revolutionary struggle.—Kim Il Sung

Preface Hardly a week passes without North Korea making an appearance in the international news. The reports are usually about acts of aggression or threats of war toward South Korea or about poverty and starvation within North Korea. The movements of the recently deceased North Korean leader Kim Jong Il were constantly scrutinized as closely as the self-imposed isolation and secrecy of North Korea allowed. (After Kim Jong Il’s death on December 17, 2011, his son Kim Jong Un was announced as the new Supreme Leader of North Korea. The power transfer appeared to go smoothly. Kim Jong Un is in his late 20s, and very little is known about his upbringing and training. At the time of this writing, there have been no reports of his being involved with films or filmmaking.) Whenever the background of Kim Jong Il was offered for the reader or viewer, he was called “movie-mad,” his large film collection mentioned and it was relayed that he used to be involved in film production on a grand scale. It is known that until his death, Kim Jong Il personally approved of every single film made in North Korea. It would thus seem to be a matter of course that his film productions and North Korean cinema in general are closely studied by scholars and analysts worldwide. Wouldn’t North Korean movies offer invaluable clues about the actual situation in the country? Strangely, only very few scholars in the English-speaking world could be bothered to even look at North Korean films. Very little has been written about them. The texts that have been published on the subject matter generally deal only with small fractions of what is a very large field. With the present work I aim to provide the first detailed road map of the littleknown territory of North Korean cinema. The majority of the work gives an historical overview in chronological fashion, as com- The author’s ID for the 7th Pyongyang Film prehensively as access to films and back- Festival in 2000. 1

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The author with North Korean movie star Jang Son Hui in Pyongyang in 2000. Jang is most famous for her role as lead actress in Shin Sang-ok’s monster movie Pulgasari.

ground information material allows. It relates the history of North Korean cinema from its beginning to today. It covers the main (and many minor) movies in detail and follows the general developments in North Korean cinema while always paying close attention to the concurrent political and social situation. Problems faced by the North Korean film industry are discussed, as well as the many social problems the films themselves reveal. Special attention is given to the impact Kim Jong Il had on the development of North Korean movies. Another particular focus is on Shin Sang-ok, the legendary South Korean director who ended up in North Korea making movies for Kim Jong Il, but later escaped from his clutches. Ferdinando Baldi, an Italian director who shot an action adventure film in North Korea, talks in an interview about his personal encounter with the North Korean movie industry. Finally, I interviewed three North Korean defectors about their experiences growing up with North Korean cinema. Special attention should be paid to the interview with Mr. C. He had some particularly relevant inside stories to tell. (Their names are not used for the safety of their families.) The book is for the most part based on viewing a great number of North Korean movies. North Korea itself published a few catalogues on its cinema, which proved to be very helpful. Further information was available via the website of the (North) Korean Central News Agency (www.kcna.co.jp). For the international publications used in the research, please see the bibliography.

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A note on the film stills and illustrations in this work: As might be expected in such an insular society, specific information about movies and photographs can be difficult to obtain. Every effort has been made to identify the actors and actresses pictured, but in many cases positive identification proved impossible. All who could be confirmed are named in the captions, and the lack of a name or names in a photograph’s caption indicates that those pictured could not be identified.

Notes on Language and Names In 2000, South Korea introduced a new transcription system of Korean hangul letters into Latin spelling which replaced the previously used McCune-Reischauer system. North Korea has been using its own simplified system of McCune-Reischauer for decades. In this book, the North Korean transcription is used for all North Korean names and place names, e.g., Kim Il Sung. The new South Korean system is used for old, pre-division Korean names as well as for all personal and geographic names associated with South Korea, e.g., Park Chung-hee. The transcription of the original film titles was done entirely according to the South Korean system. East Asian names typically start with the family name first, followed by the given name. The same system is used in this book for all North and South Korean names as well as for all Chinese names. For example, with Kim Jong Il, Kim is the family name; with Park Chung-hee, Park is the family name, as is Mao with Mao Tse-tung (now Zedong). Japanese prefer to have their name order spelled out the Western way when they are mentioned in a Western publication, and this book follows that tradition. Therefore, with, for example, Kenpachiro Satsuma, Satsuma is the family name. In all quotes, the original English used by the source was left intact. In some cases, words in brackets were added to clarify the meaning. Note that the (North) Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) always writes “south Korea” instead of “South Korea.” They don’t consider South Korea to be a separate country.

Introduction Like many other ideological dictatorships of the 20th century, North Korea has always considered cinema to be an indispensable propaganda tool. No other medium was as powerful as the movies; no other medium could penetrate the whole population even in the remote corners of the country so thoroughly and so effectively. In addition, no other medium was right from the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (to give the official name of the state) so strictly and so exclusively under state control. Looking at the history of North Korean cinema means looking at the history of North Korean politics and culture, shifts in its ideology and the many problems the country has been facing. Through movies, the country’s first two successive leaders, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, propagandized their policies and tried to rally the masses behind them. For a long period, they were successful. The very first North Korean film, My Home Village, was released in 1949, one year after the state itself was founded. My Home Village re-interpreted all recent history and established a bold new tale: it was not the American victory in World War II that had forced Japan to abandon its colony Korea in 1945. It was not the Soviet Red Army moving into the northern half of the Korean peninsula, either. The tale the film told was that Kim Il Sung and his guerrilla fighters had liberated North Korea all on their own. Rewriting history in such a fashion was a tall order, considering that the whole population had fresh memories of a different reality. Yet the film succeeded because the message it spelled out was a message people wanted to hear. The message was that it had not been foreigners who had again decided the fate of Korea, but rather proud and brave Koreans who had acted by themselves. The version of the origin of North Korea told in My Home Village has been state doctrine ever since. Many more movies reinforced it in later years. If a movie, in combination with literature, newspapers, party statements and, not least, a near-total blockage of all outside influences, could sway the population to that extent, it made sense that movies would be employed in all aspects of the new Kim Il Sung–led society. During the Korean War (1950–53), the film studio facilities were destroyed. This did not stop North Korea from making war movies glorifying the Korean People’s Army and strengthening the endurance of the population while the war was raging. The war, and the war movies made after it had ended, brought another enduring myth still prevalent in North Korean propaganda to this day: Kim Il Sung had won the war. In reality, the war had ended in an armistice and hardly any territory was won by the North. This fact could also be exploited in an endless succession of films. South Korea and the American troops 4

Introduction

5

stationed there could from now on be blamed for every single woe occurring in North Korea. At the same time, Kim Il Sung started numerous campaigns that shaped the country according to his ideas. The industry was rebuild, the agriculture collectivized. People had to learn how to behave in the earthly paradise Kim Il Sung promised the country would turn into. All this called for strong cinematic support. Many movies were made beginning in the 1950s to instill the government ideology in the minds of the people. All behavior considered “impure,” “oldfashioned” or “foreigninfluenced” was targeted Generic North Korean video disk cover. with movies. The mid–1960s brought the rise of a new force — Kim Jong Il, the son of Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong Il loved the movies — and he saw a great instrument in them to further his career. By producing grand dramas promoting the myth that his father was the true and sole liberator of Korea, he could prove his absolute loyalty. Kim Jong Il had greater ambitions than merely securing his political standing. He wanted international recognition for his films and to develop North Korea into a cinema powerhouse. While he did succeed in creating a few big productions, the overall quality of North Korean cinema remained lacking. The ideological restrictions suffocated creativity and the isolation of the country blocked new ideas from entering. Kim Jong Il urgently needed new blood. This arrived in the form of South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and his wife, Choi Eun-hee, in 1978. Both claimed later that they had been kidnapped to North Korea. From 1983 to 1986, Shin Sang-ok ran his own film studio in North Korea, directing and producing a large number of films that proved groundbreaking. Shin introduced new genres like the martial arts film and the monster movie, and brought fantasy and eroticism into North Korean cinema. The domestic success of his productions was staggering but his films also played well on an international level. (International meaning here the countries of the Eastern bloc.) Other directors took notice and closely followed his path. The mid–1980s became the most exciting and adventurous period in North Korean cinema. Suddenly, almost anything was permitted, as long as the movie followed the general ideological guidelines.

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Introduction

Another generic North Korean video disk cover.

In 1986, Shin and Choi used the chance of a visit to Vienna to escape from North Korea. The news must have been devastating to Kim Jong Il. The film industry went into a state of shock. What could be done? Some productions that Shin Sang-ok had initiated were completed. Those movies turned out to be very popular. At the same time, there was a return to heavy-handed propaganda. Those movies had a harder time finding acceptance. When China opened its economy in the 1980s, when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, when revolutions swept away the Communist party governments of Eastern Europe and when finally the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il felt very threatened. Would they be toppled next? In North Korean cinema, world affairs led to a very curious development. The notion

Introduction

7

that “our country is the best” was force-fed to the nation, via romantic comedies depicting North Koreans as leading the most carefree, happy lives imaginable. That those movies greatly clashed with the daily experiences of the audience didn’t matter — the movies were about how life should be, how it would soon be if everyone stayed in line and followed orders. At the same time, the world’s longest-running movie series, Nation and Destiny, was started. In its early installments it focused on Koreans oversees who finally, after making many mistakes and wrong decisions, discover that North Korea is the best place to live. Those fantasies came to an end when Kim Il Sung died in 1994. His death was soon followed by a devastating famine that killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of North Koreans. The movies had to react without showing what went on. Allegories were drawn to the hard times Kim Il Sung had endured as a guerrilla fighter. He had emerged victorious — and so North Korea would grow stronger from the current troubles, the movies said. At the same time, youth subcultures began to take advantage of the turmoil and to challenge the state. The problem was dealt with as sternly in the movies as it was in reality. In 1997, Kim Jong Il officially took over as the head of the state and new leader. He soon introduced the “Military First” ideology — from now on, the military was the driving force of revolution and the most important power in the country. Films appeared that actively confronted the reality of large-scale food shortages — and how the military saved the people. This way, even the famine could be dealt with propagandistically. The famine itself was entirely blamed on catastrophic weather conditions, a few incompetent administrators and, of course, the hostility of the U.S., while the North Korean military played the part of the savior. In 1998, South Korea started its so-called “Sunshine Policy” towards the North, a policy that only intensified throughout the first decade of the 21st century. North Korea was given every form of support it asked for, in addition to huge monetary payments. While the hope was big in the South that this would bring peace and reconciliation to the Korean peninsula, the North remained wary. Kim Jong Il knew that if he yielded even a bit on the ideological front, if he opened up the country even a little, he might soon suffer the same fate the Eastern European Communist Party governments had a decade before. Nonetheless, several films were made with an eye on the South Korean market, geared to make money there. Those films, like Souls Protest, were aimed at exploiting anti–Japanese feelings then sweeping South Korea. Unfortunately for Kim Jong Il, the scheme didn’t work. South Korean audiences rejected the films. Meanwhile, an unexpected enemy arrived within North Korea as cheap Chinese VHS and DVD recorders began to flood the country. With them came foreign films, including South Korean films, and American films, Hong Kong films. All movie exhibition had previously been the absolute privilege of the state, but now people began to watch what they wanted — and they were usually not North Korean productions. While being strictly illegal, those private screenings of foreign films have given North Korean audiences a very different perspective on what movies could deliver. Suddenly, the most powerful North Korean propaganda force had a competitor it was ill-prepared to deal with. North

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Introduction

Korean cinema has been in a steep decline ever since, and chances that it will recover are slim. It is a great irony that the medium that had helped to instill the central myths of North Korea’s foundation into the belief system of the population would now be among the foremost forces undermining the legitimacy of state propaganda, and with it the state and the leader.

1

At the Pyong yang Film Festival The 7th Pyongyang Film Festival of Non-Aligned and Other Developing Countries, September 2000. The female brass band of the Korean People’s Army played snappy military marches, moving their legs in exact sync while proceeding ahead of the slightly bewildered, motley crew of international delegates. Thousands of girls in traditional Korean garb lined the concrete slabs leading towards the Pyongyang International Cinema House, a huge structure on Yanggak Island in the Taedong River, performing dances, waving artfully with colored cloths, or beating old-style Korean changgo drums. The forty or so delegates fired round after round of photo film while their minders had a hard time reminding them that “this is an official function and not a tourist trip.” But the international guests did feel kind of trippy — they were TV directors from Russia and China, indie filmmakers from Malaysia

Opening of the Pyongyang Film Festival, 2000: The female brass band of the Korean People’s Army show their knees at the opening ceremony.

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Young women lining the way to the festival venue during the opening ceremony (Pyongyang Film Festival, 2000).

and Iran, documentary filmmakers from Egypt, festival curators from Finland, and movie house programmers from Germany — and none of them could ever expect an even remotely similar welcome back home. A small army of North Korean newsmen shot back with all the firepower they had available — from new Sony video cameras to vintage 16mm hand-cranks from the 1960s. This was headline news — the arrival of the international guests for the opening ceremony of North Korea’s film festival “that draws great attention of the public at home and abroad as it is opened at a time when there is a bright prospect for national reunification and the DPRK enjoys ever growing international prestige in the wake of the historic north-south summit talks and the publication of the north-south joint declaration in June last under the experienced and tested guidance of the great leader Kim Jong Il,” as North Korean Minister of Culture Kang Nung Su claimed in his speech at the pompous ceremony inside the Cinema House,1 using the official title of North Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). A documentary screened at the ceremony, depicting the international delegates marching into the event center at the last Pyongyang Film Festival, in 1998, immediately belied any special importance of this film festival which was the first one after the summit meeting between South Korean president Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in June 2000. About a hundred international delegates were cheered on two years before; this year, the number of foreign attendees was less than half. Despite all the unification talk of the post-summit-meeting days, not one South Korean film director was in sight.

1. At the Pyong yang Film Festival

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Young pioneers great the guests and reporters at the entrance of the festival hall (Pyongyang Film Festival, 2000).

After lengthy speeches by people holding titles like “vice-president of the presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK,” Iranian delegate Afshin Sadeghi took to the stage. He read a “greeting from the international film community” to the North Korean hosts, his voice uneasy and his hands holding the printed text shaking noticeably. As he would later tell in private, he had been singled out to read that speech — written entirely by the North Korean organizers — and he had been asked to “make no mistakes in reading it.” Since its inception in 1987, the Pyongyang Film Festival has been one of the few international events with which the Pyongyang regime tries to connect to the outside world. From the beginning, it came with an international competition, judged by an international jury, and also included various non-competitive sections. It was structured thus very much like every other international film festival. Since 1990, the festival has been staged in autumn every two years. While in its early years it clearly focused on films from developing countries, the festival widened its scope later on. Films from Libya, Syria and Malaysia? They still played a big part in the festival edition of 2000, but so did an ever increasing number of Western European films. The festival organizing committee had scrambled to get as many foreign films and foreign guests invited as possible. It didn’t matter much what the movies were about or in which style they were filmed. Not permitted were sexually explicit pictures and of course films taking a stance against the North Korean government. Otherwise anything available for screening on the professional 35mm film format could receive an invitation. Which

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films and which guests finally arrived in Pyongyang depended mainly on either personal connections to North Korean diplomatic outlets or simply on the brazenness of the people applying for a festival visa. The quality of the films themselves hardly mattered. It made for an odd mix. Chinese action next to a Swedish children story, a psycho thriller from New Zealand next to a Polish historical drama, romances from Syria and India, features, shorts and animation. The festival was a matter of national pride. Film is one of the most important propaganda outlets of North Korea and the “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong Il, built his career on producing films. Thus, a strong motivation to measure up to the products of the other filmmaking nations prevailed. In 2000, Japanese films were allowed to play the festival for the first time. Yoji Yamada, rumored to be one of Kim Jong Il’s favorite film directors, came to town to personally present six of his films, including two installments of his long-running Tora-san movie series. After 2000, the festival saw a remarkable shift away from Third World productions. Western European films began to dominate the festival screens. While this was clearly the result of a new booking policy, the shift was strongly supported by a growing curiosity of Western film people about the festival. General interest in Asian and especially South Korean cinema had grown dramatically and visits to South Korean festivals like the Pusan International Film Festival had become de rigeur for anyone professionally interested in either exploring Asian cinema or trying to promote films on the continent. With South Korea as such a strong focus of attention in the film world, people naturally became interested in seeing the North as well. The festival in Pyongyang offered the chance just to do that. Film submissions soared. This led to marked improvements in the film selection. In 2002, the Oscar-winning Madonna vehicle Evita (1996) played the festival as first (and so far only) American film, alongside the Chinese production Breaking the Silence, starring Gong Li (2000). In 2004, the festival was renamed Pyongyang International Film Festival, officially reflecting the change in the programming focus. That year, the gender-bending British female soccer fantasy Bend It Like Beckham (2002), directed by Gurinder Chadha, went onscreen. Since 2006, the Hollywood trade magazine Variety has been covering the festival. In 2010, British writer Derek Elley, formerly Variety senior editor (and their Pyongyang fest reporter), but by then Film Business Asia chief film critic, served as the head of the international jury. The status of the festival had risen quite a few notches. Programs were now being coordinated with international culture institutions like Germany’s Goethe Institute. The number of applications for screening slots by international production companies and individual film directors skyrocked and vastly outnumbered the works finally admitted. All this did not make the festival a place for business. It might actually have been more of a marketplace when it was a center for Third World films in earlier years. The makers and marketers of those films had gone to Pyongyang with the intention to sell their product; they didn’t travel there for fun. However, wicked fun, adventure and curiosity were the motivations of most of the Western visitors. The rules of conduct, however, have now become stricter than they were in 2000. The

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visitors are housed in a big hotel on Yanggak Island, the same island on which the Cinema House is located. Everyone is under permanent total control. Any individual movement outside the hotel is prohibited. Every delegation has a number of minders watching over them and making sure they strictly follow the program of group visits to monument after monument. Secret, unattended sneaks into the city have become nearly impossible. In 2000, with the guests staying at the Koryo Hotel next to the train station, a certain amount of independent city exploration was still possible even though that meant severely bending the rules. Even then, the various delegations were split off according to their nationalities and each got separate delegation screenings in the vast confines of the Cinema House. They were subjected to what was called the “Film Market Screenings”— an excuse to provide foreigners with movies without them witnessing the reactions of the local audience. Korean audiences tend to respond to movies very strongly. Japanese film critic Takashi Monma was able to see a Vietnamese picture with a North Korean audience at the Pyongyang Film Festival in 1992. Vietnam is a country full of bicycles, and in 1992 bicycles were still banned in Pyongyang. The street pictures of Hanoi with thousands of bicycles in view got lots of cheers and amazed “uhhh” and “ohhh” from the Pyongyang audience. The organizers made sure to not have reactions like that reported again in the foreign press. For anyone among the international delegates interested in trying to catch up on North Korean cinema, those “market screenings” were a good opportunity. At the screenings, movies from the 1960s and ’70s were shown alongside the most recent productions. But after viewing their first two or three NK films, most foreigners would go out of their way to avoid further exposure to what they largely considered dire wastes of celluloid. Aside from the “market screenings” catering to the foreign guests, there was a designated “film market area” on the second floor of the Cinema House. Unfortunately, it only consisted of a few posters, empty chairs and a few video booths. With some pre-arrangements, it was possible to see North Korean films at the video booths. No foreign production company had reserved any screening time there. For Pyongyang residents, on the other hand, the festival provided the rare opportunity to compare national productions with foreign films on the big screen. North Korean movie theaters rarely show foreign fare outside the festival and only one foreign film is shown per week on North Korean TV — usually an old Eastern European, Chinese or Indian movie. The crowds showing up at the theaters were accordingly big — people starved of outside images would fight about tickets for pretty much anything. Unfortunately, it was not possible to ask members of the audience about their opinions on the films they had seen.

The Film Studios North Korea has a number of different film studios. Feature films are made at the Korean Film Studio, founded in 1947, and the April 25 Film Studio of the Korean People’s Army (founded in 1959 and known until recently as February 8 Film Studio of the Korean People’s Army). Furthermore, there are the April 26 Children Film Studio (founded in 1957), a Documentary Film Studio (founded in 1946) and the Scientific Educational [Film Studio of ] Korea (SEK, founded in 1997) which mainly produces animated films.

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Painting of Kim Jong Il overlooking the making of Sea of Blood in the entrance hall of the Korean Film Studio main building (photograph by Jouni Hokkanen).

The latter, which had grown out of the Children Film Studio previously responsible for all animation, is the only studio involved in business on a notable international level — it is heavily in demand for cheaply shooting labor-intensive stop-motion for cartoon companies from Spain, Italy and France.2 It has been reported that even work on several Disney productions was outsourced to that studio.3 Most of the screenplays realized by the Korean Film Studio and the April 25 Film Studio are written by the staff of the Korean Scriptwriting Company, founded in 1948, which employs the majority of North Korean scenario writers. Right after the end of the Korean War, in 1953, the Pyongyang University of Dramatic and Cinematic Arts was founded to groom future talent. This school became the central film teaching institution of the country — almost all North Korean movie directors learned their craft there. A visit to the Korean Film Studio, the main and biggest studio, is a customary part of the official tours given to the delegates of the Pyongyang Film Festival. The central area of the studio is dominated by modern concrete buildings. Between them are large and carefully trimmed lawns and wide streets. Aside from the tour group, nobody could be seen walking the vast confines. In the most prominent spot stood a huge stone sculpture depicting Kim Il Sung, the founder and “eternal president” of North Korea visiting the facilities. With all this quiet emptiness around, it felt like visiting a ghost town. The main attraction shown to the visitors was the Kim Jong Il museum located in the biggest building on the central square. In the giant hallway, one wall was covered by a huge painting of Kim Jong Il overseeing the shooting of a battle scene in the 1968 movie Sea of Blood. He stands there, with his arms crossed over his chest, looking down at the filmed mayhem from a hill in the pose of a Roman emperor in a 19th century battle painting, overlooking, say, the destruction of Carthage. A big display board in the same room lists more

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The cream of the crop of the North Korean film industry assembles for a publicity shot in front of a Kim Il Sung statue inside the studio.

The headquarters of North Korean cinema — the main building of the Korean Film Studio.

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than 300 visits to the studio by Kim Jong Il, during which he gave more than 10,000 instructions. The museum itself displays an endless array of film equipment, props and movie paraphernalia. In fact, it displays just about every item Kim Jong Il ever used or laid his hands on during his visits to the studio, all accompanied by photos showing him handling or sometimes just looking at the items. The dates when Kim encountered each particular piece are given, as well as the title of the film it was used for.

Location streets within the Korean Film Studio.

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A female guide, speaking in that typically North Korean exhortative manner of excited official announcement — sounding somewhere in between an overexcited sports commentator and a chanting priest — explained the main items in the collection: chairs Kim Jong Il sat on during one of his visits, desks he used to write a note on, lenses he peered through, cameras he touched. Everything that could possibly carry his fingerprints was immediately removed from the shooting locations and put into this exhibition. The film directors saw some of their best equipment gone after a visit by the Leader — once he touched it, it became a holy artifact, removed from its mundane use and placed under glass. The museum spans a great number of rooms and after leaving, the visitors came away with the impression that North Korea could have produced twice as many films if the moviemakers would only have had access to the material stored there. The tour next went on to the various shooting locations. The “Old Korean Street” convincingly resembled a medieval village. The “South Korean Street” was fitting only for films set in the period around the Korean War (1950–53). The “Chinese Street” was clearly modeled on Manchuria in the 1930s, the “Japanese Street” on the looks of Japan shortly before World War II. The “European Street” came a little closer to current reality, with building formations like those that can still be seen in East German towns. A small simulated production of a medieval scene was staged for the delegates in a hut on the “Old Korean Street” to demonstrate the current state and technological level of filmmaking at the studio. The exercise felt rather uninspired — until the real state of North

A scene being shot at the Korean Film Studio.

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Korean technology came to the surface. One of the diesel generators providing the voltage for the floodlights overheated and burst into flames and sparks, filling the room with smoke and the stench of burned rubber. A meeting with NK film people, including directors and actors and actresses, was arranged to wrap up the studio tour. But, alas, that potentially interesting meeting was kept so short that no introductions of any significance could be made. With the studio so devoid of any real activity and much of the equipment either under glass in the exhibition or else hardly functional, what was the state of North Korean filmmaking?

Film Output Despite all the ceremonies, big banquets and minister’s speeches at the festival, it was difficult to ascertain if North Korean cinema really had something to celebrate. In 2000, only one North Korean feature and one feature-length documentary were premiered at the festival, the most important showcase for NK cinema. This does not mean that only one feature film was made that year. It means that only one feature was deemed good enough to compete with the foreign fare. Indeed, North Korea’s official news agency KCNA (Korean Central News Agency) reported on December 18, 2000, three months after the festival, “Many films of high ideological and artistic value have been released in Korea this year.” The titles of seven features produced in 2000 were given, though strangely, The Earth of Love, the film premiered at the festival, was not among them. KCNA added in the same report: “Other feature films are of great cognitional and educational significance as they represent those who think of others more than themselves and devote themselves to society and the collective. Many other films portray young people who give a steadfast continuity to the revolution.” This means that at least eight feature films were produced in 2000, though it leaves open the question of what the number of the “many other films” was. It’s hard to come by hard facts on the actual annual output of NK cinema. Brian Barron of the BBC reported in 2001 that “despite the hardship, North Korea still manages to produce around 60 films a year.”4 But that number seems unlikely high and most certainly includes all short films, documentaries and all short animation ordered and paid for by foreign companies. In her book Contemporary Korean Cinema, Hyangjin Lee quotes a North Korean Film Yearbook from 1986 which purports that in that year 31 feature films were made. Lee goes on to say that the number of productions remained stable into the early 1990s. She does not however provide any information about years after that.5 Derek Elley, reporting for Variety from the Pyongyang Film Festival in 2008, states that “during the 1970s and ’80s, annual production was around 7–10 features, falling to 4– 5 in the ’90s, and further during the new millennium.”6 In 2006, the festival premiered two new North Korean features, the festival in 2008 only one. The festival in 2010 had no NK movie in the competition but showed two films in a Special Screenings section.

1. At the Pyong yang Film Festival

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Lightning and Thunder official flyer. Pyon Mi Hyang (left) and Ri Won Bok in one of an endless flood of war movies.

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The official list of North Korean feature films.

1. At the Pyong yang Film Festival

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Stretcher Platoon Leader official flyer. The movie shows off the glory of the female combatants.

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An Unattached Unit official flyer. The Korean War is won over and over again in the movies.

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But regardless of the numbers given, where are the titles that support the numbers? A booklet named Feature Film List and published by the (North) Korea Film Export & Import Corporation in September 1998 gives a chronological listing of features made up until the date of publication but it doesn’t give years of production. All in all, 259 films are listed as being made as of then. A few outlawed films are missing as well as many early works — presumably prints of the latter are not available anymore. However, judging from the years of production of films known, it can be roughly asserted that the 1980s were the peak time of NK cinema with about 15–20 features per annum and that the output declined from then on.

Movie Theaters and Film Reception Though the International Cinema House with its four screens is the center of the film festival, the flagship theater for domestic premieres is the Taedongmun Cinema on Sungri Street, close to the Taedong River. Built in 1955 in retro style with faux Greek columns in front, the interior has been thoroughly renovated in 2008 and turned from a single-screen venue into a two-screen theater. Here events, like this one reported on December 29, 2009, by KCNA, are regularly held: “The Korean Film Studio recently produced feature film The Name Given by the Era. The preview of the film took place at Taedongmun Cinema on Tuesday. It was watched by senior party and state officials, the chairpersons of the friendly parties, officials of ministries and national institutions and working people in Pyongyang.” According to KCNA on November 2, 2009, “The Taedongmun Cinema, which was reconstructed as a monumental edifice of the Songun era, has been visited by more than

Pyongyang’s most important movie theater — the Taedongmun Cinema.

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128,000 working people at all strata, school youth and students, Koreans overseas and foreigners staying in Korea in the period from June to October.” This translates to a daily average of more than 850 visitors. At the Taedongmun, occasional special screening series of foreign films take place. Those screenings are strictly invitation only and not open to the public. They do, however, indicate the superior importance of the theater. Other notable theaters in Pyongyang are the single-screen Kaeson and Rakwon Cinemas, both built in modernist style in circa the 1970s. All three of them, the Taedongmun, the Kaeson and the Rakwon, are used for screenings of the Pyongyang Film Festival. According to a report in the English edition of South Korean newspaper Joongang Ilbo, Pyongyang had altogether about twenty movie theaters in 2001.7 Cities other than Pyongyang have nowhere near this density of theaters. The city of Sinuiju, for example, the major trade hub on the border with China with a population of about 352,000, is known to have only one movie house. This does not mean that there is a dearth of screenings outside the capital. Culture halls are located in every town and serve as venues for screenings. Film shows are held in factories, schools, town halls ... in fact, in every location suitable for a screening. Projectionists travel to the countryside with portable equipment and show films at the gathering places of farm collectives, large construction projects and volunteer work camps. Watching movies is one of the most popular forms of entertainment in North Korea.

The Kaesong Cinema in Pyongyang.

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The Rakwon Cinema in Pyongyang.

Although almost all releases are domestic productions, people flock to see them. Ticket prices are low and there aren’t many other entertainment options available to the masses, at least not outside Pyongyang. Andrei Lankov cites some numbers on screening attendance: “In 1987 Pyongyang radio stated that the average North Korean visited the cinema 21 times a year. The South Korean sociologists who, in the mid–1990s, undertook a survey of defectors came out with a similar figure —15–18 times a year. Just for comparison, the average South Korean visits the theater merely 2.3 times a year.”8

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The Early Years Several developments which took place well before the foundation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 1948 strongly influenced what was to become North Korean cinema. Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, an event still traumatizing the peninsula. Leftist nationalist resistance against the colonial forces began soon to build up and culminated in the March 1, 1919, independence movement. Cultural resistance against the attempts to Japanize Korea was a strong part of the movement. The Japanese authorities relaxed their grip and a period of relative creative freedom followed. A direct result of this freedom was the premiere of the two very first Korean film productions, the anti-colonial works Righteous Struggle and Scenery of Seoul in War. Both were shorts and released in October 1919. More films followed rapidly. Perhaps the most famous and most accomplished film director of the era was Na Un-kyu. He made or starred in 28 silent films in the times of Japanese rule. His most important film was the now-lost masterpiece of Korean cinema, Arirang. It is considered to be the first truly nationalist Korean film and tells the story of a young man who is beaten up by Japanese police during a student demonstration. He turns mad after that and starts to attack everyone who works for the Japanese. An agent, working for the Japanese, is harassing his sister. The young man snaps. He kills the agent — and goes to jail for the rest of his life. Na Un-kyu wrote the script, played the main character and directed the movie. It took him from 1921 to 1936 to complete that film. Explicitly leftist was the writer group KAPF (Korea Artista Proletaria Federatio, Esperanto for Korean Proletarian Artist Federation), founded in 1925. In 1927, an associated filmmaking group called Korean Film Arts Club was formed. Its first film was Wandering (1928), directed by Kim Ku-kyong and starring the writer Im Hwa, telling “the story of tenant farmers who rise up against the oppressive landlords who are exploiting them.”1 Other KAPF-related film making groups quickly sprung up, producing a number of “proletarian films.”2 When Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, the restrictions on the cultural and filmmaking communities were tightened again. KAPF was dissolved in 1935. With the beginning of the war against China in 1937, all Korean film production became part of the war effort. Many former leftist directors and screenplay writers joined the propaganda machinery. At the same time, the sheer amount of war propaganda productions necessitated the training of a relatively large number of technical personnel which turned out to be essential later on. The base of the Korean film industry had been formed. In fact, as Charles Armstrong 26

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writes, “The KAPF-affiliated filmmakers … would re-emerge after the Liberation; some would make their way to North Korea where the Soviet occupation and communist-dominated government allowed for — indeed demanded — precisely the kind of ‘proletarian’ films these artists had struggled to produce in the colonial period.”3

Kim Il Sung and the Foundation of the DPRK After the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945. World War II had ended. In an agreement drawn up well before the end of the war, the U.S. and the Soviet Union had Korea split up in their respective zones of influence. The Soviet Union was to move their troops into the area north of the 38th parallel, the U.S. to the areas south of it. Both installed their “puppets” to run things for them. The Americans opted for anti-communist stronghand Rhee Syng-man, while the Russians went for a Sovietgroomed former anti–Japanese guerrilla fighter who was born in 1912, bearing the name Kim Sung Chu. He had spent his childhood years in Pyongyang, then moved with his parents to Manchuria in neighboring northeast China. Manchuria had a large minority of Koreans who had settled in the area in previous decades, looking for better economic prospects. Since the Japanese colonization of Korea, Manchuria became a land of exile for many Koreans who felt politically persecuted at home. Kim graduated from high school in Manchuria. Andrei Lankov remarked that “in the Manchuria of 1930, this was a remarkably high level of educational achievement. In those days a high school graduate was roughly as common as a Ph.D. holder is nowadays.”4 In 1931, Japan had invaded Manchuria and created the state of Manchukuo. Formally, Manchukuo was independent and ruled by the last Chinese emperor Puyi, in effect it was a Japanese dependency with Japanese troops on the ground. Resistance was strong and often took the form of guerrilla warfare. Chinese nationalists battled the Japanese as well as the Communists. Many Koreans, bitter about the colonization of their homeland, joined the fight. So did young Kim Sung Chu. He joined the Chinese communist forces. Around 1935, he changed his name to Kim Il Sung (meaning “become the sun”). He was made commander of the Sixth Division of the Chinese communist guerrilla and in 1937 carried out a raid with about 150–200 fighters on the Japanese-held border town Pochonbo in what is now North Korea. A police station and Japanese government offices were attacked. After only a few hours, Kim Il Sung’s unit retreated back over the Manchurian border. While guerrilla raids inside Manchuria were common, a cross-border attack was an unheard-of act of brazenness. The press in Korea and Japan widely reported the stunt. Kim Il Sung suddenly achieved a certain degree of fame both among his comrades and among the enemy. The Japanese army hunted him and his unit, greatly decimating the number of his fighters. Nearly wiped out, the unit fled over the Amur River into the Soviet Union in 1940. At first merely receiving asylum, in 1942 Kim Il Sung, along with other Manchurian guerrillas, was taken into the newly formed 88th Independent Brigade of the Red Army,

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based in the village of Viatskoe, near Chabarovsk.5 Kim rose quickly through the ranks and by 1945 had become Major. When the Soviet Union took over the northern zone of Korea in late summer 1945, the 88th Brigade was a small part of the occupation force. The population of northern Korea welcomed the Soviets, glad to see the Japanese gone. There were also a good number of pro–Soviet politicians in Pyongyang, the largest city of the Soviet zone. They were steeped in old factional fights, however, and the Soviets didn’t trust them. Looking for a reliable leader who would run the Northern Korean Zone for them, they eventually settled on someone they knew: Kim Il Sung. He had been an officer in the Red Army for a few years by then, he had credentials as a guerrilla fighter and he was not involved in the bickering and old feuds of the local politicians. In September 1945, the Soviet Command announced Kim as head of the Provisional Government of the Northern Zone. This came as big surprise for the local political establishment but Kim Il Sung, the hero of Pochonbo, was readily accepted by the population. Stalin left the leaders of his occupied territories a certain leeway and let them choose how best to govern their area in accordance with general Socialist-Stalinist principles. After all, every territory had its specifics and the local leader was expected to play his cards well to serve Stalin the best. In northern Korea, nationalism and a certain personality cult celebrating Kim Il Sung seemed to be the most effective ploy. When in December 1946 the first Kim Il Sung statue was erected, this didn’t raise any eyebrows in Moscow. Stalin himself had built up a huge personality cult with thousands of statues glorifying him.

The Years of the Soviet Occupation (1945–1948) The Soviets began immediately to inundate their zone of Korea with propaganda works celebrating Joseph Stalin, the successes of the Soviet society and the heroism of the Red Army. Film played a central role in this massive propaganda effort. Already Lenin was said to have famously proclaimed, “For us, film is the most important of all the arts.” By the 1920s, the Soviet Union had become one of the leading forces of innovative, propaganda driven cinema, creating art works which are considered classics today. The films of Dziga Vertov (The Man with the Movie Camera, 1929), Vsevolod Pudovkin (Storm Over Asia, 1928) and especially Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin, 1925) set standards not only in terms of propaganda but also in avant-garde cinema. Once Joseph Stalin came to power, he quelled the experimental art aspects of Soviet cinema but continued to strongly support cinema as such, now with a focus on Socialist Realism and the worship of the Leader — himself. Soviet films rolled in and dominated North Korean theaters for the years to come, just as they did in the newly Soviet-occupied countries of Eastern Europe. Just like in Eastern Europe, the Soviets in Korea were not content with supplying their own works alone. They promoted the local production of propaganda to suit the local situation and language just as well and lent strong support to the embryonic North Korean cinema which so far produced only newsreels. The Soviet occupation ended with the foundation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on September 9, 1948. Six months earlier, the American zone in the south had

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become the Republic of Korea. The Soviet Union withdrew its troops. Soviet support for Kim Il Sung, the Prime Minister of the new state, remained as strong as before.

My Home Village— The First North Korean Film With Soviet help, Kim Il Sung set up the first documentary film crew in 1946. One year later, he founded the Korean Film Studio outside of Hyonjesan District on the outskirts of Pyongyang. In 1948, he set up the Korean Scriptwriting Company, a writing factory churning out the scripts for almost all North Korean films up to today. Leftist film workers from South Korea began to flock north, escaping poor production conditions and political persecution under the Rhee Syng-man regime but also being lured by the promises of the North. One of them was actress Mun Ye Bong, who had starred in Korea’s very first sound film The Tale of Chun Hyang (1935, directed by Yi Pil-u). She was to become a “People’s Actress” in the North.6 Another one was Kang Hong Sik, who had been a glamorous and at times scandalous film director and singer during the colonial period in Seoul. Kang Hong Sik was chosen to direct the first North Korean feature film, My Home Village, written by Kim Sung Gu und released to the public in 1949. Though made with material support by the Soviets, this film was not a Soviet-style production at all. In fact, it twisted all recent history into a new, absolutely nationalist tale centered on Kim Il Sung. My Home Village started the build-up of a myth that would from now on be state doctrine: it was not the allied victory in World War II that had liberated the Koreans from the Japanese and it had not been the Soviet Red Army either. Neither even gets mentioned in the film. The task of throwing the Japanese out of Korea was accomplished by only one force: Kim Il Sung’s “Korean People’s Revolutionary Army.” This imaginary army had never existed in real history. But in the movie, nobody else battled the Japanese out from the holy soil of Korea — and along with the Japanese their main allies within the country, the reactionary class of Korean landowners and feudal lords, the traitors of the nation. Nobody other than Kim Il Sung, the “Great Leader,” the film claims, could have achieved this heroic feat. North Korean propaganda insists that “this was the first feature film to be produced after the country’s liberation. It gives a picture of the boundless joy and emotion of the Korean people who are now liberated from the colonial yoke of Japanese imperialism thanks to the glorious anti–Japanese armed struggle organized and led by the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung.”7 The film starts with a shot of Mount Paektu, the snow-capped volcano that North Koreans have come to consider the holy mountain of the nation. According to legend but even more so to North Korean propaganda, all things purely Korean started from Mount Paektu. Even the Korean “race” itself originated there, the propaganda never tires to repeat, along with the mythical first King of Korea of 5,000 years ago, Tangun, who is claimed to have been born there. Where else could Kim Il Sung’s army have been based? Where else could the liberation of the country have started from? Only the holy mountain could provide Kim Il Sung with the terrain necessary to fight the battles against the Japanese oppressor troops. Conveniently,

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the mountain was directly on the border to Manchuria, lending additional credit to the story as it was well known that Kim’s fighters had been based across that border. So, it was quite logical to start the first North Korean movie with a picture of the holy mountain of the nation. Actually, the film uses a rather unconvincing scale model instead of the real mountain. The film’s general production values turn out much better than the expectations set with that first shot. The film impresses with strong black and white photography, good acting and some very well worked out action scenes. The film introduces a farmer named Gwan Pil who rents his land from a vicious feudal lord. Unable to endure the daily insults by the landlord any further, he gets in a rage and hits the landlord. He loses the use of his land and ends up in a Japanese-run prison. There, he meets Hak Jun, an operative of Kim Il Sung’s “Korean People’s Revolutionary Army,” who introduces him to Kim Il Sung’s nationalist-communist ideology. Together, the two men start a prison riot and manage to escape in the ensuing confusion. Hak Jun heads with Gwan Pil towards the guerrilla fighters in the mountains, near Mount Paektu of course. Just before they reach them, the police catch up, opening fire. Hak Jun is killed. Right at that moment the guerrilla fighters appear from behind the bushes, shooting at the police. They wipe out nearly the whole squad, with only a few of them running away in a manner that clearly depicts them as cowards. Gwan Pil, rescued in the last minute, joins the guerrilla and we see him being trained as a fighter and then, together with his guerrilla friends, ambushing Japanese army units and blowing up railway bridges. The scene of a Japanese steam train crashing down an exploding bridge is breathtakingly shot. Eventually, Gwan Pil takes part in the liberation of his home village where the feudal landlord and his son receive cruel punishment by the hands of the local farmers. After victory, he is celebrated by his mother (played by Southern immigrant Mun Ye Bong) and the villagers. Together with his girlfriend, he starts to work on the creation of the new, Kim Il Sung-run North Korean society. The film was an instant success. After the decades of harsh Japanese rule and the embarrassment of getting “liberated” by the Soviets rather than by their own strength, this film offered a version of reality a lot of North Koreans would have loved to be true. My Home Village fed a nationalist fever dream of what could have been, what ideally should have been. People believed the story the film told because they wanted it to be true. What should have been became the official new truth. Kim Il Sung (and with him, the creators of the film) had found the key to the (North) Korean soul. A degraded peoMy Home Village. Gwan Pil battles the evil Japanese.

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ple, deeply disappointed with their own lack of action and even active collaboration during the occupation period was offered an escape fantasy which North Koreans only too happily embraced. Shortly after My Home Village, another feature was finished, Blast Furnace, directed by Min Chong Sik and written by Kim Yong Kun. Charles Armstrong describes it as “centered on the struggle of the Korean working class after Liberation and … more of a classic Sovietstyle ‘workers film.’ It also seems to have been less popular or successful than [My Home Village].”8 North Korean publications and film lists published in the 1980s and ’90s don’t mention this film at all. Armstrong’s statement that the film was “less popular or successful than [My Home Village]” (Armstrong uses the Korean title of the film in his text) supports the conclusion that what the North Korean audiences were looking for was a nationalist myth offering redemption, leadership and a bright future. The story of a class struggle in an iron works left them cold. There was one problem however with the Kim Il Sung–led “liberation of Korea” glorified in My Home Village: the power of Kim Il Sung ended to the south at the 38th parallel. According to Northern propaganda, that part of Korea was now under the colonial rule of a new evil power — the United States. Soon, Kim Il Sung would do something about that and try to liberate those poor brethren down south too.

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The Korean War (1950 –1953) Kim Il Sung had bugged Stalin for quite some time about conquering the southern half of Korea. The Great Dictator was reluctant. In 1950, he finally gave in and told Kim Il Sung to go ahead but he made clear that the Soviet Union would officially stay out of that war and that all support delivered would have to remain quiet. In June 1950, Kim Il Sung’s troops attacked. The Northerners made an advance, overrunning most of the South except for a small pocket around Busan. Then, the United Nations–backed, American-led invasion at Incheon changed the fortunes and Kim Il Sung’s troops were pushed way up north towards the Chinese border. Mao Zedong, the “Great Helmsman” of China, sent in hundreds of thousands of his soldiers as “volunteers,” pushing back the U.N. forces. The result? Trench-fighting roughly along the same lines which had been the border between the South and North before the war. An armistice agreement drawn up between all parties involved (except Rhee Syng-man, who refused to sign) at the border village of Panmunchon ended the war in 1953 with a truce. Pyongyang had been reduced to rubble by American bombing during the war and the North Korean film studio had also been turned into a heap of ashes. But film production did not stop. Aside from making war newsreels, the studio started a new genre in North Korean film — the war film, then directly dealing with current events. In 1951, Boy Partisans was made, in 1952 Again to the Front. Scouts, directed by Chon Dong Min, premiered in 1953. The latter film describes the advance of a reconnoitering squad into the rear of the Southern enemy in the early stages of the war — when the North was advancing fast. The heroic squad attacks a Southern army camp and snatches the enemy’s military operation documents from the U.S. military adviser in a daytime battle, destroying the camp in the progress. On their way back North, they discover a Southern artillery installation. Of course, the bold heroes obliterate that installation. As far removed as the hero action in the film was from the dirty daily shoot-outs in the trenches, its formula of invincible might and greatness of the Northern army must have worked well with the audience — or at least the agitation officials keen on upholding the spirits of the fighters on the front and in the bombed-out towns in the hinterland. The end of the war didn’t bring an end of the war film genre. To the contrary, on the movie screens the war had just begun. In battle epics like Orang River (1957, directed by Yun Ryong Gyu, written by Han Song), The Defenders of Height 1211 (directed by Li Gi Song), and Namgang Village Women (directed by Pak Dae Sik and Ham Un Bong, written by Kim Jae Ho and Li Jong Ryol), Northern superheroes and their equally heroic and determined civilian supporters went on slaughtering cartoonish and evil Southern soldiers — to 32

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“serve as a powerful means of ideological education instrumental to arming our people with the anti-imperialist revolutionary thought and high class consciousness and to infusing them with a correct view of war,” as the writers at Korea Film Export & Import Corporation put it.1 According to all channels of the propaganda, after South Korea and the U.S. had invaded North Korea, Kim Il Sung had repelled them and won the war. The Pak Hak in Scouts, a war movie made while the Korean War crucial support he had was raging. received from China is acknowledged in the press on some occasions, especially when an anniversary is celebrated or when a highranking Chinese general is visiting Pyongyang. The monumental cemetery of fallen fighters of the Chinese People’s Volunteers in Hoechang County, South Phyongan Province, is the central spot for such celebrations. There Mao’s son, Mao Anying, who died fighting in the war, is buried. In the movies, however, the North Koreans The Defenders of Height 1211. An unidentified actor in battle fight and win the war all by scene set in the Korean War. themselves. The leadership of Kim Il Sung inspires the commandos to incredible heroics; in fact, it makes them invincible. The glorification of the Leader and the “victorious People’s Army” is not the only purpose the war films have been serving. Even more central is their role to portray North Korea as a country under siege. Since the U.S. and their “puppet” South Korea invaded the North once, propaganda says, they will no doubt invade again if they ever get the chance.

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Women to the front! A scene from Orang River.

Accordingly, the Northern nation must group closely around the Leader and strictly obey all his commands. As the propaganda continues to repeat, the Leader and the Nation are one. Given this central role in the propaganda, war movies became the most important genre, rivaling the role of the films promoting the liberation myth. Those two genres together form the core of cinematic propaganda. One genre gives the Leader his legitimation, the other shows his strength in defending the country. In both cases, he had saved the nation. Without the Leader, the nation was nothing. Without him, it would fall prey to foreign invaders again like it had to the Japanese colonizers. The enemy in the war films was the U.S., an enemy no doubt as evil as the Japanese had been. War movies have been made ever since the Korean War and they are continually being churned out. The message of the war movies (that the country is continuously under threat, that everyone must be on guard at all times against foreign powers ready to attack or subvert the country) entered all other movie genres. In the movies, North Korea is in a permanent state of war. But so it is in real life.

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The Establishment of Juche The war, although not raking in the desired results, namely the unification of Korea under Kim Il Sung’s rule, did provide considerable benefits for Kim. First of all, Kim could start to feel safe. The lines were clearly drawn in Cold War fashion. He got a perfectly sealed border towards the South and, with the American military presence in the South, a perfect enemy to exploit for his own ends. Stalin had brought him to power, and Mao had saved him in the war, but Kim was not inclined to become a willingly serving vassal of either of them. Just like Josip Broz Tito did in Yugoslavia and even more like Enver Hoxha did in Albania, he wanted to run things his way, creating a nationalist version of Communism which truly made him the boss of the country instead of a proxy of Moscow or Beijing. Pro-Soviet factions and old-time leftists originating from the south were purged and in many cases executed. The latter fate met, for example, the KAPF writer Im Hwa, who had starred in the 1928 KAPF film Wandering. Kim Il Sung had him shot in 1953 for being a “pro–Japanese traitor and counter-revolutionary.”1 Korean nationalism and national selfreliance became the main focus of politics and economic development. The concept of the Juche philosophy was mentioned vaguely by Kim Il Sung for the first time in 1955 and was then developed over the following two decades. Though based on classical Marxist/Leninist concepts of Communism, the Juche philosophy placed absolute North Korean self-reliance in all political, economical, ideological and national defense matters at its center. Externally, this new philosophy served to help Kim distance North Korea from the Soviet Union and China. Internally, Juche became a new belief system taught excessively to the population. It became North Korea’s very own religion. The teachings portrayed Kim Il Sung as the infallible Great Leader defending the nation against all foreign forces while at the same time leading it to the greatness and happiness it desired and deserved.

Diversion: Early Entertainment Films While the Korean War played out on the screens over and over again, and while forays were made into propaganda celebrating Kim Il Sung as savior as well as propaganda towards building up a new Juche-based society, traditional entertainment was also provided. An example is the 1963 production The Tale of Hung Pu, directed by Kim Song Gyo 35

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and Li Song Wan, and written by Song Yong. The film relays the ancient legend of Hung Pu and his brother Nol Pu, following the pre-war tradition of turning popular old Korean tales into cinematic works. The film simply tells an entertaining feel-good story devoid of any immediate political implications. It uses a lot of humor to get the story across and is well executed. But most importantly, it tells an old story of eternal hope. The poor and kind person is rewarded, while the greedy one is punished. Everyone loves these kinds of stories and perhaps most importantly, the film had nothing to do with the politics of the new North Korea. The Tale of Hung Pu is set in the Middle Ages. Two brothers receive the family heritage when the father dies. The older brother, Nol Pu, is a greedy, nasty and fat landlord type, while the younger one, Hung Pu, is endlessly kind and selfless. Early on in the movie (and in the legend), Nol Pu throws Hung Pu and his family (he has a wife, three small daughters and a baby) out of the family house. Hung Pu must build his own humble hut without any support from his brother. Hung Pu sometimes has to beg his brother for food and he is treated awfully in these situations. The first half of the film shows just how greedy the older brother is and what a model of a humble but good-hearted folk Hung Pu manages to remain despite all of the hardships. One day, a swallow circles the house of Hung Pu, looking for a place to build a nest. Hung Pu provides it with a small board under the roof and the swallow happily settles. Soon, it raises a family. Then something terrible happens: a snake attacks the birds’ nest. Hung Pu arrives just in time to kill the snake and save the last of the birds, one of the young ones. Trying to escape the hungry mouth of the snake, it had fallen out of the nest and broken a leg. Hung Pu takes some thread, fixes the bird’s leg and places it back into the nest. Soon, it is healed and travels southwards for the winter. In spring, the swallow returns and brings a strange piece of seed with it. Hung Pu and the children plant and water the seed. Giant pumpkins grow from it, the plant spreading all over the roof of the house. Finally, it’s harvest time. Hung Pu and his wife saw the first big pumpkin, planning to turn it into a meal. Instead, two maidens burst out of the pumpkin, offering two miraculous bottles. The magic potion of the bottles turns their hut into a wealthy farmhouse with the storage house overflowing with rice and drawers full of silk. Nol Pu hears that his brother suddenly got rich. He visits him — and behaves like a boor in his house, walking in dirty shoes all over and breaking things. Still, Hung Pu is kind as ever and tells Nol Pu how he got his riches. Nol Pu may have been the richer one of the two so far but now his house looks shabby compared to what Hung Pu got. Nol Pu wants to try his luck with the swallows as well. Luckily, there is a swallow family breeding on his property. There is no snake but this doesn’t stop Nol Pu. He simply goes up to the nest and breaks a bird’s leg. Then, he flimsily fixes it again. The swallow soon brings a seed to him, too, which will turn on his roof into giant pumpkins. Delighted and expecting great riches, Nol Pu has his henchmen saw open the first of the pumpkins. Out come three yanban, Korean aristocrats, who hold court over him, chide him and take his boxes holding the valuables. Nol Pu opens the next pumpkin and monks come out, chiding him again and taking

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The Tale of Hung Pu. Pictured is the cover of the printed version in German, published in Pyongyang in 1991.

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more things. The next pumpkins brings out robbers who hang him upside down a beam, have a party with his rice wine and rob the last of what is left. The final pumpkin opens by itself, in an explosion that brings the whole house down. All the while, Hung Pu has been busy sharing his new wealth with the neighbors, generously handing out rice. The end: Hung Pu is a well-to-do happy farmer tending his fields, Nol Pu is poor, destitute and soon out of the frame. Statistics on how successful the film was initially are not available but the fact that this film has survived over the decades and was even re-released on VCD by Mokran Video, the official North Korean video company, at the turn of the millennium, attests to its lasting popularity. A film named A Tale of Noblemen quickly succeeded The Tale of Hung Pu. This film was not available for review for this book but it was the last film depicting a medieval legend for a long time — in fact up to 1980. The time for escapist entertainment was past, and politics took over every aspect of life.

Films on the Theme of the Socialist Reality Both in classical Communist theory and in Juche, Communism is defined as the ideal society to struggle for whereas Socialism is the social system preceding it. In Socialism, the means of production have already been taken from the hands of the capitalists and made property of the “people” (usually meaning the state) and a Communist party is in power. Socialism is not a perfect society yet. Much work has still to be done until Communism will be achieved. The Soviet Union, the Eastern European countries, Mao-era China and North Korea never claimed to have achieved Communism. They called their societies Socialist since many internal contradictions were yet to be overcome before the arrival of Communism could be declared. The Japanese colonizers had been run out of the country, the North had been defended against the U.S. and their “puppets” from the South, the landlords and capitalists had fled south or their property was taken while they were sent to “reeducation” camps. It was time for reconstruction and for the creation of a new society. A new film genre was needed to help instill the emerging Juche idea in the population and to cinematically propagate Kim Il Sung as undisputed leader of post-war North Korea. Films that were dealing with daily life in industrial plants, in collective farms, films addressing personal shortcomings of members of the new society and their misguided behavior. The emerging genre became known as “Films on the Theme of the Socialist Reality.” Blast Furnace, the pre–Korean War iron works film Charles Armstrong described as “centered on the struggle of the Korean working class after Liberation.”2 It may have been the first attempt to make such a Socialist Reality film. The 1950s remained largely dominated by war movies and it took until the early ’60s until Socialist Realist films were made in a quality that later North Korean books would deem them worthy of a description. Hailed as an early example of fine Socialist Realist filmmaking is The Spinner (1963, directed by O Byong Cho, written by Han Song): “The film begins with a scene showing

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the spinner Ok Rim being maltreated and humiliated at a spinning mill before liberation. After the country is liberated, she becomes a worthy master of the country, an initiator of the multi-spindle, a Chollima-rider3 making innovations in production, a Labor Hero, a Deputy to the Supreme People’s Assembly and the director of a factory.”4 The film was not available for viewing but the description makes it sound like it is a work which simply praises the new times over the old ones. While such praise was certainly common and while celebrating the career of Ok Rim may have been intended to be an inspiration to others, it may not have been very satisfying to viewers. However, The Spinner must have featured some redeeming Juche qualities. It remains the only Socialist Realist film of the era (before the late 1960s) still prominently mentioned in North Korean film books and catalogues. About films preceding it like Youth in Ship “Sea Gull,” A Red Agitator and the teacher drama The Red Flower hardly any information is available. Those films may simply not have met the standards set later in the 1960s and early ’70s. They were certainly not prohibited but they were relegated to the dustbin. Still available today is My New Family (directed by Chae Pung Gi, written by Choe Yong Su), a smaller production made by the February 8 Film Studio of the Korean People’s Army in the mid– to late ’70s. The army studio was not only making military related films; they produced movies on civilian matters as well. My New Family tells the story of a young woman named Un Shil (played by Chong Myong Sun), who works at a cloth-printing plant in a small town. Her job is to engrave elaborate patterns by hand into the printing drums. The cloth with her patterns is the best the factory produces. Un Shil loves her job. The

Working class heroes have a meeting in The Spinner.

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working collective of mostly young women is one happy bunch and they are all best friends with each other. Then things shift after she marries a nice young meteorologist from Pyongyang and follows him to the capital. There she finds work in a barbershop. She is, however, totally untalented for grooming hair. She is relegated to sweeping the floor and feels depressed. She often thinks about her friends and the good work in the printing facility. Meanwhile, the folks at her former workplace fall into despair. Without her talent and knowledge, they can’t produce the high-quality fabric prints they used to do anymore. They call on her to temporarily return and to train young engravers to stand in for her. Back at her real workplace, she blossoms again. Eventually she convinces her husband to move with her to her hometown where he quickly finds work at the local weather station. She brings the quality of the printed cloth back and everyone is happy. The story is told in black and white and in melodramatic ways, though no big drama plays out. Everyone is friendly to each other and everyone is fully understanding of each other’s situation. North Korea is portrayed as one happy country. The modern electrical trains run on time, people live in modestly luxurious apartments and the capital features plenty of neon lights. The girl learns in the course of the film that Pyongyang is not for her, that her real place is where she came from, at the job she is best suited for. Thankfully, her husband, a Pyongyang native, understands and agrees. One message the film relays is that people should not only think of Pyongyang but rather excel at their jobs in the small towns they live in. Pyongyang is a city where only people chosen by the party can live. Others shouldn’t yearn to move there; they would be bitterly missed in the collectives they really belong to. More importantly, however, is the message that people find their true fulfillment in their work. The film points out that work is more important than even the marital situation or the family, although they can be reconciled if the participants really want to find a solution. The “new family” the title refers to is the workplace collective after all. My New Family is in no way an outstanding film. To the contrary, it is a very average example of the deluge of similar small Socialist Realist films produced in the 1960s and ’70s. It served as light entertainment for women while at the same time stressing the point that North Korea is an advanced country and that all problems can be solved by working together. In fact, in the 1960s and ’70s North Korea was a rather well developed country. The industry was doing well and money from the Soviet Union and China flowed in. People had a reason to be optimistic and to perhaps even hope to one day lead lives like the characters on screen. A Flourishing Village (1970, directed by Kim Yong Ho, written by Han Bok Gyu) was a production on a much grander scale. Set in the year 1959, shortly after the collectivization of agriculture, the film shows an ideal bucolic village. It is fully motorized with plenty of trucks and tractors driving around. The fields are served by modern irrigation technology and produce bountiful harvests, high-voltage power lines dot the landscape. Jointly singing and laughing, the farmers work to better what is already a Juche paradise. But there is one family that doesn’t fit in. The old man Yong Sam always takes care of his farm first. He works his private patch of land the best, hoards wood and other things, and puts only the absolutely necessary work into communal projects. His second son, Byong

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Father (Kim Gwang Nam, right) is a hard nut to crack. He’s almost a reactionary, as Kim Ryong Rin (left) discovers. But eventually, he does become a Juche hero in Flourishing Village.

Gi, is a lethargic dreamer who likes to think about moving out of the village altogether to join the excitement of urban living. He recklessly drives the communal tractor, even causing a minor accident. Mostly, he just lies about in the fields, dreaming. A chart posted in the center of the village shows the contributions to communal living made by all families of the village. The contributions of Yong Sam’s family are by far the lowest. When Byong Chol, Yong Sam’s eldest son, returns from the military, he is shocked to see the ways his father and brother behave. Himself excelling as a model farmer the minute he has come back, he is determined to “revolutionize” father and brother. In one central scene, Byong Chol is alone in the family house. He sees that the family clock is late. He corrects it and winds it up. Just like the clock they so poorly attended, his family is far behind in their thinking!

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Eventually, he coaxes his brother to join the communal life by participating in the digging of a well. The work is hard but once he experiences the result of his work — water gushing out and watering the fields — it makes him proud and he changes his life. From now on, the younger brother, too, strives to be a model collectivist worker. The village girls who had been laughing behind his back are now admiring him. Father is a tougher nut to crack. No amount of talking seems to help. The old man just cares about himself and the ones closest to him. One day, a stash of old documents is discovered, bringing back memories to Yong Sam. That night, he opens up and begins to talk about the bad old days. He tells (in flashback) the story of one particularly terrible night that has scarred him forever. The feudal landlord ordered his poor mother to crush the grain. The grain crusher was an evil looking huge wooden hammer powered by a water wheel. When the hammer went up, his mother had to reach under it and rearrange the grain for even crushing. She works all night. Young Yong Sam brings her a fish he had caught as a meal. Still, she has to continue working, shoving the grains into position. She’s exhausted, gets dizzy, falls asleep, and her head falls under the hammer. The water powered beast whacks on her head. And continues whacking. Everyone is shattered upon hearing this story. But most moved is father himself. He suddenly realizes that there is no landlord here anymore, just a hardworking collective and that everyone is trying to make everything better for everyone. Thus, he changes his ways and joins the collective farming, soon to become a model worker. The message here is quite clear: leave behind outmoded thinking and join the working/farming collective. The village setting is, of course, idealized to the point of fiction. The North Korean countryside has never been a motorized paradise as portrayed in the film. This was what the country was supposed to look like in the future. Domestically, the film won the “People Prize,” the highest award that could be bestowed. Well shot, well acted and with a lot of drama, it certainly was a success among North Korean audiences. On an international (Eastern bloc) scale, however, it just added to the impression that North Korean cinema (and particularly its Socialist Realist pictures) were an incredibly outdated bore. The Soviets and Eastern Europeans hadn’t made movies like this since Stalin had died. One aspiring young man striving to reach the top both in cinema and politics understood this situation all too well and he set out to change it. His name was Kim Jong Il.

5

Kim Jong Il Enters the Scene Kim Jong Il was the son of Great Leader Kim Il Sung. According to Western sources, he was born in the village of Viatskoe near Chabarovsk in Siberia either in 1941 or 1942, while Kim Il Sung was stationed there with the Soviet army. North Korea gives a different account: that he was born in a guerrilla fighter camp on Mount Paektu, the holy mountain of Korea, in a makeshift hut next to the impressive Jangsu Peak, whose name was later (of course) changed to Kim Jong Il Peak. Accounts of his early education differ as well. Officially, he is said to have attended elementary and middle school in Pyongyang, while other sources claim that he spent parts of his childhood in China to be out of the line of fire during the Korean War. In 1964, Kim graduated from Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang and soon after, he was made section chief in the Party Central Committee of the Korean Worker’s Party, the ruling party run by his father. In this position, he came to oversee the activities of the Propaganda and Agitation Department. All arts were considered important as propaganda and agitation instruments and thus under the control of this department. Young Kim had always been interested in the arts and especially in movies. An English-language booklet named Great Man and Cinema, which was distributed to the foreign guests at the Seventh Pyongyang Film Festival, even claims that he attended a preview screening of My Home Village in 1949 and that he discovered and criticized inconsistencies in the film: Comrade Kim Jong Il has been very fond of the cinema since his childhood. After Korean liberation he often accompanied the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung and his mother Kim Jong Suk, anti–Japanese women general, to a film studio. One spring day in 1949 when he was 7 years old he went there and joined in previewing the working film My Home Village, the first of its kind in Korea. The film showed the winter scenes of the falling snow. At this sight Comrade Kim Jong Il shook his head dubiously and told an official of the film studio that he wondered why no snow was found on the heads and shoulders of the characters while it came down copiously. The official blushed with shame in spite of himself because Comrade Kim Jong Il was right. He noticed that a bad job was made of trick shots. Comrade Kim Jong Il again remarked that the snow was not lifelike, and asked the official if it was bits of cotton wool. It was true. Bits of white cotton wool were sprinkled to make them look like snowflakes, but they were too crude to produce the intended effect. Afterwards, these scenes were re-photographed.1

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Kim Jong Il (center right, with glasses) on a visit to the Korean Film Studio in 1979.

While it may be doubtful if this particular anecdote is true, young Kim did indeed have a keen eye for cinema and became involved in the activities of the Korean Film Studio as soon as he got the chance to do so in the mid–1960s. He understood perfectly well that the situation of the film industry was not what his father had envisioned as a powerful propaganda tool. The war movies may have been more or less effective, but the ones propagating the virtues of the Juche-communist society currently being built were rather clumsy and there were even non-political entertainment flicks like The Tale of Hung Pu being made. Kim put a stop to the production of the latter right there. All films had to be political from now on — but they had to be gripping and convincing. Most importantly, they had to hail his father as the liberator of Korea. Kim was clearly going back to the roots here, to My Home Village. By promoting his father as the liberating hero in artfully crafted films successful with the audience, he was clearly able to shore up his political position. On the other hand, his involvement with film led him to defy the traditional mores

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of his father. The elder Kim had chosen the daughter of a high-ranking official, Kim Yong Suk, as Jong Il’s wife, and the son had to marry her. On the movie sets, he soon met his major first mistress, the popular actress Song Hye Rim. He made her divorce her first husband and then secretly lived with her. It is debated as to whether or not they ever married. Song was a star in 1960s North Korean cinema and had acted in popular movies like Onjongryong, Paek Il Hong and The Road I Found (1970, directed by Chen Sang In). A son was born from this relationship in 1971, Kim Jong Nam, but his existence was kept secret from Kim Il Sung for several years. (This son made headlines in 2001 when he was caught by Tokyo immigration trying to enter Japan on a fake passport.) Kim Jong Il visited the film studio almost daily and he didn’t only give out general rules about how films had to be made, he also became involved in the productions in detail. The anecdote 23 Shots from the same Great Man and Cinema booklet shall serve to demonstrate his detail-obsessed micro-management at the time: A drop of water reflects the universe. The lightning flashes in a moment, but it cannot be compared with other lights. This happened when comrade Kim Jong Il examined a working film. The scenes he saw a few days ago and rated high were flitting in the film. The creators appreciated its scenes and music, deeply enthralled by them. At this moment Comrade Kim Jong Il said quietly: “Stop projecting.” Presently the projector halted and the dubbing room was lit up. The creators wondered why, looking at each other. After a while he said: “The film shows the hero weeping in his sickroom. This scene does not harmonize well with music.” The creators were all puzzled by their ignorance. Comrade Kim Jong Il asked the director if any of the shots was cut off in the course of the montage. The director was at a loss for a reply, because he did not know the reason. He had cut the film at the last stage of its production, examining every scene shot by shot. Comrade Kim Jong Il asked the composer: “What do you think of it? Have you not sensed anything different from the first working film?” The composer pondered over the film and answered that he did not feel any difference. “That’s not true. I’m sure that several shots were cut off. Find them out,” said comrade Kim Jong Il in a confident tone and left the place. All creators ransacked all night the piles of the remaining films that had been cut away. At daybreak the producer ejaculated abruptly: “I’ve found it!” He was holding a 23-shot strip of film about a meter long in his hand. It was certain that it was removed in the course of cutting. The creators doubted whether it was the right one, and they continued to search for others. But they could not find any other thing. The creators had no alternative but to connect the 23-shot strip to the film. Comrade Kim Jong Il visited the creators again. “Have you found it?’ “We’ve found a 23-shot strip…” “All right.” Soon the scene was put on the screen. When the projection was over, Comrade Kim Jong Il lightly slapped his knee and said in joy: “All right! You’ve found it at last! Thank you. The scene matches exactly with music.” This was really beyond imagination for a man without the keen sense of detecting the minute flow that flashes away light lightning.2

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Though the anecdote itself may well be fiction, that it was published in this form shows what the North Korean propaganda wants the world to know about Kim Jong Il’s cinematic prowess: his unfailing sense of timing, images, music and filmic design, his certainty of opinion and his absolute power to have his visions realized. Kim Jong Il kept a low profile while working on the movies by not being mentioned in the films’ credits. All North Korean information maintains that he only gave “guidance” and never acknowledges Kim Jong Il being anything like a “producer.” The huge painting covering a whole wall in the entrance hall of the Korea Film Studio, showing him calling the shots during the filming of a battle scene in Sea of Blood is surely closer to the scale of his involvement in film production. The most ambitious films he fully produced in this period were later dubbed “Immortal Classics”3 and indeed, two of them were among the most impressive films ever to come from a North Korean studio.

The Immortal Classics Sea of Blood The first of the “Immortal Classics,” Sea of Blood (1968, directed by Choe Ik Gyu), was based on a stage play by the same name, allegedly written by Kim Il Sung himself at the time when he was an anti–Japanese guerrilla fighter. The movie tells the story of a

Sea of Blood. The first of the “Immortal Classics,” with Yang Hye Ryon.

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mother who experiences 1930s Japanese oppression the worst way: Japanese collective punishment against villagers who support the anti–Japanese guerrilla. Her children join Kim Il Sung’s guerrilla group while the mother, after meeting one of Kim Il Sung’s propagandists, becomes both a communist women organizer in her town and a smuggler of explosives to the rebels deep in the forest. The Korean authorities, acting on Japanese command, catch and torture her but she won’t budge. The guerrilla lay siege to the walled town she’s held at. The mother kills the guards and opens the gate of the town. It’s great drama and very violent. Great Man and Cinema describes the shooting this way: “When … actors balked at piercing old people with their bayonets and throwing children into the fire, he [Kim Jong Il] told them that they should act boldly to lend realism to the film.”4 The writer of the booklet obviously got carried a away a little when praising the efforts of the Dear Leader, as Kim Jong Il was known then. Telling its story of liberation by the forces of Kim Il Sung’s guerrilla army, Sea of Blood harks back to My Home Village, propagating the same myth of Kim Il Sung as the sole liberator of Korea from the Japanese occupation forces, but this time on much grander scale than its humble predecessor. Promoting his father as the god-like founding father of the Juche nation became Kim Jong Il’s greatest ambition. In the same year, 1968, Kim Jong Il oversaw the production of the three-part Five Guerilla Brothers, again directed by Choe Ik Gyu. This film did not become recognized as “Immortal Classic” but did become a “People’s Prize Winner,” an award handed out to only the best productions. It is another reinforcement of the Kim Il Sung legend — an anti–Japa-

Yang Hye Ryon plays a woman in despair during the Japanese village massacre in Sea of Blood.

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Desperate children during the village massacre in Sea of Blood.

nese guerrilla movie very much along the lines of My Home Village. It’s five brothers this time, who according to Northern movie promotion, “under the wise guidance and amid the warm love of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung … join the revolutionary struggle and grow up in the course of the revolution to be revolutionaries of a Juche type who are ready to lay down their lives to defend and safeguard the great leader politically and ideologically.”5

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Flower Girl Intrigued by the apparent domestic success of Sea of Blood, Kim Jong Il headed for his next “Immortal Classic” project — which would be released in 1972 under the title Flower Girl, directed again by Kim Jong Il’s favorite Choe Ik Gyu and co-directed by Pak Hak, who also already had a large number of pictures under his belt. With Flower Girl, Kim Jong Il achieved what he always had wanted to do: make a great, moving film of epic proportions. It’s in color and set in the late 1920s, early ’30s and based again on an allegedly Kim Il Sung–written play. It tells the tale of Ggot Bun (played by Hong Yong Hui), a beautiful young girl selling flowers she has picked in the mountains. Her family is in a terrible situation. Her father was bond servant to a cruel landlord couple trying to repay a minor old loan through hard work. Once he died, her elder brother had to take over that position. The landlord couple is portrayed as extremely evil. Early in the film, they throw a pot of hot water in the face of Ggot Bun’s younger sister, blinding her. Enraged, Ggot Buns brother attacks the couple. He goes to jail for that. Now, it is the mother’s turn to enter bond servantship. Ggot Bun is trying her best to support the family with her flower-selling on the market. It is never enough. One time, she is joined by her blind younger sister who begins to sing and collects money next to her. This brings in much more than the usual amount Ggot Bun makes, but the hard-working mother puts an immediate stop to such enterprises: singing in the market and accepting money for it is akin to prostitution, as mother makes clear to the daughters. Honor and purity are more important than food. When the mother dies from overwork, Ggot Bun has to take over her position. She escapes and starts a long walk across the country to find her brother in jail. Meanwhile, her orphaned young sister loses her mind and disappears. Arriving at the prison, Ggot Bun is told by the guards that her brother has died. Shocked, saddened and exhausted, she begins the long trek back to her hometown to take care of her sister. Out of funds, she is starving, on the verge of dying at the side of the road. Everyone’s suffering is immense. That is, until the last ten minutes of the film, when every thing is solved. The brother has not died but escaped from prison, having joined Kim Il Sung’s “army.” He rescues the blind little sister, and he also rescues Ggot Bun, who in one big act of revenge burns the faces of the oppressive landowner couple by throwing boiling soup at their evil mugs. The last ten minutes are standard propaganda but until Hong Yong Hui in Flower Girl. then, it’s a great and very mov-

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ing anti-feudal drama. The main focus is on class relations under feudalism; the Japanese occupiers play only a marginal role. In general, the Japanese occupation forces play two main roles in the films promoting the legend of Kim Il Sung as liberator: on the one hand, they are the foreign invaders that must be driven out of the country; on the other hand, they are the force that keeps the feudal lords of Korea in power. Here the emphasis is on the latter. The artistic qualities of Flower Girl did finally bring an international breakthrough for North Korean cinema: it won a “Prix Special” at the 1972 Karlovy Vary Film Festival in Czechoslovakia. Leading Hong Yong Hui became an international icon of North Korean cinema. The big Eastern bloc film festivals in Karlovy Vary, Moscow and Sochi (Russia) had shown North Korean films before, though more out of political than artistic considerations. But with Flower Girl, even a real international jury was won over by a Kim Jong Il production.

An Jung Gun Shoots Ito Hirobumi Emboldened by the newfound international reputation, Kim went for his next historical epic: An Jung Gun Shoots Ito Hirobumi (directed by Om Gil Son). If Flower Girl left doubts as to what extent the film was actually about Japanese involvement in the unfolding story, An Jung Gun tells a straight anti–Japanese tale. Again based on an allegedly Kim Il Sung– written drama from his times as guerrilla in the mountains, the film purports to deliver a true historical account. An Jung Gun was a young Korean nationalist at the beginning of the 20th century when Japan began to take over the peninsula step by step. The mastermind on the Japanese side was former Prime Minister and current special emissary Hirobumi Ito. An Jung Gun joined many different Korean nationalist groups and movements trying to prevent Japan from taking over the country. All of those movements failed. Eventually, in 1909, An Jung Gun shot and killed Hirobumi Ito at the train station in Harbin, China. Unfortunately, this assassination only sped up the annexation of Korea by Japan. In March 1910, An was hanged at a prison in Port Arthur (then a city under Japanese management and now part of the city of Dalian in China). In the same year, Korea was officially annexed by Japan. The Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) fell within the scope of the movie as well as a lot of Seoul palace intrigues and the inability of the ruling class of aristocrats to prevent the takeover by Japan. Nationalist groups and movements by the citizenry are given great play in the movie. According to North Korean online publication Korea Today, “When Om was assigned to direct the film, Kim Jong Il sent him dozens of books that deal with historical materials on An Jung Gung, and gave special advices concerning the personalities of the characters and analytical study of the events to be handled. Then he personally went out to where the film was being shot to give first-hand guidance to the production ranging from make-up to costume designing and properties.”6 The same publication quotes director Om Gil Son: “I understand how I could make a success of my first production task —An Jung Gun Shoots Ito Hirobumi. Talent, enthusiasm, unusual quality — these were all the terms in which I could hardly outdo other directors.

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Li In Mun fires a gun in the assassination scene in An Jung Gung Shoots Ito Hirobumi.

Still, I have got an unusual source of happiness: It’s Kim Jong Il’s guidance to my work that made a masterpiece.”7 Alas, despite being declared an “Immortal Classic,” a masterpiece the film was not. All the many historical details given and altered to match Kim Jong Il’s agenda distract greatly from the plot itself. The work felt more like a classroom history lesson than a gripping movie. Released in 1979, An Jung Gun was clearly inferior to Flower Girl. The jury in Karlovy Vary thought the same and didn’t hand out any award this time. The film did receive a limited release in Japan — of all places — but must have been a disappointment to Kim Jong Il.

The Road I Found— What the Socialist Allies Thought While producing his “Immortal Classics,” Kim Jong Il was also involved in a large number of projects on a smaller scale. Especially interesting in this regard is the movie The Road I Found. This film aired on August 11, 1970, under the title Der Weg, den ich fand on East German TV. The German Broadcast Archive in Potsdam Babelsberg (Deutsches Rund-

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“The impact on the viewer is limited.” Internal memo of East German TV on The Road I Found (courtesy Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Babelsberg).

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funkarchiv) made the original assessments of the East German comrades available for this book. The film was directed by a certain Chen Sang In, a director who otherwise is not mentioned in North Korean film literature. The female lead is played by Song Hye Rim, Kim Jong Il’s lover at the time. Acting star Om Gil Son plays the male lead. Though famous as an actor at the time already, he had a big directing career ahead of him. In 1974, he shot The Fate of Kum Hui and Un Hui with Pak Hak. In 1979, he lensed the “Immortal Classic” An Jung Gun Shoots Ito Hirobumi. A film with such an A-list cast and yet the director is a total unknown? Made in the period when Kim Jong Il was a daily visitor to the film studio? One might easily speculate that Kim Jong Il tried his hand at directing with the film … though unfortunately, there is no documented evidence available pointing in this direction. The film was later taken out of circulation on the order of Kim Jong Il, along with all other films in which Song Hye Rim had acted. The German Broadcast Archive did not have a copy of the film available for viewing either. It could, however, provide the internal documents of East German TV regarding the broadcast. From those documents, we can glean some information on the story the film tells. Indeed, the plot provides nothing new: the land is under the yoke of the Japanese colonizers. They treat the women folk of the small town like game. Beautiful Sun Yong (Song Hye Rim) has to especially suffer their harassment. One day, though, a young man, Kang Min Ho (Om Gil Son) gets in front of the Japanese and, in defense of Sun Young, screams his hatred towards them. He gets arrested but it is the start of a learning process that will lead him eventually to join Kim Il Sung’s “rebel army.” What is interesting is how the officials at East German TV judged the film. In an internal memo dated March 19, 1970, resort chief Neumann and dramaturg Möller wrote to their editing staff: The film shows via the fate of a young man the development of the still [class] consciousless workers to a powerful organized revolutionary working class which finally prepares for the armed struggle against Japanese rule in their country. This development is shown in all steps in logical consequence. It must be maintained in the German editing. Conceptual changes are therefore not necessary. The film has however a length of 130 minutes. Thorough shortening through cuts is recommended to eliminate unnecessary lengths and to remove the worst kitsch parts. The step-by-step development of the hero should however be maintained. For the German dialogue design, we consider natural dialogue without exaggerated pathos especially important. We ask to avoid stiffness in [party newspaper] editorial style as the original mainly provides it. From the original, the various places where the plot takes place are not clearly recognizable. We believe that the possibility exists to set the plot on two locations (hometown of the hero and harbor town). In addition, an exact historical classification of the action is necessary. For this purpose could the off-screen narrator, which is used in the original only once, be employed at various points. We ask for a viewing copy of the edited version with read-in German text.8

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On August 12, 1970, the day after the broadcast, another East German TV memo stated that it was “useful for honoring and appreciating the victorious Korean party. The impact on the viewer is limited.”9 Removing the “worst kitsch parts”? Dialogue in party paper editorial style? The plot locations were unclear? The impact being limited? The Socialist allies in East Berlin don’t seem to have had a particularly high opinion of the film. As these were internal East German memos, Kim Jong Il certainly didn’t see them. But he was intelligent enough to know the faults in North Korean cinema by himself. He set out to rectify things by writing a book laying out his thoughts on the basic rules of North Korean cinema.

On the Art of the Cinema In 1973, Kim Jong Il published his book On the Art of Cinema, outlining his views of how to create modern national films fitting the Juche age. Naturally, the book became the new bible of North Korean filmmaking — all directors, actors, technicians, etc., have been working along the precious principles laid down in the book ever since. So they claim. But in actuality, the book had few new thoughts to offer to the North Korean film world. What it does is to elaborate on previous Kim Il Sung statements on the importance of film as a means of propaganda and its central status in the arts while at the same time drawing on Kim Jong Il’s experiences in the film industry — where he apparently encountered a lot of sloppiness and thoughtlessness — urging the film workers to be more focused in their work. Kim Jong Il writes in the preface of the book: “The cinema is now one of the main objects on which efforts should be concentrated to conduct the revolution in art and literature. The cinema occupies an important place in the overall development of art and literature.”10 With the “revolution in art and literature” he means, of course, that the Juche ideology must be put into the center of all artistic production. Films must be realistic, he says. Film workers should actually have lived with the popular masses to know about their problems, hopes and sentiments and thus be able to connect to the audience. But the realism he talks about here is not the gritty realism of, say, Italian Neorealism. He means the “realism” of Juche. A “realism” that endlessly glorifies Great Leader Kim Il Sung, paints the picture of a single-minded Juche nation striving to achieve Juche paradise and otherwise condemns all Western thinking as foreign to the Juche ideology as are all feudal remnants. He wants pictures made which both press the right buttons with the audience while successfully preaching the gospels of Juche. He says that North Korean films have to be made with the special needs of the North Korean situation always in the mind of everyone involved in the filmmaking process. He also says that incorporating Korean traditions is important to reach the hearts, minds and sentiments of the prospective audience but that the traditional Koreans arts cannot be fully trusted. They have to be used — but in a modified way, in a way which promotes the current ideological lines and purges any “feudal ideologies” which may still be contained in much valued traditional Korean legends and tales. His advice on how to achieve this is hardly surprising. He demands that the process

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of making a film must start from a strong, convincing idea of what to tell (the “seed,” as he calls it), that the right ideological content always has to be the main focus of the work and that the aesthetics and the storytelling of the film in question always have to be strongly put to work to emphasize the ideological message. This, of course, had been done before by propaganda film directors of all persuasions all over the world. In practical terms, the book tends to deal with the obvious. Kim Jong Il’s experiences at the film studio must have been far from satisfying if he had to tell these things to the industry insiders the book was aimed at : “The director is the commander of the creative group”; “In creative work one must aim high”; “The quality of directing depends on the director”; “The secret of directing lies in editing”; “The actor is the face of the film”; “A screen portrayal demands first-class filming techniques”; “Make-Up is a noble art”; “Custom and hand props should conform to the period and the The bible of North Korean cinema. character”; “The sets should reflect the times”; “Musical arrangement is creative work.” If one reads the anecdotes about Kim Jong Il on the film sets in Great Man and Cinema, one gets the impression that the Dear Leader was surrounded by fearful and uncreative dimwits. Reading in On the Art of the Cinema of Kim Jong Il telling his film workers the absolute basics of filmmaking is a sign that Kim did not hold the professionalism of his film people in high regard. The movies that he does praise as successful examples of Juche filmmaking are logically the ones he produced himself, like Sea of Blood and Flower Girl. These movies are quoted throughout the book as examples of how to make a good and successful movie. They are dealt with as the high standard to which all future North Korean productions should rise — which very few did upon publication of the book. He himself terribly disregarded one of his rules set forth in his book, in his own productions: “If the ideological and emotional impact of a film is to be long-lived, it must not drag on monotonously, but come to its conclusion neatly and quickly. If the film drags on tediously when it has finished telling the story and has nothing more to add, it will dissipate the emotional excitation which has caused so much effort to arouse.”11 In other words, he said: “Don’t make overlong and boring movies!” Watching North Korean movies from before and after the publication of the book, one can discern very little of the book’s impact. Certainly not in regards to the length of

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the movies. Being boring and overlong is what most North Korean films have been characterized by except for a few very special periods of more interesting moviemaking. North Korean film productions were, in fact, much more influenced by the pressures of actual political and economical situations than by the teachings of this book — which is still enshrined to this day as the holy text on North Korean filmmaking.

The Mid–1970s to the Early 1980s From the time of its publication, On the Art of the Cinema was taught to all personnel involved in the film industry as the absolutely groundbreaking work on how to make successful Juche films. If one looks at the films made in the years immediately following the publication, however, no visible improvement in the quality of the films made can be discerned — though great efforts certainly went into film production. The endless glut of small productions on the “Theme of the Socialist Reality” went on unabated. Those films were popular with the population as they showed small problems in daily life and often didn’t include too heavy propaganda messages. One popular series started with the film The Problem of Our Family (1979); it was quickly followed by nine sequels with titles like The Problem of Our Upstair Neighbor, The Problem of Our Downstair Neighbor, The Problem of Elder Brother’s Family, The Problem in My Wife’s Family and The Problem of Son-in-Law’s Family. All of them feature happy families in wealthy contemporary surroundings who have just one little problem. Their official description reads: “All the leading characters in the ten films retain old thoughts which exert a negative effect on the healthy atmosphere and order of life of society. They are mostly people occupying important posts in the national economy and their families, who have various shortcomings because their homes have not been revolutionized. But under the impact of the principled and sincere and warm criticism of their comrades, neighbors and relatives they make a clean sweep of their shortcomings and turn over a new leaf. Although they had shortcomings yesterday, they are now free from the remnants of outworn ideas and take the lead in the struggle for revolutionizing the homes, neighborhood units and the whole of society.”12 People in North Korea certainly enjoyed those movies. They featured many mildly comical situations and perhaps most importantly, self-important, arrogant mid-level cadres were cut down to size. Films like the Problem series were mass-produced and cheaply made. They featured popular actors and actresses but much good acting was not required here. At that time, those films were the closest to simple entertainment to be enjoyed after a hard day at work that people could get. Kim Jong Il generally approved personally of every production. He certainly knew that those low-level films had a limited educational impact but that the population could not chew on an “Immortal Classic” every day. However, they had to be inundated with subtle propaganda; propaganda had to be everywhere and always. In this sense, the Juche reality daily grind did its work. People swallowed up low-level propaganda because they liked it better than the heavy duty kind. But they gobbled up propaganda nonetheless. Above the level of those films, however, masterpieces needed to be produced. Gripping

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Problems abound ... upstairs, downstairs and beyond.

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works that rallied the masses, movies that sent messages on a national level, films that could perhaps even impress the outside world. Kim Jong Il was clearly more drawn to the ambitious projects.

The Fate of Kum Hui and Un Hui The first major film produced in that mold after the publication of Kim Jong Il’s book was The Fate of Kum Hui and Un Hui (1974), directed by Pak Hak (who had been codirector of the “Immortal Classic” Flower Girl ) and Om Gil Son (who would soon after become the director of the “Immortal Classic” An Jung Gun Shoots Ito Hirobumi). It belongs to a genre called “Films on the Theme of National Reunification” and deals thus with the differences in the social systems of North and South Korea, exemplified here by the fate of twin sisters Kum Hui and Un Hui, both played by Chong Chun Ran. Films depicting the alleged suffering of the brothers and sisters in the South while praising the North as earthly paradise were nothing new by then. What was new was the sheer scale of the movie, that it was in color and that life in the South looked gorgeously depraved here, like straight out of a Japanese yakuza flick from the same period. The North, on the other hand, looks thoroughly modern in every respect. The story the film tells is epic and said to be based on the true story of Chae Sam Suk, an aspiring singer at the time with an older sister in Seoul. Chae became very popular in the 1980s when she sang the theme song of the Shin Sang-ok movie Love, Love, My Love (1984). The film starts out with young Kum Hui selling paintings at a Pyongyang art gallery. Two young men walk in and spot a picture that strongly reminds them of their adopted sister. They purchase the painting and Kum Hui overhears them making remarks, saying that they knew the girl and that she had a sister. In fact, it portrays Kum Hui, and her father had painted it. Back home, she confronts her father, painter Ok Hyon San. He tells her the story of how she became his adopted daughter. South Korea 1945: Young art student Ok walks home towards Pyongyang after the liberation of the country. He meets a fisherman named Han Byong Ho who is also on his way home. They rest together in a hut when they spot an exhausted man breaking down on the road. The man carries twin baby daughters. He is a composer and also on his way to Pyongyang. The mother of the girls died during childbirth, he says, and he dies that same night right there in the hut. Ok wants to take both children to Pyongyang but Han thinks that it would be better if he takes one. The burden might be too big for Ok, he says. Ok reluctantly agrees. As Kum Hui, the child he took, is ill, Ok visits a doctor in a small town but the doctor refuses treatment of the girl without immediate cash payment. The following night, Ok, carrying the baby, crosses the border to the North, getting shot at and wounded by a Southern soldier. The South was dirty, dreary and rainy. Once Ok is in the North, the sun shines brightly. He takes the baby to a modern hospital (in 1945!) and the doctors and nurses give her all the loving care Juche society can give. Meanwhile, Han, the fisherman, also arrives home. His poor, exhausted wife greets him, along with all the small kids they already have. She takes the new child, Un Hui, in,

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Kum Hui has a proud and happy life in the North...

though she doesn’t know how to feed her. Things are already tough with the rest of the bunch. Back to current times. Ok, the painter, travels to a harbor to portrait a man repairing a fishing trawler. Turns out, the captain of the ship is Han, the man who had taken care of Un Hui. His two eldest sons are also on the boat. Actually, they were the young men buying the painting they believed to portray Un Hui at the beginning of the film. Ok takes his daughter to the boat, too, and she gives a dance performance on the boat. She is a professional dancer at Pyongyang’s greatest theater. The younger one of the sons leaves the dance, sad and with a tortured mind.

...while her twin sister Un Hui suffers in the South.

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Kun Hui just reminds him too much of Un Hui. He begins to write down Un Hui’s story. The film now jumps into the account he writes. At age 16, Un Hui is the beauty of the poor, medieval-looking South Korean fishing village. She likes to sing and has a wonderful voice. A slimy rich man, the landlord of the area, discovers her and promises her a glorious singing career in the nearby town. Han and his family let her go reluctantly. Han soon misses his adopted daughter and goes to town looking for her. The town is shown at night, a dirty hellhole of nightclubs and debauchery. Through a window, he spots Un Hui singing at the Sakura Club ( Japanese name, spelled in Latin letters). A terrible, decadent place. Un Hui sings a sad old song and has to beg for coins after she is finished while a jazz theme kicks in, turning the patrons wild. She is the pure, poor Korean while the people getting into a jazz dance frenzy are clearly shown as perverted. Han walks in and after a sad reunion, he takes her outside. She tells him about the depravity of the place; both have tears running down their cheeks. The club owner shows up with thugs in tow. They look exactly like the thugs in Japanese movies of the time, in dress, longish hairstyles and general manner. They beat Han up and have him handcuffed by a policeman. After a sad sayonara, Un Hui is led back into the club. Once Han is out of prison and back in the home village, he confronts the landlord at the beach. Their argument turns violent, the landlord pulls a knife, and one of Han’s sons kills him by crashing a rock on his head. Han and his two eldest sons flee to the North by boat. Meanwhile, Un Hui gets locked up in a room and is threatened with punishment by the club owner. She escapes via the roof, then gets chased through the red light district by the Sakura thugs. Running through dark muddy streets, she is hit by a truck. Being crippled now and thus useless as a singer, Un Hui makes her way back to her fishing village on crutches … only to discover that her mother is close to dying while the younger kids look for food in the garbage. The film ends with ecstatic scenes of a blossoming Pyongyang: construction, welding, happy students, happy children, happiness everywhere. Sad Kum Hui walks through it all, thinking of her poor sister in the South. But the happiness of Pyongyang consoles her. Finally, she arrives at the brand new giant Kim Il Sung statue on Mansudae Hill (built in 1972), which everyone else is also drawn to, like to a magnet. Final images: pictures of the DMZ and an off-screen narrator’s speech calling for unification. The partition of Korea was felt as a deep emotional burden by most Koreans at the time, a time when many on both sides were still mourning the separation from close friends and family who remained on the other side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Thus, the film easily tapped into deep emotions among the audience. Most people in the North believed the daily propaganda that life in the South was an almost unbearable disgrace. Poverty, greed, old feudal social structures, remnants of the Japanese occupation, a general subjugation under the rules of the new American colonizers … all evils could be found in the South, according to the daily propaganda grind. The powerful images of the film, however, surpassed the daily grind by far. Here was a work that showed the North (especially in the final scenes) as a frenzied paradise of love and passion for the leader, a place with almost an orgy of happiness taking place. Certainly

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a cinematic fantasy but the images are powerful and energetic enough to carry the viewer with them. That the South was portrayed in an equally orgiastic tone, with its wild jazz clubs, stylish thugs and alluring dirty, dangerous alleyways, was probably only perceivable to viewers from “decadent” capitalist countries. For Northern audiences, the message that life in the South means nothing but suffering was made absolutely clear. Northern audiences also didn’t know that South Korea began to surpass the North at just that time in economic terms. It is even possible that the South’s economic success (of which the Northern leadership was well aware) inspired the making of the movie: to counter any possible rumors in the population that life in the South was getting better than life in the North.

Unknown Heroes In 1970s Eastern Europe, two politically charged adventure series became immensely popular: the East German espionage/counter espionage adventure TV series Das Unsichtbare Visier (The Invisible Crosshairs, 1973–1979, 16 parts) and the Czechoslovakian (political) crime detective TV series Trˇ icet prˇ ípadu° majora Zemana (The Thirty Cases of Major Zeman, 1974–1979, 30 parts). Both dealt in international intrigue and shadowy secret service games, spread the correct socialist gospel and featured smart, fearless and good looking heroes (Armin Müller-Stahl in the East German series, Vladimír Brabec as Major Jan Zeman in the Czchoslovakian series). Both series were magnets for viewers across the Eastern bloc. Kim Jong Il might well have been directly inspired by these Eastern European productions when he ordered the making of the North Korean 20-part movie series Unknown Heroes (also known as Unsung Heroes and Nameless Heroes, 1978–1981). The timing is conspicuous — the North Korean series began right after the Eastern European series had fully proven their potential. The basic concept of adventurous espionage action set against a background of recent history and based on certain real events is also identical in all three series. Unknown Heroes (directed by Ryo Ho Son, Ko Hak Rim, Kim Gwan Dok and Chang Yong Bok, written by Li Jin U) aimed high. Weaving real events having taken place during the Korean War with a fictitious plot, the series went on to tell an epic tale of international conspiracies zigzagging across continents. Yu Rim (played by Kim Ryong U.S. Army defector Jerry Wayne Parrish as North Rin), a Korean reporter for a British Korea–supporting British officer Louis London in paper with a background of studies in Unknown Heroes. (Parrish is credited with his Cambridge and training as a North Korean name: Kim Yu Il.)

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Korean spy, arrives in Seoul in 1952 on the orders of Kim Il Sung. The Korean War is still raging at the time, though it has been mainly reduced to trench fighting along the 38th Parallel. The armistice talks are already going on but Kim Il Sung needs to know what is really going on behind the scenes in Seoul — both inside the South Korean Command and among the U.S.-led United Nations forces allied to South Korea. As a reporter, Yu Rim is also instructed to write texts for his London newspaper aimed at creating problems between the U.N. allies. Once in Seoul, Yu Rim immediately meets up with various old contacts he has from his student days as well as from his service as a POW camp guard with the Japanese Army during World War II. He soon worms his way into the centers of the various competing factions within the South Korean and U.N. forces. Everyone is tricking everyone else, everyone is trying to shore up his own positions at all costs. Spies and double-agents of all stripes abound — as in any espionage thriller. Early in the film, while still building up his contacts, Yu Rim is shocked to meet his college-day love interest Kim Son Hui (played by Kim Jong Hwa) accompanying U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps Commander Klaus. She has a high position within the corps. A few installments later, however, it is revealed that she is in fact the North Korean agent “Diamond,” and that Yu Rim and she have the order from Pyongyang to work together. Naturally, this development doesn’t turn the relationship between them into anything like a love story. They remain strictly comrades in arms. The plot of the series is convoluted. Its central part, however, revolves around a planned coup d’état by a General Shin Lee who considers President Rhee Syng-man as too old and weak to fight forcefully enough against the North. With American backing, Shin is ready to realize his plot but Yu Rim arranges his betrayal to Rhee. Shin commits suicide. This won’t stop the war but a potential hardcore adversary of the North has been eliminated. Yu Rim also gathers a great deal of American battle plans and transmits them to the North, thus causing massive losses to American troops which eventually force the Americans to agree to the Panmunjom Truce Treaty of 1953. Some of the film series’ characters and plot points are based on actual persons and events but altered to fit the plot. The main story of Yu Rim, the master spy, is fiction. Although the plot features a large variety of locations (besides Seoul the story is set in Hong Kong, England and Italy), all shooting was done at the Korean Film Studio near Pyongyang. The locations look accordingly unconvincing, as do the uniforms of the U.N. forces and the military hardware used by them. But this is generally the case in North Korean movies. Eventually, actual intelligence reality sets in on a very different level than the one relayed through the plot. Despite being widely broadcast in China in 1982, analysts at the U.S. Department of Defense admitted to having obtained a copy of the film only in 1996. They then publicly identified one character, Dr. Kelton, the sinister “mastermind of the Korean War,” as being played by none other than U.S. Army Sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins. Jenkins had been on patrol duty on the DMZ when he defected to the North in 1965. Since his defection, there had been no contact to him, no report about him at all. It was not known if he stayed in North Korea voluntarily or if he was held hostage. At the time of the film’s production, there were four American military defectors living in North Korea, all of them having gone north in the early 1960s. All four of them acted

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U.S. Army defector Charles Robert Jenkins attends a funeral in his role as Dr. Kelton, the mastermind of the Korean War (center, with glasses) in Unknown Heroes.

in the Unknown Heroes movie series, as later confirmed by Jenkins in his book The Reluctant Communist (University of California Press, 2008). According to Jenkins, Jerry Wayne Parrish played Louis, a low-level Irish-British officer who through Yu Rim’s indoctrination turned into a Communist collaborator and Northern spy. Larry Allen Abshier played Carl, a U.S. secret service captain. James Joseph Dresnok, the only one of the four defectors still alive and still living in Pyongyang at the time of this writing, went on screen only in episode 14 to play a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel named Arthur.13 All four of them were credited in the movie with the Korean names given to them by the Northern authorities after their defection. Parrish, for example, is credited in the movie as Kim Yu Il. Proving the popularity of the Unknown Heroes series, Jenkins writes in his book: “After that first movie, sometimes I would be walking down the street and someone would yell, all excited and happy, ‘Kelton Bac-Sa [Dr. Kelton]! Kelton Bac-Sa!’ Regular North Koreans would sometimes ask for my autograph.” For Parrish, it was even more extreme. His character, Lt. Louis London, wound up turning against the British and joining the North Korean cause, so average North Koreans would not just approach him but would treat him like he was a genuine communist hero.”14

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Kim Jong Il apparently considered the film series a success. Unknown Heroes received the Kim Il Sung Prize, marking it as outstanding by North Korean standards.

The Star of Korea Following the release of the nationalistic-historical “Immortal Classic” An Jung Gun Shoots Ito Hirobumi in 1979, the Korean Film Studio approached an even more ambitious project: an eight-part epic detailing the early revolutionary activities of Great Leader Kim Il Sung. Started in 1980, The Star of Korea directed by Om Gil Son, the director of An Jung Gung Shoots Ito Hirobumi, was penned by Li Jong Sun. The final installment of the series was released in 1987. Its theme song was also called “The Star of Korea.” KCNA reports: The Star of Korea is the first revolutionary hymn created in Korea in praise of President Kim Il Sung. It was written and composed by Kim Hyok, a revolutionary poet, in Juche 17 (1928) when the anti–Japanese revolutionary struggle was in its early period. The song reflects the deep reverence of young revolutionaries and other Korean people for Kim Il Sung, who started revolutionary activities for national liberation in his early years, as the sun of the nation and the centre of unity. With the approach of the 6th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea, the song was known to the public. At that time, the feature film The Star of Korea was released and the song was widely introduced by mass media.15

A “revolutionary hymn” had been created in praise of Kim Il Sung in 1928? When Kim was 16 years old? But it became only widely known to the public at the time of the 6th Party Congress in October 1980? At exactly the same time when part one of the movie was released? If KCNA says so, the average North Korean is obliged to believe it. The alleged early revolutionary exploits of the leader were familiar to all North Koreans — they all had learned about them in school and during endless propaganda lectures. Yet this film series was indeed exceptional. It is the extremely rare example of a film in which an actor is portraying Kim Il Sung. While Kim Il Sung’s real face has been shown in countless documentaries, in fiction films it is usually, if at all, just shown in the form of short documentary clips or photo images. In The Star of Korea, howThe Star of Korea. Revolution and guitars — a perfect ever, we can follow the developcombination, even in the early days of Kim Il Sung.

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ments that lead Kim Sung Chu (the real name of Kim Il Sung, used by him until about 1935) to become a powerful guerrilla commander. In the film, he is only referred to under his birth name. The actor playing Kim is not named in the credits and is said to have undergone plastic surgery in order to look exactly like the young Kim. He’s also said to have not been allowed to appear in any other film again. The Star of Korea spans the years from 1926, when Kim Il Sung allegedly organized his anti–Japanese “Down-with-Imperialism Union” as a middle school boy, to 1932, when he supposedly formed his guerrilla group in Manchuria. The film starts out with a young Korean revolutionary named Kim Hyok (the same who allegedly wrote the “revolutionary anthem”) in Seoul who gets sick of the infighting among the various nationalist factions and therefore heads to China. In Shanghai, he hears about a communist activist named Cha Gwan Su in the Chinese/Korean border town Jilin. Jilin was, of course, the town where the real Kim Sung Chu (aka Kim Il Sung) went to middle school from 1927 to 1930. There, the anti–Japanese revolutionary activities are the strongest. Kim Hyok goes to Jilin and is impressed by the briskness of the action there. He meets young Kim Sung Chu and joins his rebel group. Soon after writing his “revolutionary anthem” praising Kim, he is killed by the enemy. The plot continues without him. Japanese spies move in, searching for Kim Sung Chu. They are successfully fought off by Comrade Cha Gwan Su. The rebels retreat to the mountains, fighting off rival factions and Japanese units. Kim Sung Chu thus earns the admiration of Commander Wei of the Chinese nationalist anti– Japanese brigades. On April 25, 1932, the “Korean People’s Revolutionary Army” is finally founded, the imaginary Kim Il Sung army ever present in North Korean movies about the time though it was actually just a small guerrilla unit under the control of the Chinese communists. According to Shin Sang-ok, Kim Jong Il himself said about the film: “Star of Joseon [= The Star of Korea] is history. It is suitable for those who have difficult time reading history, but it is not art. It is history.”16 This judgment, made in 1983, did not stop Kim from permitting the continuation of the series which was completed only in 1987. It revealed the deep dissatisfaction of Kim Jong Il with the developments in his film industry: a decade had passed since the publication of his book, a decade had passed since the production of his so far definitely best film Flower Girl, but instead of evolving onto higher ground, the industry had become mired in filling screen time with excessively long, uninspired pseudo-historical accounts. Movies like The Star of Korea certainly delivered ideologically correct versions of the past and the public ate them up for lack of choice. Exciting, energetic movies they were not. But more of the same was to come.

Wolmi Island The turning point of the Korean War was the Incheon Landing of the American forces in September 1950. The North had conquered much of South Korea in a fast advance. Only

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Wolmi Island. The heroes (including Choe Sang Su, right) relax between the battles.

a small area around the Southern port city Busan was held by South Korean and American forces when, under the direction of Douglas MacArthur, the U.S.-led U.N. troops attacked and quickly captured the Western port city of Incheon, only twenty kilometers from Seoul. After this landing, the North Koreans were quickly pushed back all the way up North to the Chinese border. They were essentially squashed and could re-group and re-advance down to the 38th parallel only once the Chinese sent their so-called “volunteer” army in. Script writer Li Jin U, who had penned Unknown Heroes, was ordered to rewrite this moment of utterly devastating humiliation into an uplifting tale of glory, endurance and eventually (at least) a moral victory. The result was the film Wolmi Island, directed by Cho Gyong Sun and released in 1982. In real life, the city of Incheon had been a South Korean city before the Korean War and it is a South Korean city today, home to South Korea’s largest and by far busiest international airport. Wolmi Island is a small island right in front of downtown Incheon and Incheon harbor, connected to the mainland via a bridge. It took the Americans all of one morning on September 15, 1950, to take it, with a minimal loss of 14 men. These were, of course, facts to be left out of Li Jin U’s script. He, and thus the film, tries to tell a very different story. His angle is this: “In September 1950, 50,000 U.S. imperialist troops led by the warmonger MacArthur carry out landing operations at Inchon. Men

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Wolmi Island: An American invader gets caught.

of the coast battery commanded by Li Tae Un fight the enemy. This turns Wolmi Island into a cauldron of fire. Men of the coast battery commended by Li Tae Un fight the enemy with only four guns and the strength of one company. They check the enemy’s landing for three days by displaying unexcelled bravery, mass heroism and a high degree of self-sacrificing spirit. This is a feat never known in war history…. They are fully aware that the motherland means immediately the leader and that to die for the motherland is to live most honorably and admirably.”17 The official North Korean announcement is pure hyperbole. Instead of the advertised action-filled battle epic, the film is a slow, talky turkey. The movie begins with Li Tae Un and his men sighting an armada of airplanes. When bombs fall and the American warships arrive at the horizon, Li gets the order from high command to hold out for three days so that the troops inland can regroup. After their first attack, the American planes take a rest and give Li and his men time for much talk — and even singing. Then, the American gunboats begin to fire at the coastal fortification. This doesn’t stop their cook from going out to catch fish in the middle of the bombardment. The fish he takes out of the water had been killed by the explosions, he explains, thus murdered by the imperialists. Meanwhile, the four coastal artillery pieces sink scores of enemy ships. They retreat and give the men at the base more time to talk and sing. At night, a small American advance squad lands near the base in inflatable boats. Li and his men beat them back quickly, capturing one American. Unshaven for days, his hair disheveled, he looks like the typical baddy in North Korean films. He is played by a tall white guy with a heavy Italian accent. After a short interrogation in English, he is locked away in what looks like a storage room.

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In the morning, another American attack. Many of their ships are sunk, they retreat. The rest of the day is spent talking. The following night, about four or five of Li’s men set out in small boats on a suicide mission. Some of their boats are sunk but they swim with a mine to the closest American ship and blow it up, killing themselves in the process. The captured American observes the action and writes in his notebook: “The war cannot be won, you can’t win against people like this.” More coastal battles take place, always resulting in scores of sunken enemy ships. Finally, the North Korean base is engulfed in fire, waves crash against the shore. The film ends with the written caption, “They fought up to their last man.” Many battles take place during the course of the movie. They are always, with the exception of the final images, very brief, look generally all the same and are very poorly executed. There is no thrill in them at all. Things like the fishing during one of the battles don’t help to make them more exciting. The long lulls between the fighting scenes, filled with patriotic dialogue and songs, prevent any dramatic development, eventually turning the film into a slow-moving bore. A high-profile production this certainly was, made with the active support of the North Korean air force (the fighter planes on screen are real planes) and it definitely hammered home the usual points about reverence for the Leader, love for the motherland and self-sacrifice as a noble concept of life. A great movie it was not.

The Tale of Chun Hyang Kim Jong Il and the leading men in his film industry knew that flooding the country’s theaters with always the same and more of the same shoddily produced tales dealing with recent history could not go on endlessly. Eventually, at some point, the audience would be so fed up that they would lose all interest — which would pose a grave danger for the continuous dissemination of propaganda. The audience had to be served something more appealing than the daily ration of the same old tough political chew. The solution was to revive the historical costume drama, a genre that had been abandoned in the mid–1960s, shortly after the production of The Tale of Hung Pu (1963). Thus, in 1980, The Tale of Chun Hyang (directed by Yu Won Jun and Yun Ryong Gyu, written by Paek In Jun and Kim Sung Gu) was released in a first effort to broaden the scope of North Korean cinema again. Originally, The Tale of Chun Hyang was one of the most famous medieval pansori — very long traditional ballads sung on stage by a soloist accompanied by a drummer. The tale had been filmed many times already — starting out as the second Korean silent film (1923), then as the first Korean sound film in 1935 and then many times over in South Korea. There also had been a North Korean version of the tale before, made in 1959 (directed by Yun Ryong Gyu).18 The story the legendary tale tells is rather simple. Chun Hyang is the beautiful daughter of a kisaeng, a Korean geisha. She lives with her mother; her father has moved away and died. One day, she falls in love with Mong Ryong, the son of a wealthy aristocrat. Mong Ryong’s father doesn’t approve of the relationship between the two because of her lower class status. The lovers marry secretly but can’t make their liaison public.

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Love and happiness between Choe Sun Kyu (left) and Kim Yong Suk in The Tale of Chun Hyang.

One day, Mong Ryong is sent to the capital to train as a government official. Chun Hyang stays with her mother, waiting for Mong Ryong’s return. A new governor takes over the province. Struck by Chun Hyang’s beauty, he tries to make her his mistress. When she refuses, he throws her in jail. After repeated rejection, the governor orders her executed. Just in time, Mong Ryong returns from the capital as an undercover investigator sent by the government to root out corrupt officials. He rescues Chun Hyang in the last minute, punishes the governor and officially marries her in a great ceremony. While this basic story stayed the same in all the various filmic realizations, the different scenario writers and movie directors put their own emphasis on the details, found their own ways interpreting what was essentially a grand love story. In the 1980 North Korean version, the basic tale was unchanged as well. The film focuses on class relations in the feudal times … and yet upper class scion Mong Ryong comes off as the good guy, the hero. Here, Chun Hyang is seen as a hard working young girl, ceaselessly weaving cloth to support her aging mother. The conflict between Mong Ryong and his aristocrat father is given a fair amount of play. The new governor taking over the province is not only an evil, leering bastard, but he also sends out his tax collector henchmen to rob the villagers of all their rice and grain. When Mong Ryong returns and punishes him, the people are freed from a greedy feudal oppressor. Mong Ryong acts thus as a sort of an agent of revolutionary justice — even though he is himself the privileged son of an aristocrat. His heart is with the people.

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The poor girl (Kim Yong Suk) imprisoned in The Tale of Chun Hyang. The scene resembles Japanese bondage movies.

His love story with Chun Hyang is portrayed as very chaste. There are no kisses and no sexual situations. But there is much wailing regarding the filial duty Chun Hyang has towards her secret husband Mong Ryong when the governor goes after her and has the poor girl thrown in prison. By all accounts, the film was an incredible success with North Korean audiences. Something new and different finally! No overt political preaching! Best of all — a love story! Love stories did not take place in North Korean movies at all up to this point. Though there were many women involved in often important positions in almost all North Korean films up to that time, their roles were very different. They had been mothers, wives, comrades, even war heroes, but never lovers. Chun Hyang was clearly a lover, no matter the emphasis on her lower class standing. She was very beautiful, too, and all the more beautiful when she sat sadly in her prison cell, her long black hair open while she has a wicked board fixed around her neck to keep her from moving. The scene looked like it was straight out of a Japanese erotic bondage movie (though that was something Northern audiences certainly did not realize). Finally, people could see raw emotions on screen! Fantastical images of love, life and suffering and a final happy release. Seeing the movie meant to delve into a fantastic world… This may have been the exact reason why The Tale of Chun Hyang was not followed up with similar pictures in the following years. Politics and general propaganda purposes called for another kind of movie … the likes of Wolmi Island.

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Kim Jong Il certainly understood the message the theater audiences had sent him by stampeding the movies houses scrambling to see The Tale of Chun Hyang. He knew that he couldn’t continue running North Korean cinema the way he used to and that his book didn’t make a difference on the way movies were made. He fully understood that his writers and directors, trained in North Korea, were never being able to deliver what he envisioned to be his brand of world-class North Korean cinema. But he had a secret trump card up his sleeve already: a famous South Korean director currently being held in a cell in a Northern prison camp, as well as the wife of that director, held under guard in a guest house. Once he brought them totally on his side, there was a strong chance that he would finally be able to realize his vision of what North Korean cinema ought to be.

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Shin Sang-ok Active in North Korea (1983 –1986) The trump card Kim Jong Il had hidden in one of his prison camps was Shin Sangok. Shin had been an extremely prolific South Korean movie director and producer and was truly an international film director, having already worked within or closely collaborated with the film industries of Hong Kong and Japan, among others. He had displayed the ability to successfully adapt quickly to all those different settings. The perfect man for Kim Jong Il … or so he may have thought.

Shin Sang-ok’s Pre–North Korea Career Shin Sang-ok was born in 1926 in Chongjin, a city located in what is now the very far northeast of North Korea. A film fan from his childhood days, he spent much of his early youth in the local theaters, growing especially fond of early Korean directors like Na Un-kyu, who had shot the Korean nationalist masterpiece Arirang (released in 1936). Foreign films were another area of fascination. Shin later mentioned Charlie Chaplin as an especially strong influence. In 1944, he went to study painting at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts. At the university, he watched a large number of movies and was particularly struck by French surrealist films. In April 1945, during the Tokyo Fire Storm American bombing campaign of World War II, he returned to Seoul, where his family had by then relocated. Seoul became the capital of South Korea after the Japanese withdrawal in August 1945. Soon after the end of the war, Shin became an assistant production designer for the first film production in post-war Korea, Viva Freedom! The film, directed by Choi In-kyu and released in 1946, tells the story of an anti–Japanese resistance fighter towards the very end of the colonial period. Interestingly, director Choi In-kyu had been very active in making pro–Japanese propaganda movies until right before the Japanese surrender. It was very common at the time for Korean intellectuals and film directors to instantly switch from strongly defending Japanese colonial politics to radical Korean nationalism. However, it was known that Choi would go to any lengths in order to be able to make films. Choi became a mentor for Shin, employing him in the making of his following productions and teaching him the basics of the art of film directing. Tired of living in cramped quarters with his family, Shin left home and lived for a few 72

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months with a prostitute who catered to American soldiers. This experience helped him a lot, as he later said, in realizing his first film. She also supplied a good part of the budget for the film. The Evil Night tells a story centered on a prostitute and was based on the short novel Ag ya (which is also the original Korean name of the film), written by Kim Gwang-ju. The film was released in 1952 and had been completed under great difficulties in the midst of the Korean War. One actress playing a minor role in The Evil Night was a certain Choi Eunhee. In 1954, while making the semi-documentary Korea, Shin became closer acquainted with Choi Eun-hee, who was acting in this film as well, and soon after married her. From then on, Choi acted in almost every movie Shin ever Shin Sang-ok (right) and Choi Eun-hee at the Pusan directed. His career took off from Film Festival in Busan, South Korea, in 2001 (photothere. Soon, he was very busy as graph by Christian Karl). director and producer. Shin was not shy when it came to who he was collaborating with. In 1959, he was asked by the government to make a propaganda movie for the re-election campaign of Rhee Syng-man, the dictatorial American-appointed ruler of South Korea from 1945. The film concentrated on anti–Japanese activities in Rhee’s youth and was titled Rhee Syng-man and the Independence Movement. According to the book Korean Film Directors: Shin Sang-ok, by Yi Hyo-in, “Production duties were handled by the anti-communist youth brigade of Im Hwa-su, famous as a political thug, while Chief Bodyguard Gwak Yeong-ju of the Blue House [presidential palace] provided support behind the scenes. Virtually, all people in film were mobilized for the making of this project, which generated a lot of discussion, and during the making of it the popular actor Kim Hui-gap was struck while standing up to Im Hwa-su, resulting in a fractured rib.”1 Rhee Syng-man won the 1960 election but was soon after run out of the Blue House by a popular uprising. He fled the country. Nonetheless, the Rhee movie helped Shin a great deal in his career. In 1960, he was able to establish his own film production company, Shin Film. In 1961, Park Chung-hee succeeded in taking over the presidency of South Korea in a coup d’état. He became a powerful dictator who mercilessly crushed his enemies but at the same time rapidly built up the

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economy. The later economic success of South Korea became possible because of Park’s rigid policies. Like many dictators, Park was a fan of the movies. He was especially moved by Shin Sang-ok’s Evergreen Tree (1961), a drama set in the Japanese colonial times. As a result, Shin and Park grew very close. Shin went to the Blue House with every new film he produced and did special screenings for Park. Shin produced films in rapid succession. Many of them he didn’t direct himself. As head of Shin Films, he hired directors to realize the works though he generally closely supervised all productions. In 1967, Shin took over a largely abandoned film lot in the Seoul suburb of Anhyang. Shin had used it for previous productions but now it became fully his. It was the start of him releasing films in an industrial mass production manner. At the Anhyang lot, more than 30 directors worked for him as well as more than 250 hired employees. To train future talent, Shin opened the Anhyang Academy of Cinema. Shin Film became by far the biggest studio in South Korea at the time. Shin worked in many genres. From historic epics to war movies, from melodramas to gritty social realism, Shin left his marks in all directions. If necessary, he even made movies directly propagating Park Chung-hee’s politics. With his film Rice (1963), for example, Shin volunteered to advertise Park’s policies of agricultural modernization. Shin always stayed abreast with the developments in international cinema. He worked with the newest technology available and was strongly influenced by the new editing techniques now becoming the norm overseas. He also injected as much eroticism into his works as possible. Depictions of overt eroticism were strictly prohibited under Park, but Shin relentlessly pushed the envelope. It was this penchant for erotic scenes, along with Shin Film constantly losing money due to the limits of domestic distribution and last but certainly not least, because of Shin’s open contempt for the film censorship of the Park administration, that eventually led to Shin’s downfall. In the 1970s, Park Chung-hee became increasingly paranoid and his rules became stricter and stricter, leading to the erosion of the once close relationship between Park and Shin. Park’s rigorous conservative morals also clashed with Shin’s scandalous and very public love life. By the mid–1970s, Shin had openly started a liaison with a famous actress, leading to a separation from Choi Eun-hee. In November 1975, Shin’s inclusion of two censored scenes in the trailer for Rose and Wild Dog, as well as his announcement to make a movie about the kidnapping of dissident (and later president) Kim Dae-jung by Park Chung-hee’s secret service from exile in Japan, caused the South Korean government to finally revoke Shin Film’s certificate. It was a major blow for Shin. Yi Hyo-in quotes him as saying: “[I] ran around for three years requesting that the permit for Shin Film be reinstated, but there was nowhere to turn. Those three years when I was forcibly kept away from film represented the most difficult, frustrating and unbearable period of my life.”2 The three years Shin is referring to are the years from 1975 to 1978. In this time, he did actually realize a few films with other Korean companies, such as the 1976 women-inprison sexploiter Revenge in the Tiger Cage, about a female concentration camp in Manchuria

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in the 1930s. Soon after wrapping up production, he suddenly found himself in … North Korea.

Shin and Choi Arrive in North Korea In January 1978, Choi Eun-hee, by now Shin Sang-ok’s estranged wife, suddenly disappeared from Hong Kong. In July of the same year, Shin also went missing there. We will not know the exact details of what happened then until the North Korean secret police archives are open to the public — which might take a while. If we believe what Shin Sang-ok said about the events later (after having defected from North Korea in 1986), they were both kidnapped by the North Koreans and taken to Pyongyang. “As soon as the car door shut, someone suddenly put a sack over my head, and I couldn’t see anything or even breathe properly,” Shin told the BBC World Service’s The World Today program. “Then they sprayed something inside the sack, and I started to lose consciousness. A short while later I was being loaded onto a big ship, having been wrapped in some kind of plastic sheeting.”3 Shin continued the story by saying that in December 1978, he tried to escape North Korea but got arrested. Upon being released by a special amnesty in early 1979, he tried to flee again. This netted him a stay in a concentration camp for the next 4 years, during which time he was tortured. Upon his release in 1983, Shin feigned a conversion to the Northern ideology and was allowed to reunite with Choi Eun-hee and to re-establish Shin Film in North Korea. But should we believe Shin? Japanese film critic and early friend of Shin Sang-ok, Tetsuo Nishida, tells us not to in his book Kyokoo no Eizoo (Fictional Image).4 He says that Shin Sang-ok told him various times before disappearing from Hong Kong that he had gotten an offer from North Korea to make movies there freely — and that he considered going there voluntarily. Given that he was severely at odds with the South Korean government and couldn’t work in the South anymore, it certainly made sense for him to consider such an opportunity. The only thing certain at this point is that both ended up in North Korea: Choi in the comfortable isolation of a guarded guesthouse, Shin in prison for his escape attempts. Neither of them knew about the other also being in the country. They were reunited during a big banquet by Kim Jong Il himself and immediately (and on Kim’s order) became a couple again. In October 1983, Kim Jong Il invited Shin and Choi to his office and told them what he thought of the North Korean film industry. Choi secretly taped Kim’s ranting monologue. Suk-Young Kim quotes Kim Jong Il from the recording in her book Illusive Utopia: “We send our people to East Germany to study editing, to Czechoslovakia to study technology, and to the Soviet Union to learn directing. Other than that, we cannot send our people to anywhere since they are enemy states…. I acknowledge that we lag behind in filmmaking techniques. We have to know that we are lagging behind and make efforts to raise a new generation of filmmakers.”5 Kim further declared that he cast his highest expectations in Shin and Choi. They were to help him create a truly impressive North Korean cinema able to compete on an international level.

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Shin Sang-ok received permission to open his own film company, named Shin Film, just like the one he used to run in Anhyang, and he received a huge area outside of Pyongyang to build his studio and sets. For the next three years, Shin went into extreme artistic overdrive. His working conditions in Pyongyang were extraordinary. Money, actors, extras, technology: nothing was in short supply as Kim Jong Il delivered everything Shin requested. Shooting on locations in Eastern Europe? No problem. Inviting foreign specialists to work on his movies? No problem. Shin soon operated like in the best days of running Anhyang. The projects he felt closest to he directed by himself, otherwise he chose directors to realize movies but supervised what they were doing. It was mass film production again, the kind of industrialized film work he liked best.

Shin Sang-ok’s North Korean Films Kim Jong Il did not want Shin to make propaganda movies in the regular mold. He wanted him to raise the status of North Korean cinema internationally. This would in turn give the domestic audience pride in the national film industry and let them experience what progress North Korea was making in terms of international respect. This would also set an example for other North Korean directors.

An Emissary of No Return Thus, Shin chose a European setting for his first North Korean film with plenty of European actors and extras, a first in North Korean cinema. The story was a thoroughly Korean one. An Emissary of No Return (1984) was based on a stage play called Bloody Conference, allegedly written by the Great Leader Kim Il Sung himself. The film purports to tell the story of Ri Jun, one of three Korean emissaries at the “Second The Hague International Peace Conference” in 1907, at which the emissaries of the Korean emperor tried to convince the international community to help reversing the Hirobúmi Ito–drawn Japanese-Korean Protective Treaty of 1905 which essentially subjugated Korea under Japanese leadership. In the film, Ri Jun, one of the emissaries, delivers a long, passionate speech at the conference and finally, frustrated that he can’t win support from the Western powers, commits hara-kiri in front of the shocked diplomats. In fact, many Koreans, even in South Korea today, believe in the myth of that desperate hara-kiri having actually taken place. Just that it didn’t. What is true is that the three emissaries went to the conference and did some lobby work for the Korean emperor. They worked behind the scenes without success and didn’t do any big speeches at all. No harakiri was committed. One of the emissaries, Ri Jun, died of illness and perhaps exhaustion during his stay in The Hague. Soon after, the dramatic myth of the disemboweling in front of the diplomats spread in Korea. Did Shin know the true story? Maybe — but it would certainly not make for a thrilling movie. The myth was so much better and Kim Il Sung had written a play about it. Kim Il Sung’s every word was holy and not to be questioned in any way.

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This was the first North Korean film that had shooting locations abroad. Not in Holland, of course (Shin couldn’t go that far and use a Western location) but at the Barrandov Film Studio in Czechoslovakia. This gave the film a real European flair. The film opens with stock footage of the actual The Hague but then switches to old buildings in Prague to fill in for the Dutch city. That might look strange to audiences with knowledge of European architecture but it certainly didn’t bother anyone in North Korea. The massive use of Western actors and extras made an even greater impression. Hitherto, most Western characters in North Korean cinema had been played by blond-dyed Koreans. Now, hundreds of real Western faces were assembled on screen. That they all spoke in Korean, even to each other, wasn’t any bother either. Everyone knew that all the foreign voices were dubbed. Even to Kim Jong Il, the film looked convincingly European and for that he praised it. Still, Shin himself was not quite happy with the film and thought he could have done better. Thus, he gave the directing credits to Choi Eun-hee. The Karlovy Vary Film Festival in 1984 awarded Choi with the Special Jury Prize as Best Director. Subsequently, the film was released not only in the countries of the Eastern Bloc but also, on a limited scale, in Japan. The 1984 Karlovy Vary Film Festival also had another and much more important impact than the success of the film itself. It was here that Shin Sang-ok announced to the international press that he went voluntarily to North Korea, alongside Choi Eun-hee, and that the South Korean newspapers who had claimed that he had been kidnapped were lying.

Love, Love, My Love Shin’s next film was a new take on an ancient Korean tale which had already been filmed many times in pre-war times as well as in South Korea, The Tale of Chun Hyang. The story had also been turned into a domestically very successful North Korean movie in 1980 by Yu Won Jun and Yun Ryong Gyu, under the title The Tale of Chun Hyang (see previous chapter; a description of the basic story can also be found there). Shin Sang-ok himself had also already made a film based on the legend, Song Chun-hyang. It was released by Shin Film in 1961 and starred Choi Eun-hee as Chun Hyang. Compared to the 1980 North Korean film based on the same story, Shin chose a rather risqué approach. First of all, for his new 1984 version of the tale, Shin chose the audacious title Love, Love, My Love. To foreign ears, the word “love” might sound innocuous enough. Not to North Korean ones. There simply was no concept of interpersonal love in North Korean ideology. Everyone had to love the Great Leader and he loved everyone in the nation. That was enough love already. There was no space for any other people loving each other. “Love” as part of a movie title? That was unheard of. Though the 1980 North Korean film version of Chun Hyang did clearly show a love story, it went to great lengths to put the focus on filial duty. That was a subject that fit well into the ideology. Shin, however, clearly went for the personal love aspects. He even included (another “first” he introduced into North Korean cinema) an only slightly veiled kiss between the two protagonists. The film was shot as a musical with plenty of singing and dancing. The medieval times

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North Korean video disk cover of Love, Love, My Love, featuring Ri Hak Chol (left) and Jang Son Hui.

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look bucolic here with big village festivals. Yu and Yun had shown back in 1980 in detail how hard Chun Hyang works as a weaver; in Shin’s film, she doesn’t work at all. Choi starred as the kisaeng (geisha) this time, as Chun Hyang’s mother. The whole film was nothing but light entertainment, another first in the recent history of North Korea’s otherwise highly propaganda-driven cinema.

Runaway With Runaway, also made in 1984, Shin ventured full force into classical North Korean propaganda, into the kind of propaganda featured in the “Immortal Classics” like Sea of Blood and Flower Girl. Like those films, he was focusing more on the suffering of poor people in the colonial times than on the glory of Kim Il Sung whose guerrilla troops would again just show up at the very last minute. Runaway is set in the 1920s, the middle of the Japanese colonial period and based on a story by a leftist writer of that time, Choi Suh-hae. Ambitious young Song Ryul and his wife (played by Choi Eun-hee) live in poverty in Korea and have a hard time making ends meet. When a rich cousin offers them a plot of land, they are only too happy to cultivate it together with Song Ryul’s parents. Right before harvest time, the cousin sells the land, including the harvest. Song Ryul and his family are left with nothing. The father protests and is killed by police. Looking for new prospects, the family moves to the Kando area of Manchuria in neighboring China. Kando had been settled by generations of Koreans since about the 1860s; it was a largely lawless area and considered a kind of “Wild West” for Koreans. It was also the area in which Kim Il Sung spent most of his youth and where he was active as a guerrilla fighter. For Song Ryul and his family, things in Kando are not easier than at home. They get robbed, cheated, exploited and every attempt they make to secure a living fails. In short, the film is nothing but a long list of sufferings, one defeat hitting Song Ryul after the other. When finally a pack of rabid dogs attacks his mother, and the local pharmacy owner refuses to give him medicine without immediate payment, Song Ryul snaps. He packs an axe and smashes the pharmacy into pieces, eventually setting it on fire, all filmed in slow motion. He gets arrested and is sent off to prison by train. Kim Il Sung’s troops attack the train and free the prisoners. Song Ryul joins the Kim Il Sung group. With the guerrilla, he later returns to the train tracks and blows up a Japanese army train. This explosion is the final image of the film, stopping mid-way in a freeze frame and remaining on the screen for an extended time before the titles roll. According to Shin, as quoted by Suk-Young Kim in Illusive Utopia, Shin had asked the authorities for a real train carriage to be blown up for this scene as he didn’t have the means to create adequate special effects. To his amazement, he received the permission and the train plus dynamite without any ado.6 Kim Jong Il and, by extension, the North Korean authorities, would do anything to further the impact of Shin’s films. According to Suk-Young Kim, Shin called the filming of this explosion the highest point in his entire directing career. How many directors get the chance to blow up a real train after all? It must have been a very unique experience.7

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Salt His next personally directed film, Salt (1985), was in a very similar vein. Again, the story is set in Kando, though this time in the 1930s when public order had further deteriorated and open warfare took place between the Japanese occupation forces, communist fighters and ragtag Chinese bandit units. While in Runaway, Choi Eun-hee had excelled in a powerful role as Song-Ryul’s wife, she is now put in the center as the otherwise unnamed mother of a family consisting of her husband, her son Pong Shik and a young daughter. The story, based on a novel by 1930s leftist writer Kang Gyon-he, starts out showing the family living a relatively comfortable life. They have food, own a house and don’t care about politics. One day, they hide a wealthy Korean Chinese merchant from marauding rebels. He promises to be ever grateful for this favor. Then, during a clash between Japanese police and Chinese bandits, the father gets into the crossfire and is killed. Mother believes that he died from a communist bullet. She begins to strongly dislike the communists. Her son, however, is a sympathizer of the communists and when police come to look for him, he runs away but is soon captured. Mother talks the police into releasing her son but implicates his communist girlfriend in the process. She gets arrested. This puts a serious strain on the relationship between mother and son. He runs away to join the communists fighting in the woods and later frees his girlfriend from prison in a daring raid. Mother runs out of funds and seeks help from the Korean Chinese merchant. He provides her with a job as helper in his household. Soon, however, he turns his sexual attention towards her. In an extremely violent and suggestive scene, he rapes her in his pantry. White liquor gushes out of an overturned urn while he pumps into her. Suddenly, a pot falls from a shelf and onto his head, killing him instantly. Mother gets arrested and soon finds out that she is pregnant. She tries to abort the baby by throwing herself down a stairway as well as by eating laundry soap. It doesn’t help. After her release from prison, the baby is born. She tries to strangle it instantly but can’t go through with the murder. She has another mouth to feed from now on. She takes a job as a nursemaid in a wealthy household. Breast-feeding the baby, we see one of her breasts fully exposed — an absolutely unprecedented sight in North Korean cinema. Both her daughter and the newborn die in an unexplained epidemic. Desperate, mother tries to hang herself. A friendly neighbor finds her at the last moment and tells her of the most lucrative if illegal business available: smuggling salt. The Japanese authorities blocked the import of salt into the rebel areas, trying to force them out that way. Much money could be made bringing salt in. Mother joins a smuggler group and carries a heavy load of salt through snowy forests and the perils of a torrential river. Right before reaching their target, the group is attacked by a militia working with the Japanese. Right in that moment, a communist group, presumably part of Kim Il Sung’s forces, counterattacks the militia, saving the smugglers. One pro–Japanese agent who had been with the militia, now lying in the snow fatally wounded, recognizes mother. He confesses to her that it was he who had killed her husband in the shoot-out early in the film.

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It hadn’t been the communists after all, as she had always believed! Mother finally realizes that the communists were actually the ones helping the people and that her son had always been right in his communist activities. She sets out to find and join him. Though the film tells another tale of endless suffering until the main character sees the holy light of Kim Il Sung, Choi’s strong acting makes this an especially powerful film. Even more than in previous films like Flower Girl and Runaway the suffering here looks gritty, raw, realistic … and yes, thoroughly sexualized. Choi’s acting presence combined with the dirtiness, bodily fluids and violence all around her make Salt an extraordinary piece of cinema. It feels like 1970s exploitation meeting socialist-realist art. Which leads to the question: Why does extended and intensive suffering occupy such a central position in North Korean cinema? The suffering always takes place in the times before Kim Il Sung arrived to save the nation or in areas Kim Il Sung and his son haven’t liberated yet (particularly South Korea). Kim Il Sung appears as a messiah who will end all suffering. But right before he arrives, the suffering of the people is the greatest … and all the bigger then is the relief once he is able to directly bestow his endless love on the people. Shin’s film works fully in this context but subverts the message at the same time by letting the suffering appear in a strongly sensational and sexualized manner. Suffering looks almost glamorous in his film. International critics loved Salt and especially the way Choi handled her role: the film won Choi the “Best Actress” award at the Moscow Film Festival.

The Tale of Shim Chong The year 1985 also saw the release of the Shin-directed musical version of a medieval folk legend, The Tale of Shim Chong. It was Shin’s second filmic version of the tale, the first having been released in 1972 in the South. Again, the legend tells a tale of endless suffering and filial piety. A poor blind farmer lives with his beautiful daughter, the mother having died when the girl was an infant. One foolish day, the father walks up to a temple. The monk there tells him that he would be able to cure his blindness if the father could provide him with 300 sacks of rice. The father happily agrees and signs a contract with the monk, only to regret it once he realizes that he has no way of providing the rice. Right at that time, merchant sailors arrive in the vicinity of the village. They had angered the God of the Sea with their stinginess and that god was now demanding from them the sacrifice of a 15-year-old girl to ensure further save passage. Shim Chong hears about it, approaches the sailors and sells herself to them for 300 sacks of rice which are immediately taken to the temple to pay for her father’s contract. Much desperation ensues once the father learns of this but he can’t stop his daughter, a daughter who would do anything for the well-being of her father. She goes onboard the boat and once a storm arises, the sailors throw her into the ocean, causing the waters to immediately calm. Shim Chong doesn’t drown, though. She sinks and sinks until she reaches the palace of the God of the Sea who is already awaiting her, impressed by the strength of her filial duty towards her father. The underwater world is lavish and bizarre and populated by a huge ensemble of

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fantastically dressed dancers. Though all dancers are masked, it is easy to recognize them as Westerners by the way they dance. They move decidedly like a European showgirl troupe which greatly contrasts with the wailing Koreans on land. In this surreal world, Shim Chong meets her long-deceased mother (played by Choi Eun-hee) before she is being put back on land inside a giant floating orchid. Fishermen find the orchid and take it to the young and very kind king. In his palace, Shim Chong steps out of the orchid, the king falls in love and marries her. The girl however has only one thought: her father. He has disappeared from their home village. It turns out that he had fallen in with a bad woman who cheated him out of all the additional money the sailor had paid him on top of the sacks of rice. He is now homeless and helpless. The king offers a feast for all the blind people of the country in order to find him. Eventually, the father is brought to the long-lasting feast, Shim Chong recognizes him and right at that moment his eyesight returns. According to Stephen Chung’s dissertation Sin Sang-ok and Postwar Korean Mass Culture [Chung uses a different spelling of Shin], “In his recollections, Sin underscored the worldliness of the production, pointing out that much of it was filmed at the Munich Bavaria studios and that the special effects team that worked on Neverending Story [Eine unendliche Geschichte, 1984] helped with [Shim Chong].”8 Aside from the elaborate bizarreness of the scene, Shin and Choi’s stay in Munich immediately raises a real-life question: Why didn’t they try to defect there? Munich, West Germany, was a major frontline city during the Cold War, a frontline city on the Western side at that. It should have been easy for Shin and Choi to escape their North Korean guards right there. Instead, they dutifully returned to North Korea.

Pulgasari In 1985, Shin also directed Pulgasari— the film he became most well-known for internationally. Inspired by the ongoing Japanese kaiju (monster movie) series Gojira (Godzilla), Shin went out to make the first North Korean monster movie. Pulgasari tells the story of a farmers’ uprising in medieval Korea. The governor’s soldiers confiscate all iron from the farmers — their tools, their pots and pans. But the farmers can’t make a living without those things. An old blacksmith gets arrested for rebellious activities — he refuses the governor’s order to forge the confiscated metal into swords. Held prisoner in a wooden hut, he sculpts a little figure out of the rice his daughter smuggles in, making a little dragon-style toy with horns on the head. The blacksmith dies in prison and his daughter Ami (played by Jang Son Hui), inherits the figure. While sewing, she pricks her finger, blood drops onto the figure and it becomes alive. Cute in the beginning, it eats all iron available and grows quickly. It’s a huge monster soon. Now named Pulgasari, it is strong as all monsters are and invincible of course. Pulgasari fights with the farmers against the evil authorities and is soon the farmers’ wunderwaffe: nothing can stop him. They fire rockets at him (yes, the Chinese and Koreans used primitive rockets 700 years ago), try to kill him any way they can but Pulgasari remains the undying friend of the farmers — finally smashing the emperor’s palace to ensure victory.

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But Pulgasari, who had been eating the metal weapons of the enemy, now becomes a burden. He eats the farming tools of the people he used to help, their pots and pans. To rescue her village from starvation, Ami hides in a big bell. Pulgasari eats the bell and with it the girl. But he is meant to eat iron, not girls. Upon tasting the blacksmith’s daughter, he explodes. A tiny Pulgasari is running around the debris of the broken monster, then it is hit by a light beam and dissolves. Ami is sleeping in the midst of the rub- Pulgasari: The old blacksmith (Ri Gwon) forms a tiny ble with a tear on her face. The creature, Pulgasari, from his food while in prison. End. What was the message here? The friend of the people becomes their worst enemy in the end? Did Shin dare to imply Kim Il Sung, the savior of the nation, had turned into the enemy of the people?

A grown Pulgasari joins the battle.

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Pulgasari comes to town. Soon, none of the buildings will be left standing.

Another explanation seems to be more likely. North Korea has a long history of films featuring medieval rebellions and all those heroic rebellions are portrayed as having failed. They were doomed to fail because they had no real leader — such a leader would only arrive with the appearance of Kim Il Sung. Seen from this point of view, the ending doesn’t appear so strange at all. A tiny Pulgasari is living on after all, symbolizing the never dying spirit of the people. To be as close to the original Godzilla as he could get, Shin had flown in fifteen technicians and special effects experts from the Toho Studios in Japan, where the real Godzilla movies were being made. The actor wearing the Pulgasari rubber suit, Kenpachiro Satsuma, had destroyed Tokyo several times before as he was the man acting in the Godzilla outfit. He later wrote a book about his experiences in North Korea, called North Korea Seen Through the Eyes of Godzilla.9 Shin Sang-ok escaped from North Korea shortly before finishing the film. His assistant director, Chong Gon Jo, finished the movie and therefore received the official directing credit — on the foreign releases as well. In 1998, Pulgasari was sold to Japan and widely shown in art theaters. Shortly after, it was released on VHS in the U.S. Only through those belated releases did the film become known to international audiences. But it soon acquired cult status and has by now become both the most famous film Shin ever made as well as the internationally most widely watched and appreciated North Korean film.

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Besides the six films briefly discussed above, Shin directed one more film during his North Korean tenure, Breakwater (1985). This film was unfortunately not available for viewing.

North Korean Shin Productions Realized by Other Directors While in North Korea, Shin did not only direct films, he also produced films realized by other directors under his supervision. Altogether, more than 10 films were made this way. Only two of those films were available for viewing for this book, however.

Thousand Miles Along the Railroad Shin himself didn’t direct any film that depicted either the Korean War or contemporary North Korean life. This might have had to do with the fact that Shin knew very little about the life of ordinary people in North Korea. He had been secluded, first in prison and later in his elevated situation as movie director extraordinaire. What he did actually experience in the North, he could not possibly show on screen. His experience of the Korean War behind the Southern front line may have made it undesirable for him to direct Northern Korean War hero epics as well. Employing native screen writers and directors, however, enabled him to deal with those topics and to inject the films with his own ideas. For Thousand Miles Along the Railroad (1984), he partnered with writer Kim Se Ryun and director Kim Kil In. Kim Kil In had already made his name in 1978 as co-director of the popular Centre Forward, the first North Korean soccer movie. Nonetheless, the film was a full-force Shin production with lots of action, adventurous camera work and innovative editing, at least in its first half. A poor railway stoker named Sun Gyu loves a girl by the name of Chong Hee (played by Oh Mi Ran, North Korea’s biggest female movie star) during the final days of the Japanese colonial period. One day, Sun Gyu kills a Japanese officer who had treated him badly. Sun Gyu is thrown in prison. While he is suffering there, another Japanese officer rapes Chong Hee. We just see the lights go out in the house, but this is a clear enough indication. The country gets liberated. Arriving back in his hometown, Sun Gyu discovers that Chong Hee is now shunning him. She is terribly ashamed of the rape. Sun Gyu continues to love her anyway. He learns how to drive trains and in a very dramatic scene, he saves a passenger train sabotaged by Southern agents. Then the Korean War starts. Both Sun Gyu and Chong Hee become heroic fighters, defending the railroad against the enemy. In one terrifying scene, a train carriage rolls over Chong Hee’s arm, cutting it off. North Korean cinema never showed that kind of gore before. Once peace has arrived, Sun Gyu and Chong Hee finally marry. After their baby girl, Song Mee, is born, the film suddenly jumps to contemporary times. Sun Gyu is a respected senior train driver now, steering electrical trains. Song Mee is by now a beautiful young lady. She’s not interested in trains, though. One day, she falls in love with a young orphan boy. He’s an unreliable train worker but very smart. Unsatisfied with her life in general,

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Heated dispute among steam locomotive drivers in Thousand Miles Along the Railroad.

she goes to Pyongyang and falls in with a famous actor. He turns out to be a cheat and she leaves him. Too ashamed to return, she disappears. After various twists, it turns out that the lazy young guy is the son of Sun Gyu’s old friend who had taught him to drive trains and who had been killed in the incident with the South Korean agents. The young man now learns to be responsible. During a typhoon, a young girl living by the railroad tracks saves a train by removing rocks that had fallen onto the tracks. It turns out that she is Song Mee. A happy reunion with her parents follows. A wedding with the young man is now certain. Most striking about the film is its aesthetic celebration of steam trains. The giant monsters are featured with amazing photography and a great attention to detail. The steam trains are the true heroes of the film and they provide Shin with every opportunity to show off his technical skills. The historical stories relayed are rather standard North Korean fare. Heroic Koreans fight back against evil Japanese and kill scores of Americans (played by English-speaking Westerners). The way Shin portrays the heroic deeds is totally new to North Korean cinema, however. The action is really thrilling and the images of explosions, train crashes and aerial bombings are absolutely convincing.

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The second half of the film offers much less. The electric trains look uninteresting compared to the smoking steam trains and hardly any heroic deeds take place. What the film, however, features in its second half is the normality and prosperity which had been built up since the heroic days. Some unmotivated, spoiled youth were getting into problems now — what a luxurious situation compared to colonial rule und war. North Korea had arrived as a developed nation, the film seems to say. The strangest part is certainly the one with the famous Pyongyang actor Song Mee falls briefly in love with. He is seen kissing another girl in a park (shown openly on screen) and is generally portrayed as decadent character. Some sort of criticism on the Pyongyang elite? A critique of the film industry even, the heart of propaganda? Probably not. That character is pure cliché and in any case just dishing out to the girl what she deserved for leaving her natural place in society — which was at the railroad and not in fancy Pyongyang.

Run and Run Written by Kim Se Ryun (Thousand Miles Along the Railroad ) and directed by Pak Sung Bok, Run and Run (1985) is a contemporary sports movie based on the then-recent successes of North Korean male runners at the Kosˇice Peace Marathon in Czechoslovakia. The Kosˇice Marathon is Europe’s oldest, held since 1924. In 1975, Choe Chang Sop won gold for North Korea; in 1977 and 1978, Go Chun Son did the same. Ri Dong Myong’s 1984 win of gold was still vivid in memory, still glorified by state propaganda and it was that win the film focuses on. One brief image of original Kosˇice footage shows a sign in the background displaying the numbers “1924–1984,” celebrating the 60th anniversary of the run. The Kosˇice gold winner in the film, however, is a fantasy figure. Named Yong Ho (played by Kim Chol), he is a lumberjack felling trees for the local lumber station in his remote mountain village. The film starts out with a few brief images of Yong Ho running at a competition, then showing his return to the home village. He looks sad and depressed; his father doesn’t even want to talk to him. Yong Ho had lost out big time at the national competition in Pyongyang, it turns out. He returns to his work at the lumber station. His father and the station manager urge him to give up the running. Yong Ho gets lost in despair. The local schoolmaster who had coached him and the station master’s pretty daughter, Kum Ju (Cho Gyong Suk), encourage him to restart training. It is a slow process much hampered by the resistance of the father and the station manager to Yong Ho’s sports activity. Once his spirits are up again, we suddenly see Yong Ho in Pyongyang, getting ready for the national marathon. His coach and Kum Ju cheer him on as he runs through the wide city streets lined by blossoming cherry trees. Heroic music sets in … and then stops. Yong Ho’s feet get wobbly, he falls down, gets up again, falls again, gets up, and finally, right in front of the finishing line, breaks down completely. An ambulance takes him away. It’s a cruel trick the scenario writer has come up with here: this entire section of the long Pyongyang run was a flashback to the run Yong Ho couldn’t finish at the beginning of the movie. It’s the run that set his father against him, the run so much talked about early in the movie.

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The official flyer for Run and Run, featuring Kim Chol.

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Once the plot returns to contemporary times, the villagers greatly cheer Yong Ho and wish him farewell — he had been chosen for Kosˇice. His plane leaves and the villagers gather around their color TVs to watch the broadcast from Kosˇice. The run there is shown in a mix of original 1984 TV footage and acted scenes. He wins the run, the North Korean flag goes up behind the pedestal on which he receives his medal and large glass trophy. Now his father and the station master and, of course, Kum Ju are really proud of him — as is the whole country.

Shin and Choi’s Escape In March 1986, Kim Jong Il sent Shin Sang-ok together with Choi Eun-hee on a business mission to Vienna. Kidnapped by North Korea or not, Shin and Choi took the chance and made a run for the American embassy there, asking for asylum. Explaining the background of Shin and Choi’s travel to Vienna, Alex Spillius wrote in the South China Morning Post that “when stories in the South Korean and Japanese press about their disappearance refused to go away, Kim [Jong Il] decided to open an office in Vienna to enhance the impression of Shin and Choi’s independence.”10 Austria was considered a neutral country during the Cold War; it was neither part of the NATO nor the Eastern Bloc. Vienna became a center for exchanges between the blocks as well as a center for secret agent activities conducted by both sides. Spillius continues, “On the second day of a trip to Vienna the director [Shin] arranged a lunchtime meeting with a trusted Japanese journalist friend, whom he had contacted on an earlier European visit and who knew of the couples’ plight. They managed, just, to convince their minders that their presence at lunch would spoil the couples’ autonomous image.”11 According to BBC reporter Mike Thomson, however, “They went to a film festival in Vienna heavily chaperoned by a team of North Korean minders.” Thomson continues then to detail the events of their escape, as told to him by Shin and Choi: “[They] managed to persuade their guards to travel in a taxi behind as they headed for the festival hall.” “‘We got to a crossroads where we were supposed to turn left for the festival. Our minders’ car was following us about 30 meters behind, but several other cars had got in between them and us. So we told our driver to turn right instead, towards the United States Embassy,’ said Choe Eun-hui [Choi Eun-hee]. “Seconds later the car behind realized that something was wrong and radioed the taxi that the Shins were in and asked their driver to tell them which way he had gone. “The couple quickly handed him a sizeable tip and lied that they had gone in the opposite direction. “Soon they arrived at the US embassy but could not find anywhere to stop outside, and the couple had to get out down the road. “‘We tried to run as fast as we could, but it felt like we were in some sort of slow motion movie,’ Mr. Shin said. “‘Finally we burst through the embassy’s doors and asked for asylum.’”12 Both Shin and Choi were at the absolute height of their careers in North Korea at the time. Why they chose to escape at that moment is unknown. They must have had strong reasons to leave the dangerous embrace of Kim Jong Il right then.

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According to John Gorenstein of The Guardian, North Korean “apparatchiks” immediately claimed that Shin and Choi took a large amount of government cash with them.13 Having some change in their pockets at the time of defection would certainly make sense and could explain the timing. That North Korean propaganda assertion is lent a certain amount of credibility by Mike Thomson mentioning in his report on Shin and Choi’s escape that Kim Jong Il had years earlier “placed $2.5m into an Austrian bank account and told Mr. Shin that the money would be available for him to make ‘good’ films.”14 This bank account would have been the most easily accessible to Shin while he was in Vienna. The Americans flew Shin and Choi out to Los Angeles and Shin soon resumed film production there under the name Simon Sheen.

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Shin Sang-ok’s Influence on Concurrent North Korean Cinema (1984 –1986) The popularity of Shin Sang-ok’s works and their approval by Kim Jong Il clearly showed other North Korean film writers and directors that suddenly more entertaining, more exciting and more daring films were possible. Genre rules could be bent, foreign locations in the Eastern bloc could be used, as long as the films promoted the correct official line of propaganda, of course. But within the parameters of Juche, a lot had almost overnight become possible. Fun had become possible, fantasy had become possible, wild imagination even.

A Changing Climate Order No. 027 The best example for this new way of thinking within the filmmaking community was the war/action movie Order No. 027 (1986, directed by Jung Ki Mo and Kim Un Suk, written by Ri Sang Uk). Basically, it was a remake of a story already told via many movies since the 1953 Scouts— only that here the Korean War became a pure martial arts battleground. The reconnaissance group going behind the enemy lines to steal the fighting plan documents in Order No. 027 is employing first-rate taekwondo to reach its goals. The martial arts scenes seem to have been more important to the filmmakers than sending political messages. It’s simply good guys versus bad guys, the war just a customary backdrop for the often comic fighting scenes. Most of the martial arts stunts were performed by the students of a martial arts academy and by special forces soldiers. Rumor in North Korea has it that during the making of the movie, many soldiers got their bones broken while acting out the fight scenes. As the plot unfolds further, though, firearms are also introduced, the film making the transition from martial arts to big scale gun battles and explosions — all for the sake of politically correct but hilarious entertainment. Even the final kamikaze action of the troop commander comes off rather cartoonishly. His comrades flee back to the North with a ship seized from the Southern Navy. A helicopter sets out to shoot at the boat. The Northern commander, already wounded, grabs an armful of hand grenades, hangs on to the wheel 91

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Order No. 027. The martial arts scenes are top notch. This train is moving.

fixture of the helicopter and goes up with in the air. In full flight high up above the sea, he explodes the grenades and with it the helicopter. The special effects of the scene are very well executed. Order No. 027 didn’t receive any festival prize but both got wide distribution in the whole Eastern bloc.

The Separation Even propaganda movies with heavy political messages came under the influence of the new openness. A good example is the 1985 defection drama The Separation, directed by Park Chang Song and written by Ri Hui Chan. Opening with a shot of the Eiffel Tower, the camera pans to a Paris circus hall, then cuts to posters announcing “Le Cirque de Corée” in big letters. A North Korean film team had

A taekwondo fight in Order No. 027; Cha Sung Chol overpowers an unidentified assailant.

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finally made it to the West, shooting documentary footage of an actual performance of the internationally recognized North Korean State Circus. Around this footage, the fictitious part of the movie was woven. The story told begins with the assertion that the North Korean circus is the attraction of the season in a “foreign city.” Paris is not mentioned by name in the movie, though North Koreans were informed that the film was set there. Beautiful Su He Ran (played by Park Mi Hwa), the fabulous trapeze The Separation: The famous North Korean trapeze artist, is the talk of the town. The South artist (Park Mi Hwa) despairs while her father is Korean agents notice, too. They get hold taken back to the poverty of Seoul. of another fact — Su He Ran and her father were separated during the Korean War, haven’t seen each other since then, and that the father lives in Seoul. In abject poverty, of course. The agents approach an old friend of that father who now lives in the “foreign city” and tell him that they want to arrange a reunion of father and daughter. The friend of the father and an agent meet in what is unmistakably a café in the old town of Prague — standing in here as the “Korean tea house in the foreign city.” The film pretends that all events take place in one city and for general North Korean audiences, it was certainly impossible to make out any difference between the place of origin of the documentary footage and the shooting location of the fictitious plot. The Separation took here a direct clue from Shin’s An Emissary of No Return where Prague has to stand in for The Hague. The film continues to jump back and forth between the Paris documentary circus footage and the Prague fiction parts, blending them into one story. Although no obvious Prague landmarks are shown, the architecture on view makes it clear where the fiction parts take place. To viewers familiar with both cities, it certainly looks like a strange unification of the two European capitals. With the help of the teahouse-operating friend, the father (played by Yu Won Jun) is brought over from Seoul — a city where poverty-stricken folks line up in the rain outside the employment office and U.S. military trucks and jeeps are the only cars on the street. The plan of the Southern agents is for the father to convince his daughter in a dramatic meeting to defect and go with him to Seoul. The meeting takes place — and the daughter convinces her father that the North is better. Now, he wants to join her! But the Southern agents kidnap him, lock him up at the South Korean embassy and finally fly him back to the poverty of Seoul. It’s great drama and quite effectively played out — presumably leaving scores of girls in the North Korean audience weeping and men clenching their teeth when the agents force the father into an airplane at the end of the movie, his daughter looking on and screaming, “Father! Father!”

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Heavy duty propaganda indeed but still, the film did give its home audience some rare exposure to what the contemporary outside world looked like — both in Paris and Prague.

Movies Made in Japan Even more outside exposure was provided by two films made in early 1985 — both were shot in Japan. There was no direct involvement of Shin Sang-ok in those films — but they could only have been made during the times of a more liberalized and adventurous North Korean cinema inspired by Shin. The North Korea–affiliated General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, known in Korean as Chongryon and in Japanese as Chosen Soren (founded in 1955) as well as its short-lived forerunner, the League of Koreans in Japan (known as Choren, active from 1945 through 1952) had been active in film production from right after the end of World War II. They produced pro–North Korea newsreels aimed at Koreans living in Japan, they had shot documentaries, they had organized shows of North Korean films. In 1974, the Chongryon Film Studio was formally founded, continuing the previous activities on a more sophisticated level. However, they had never shot a feature film. In February and March 1985, a production team from Pyongyang went to Japan. The group consisted of Northern movie stars and technicians and was headed by Ko Hak Rim, a North Korean director who had grown up in Japan and who had moved to North Korea in 1960 at age 25. Ko Hak Rim had been one of the directors of the spy series Unknown Heroes and was most certainly chosen for the current projects because of his background and his knowledge of Japan. During their stay, the North Korean team shot two features in collaboration with Chongryon. Though both were clearly Northern propaganda aimed at the home market, they managed to introduce plenty of real-life images and scenes from Japan to the Pyongyang viewers.

A Silver Hairpin Aside from Ko Hak Rin, four other directors were working on A Silver Hairpin: Ryo Un Gak, O Hon Rok, Kim Jong Chi and Ko Hwi Ung. The screenplay was written by Kim Su Jung. The plot: Jin Sok (So Kyong Sob) is the local branch manager (and only employee) of the Chongryon newspaper Choson Sinbo in a mid-size town somewhere near Tokyo. He has been on the job for 20 years, delivering the paper every day to the Koreans in town by bicycle, no matter the weather, no matter the circumstances. He is close to turning 60 years old now and is living with his daughter. His wife had been tricked a long time before into visiting South Korea — where she is since being held against her will. The newspaper is the lifeline of the Korean community of the town. Since having been brought to Japan in colonial times (against their will it is stressed), most of them have been able to built up veritable careers. One owns a Pachinko (game machine) parlor, others run

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tea houses, restaurants and an izakaya pub ( Japanese-style pub where a wide variety of small dishes is served alongside the drinks). Their regular meetings at the local Korean school and their daily study of the Choson Sinbo hold them closely together. Jin Sok knows all of them and often has to help out when trouble arises. The worst problems befall the friendly lady who runs the izakaya pub: her daughter has a Japanese boyfriend and doesn’t want to be Korean anymore. She runs away to Shinjuku, a central Tokyo neighborhood with a large entertainment district. Jin Sok heads out to find her. He discovers her dancing drunk A Silver Hairpin Jin Sok reliably delivers the pro–North in a disco — a real 1980s Tokyo disco Korea newspaper in his Japanese small town. with strobe lights and wild light effects providing very unusual images for a North Korean production. When he wants to take her out, she yells at him: “I don’t like Koreans!” He slaps her in the face and takes her with him anyway. They stay in a hotel room with a view from the window of the Japan headquarters of Chongryon — a large North Korean flag is seen proudly fluttering over the rooftops of Tokyo. When she has sobered up in the morning, Jin Sok explains to her what it means to be Korean: a member of a proud nation, a nation led by the Great Leader Kim Il Sung. The Japanese, “You can pay this taxi by credit card,” says the Japahowever, are of another blood: they nese-language sign. A Silver Hairpin featured a lot of are another nation and the two peo- detail about Japan. ples should never mix. Full of regret for her mindless escapades, she vows to become a good Korean girl again — and so she does. Taking care of this kind of necessary community business is simply a part of life for Jin Sok. Towards the end of the movie, the local Koreans organize a lavish party on the occasion

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of Jin Sok’s 60th birthday — a very important birthday in all of East Asia. To his big surprise, a delegation from the Chongryon headquarters in Tokyo also shows up — they bring him a personal congratulation from Great Leader Kim Il Sung! The Great Leader had heard about and recognizes Jin Sok’s tireless efforts and struggles to always deliver the paper on time and to always serve the Korean community in his town. He declares him a hero for pursuing this path, no matter the difficulties. Happy End. The silver hairpin the title refers to is a hairpin that shows up in the film only two times. Jin Sok had inherited it from the mother of his missing wife. Whenever he sees it, he feels reminded of Korea. In the course of the film, he passes it on to his daughter. All the way through, the film captures real life in Japan very well. Many of the daily life scenes could just as well have been part of a Japanese movie. But this movie was concerned with the special circumstances and concerns of the pro–North Korean part of the Korean minority in Japan. Sure, it was propaganda but propaganda on a much more sophisticated level then anything done on the subject in North Korea before. Back in the North, it reportedly wasn’t the shots of Tokyo with all its city lights and crowded, car-packed streets that aroused the audiences — it was the couple scenes. There is copious kissing among young folks in the movie, which was still an unusual sight for North Korean audiences at the time. Ko Hak Rim had clearly moved into provocative Shin Sangok territory with that — at least on the home front. To the Korean Japanese he was working with, scenes showing kissing couples in a car were most likely not something they would have even thought to be considered provocative by anyone.

Thaw Also known under the more literal English translation of the Korean title, Snow Melts in Spring (directed by Ko Hak Rim and Rim Chang Bom, written by Ri Chun Gu), the film opens with a scene of men being rudely taken away from their Korean home village to serve as forced laborers during the Japanese colonial period. That is the old routine but the next scene is not: shots of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline, cutting to a lecture room at an American university. Chol Mun, an American professor of Korean heritage, has a discussion with students. His views are pro–North and he easily manages to counter the views of the pro–South student who challenges him. His class applauds and the student readily admits his defeat. Back at his office, Chol Mun receives a letter from Tokyo, inviting him to the wedding of the daughter of his old Korean friend, Hyung Chol, who now lives in Tokyo. He flies over — arriving at Haneda Airport and then staying at the spacious upper-middle class house of Hyung Chol and his family. Sang Ho, a wealthy businessman from Seoul, has also been invited by Hyung Chol. Hyung Chol, it turns out, is a member of Mindan, the pro–South Korean organization of Koreans living in Japan. His daughter loves a fellow Korean boy named Namsu and we see them rolling around on the floor in clearly sexual poses at the house of the boy’s parents. His parents, though, belong to the rival group of Mindan — to the pro–North Korean association of Koreans in Japan, Chongryon. Once Hyun Chol finds out about that, the problems start. Because of his political opinions as pro–South man, he suddenly changes his mind and tells his daughter that he cannot allow her to marry a boy with a pro–North background.

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Father and daughter go to a Tokyo strip club and see a performance. In the beginning, the girls are dancing fully clothed and in a rather awkward way — like a North Korean might imagine a Tokyo strip club. But after the father told his daughter that she cannot marry her boyfriend, real topless girls take the stage — for the first time in North Korean cinema. Was Ko Hak Rim challenging Shin Sangok here on who dared to go further with the nudity on-screen? Of course, it’s a rather strange idea that a father takes his daughter to a strip bar to tell her that she The bride plays the blues in Thaw. Girls in North Korea cannot marry the boy she loves. It’s who dared to imitate her hairstyle got their hair cut off clearly the product of the imagina- in public. tion of the North Korean screenwriter who wants to show what things are like in “decadent” Japan. Feeling guilty about this decision, Hyung Chol gets himself totally drunk. When he arrives home, he picks a fight with his wife. Disgusted and desperate, the daughter runs away to join Namsu, who is at that point working as a volunteer at a ski resort in Hokkaido. All the while through this North Korean version of Romeo and Juliet, flashbacks are woven in involving Hyung Chol as a forced laborer for the Japanese in the colonial times. He and another man beat up a guard at a quarry, incite a riot and flee. The other man is shot in the legs and falls into the sea. Hyung Chol, however, is rescued by a Korean family after living in the woods and almost starving to death. At the dramatic climax of the movie, it turns out that the other man, the one who got shot in the legs, is nobody else than that wheel-chair bound father of Namsu! A big reunion of the old comrades follows and, of course, their children are given the green light for a happy marriage. Shots of melting arctic iceblocks crashing into the ocean conclude the movie. Korean-American Chol Mun, who the movie starts with, and Sang Ho, the Seoul businessman, play only minor roles after being introduced as if they were important characters. They are important, however, in their own right by rounding out the picture — by bringing the overseas community and the South Koreans into the national fold. America depicted as a country of free speech? A pro–South Korea family living in Tokyo in a big mansion and even having a Japanese maid? Their daughter driving her own car? Japan generally depicted as a wealthy country where it’s easily possible to see topless girls and customary to drink large amounts of Hennessy cognac and imported whiskey at any time of the day? A South Korean businessman wealthy enough to be easily part of all that? The pro–South people, as well as the Korean living in America, all portrayed as thoroughly likable characters? It’s all here.

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The bride’s father drinks it up in Thaw.

Thaw looked all the way through as if North Korea would suddenly embrace reconciliation with the South, Japan and even America. Thaw suddenly seemed to have set in. International film festival jurors thought similarly and gave the film the main prize at the Karlovy Vary film festival in 1986. The Chongryon Film Studio went on to collaborate with the Korean Film Studio in Pyongyang in the making of the feature A Mother’s Hope (1987). No information about this film could be obtained. For its documentaries, the studio switched to the much cheaper video format in 1985. Since 2002, the studio concentrates on operating the pro–Pyongyang website www.elufa.net.

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The Post-Shin Sang-ok Years (1986 –1993) The second half of the 1980s was the period when the North Korean government really started to worry. New leader Mikhail Gorbachev had taken over the Soviet Union and had begun to open up the country. In China, Deng Xiaoping was busy doing the same, even though in his case it was strictly in economic terms. North Korea’s closest allies underwent dramatic changes. North Korean Leader Kim Il Sung decided to continue the old Juche ways of proclaimed self-reliance. The country had never been sufficiently self-reliant, however, and his hanging on to his old model of governance would soon have grave consequences. Compared to those challenges, the sudden departure of Shin Sang-ok must have looked like a minor problem to Kim Il Sung. It certainly wasn’t for Kim Jong Il — it dealt a serious blow to his cinematic ambitions. Still, Kim Jong Il decided to continue, at least partly, the ways of Shin. Shin productions in progress were continued, and planned Shin movies realized. International cooperations were forced and the Pyongyang Film Festival of Non-Aligned and Other Developing Countries was launched in 1987. At the same time, much emphasis was placed on inward-looking heavy-duty Juche propaganda, resulting in oppressive pictures like A Bellflower (1987) and My Happiness (also 1987).

Shin Productions Realized After Shin’s Departure Hong Kil Dong Starting out as a regular Shin Film production, Shin Sang-ok had teamed up with trusted screen writer Kim Se Ryun and director Kim Kil In (the three had already collaborated on Thousand Miles Along the Railroad) to make the first North Korean Hong Kong– style martial arts movie. Hong Kong martial arts special effects experts were hired and worked on the set. The film was based on the old Korean legend of Hong Gil-dong, Korea’s version of Robin Hood. The tale had been filmed in the South two times already: as an animated feature by director Shin Dong-heon in 1967 and as an adventure drama by Choi In-hyeon 99

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in 1976. Shin, however, was the first to approach the tale Hong Kong–style, with flying monks and sword fights high up in the air. Making great use of North Korea’s rugged mountain landscape, the plot unfolds with Hong Kil Dong (as the name of the hero is spelled in the North) being born in the midst of a thunderstorm in the servant’s house of an influential minister at the Emperor’s court. He is the illegitimate child of the minister and his young concubine. The wife of the minister hates that lowclass offspring from the beginning and plots to eliminate the boy. When Hong is about 10 years old, the minister’s wife arranges that Hong and his mother travel a remote mountain road and she has paid a gang of robbers to kill them both. The robbers attack — but Hong and mother are saved by a flying monk and master of the sword. They take refuge at his mountain retreat and it is here that young Hong learns the martial arts. As a young man, he has a coincidental run-in with the same robbers again. They fight and, by accident, Hong kills their leader. The robbers escape but leave a sack with booty behind. A beautiful girl is in the sack. She is the daughter of another Seoul minister, a man who was always plotting behind the back of Hong’s father. Hong falls in love with her and leaves for the city, returning with his mother to his father’s house where he can be close to his beloved girl. Continuous plots against his life by his father’s wife get him to leave again. Wandering around the country, he learns about the feudal injustices of the period and becomes a hero of the farmers whom he helps in often hilarious ways to drive away greedy tax collectors and to punish local lords who waste their farmer’s money by indulging in orgies. But suddenly, a foreign force threatens the country: a small army of black-clad ninjas speaking Japanese under the Korean voice-over. They rob the crown jewels and kidnap scores of young girls — Hong’s beloved one among them. They fight with the help of black magic and the emperor’s army is helpless. Only Hong Kil Dong can save the country now — and he does. He unites all Koreans from the robbers in the woods up to the emperor’s army and now the action starts to get serious. While in all the previous fights Koreans were pitted against Koreans and, except for the leader of the robbers, nobody gets killed in those rather humorous clashes, now a true Hong Kong–style gorefest begins. With elaborate martial arts and great evil ninjas. Hong and his men beat the ninjas in the end. But Hong is still considered a lowclass “bastard”— even after saving the country. He is not allowed to marry his upperclass girl. They sail away into the Ri Yong Ho as the title character in Hong Kil Dong.

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sunset in “search for a country of justice.” It’s a very surprising ending — leaving the country as a solution to domestic problems is not condoned by any other North Korean movie. With its top-notch swords fights and wire work special effects (which let people appear to fly freely through the air), a charismatic lead played by Ri Yong Ho and all the humor and adventurous action displayed, Hong Kil Dong became a major hit. In a 2002 survey among ex–North Koreans living in South Korea conducted by the newspaper Chosun Ilbo, Hong Kil Dong was named “best North Korean film ever.” This success was not limited to North Korea. It spread all over the Eastern bloc, especially the Soviet Union and Bulgaria. In the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) comments on the film, Bulgarian user Todor Nenov recalls: “Hong Kil Dong attracted hundreds of thousands [of ] people to the cinemas across Bulgaria, it was almost impossible to get tickets for it, unless you book[ed] them 2 or 3 days earlier!”1

Rim Kkok Jong Shin was only involved in the planning but not the execution of the five-part film Rim Kkok Jong (directed by Jang Yong Bok, written by Kim Se Ryun). He might have condensed the epos to a more palatable duration than the 7 1 ⁄ 2 hours it takes to watch the finished version. Part one of the series (titled Sworn Bothers) was released in 1986. It took until 1993 for part five (Lesson of Blood ) to reach the screens. Presenting extended movie series over the course of years was an established North Korean custom. Unknown Heroes and The Star of Korea are pre–Shin Sang-ok examples. In the case of Rim Kkok Jong, the concept of a long-running series seems justified as the film was based on a serialized novel written by Hong Myeong-hui and published in the daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo from 1928 to 1939. The novel in turn was based on the historical records of a Korean bandit who was executed in 1562. After the Korean partition in 1945, novelist Hong went to North Korea and eventually made it to the posts of vice-president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly and chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland. The film, set in about 1550, starts out with a battle on a beach Dangerous revolutionary: Choe Chang Su in Rim Kkok very reminiscent of the final battle Jong.

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in Hong Kil Dong. Only that here no magic and no martial arts are on display. Brute force alone must suffice to kill off the foreign ( Japanese) invaders. As hero of the battle, bearded Rim Kkok Jong (played by Choe Chang Su) is introduced. He is a man endowed with almost superhuman physical strength and a very strong moral integrity, the latter bringing him often in conflict with the greedy class of feudal aristocrats. As a leather tanner, Rim is of very low caste standing in feudal Korean society. People of his rank are not even allowed to cultivate land. The governor makes an exception in his case and honors his battle victory with a special permission to farm. Rim returns to his poor home village and starts to build his farm. Many of the folks in his vicinity have run-ins with the local lords, and violence is the result more often than not. Rim always steps in to sort things out and to let justice prevail. Men gather around him, calling themselves the “Sworn Brothers.” Things turn nasty towards the end of part two. The local yanban (aristocrat) first has all the leather that Rim had prepared confiscated, then the harvest of the field he has worked on so hard is taken. Rim resists. The yanban tricks Rim into coming to his fortress and to hand over his treasured sword. Immediately, he gets Rim arrested and bound with rope. Immobile, Rim has to witness how the yanban’s soldiers kill his old and ailing parents right in front of him. He breaks free. At the same moment, his “sworn brothers” break into the fortress. A bloody battle ensues. Rim himself kills the head yanban in a swordfight. After this, he can’t possibly stay on in his home village. The whole village leaves with him and they all seek refuge in the mountains. At the beginning of part three, Rim and his men receive the blessing of a monastery monk to settle in a mountain area. They build up their own village where the women are also trained in the arts of war and archery. Rim and his folks become full-time bandits, robbing rich people traveling the nearby road to Pyongyang of their valuables and attacking particularly greedy or vicious feudal lords in their own fortresses. He becomes a rebel band leader, scaring the yanban all over Korea. In the film, he is not caught and executed as stated in the historical records and as described in the novel. Instead, he remains alive, successfully fighting the good fight. In fact, his spirit stayed alive too well for the taste of the North Korean authorities. On May 18, 2011, the Daily NK reported: “The North Korean authorities are trying to stop people singing the theme song to a popular 1980s movie, Rimkkeujong [Rim Kkok Jong], ‘Come Forward, Sworn Brothers….’ “The movie used to get aired on Chosun Central TV quite often before 1997, the middle of the March of Tribulation [Arduous March]. The reason why the movie was not shown after that is that the authorities began to worry about the possibility that it might inspire rioting over rapidly worsening conditions. “The recent measure is presumably a further move intended to lower the chances of a similar effect. “The Yangkang Province source who revealed the news said that the song, while old, is indeed very popular, saying, ‘People have recently been singing the song often on trains or at other events.’ “This, he added, really is subversive, ‘It is a way of subtly complaining about society.’”2

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Return to Hardcore Propaganda With Hong Kil Dong proving an unprecedented international (Eastern bloc) success and Rim Kkok Jong playing well with domestic audiences, those post–Shin productions were doing a good bit to enhance the popularity of North Korean cinema. But the social and economic developments the two main allies were undergoing demanded strong countermeasures. The opening up of the Soviet Union and China directly challenged Kim Il Sung’s Juche policy of nationalism and national self-reliance. Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il had to renew their propagandistic efforts to keep any such influences out of their half-peninsula. Even worse, it had become obvious by now that South Korea had surpassed the North by far. Though the general population of the North was still strictly shut off from any outside information, sooner or later they would learn about it. A closing of the ranks was in order and ideological firmness had to be ensured. The result of this new policy was the production of some of the most heavy-handed, inward-looking propaganda movies up to that time.

A Bellflower This development is most evident in Jo Kyong Sun’s A Bellflower (written by Ri Chun Gu). The film starts out with old man Won Bong and his teenage son arriving by what must have been a long hike at a forest clearing above a valley. Down in the valley, a village is visible, Won Bong’s home village. He knows that he would be very unwelcome if he simply walked in. He sends his son down to test the waters first. Once the son is out of sight, Won Bong scoops up native earth and cries. He is desperately homesick and longs for the village with all his heart. Nothing is mentioned about the mother of his son, nothing about how and where exactly he has spent all those years away from his village. The son arrives in the village and is welcomed by the locals. They don’t know about his background and don’t know who his father is. Piece by piece, the son hears about the early years of his father from the villagers. All the information is relayed to the viewer via flashbacks. As a young man, Won Bong had a lot of ideas on how to turn this remote mountain village into a modern place to live. His girlfriend Song Rim, an orphan nicknamed “Bellflower,” loves him for his ideas and plans. He also enjoys all the appreciation by her ambitious sister. But suddenly, Won Bong changes his mind — he wants to move to the city and take Song Rim with him. She feels responsible for the people in the village and begs him not to go. He decides to leave anyway. Song Rim’s sister (played by Oh Mi Ran of Thousand Miles Along the Railroad ) angrily stops him on the little bridge leading out of the village. She has laid out his drawings on how to improve the village in the snow right on the bridge and he has to stomp over his own old plans if he really wants to leave. He does. Fiercely angry, the sister forces him to sign a paper which says that he is never going to be allowed back to the village. With Won Bong gone, the two girls go ahead and realize his old plans. They get electricity into the village, build a successful farm, erect a cultural center — the village becomes

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“Get out of here!” The message given by Oh Mi Ran to Kim Ryong Jo in A Bellflower is unmistakable.

exactly the model village Won Bong had envisioned earlier on. Song Rim dies a heroine’s death trying to save a sheep from a landslide during a rainstorm. Won Bong’s son is shocked to learn all these facts and finally reveals who he is. After a dramatic discussion, the villagers allow him to stay. His father, however, is still considered a traitor. His betrayal of his own old ideas still hurts the villagers. In the end, he is allowed back into the village, out of mercy. He is not forgiven and will remain a despised outsider for the rest of his life. Why was Won Bong less successful elsewhere in the Worker’s Paradise? Isn’t there a place for everyone to be happy in the DPRK? Only for those who remain where they belong, the film makes clear. “Don’t make your own decisions!” the movie essentially screams all the way through. “Stay with the collective you have been born in and work hard to improve your own place!”

My Happiness Harking back to the super-heavy propaganda of the pre–Shin Sang-ok days was another major film made in 1987: Kim Yong Ho’s My Happiness (written by O Hye Yong). Here, as in A Bellflower, the propaganda messages feel like slabs of lead sinking onto the heads of the viewers — despite the film being about two cute-looking girls. Hong Su Jong (Kim Jong Hwa) and Ri Ji Un (Kim Ok Hui) are young girls and best

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friends in the early days of the Korean War. Hong’s boyfriend is drafted into the army and the two girls follow soon after, serving as nurses in a stretcher platoon. Hong is still a little lighthearted in the beginning, causing trouble for her unit by trying to reach her boyfriend who is fighting nearby. She learns quickly that war is a tough business — the war scenes of the film are dirty and realistic. But soon, the picture shifts gears and moves into unabashed heroism: the girl platoon is trying to rescue wounded soldiers when an enemy boat attacks their coastal position. There is She may look cute but her mind is on war. Kim Jong Hwa only one way out — destroying in My Happiness. the boat. The chief nurse does it — swimming over to the boat in the disguise of a deserter and blowing herself up with the whole crew of devilish-looking Southern soldiers — yelling “Long live Kim Il Sung!” the moment before she evaporates in fire along with the boat. Now, the rest of the girls can save the wounded they were carrying. Cut to post-war times. The two heroines continue living in the spirit of war. The country has to be rebuilt and they are on the forefront, Ri as doctor and ambitious academic, Hong still serving in the army, also as doctor. Hong’s boyfriend was declared missing in the war. News arrived then that he survived without his legs. One day, he surprisingly shows up at Hong’s hospital — his legs intact. Emergency battlefield surgeons had saved his legs by transplanting their own flesh and bones into his legs! “What a wonderful society we live in!” he comments. They marry and have a child but Hong’s true happiness lies in her work: she is director of an army hospital now and also acts as head surgeon, makes bricks to enlarge the hospital, raises chickens, pigs and cows to feed the patients and grows herbal medicine to heal them. Serving the country in all her capacities is making her happy — hence the title of the film. She is a true heroine of the new Korea and worthy to take part in the gigantic parade we see marching over Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang at the end of the movie. For her, the war has never ended — it just moved to other fronts. The war with the “imperialists” is never quite over. Her husband is killed in a “peace-time naval battle” with the “American imperialists” towards the end of the movie. A rather realistic way of dying, actually, as sea skirmishes on the Northern Limit Line sea border (which is not recognized by the North) still continue today. American forces have not been involved in any of those, however. They were strictly fights between North and South Korea. While A Bellflower told the audiences not to look anywhere else and just to persevere

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at any cost where they are —My Happiness takes that position even further: work as hard as you can where you are — and do it as hard as if you were in the midst of war.

Establishment of the Pyongyang Film Festival When Shin Sang-ok met Kim Jong Il for the talk in 1983, he had asked him why North Korea didn’t stage a film festival to promote its movie output internationally. Back then, Kim told Shin, “We really do not have any films to present. What kind of North Korean film could we show to the entire world? We do not have any films that will make the world laugh and cry.”3 By 1987, Kim Jong Il had finally thought that he had some worthy movies to show and gave the green light to the establishment of the Pyongyang Film Festival of Non-Aligned and Other Developing Countries. The Non-Alignment Movement had been formalized as an organization founded in 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Since the 1960s, it had been a policy of Kim Il Sung to try to win influence among the non-aligned countries. That is, countries that belonged neither to the Eastern bloc nor the West. Many of those countries had a tendency to be anti-capitalistic and fiercely independent — the latter either because they had just recently won their independence from colonial rulers or because they were run by dictators who suppressed outside influences for their own benefit. Dictators Kim Il Sung could fully understand, dictators he could support and try to bring to his side. Some of the non-aligned countries had strong film industries. India sported the strongest; China (not a formal member of the organization) was a serious contender; and Iran was another powerhouse. Arab countries run by leftist dictators like Syria also had films to offer. All those countries had very strict censorship rules and although the details on what their censors focused on varied, some rules they all had in common: no criticism of the own leadership, a strictly anti-colonialist/anti–West worldview, and, of course, no sex or nudity in the movies. In the latter case, Yugoslavia could pose a possible problem but all films had to pass the Pyongyang selection committee in any event. With the film festival, Kim Jong Il found a nice niche: a festival promoting the international outreach politics of his father and a festival designed to appeal to film promoters from countries with a similar or lower standard of film production. Even the scenes of daily life shown in the movies would be likely to portray the living conditions in much poorer countries compared to the living standards in clean Pyongyang at the time. By all accounts, the festival was a smashing success with audiences. People thronged at the entrances of the theaters to see foreign pictures, and any foreign picture would do. Starved for images from the outside world, they would see anything. Yet, once seated in the theater, they just found out that the world was very much like they had always been told by their own propaganda: poverty, struggles for social justice and bitter fights against the colonial politics of the West dominated the rest of the world. All that let their own Leader Kim Il Sung only shine all the brighter. North Korean films were a strong feature in the festival, too, of course. As expected, the international jury comprised of film personalities from non-aligned countries handed the main prize of the first Pyongyang film festival, the “Golden Torch,” to a North Korean

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film. They were most likely not directly told to do so by the festival organizers but as any visitor to Pyongyang can attest, things tend to get a bit intimidating at times. In any case, A Bellflower won the “Golden Torch,” being the main and most touted North Korean production of the year, an oppressive propaganda picture strongly denouncing any individualistic hopes and dreams, denouncing any attempts to better one’s situation through personal decisions. What may have looked to the outside world as an act of opening up North Korea — the establishment of a film festival — became in fact the confirmation of increasingly isolationalist regime politics. That the “outside world” had “approved” of A Bellflower became an endlessly repeated message in North Korean internal propaganda.

Traces of Life Traces of Life (directed by Cho Gyong Sun, written by Li Chun Gu, 1989) added to the glorification of a life of duty in the countryside but the main character (played by Oh Mi Ran, who had been the main actress of A Bellflower) has at least a choice of where she will realize her ambitions. She has hard times doing so, of course, but she succeeds. As the film was not available for viewing, the description Suk-Young Kim gives in her book Illusive Utopia must serve as a first illustration of the film: “Traces of Life tells the story of a widow whose husband dies in a suicide mission blowing up a South Korean ship. The widow protagonist suffers from guilt over having argued with her husband on the night he left to sacrifice himself for the nation. In order to redeem herself, the wife embarks on a self-imposed exile to the countryside, where she becomes a farmer and eventually raises rice production to unprecedented levels.”4 The Seoul-based, defector-run online news outlet Daily NK has some interesting background on the movie and some later real-life developments on the woman the main movie character is based on to report: “This movie became even more famous as the movie which elicited tears from Kim Jong Il, who said, ‘A true patriot is someone who does not want honor or a reward, but fights for the fatherland by sacrificing himself.’ “This movie is a story of a female Hardworking Hero married to a People’s Army Officer who dies while bravely fighting in the marine battle against the South. She devotes herself to farming work and ultimately rises to the manager Many medals and microphones: Han Soon Hee (played by Oh Mi Ran) was a role model par excelof the collective farm. lence but worked with the wrong faction of the “At the time of its 1989 opening, it party. Her early success story was told in Traces of received the praise of ‘expressing the Life, long before she was executed.

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unchanging devotion regarding the Workers’ Party and noble humanity.’ However, the actual figure on which the movie was based, Han Soon Hee, was accused of being a ‘spy’ at the height of a life which received spotlight and was executed, closing the curtains on a ‘life resembling a screen.’ “Han Soon Hee was executed along with Suh Gwan Hee, a secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party being in charge of Agriculture, in September 1997 under the charge of espionage. She was the chairwoman of the management committee of the Sungnam Collective Farm in Sookcheon, South Pyongan Province. “In Traces of Life, her husband was depicted as having died in a battle with the South Korean navy, but in reality, he died from a chronic disease during his time as a collective farm leader in Sookcheon. After losing her husband, Han met Kim Il Sung who was on an onsite inspection to Sookcheon and due to the fateful meeting, she was promoted as the chairwoman of the collective farm. “Between 1960s and the 1980s, Kim Il Sung visited Sookcheon almost every year. Due to this, Han received the ‘Hard-Working Hero Title’ and was chosen as a delegate to the Supreme People’s Assembly in 1982. In Traces of Life, her life was adapted as a movie. In the Workers’ Party, they backed her up as someone from whom everyone should learn. “However, after Kim Il Sung’s death, Han was implicated in the so-called ‘Shimhwajo Case,’ which is the mass-scale espionage crack-down ordered by Kim Jong Il to remove close associates of Kim Il Sung in the late 1990s. Suh, the secretary was blamed as the principal offender of the food shortage in North Korea in the 1990s. When he was executed, she also received the charge of espionage for having been close to Suh. “In September 1997 in Victory 3-dong, Tongil (unification) Street in Pyongyang, they were publicly shot in the midst of a countless number of Pyongyang citizens who came to watch. After the purging of a number of pro–Kim Il Sung figures from the Party and national organizations, due to the ‘Shimhwajo Case,’ Kim Jong Il ironically played ‘benevolent politics’ of restoring the honor of a few people whom he had ordered to be executed. In 2000, the honor of Han [who] had been shot to death under Kim Jong Il’s order was restored.”5

Years of Forced Domestic Happiness The year 1989 brought with it the formidable but peaceful demonstrations in East Germany, the fall of the Berlin Wall and, shortly after, the collapse of Socialism in all of Eastern Europe. In 1991, the Soviet Union fell apart. Kim Jong Il and his film industry had to react. This was not a time to fight internal battles, to dwell on the divide between the countryside and the city or even to cinematically criticize “outmoded” behavior. Reassurance was needed, reassurance that the nation was a happy one as a whole and that no changes were needed at all. Everyone had to be happy, in both countryside and city, to live in that one great nation under the rule of the beloved leader Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong Il had written in On the Art of the Cinema that “in fact, the most beautiful and ennobling picture of our time is provided by the estimable and worthy lives of those who devote all their energies and talents to repay the warm benevolence of the Party and the country. Writers whose sympathy with those people fires them with the desire to affirm

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We Are the Happiest : Happiness North Korean style.

this fact are capable of composing beautiful songs in praise of the socialist motherland and creating noble artistic images of the beautiful people of the new era by depicting life itself. “In the socialist situation in our country, emphasis on and praise of the positive imply of themselves an attack on and criticism of the negative, and the affirmation and defence of socialism signify by themselves the denial and criticism of capitalism. Thus, when writers express their ardent admiration of the socialist reality in works dealing with life in which there are no conflicts reflecting a direct clash between the positive and the negative, they must underlay these aspirations with a powerful yearning for the renunciation of what is opposed to the reality.”6 What Kim Jong Il means with those sentences is that Juche reality can be shown by strongly (and only) focusing on the positive. The negative, i.e., the encroachment of capitalism, can be dealt with by heralding the incredibly glorious example of Juche. In a true

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and well-executed Juche work, the negative doesn’t even have to be shown; it can be dealt with implicitly. Kim originally wrote the lines in defense of the 1970 film We Are the Happiest (directed by Pak Hak, written by Kim Se Ryun). Apparently, this film had received some criticism in the inner circles because it lacked any obvious conflicts. We Are the Happiest told the story of an ex-soldier and his family who search for, find and take care of the children of a comrade of his, who was fallen in the Korean War. It showed no criticism of anything, but only the heroic deeds of the ex-soldier and his wife. They had to overcome difficulties in their arduous tasks, of course, but no adversaries are on display. They simply had to overcome the general difficulties of life. Korean Film Arts wrote: “The film shows in great style the life of our people who are the happiest in the world under the care of the Party and the shining achievements of the Juche art which is in full bloom in the era of the Workers’ Party.”7 We Are the Happiest became the model film for the post–Berlin Wall era. What may have been a very minor entry in Kim Jong Il’s book now became central. Already in 1988, the film A Country I Saw (directed by Ko Hak Rim) tried to espouse in a renewed way the message that North Korea was the happiest country in the world. A Japanese journalist, at first very skeptical about North Korea, is invited to Pyongyang and surprised by all the hospitality, friendliness, thoroughly modern infrastructure and the happy fulfilled lives people lead there. He returns to Tokyo a changed man, praising the achievements of Kim Il Sung. This journalist was not portrayed as a Korean-Japanese, but rather a real Japanese, a son of the race of the colonizers. Even he had to admit that North Korea had become the superior country by now. Kim Il Sung had finally overcome the colonial master on all fronts. This was, of course, a popular stab against Japan and it was certainly making North Korean viewers happy. However, this approach couldn’t work efficiently in a situation when the people of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union discarded socialism and embraced capitalism. The new wave of Juche happiness movies rolled out in the early 1990s. None of them were entirely without conflicts played out on screen, but the conflicts here were not aimed at criticizing anyone but to rather show that difficulties could be overcome when everyone works together under the idea of Juche — just like in We Are the Happiest. Three young Pyongyang sisters sacrifice their private lives in favor of helping their father provide shoes for the population in the 1992 movie Sisters (at other times that shoemaker may have been accused of being a capitalist by running what looks like his own business). In the marriage/sports drama O, Youth (1992), ambition and happiness prevail in a perfectly modern society blessed with all the consumer goods and modern transportation one could wish for. Sacrifices are made at times, of course, such as in An Obliging Girl (1992), where a young woman renounces her chances to move to Pyongyang in order to raise two orphaned children all by herself. It makes her a heroine and the Workers’ Party is assisting her greatly. Another movie heroine is young female teacher Rye Yong in A Far-Off Islet (1992). She is running a school with only two pupils on a remote island and yearns for Pyongyang because there, she thinks, she could be close to the Great Leader. Yet she stays on the island

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She powers the island’s lighthouse with her bicycle dynamo if the situation calls for it. Flyer for A Far-Off Islet.

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because the children need her. Then, she miraculously saves a ship from crashing into the cliffs by powering the failing lighthouse of the island with the dynamo that runs her bicycle lamp. The Great Leader Kim Il Sung, hearing of that heroic deed and of her bravely teaching the only two kids of the island, gives her a special medal — honoring her for staying at her own place and being a heroine there. But compared to the big drama and despair of A Bellflower, which was centered on the same subject, A Far-Off Islet feels much lighter. The scene where she runs the lighthouse by pedaling her bicycle is staged with much drama but aside from that, thanks to the closeknit community on the isle and everyone understanding that the country can only progress on its great way into the future when everyone works the best they can wherever they are, it is a picture displaying thoroughly happy folks. The 1993 film They Met on the Taedong River (directed by Kim Kil In, written by Ri Hui Chan) was one of the biggest productions of the early 1990s. The North Korean flyer announces the film by claiming: “The Taedong River which was converted into a river of paradise is replete with pleasant episodes of our people. Here you will see the romantic life of our protagonists, aboard a passenger ship along with the advisory captain Kang Son Dal.”8 The Taedong River flows through Pyongyang. The passenger ship is actually a tour boat cruising in front of the capital. The Pusan Film Festival in South Korea screened the work in 2003 and announced it thus: “Kang is the captain of a passenger ship on the Daedong [Taedong] River. He has spent all his life on the river and regards his passengers as family. He is a widower who lives alone, and his children try to find him a new wife. The woman they have in mind is a kindergarten headmistress their father’s age. But the two selfconsciously balk at the idea of re-marrying, and they both mistakenly think that the other is seeing someone else. But the children help to clear up the misunderstanding and the two happily agree to date each other.”9 Times had changed since The Tale of Chun Hyang. Romance had become a common topic; it could now even play out in contemporary times. Everything had to be chaste, however, and romance always had to lead to marriage.

An Urban Girl Comes to Marry An Urban Girl Comes to Marry, released in 1993, proved to be the most popular movie of that time of forced Juche happiness. It was an unprecedented experiment: a very lighthearted romance movie for general consumption written, directed and acted by an all-student-crew of the Pyongyang University of Dramatic and Cinematic Arts, supplemented by a few older actors who play the folks of the parent generation. Young man Song Sik walks through a Pyongyang park with a box of living ducks on his back. One duck suddenly escapes and flutters away, heading straight towards Ri Hyang, a girl walking over a bridge. Her fashion design sketches fall out of her hands and the duck leaves dirty foot prints on them before jumping into the water below. Song Sik runs after his duck and dives into the water right from the bridge, greatly surprising Ri Hyang. Ri Hyang is a fashion designer at a Pyongyang clothing factory. Soon after the little incident on the bridge, the rice planting season is approaching and like so many city dwellers, Ri Hyang and her whole textile company collective go to the countryside to help the farm

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Pyongyang, situated on the Taedong River, is the happiest city in the world. Kim Ryong Rin (top) and Han Kil Myong (bottom left) in They Met on the Taedong River.

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City and countryside, a happy combination. Duck farmer and fashion designer meet in An Urban Girl Comes to Marry, featuring Ri Kyong Hui (left) and Ri Kun Ho.

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work. On the very first day in the village, she encounters a good-looking man shepherding a huge flock of ducks along the local road, happily beating a drum to keep the birds moving — Song Sik, the guy from the Pyongyang bridge. They recognize each other instantly but are both very shy. In the evening, a party is held outdoors at a campfire. The boy band of the villagers plays light, somewhat jazzy tunes with Song Sik at the drums. Then, in turn, the girl band of the Pyongyang factory performs traditional Korean songs, with Ri Hyang as the main singer. These two are clearly cut out for each other. He tries to create a new breed of duck to serve the country better with their meat. He was in Pyongyang to attend a congress for that purpose. She, on the other hand, wants to create the best and most fashionable clothing, to be worn both in the city and the countryside. The city and the country look almost identical here. Pyongyang is portrayed through its parks and highrises but not via any outstanding architecture or landmarks. The countryside is modern, with plenty of new city-style buildings, and is fully mechanized. Just that from the city industrial and fashion products originate while the food comes from the fertile soil of the country. Essentially, two sides of the same coin — the glorious fatherland. Mistakes and misunderstandings between girl and guy take place, mainly because of the shyness of both. They get closer to each other eventually, through a series of encounters often played out for comedy. Eventually, they fall in love. They start holding hands and romantic allusions start to appear — symbols like a white and a red flower in close touch. But then she has to go back to Pyongyang. The planting season is over. She can’t forget Song Sik, however, and decides to hold a fashion event in the village. There are minor complications creating some drama but eventually, the two lovers find and dedicate their lives to each other. The wedding takes place in Pyongyang — and then the girl moves to the countryside village. A village is portrayed in the final images as producing an abundance of apples, peaches and corn, while the girl opens a tailor shop to provide the womenfolk out in the country with big city dresses. The country and the city — one happy, fruitful combination.

Nation and Destiny— The World’s Longest Movie Series Simply presenting a flood of movies claiming all-abounding happiness among the North Korean people who had, as propaganda told them again and again, “nothing to envy in the world” as they were living in a paradise already, couldn’t possibly be enough to cope with the situation of and in the country. Something much stronger was needed to hold up the national spirit. The result of that line of thinking was Nation and Destiny, envisioned as a 100-part feature film series dealing with important recent and concurrent historical characters in a fictionalized manner. Multipart features were nothing new to North Korean cinema. Nation and Destiny, however, was not only conceived as the biggest film series ever produced anywhere,10 but was from its inception planned as an “Immortal Classic” achievement. According to the official North Korean version of events, Kim Jong Il simply gave the one-line directive: “A multi-part film The Nation and Destiny must be produced, based on the song ‘My Country Is Best.’”11

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The beginning of the world’s longest movie series: Choe Chang Su on a brochure promoting the first parts of Nation and Destiny.

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These are the lyrics of the song, written by Choe Jun Gyong: I saw flowers blooming, too In the fields of an alien land. But none so pretty As the flowers of my country. Refrain: Vast is the world I looked around. Best is the country I call my own. “I’d drink a cup of water Offered by a foreign friend. But never did it taste sweeter Than the spring water of my own home. Refrain....”12

Indeed, based on that song, a large variety of stories could be told. This is exactly what the series does. The series has no continuously appearing character or plot but is broken up into different sections, each consisting of several parts. All of these sections could essentially be smaller multi-part films entirely independent from each other. They are only held together by the label Nation and Destiny, the special unit that produced all the various installments and by the high prestige the series strived for. Parts one to four, released in 1992, make up the first section, titled Choe Hyon Dok. According to the North Korean booklet on those parts of the series, “The film … shows how the main character Choe Hyon Dok, who has followed an anti-communist path and is roaming about in an alien land like an ‘international orphan’ in the twilight of his life, deserted by his fellow countrymen, finds the genuine road of life, the road of rebirth in the embrace of his dear home and fatherland.”13 In fact, Choe Hyon Dok was based on the life of Choi Duk-shin (1914–1989), who was born in North Korea and had served in the Southern Army during the Korean War. The division he led committed at least two major massacres on South Korean civilians suspected of aiding the North during the war. He became Foreign Minister of South Korea in the early 1960s and later ambassador to West Germany. In the 1970s, he was a leader in the Chondoist religious movement, a Korean peasant religion, and got into problems with Park Chung-hee because of this religious activism. In 1977, he went into exile in the U.S. The U.S. is the “alien land” referred to in the North Korean film description. In 1986, he relocated to Pyongyang and advanced there to “chairman of the Central Committee of the Chondoist Chong Wu Party, vice chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland and chairman of the Korean Religionists Council.”14 To the North, he was clearly a traitor for most of his life. But as the film showed and as his real life appointments as ranking official in Pyongyang proved, his experiences in the South and his life in the U.S. had made him deeply regret that he had ever left the North. Showing serious repentance, admitting his mistakes and wholeheartedly embracing the Great Leader turned him around and made him a hero who could serve as a glorious example that the North was indeed the best country in the world. It was a brilliant start and a perfect application of the “My Country Is Best” poem. Only the highest cream of the crop of the film industry was permitted to work on the

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During parts 17 through 32 Nation and Destiny was just warming up.

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project. It was written by Choe Sang Gun, Sin Sang Ho, Li Chun Gu, Kim Se Ryun, O Jin Hung and Kim Hui Bong, all of them “Kim Il Sung Prize” winners. The directors were Choe Sang Gun (the head writer), Kim Yong Ho, Cho Gyong Sun, Ko Hak Rim and Pak Jong Ju. All either Kim Il Sung Prize winners, People’s Artiste or at least Merited Artiste. All main actors held the title of People’s Actors. Consequently, parts one and two of the series went on to win the “Golden Torch” main prize of the Third Pyongyang Film Festival in 1992. Part five (1992) is titled Yun Sang Min and based on the life of South Korea–German avant-garde composer Yun I-sang. Just as it was the case with Choi Duk-shin (who became Choe Hyon Dok in the movie series), Yun I-sang’s name was slightly changed. This allowed for greater artistic freedom, as a change of their actual stories into more propaganda-fitting material. Yun I-sang had studied in the 1930s in Seoul and Japan and in the 1950s in Paris and West Berlin. He settled in Berlin and tried from there to arrange concerts involving both Koreas. He traveled to North Korea in 1963 without permission from the Southern authorities and soon after became allegedly involved in illegal activities of the North Korean embassy in East Berlin. In 1967, the South Korean secret service kidnapped him in West Berlin. He was taken to Seoul, accused of espionage and sentenced to death. A worldwide petition of high-ranking musicians like Igor Stravinsky and Herbert von Karajan led to his release and exile in 1969. He settled in West Berlin again, eventually receiving German citizenship. In 1984, an Yun I-sang Music Institute was opened in Pyongyang. He died in Berlin in 1995. His life was perfect material for Nation and Destiny. The series visited him later again and based parts 14 to 16 on him. Parts six to ten again dealt with a famous Korean abroad. Titled Cha Hong Gi, it tells a fictionalized account of the life of Choi Hong-hi, often referred to as the father of modern Taekwon-do. The film starts out in Toronto where Cha operates a Taekwon-do studio and from where he heads the International Taekwon-do Foundation (just like the real Choi). He receives a phone call from his former best female student. The rest of the film is mainly told in flashbacks. Cha, the movie character, was an eager young revolutionary in the post-colonial days in the North but he felt frustrated by the pettiness of the local cadres who took over after the liberation. He beats one of them up and escapes to the South. This makes him a terrible traitor but he will find out that life away from the true home and the love of party and leader is unbearable. During the Korean War, he becomes a South Korean officer, fighting the North. He is portrayed as very humanistic compared to the rest of the southern corps. While he prefers to discipline soldiers trying to defect to the North, other officers simply kill them. Cha becomes part of the inner circle, and eventually a very close friend of fellow officer and later president Park Chung-hee, who promotes him to three-star general. Park holds him in the highest regard and considers him the best of his soldiers. They often have private talks but finally disagree on the politics of future Korean reunification. Cha has to leave the country for Canada. In the end, however, he is ready to re-settle in Pyongyang — where his true home has always been. All this is told with a fair amount of action, violence and intrigue, and a great helping of melodrama. The real Choi was also from the North, was an officer and later general in the South

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Old Kim Il Sung comrade Choe Hyon (Yu Won Jun) was featured in parts 45–47 and parts 53–55 of Nation and Destiny.

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Korean Army during and after the Korean War. He internationally popularized Taekwondo but ran afoul of the South Korean regime and went into exile in Canada in 1972. He started to become friendly with North Korea in his later years. The movie must have seemed to him like a great invitation to come to Pyongyang. The last part of the Cha Hong Gi series was released in 1993. In 2000, Choi moved back to North Korea. He died in Pyongyang in 2002. Parts 11–13 deal with Ri In Mo (though title and name of the main character are Ri Jong Mo), according to the North a war correspondent with the Korean People’s Army during the Korean War. He was arrested by the South in 1952 when he was with a band of guerrillas behind the frontlines, participating in their activities. He refused to renounce his pro–North stand in prison and was released in 1986, after 34 years. After his release he continued to actively support the North. In 1993, he was eventually permitted to go to Pyongyang and settle there. He became a big hero in Northern propaganda and died in Pyongyang in 2007. When the film was released in 1993, Ri was still in the South and the decision of whether or not Ri would receive permission to move North was still pending. When Ri, soon after the release of the film, arrived in Pyongyang, the North celebrated it as a great victory of the impact of their propaganda. Parts 17 and 18, Hi Jong Sun, tell the story of Ho Jong Suk, the daughter of close Kim Il Sung comrade Ho Hon and a female fighter herself with a Korean unit of the Chinese Communist anti–Japanese forces in the 1940s who helped in coordinating the various Korean armed groups fighting alongside the Chinese in the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). After liberation, she became the first Minister of Culture and Information under Kim Il Sung. With that, she also became the first female government minister in North Korea. Parts 19 to 24 deal with Japanese Women Naturalized in DPRK. The background here was the “Homecoming Movement” conducted by North Korea in collaboration with the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) under the supervision and with the support of the International Red Cross. Before and during World War II, hundreds of thousands of Koreans had settled in Japan. Many were looking for improvements in their economic situation, while others were taken as forced laborers in the final stages of the war. After Japan lost the war and the two Koreas became independent countries, those Koreans lost their Japanese citizenship. They formed two major organizations, divided by the politics at home. The Korean Residents Union in Japan, better known as Mindan, gathered those who were with South Korea. They typically chose South Korean citizenship though they stayed on in Japan. The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (known as Chongryon in Korean and as Chosen Soren in Japanese) became the stronghold of North Korea in Japan. The members of Chongyon received special resident papers in Japan. From 1959 to 1984, the North Korean government and Chongryon persuaded about 87,000 pro–North Koreans to move to North Korea, hailing the North as “Paradise on Earth.” With them went about 6,000 Japanese spouses, mostly women. By all accounts, life turned very nasty for most of those who made the move. Especially for those who could not continuously procure financial remittances from their relatives back in Japan. Many wanted to return but nobody was allowed to do so. A few, including some Japanese spouses, managed to escape in later years.

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The film, of course, shows how greatly the Japanese spouses were welcomed and how, after some adjustments, they learned to love North Korea and to praise it as “the best country in the world.” Parts 25 to 33, produced in 1995 and titled Workers, show “the contents that everyone is transformed on the pattern of the working class while finding himself among the workers, just as scrap metal is turned into the glowing molten iron in the electric furnace.”15 In other words, they “deal with the heroic struggle of workers in Kangson and with careers of people who covered different paths of life.”16 The series returned with parts 43 and 44 in 1998. In 1996 and 1997, parts 34 to 42 were made. Titled KAPF Writers, they deal with the Korean leftist writer group of the same name in the 1920s. KAPF means Korea Artista Proletaria Federatio, Esperanto for Korean Proletarian Artist Federation. Many of the writers involved in the group moved to the North after the partition of Korea in 1945. [See Chapter 2 for details on the involvement of KAPF in Korean cinema.] KCNA gave this description: “KAPF Writers portrays the miserable life of the main character Ri Chan and other colonial men of literature and art who entered KAPF with the ambition for the proletarian literature. It also deals with the happy life of men of literature and art after the country was liberated. Through this, it impressively shows that only when there is the wise guidance of the leader can literature truly contribute to the cause of the working people for independence and can the destiny and future of the men of literature and art be ensured. In the movie Ri Chan wrote the words of the immortal revolutionary hymn Song of General Kim Il Sung representing on a high ideological and artistic level the faith and will of the Korean people to follow the President, the hero of the nation who liberated the country, with ardent feelings of respect.”17 Ri Chan did indeed write “The Song of General Kim Il Sung” in 1946; the music was composed by Kim Won Gyun who also composed the North Korean national anthem. “The Song of General Kim Il Sung” has been sung at all national celebrations in North Korea since about 1980. In the 1990s, it was supplemented with a “Song for General Kim Jong Il.” The parts 45 to 47 (made in 1999) and 53 to 55 (produced in 2000 and 2001) concerned an old comrade of Kim Il Sung from his revolutionary days in Manchuria, Choe Hyon. It was the only segment of the series which was named after a real person and kept the name of that person intact. Choe Hyon (1907–1982) became a leading general after the liberation, fought in the Korean War and served as “minister of the people’s armed forces till his death.”18 The first three parts deal with heroic deeds while fighting with Kim Il Sung in Manchuria, while the rest concentrates on his heroics during the Korean War. Parts 48 to 52 and 56 to 58 were titled Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and were made from 2000 to 2002. KCNA reported on July 7, 2002: “The Korean film studio recently produced part 7 Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow of the multi-part feature film The Nation and Destiny part 58. Through the depiction of different aspects of lives of heroines the film stresses the importance of maintaining the class principle in revolution, telling the truth that a deep-going class struggle to defend the revolutionary gains continues even in the present peacetime as it did in the rigorous days in the past. “A preview of the film was held at the people’s palace of culture yesterday. It was

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watched by senior party and state officials, chairmen of the friendly parties, officials of the commissions and ministries of the cabinet and national institutions, anti–Japanese revolutionary fighters and working people.”19 This was the last time KCNA reported on a new release of a part of the Nation and Destiny series. Previously, every new part of the series was highly eulogized and the release celebrated. It was not the end of the series, however. With part 59, the Parts of Peasants segment began and part 62 was another installment of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Those parts were released in 2003 by Mokran Video in Pyongyang, the government-operated video distribution company, but they didn’t receive any praise from KCNA. The series faded away without as much as a whimper. Over were the days when Nation and Destiny was called “the face of the Korean film”20 though the series is still held in high regard today as “the work of summing up the Juche-based literature and art of the 20th century.”21 Indeed, a lot of things had happened in the years between 1992, the start of the series, and 2002, when it ended. Dramatic changes had shaken the country and had to be dealt with by movies on a smaller scale, movies that could react quicker to the events unfolding than that dinosaur of historical tales, Nation and Destiny.

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Famine and the Death of Kim Il Sung (1994 –1999) On July 8, 1994, Kim Il Sung died from a heart attack at age 82. The funeral was dramatic with hundreds of thousands of people attending, shouting his name, crying, screaming and wailing. Scores of people committed suicide, having lost the faith in the future of the country without the Great Leader at the helm. Indeed, the future looked grim. The Soviet Union had broken up; Boris Yeltsin was running Russia and he wasn’t interested in helping out North Korea. China was quickly turning to capitalism although it was still run by the Communist Party. Eastern Europe had fully abandoned the idea of Communism. No help could be expected from those former allies anymore, although China still lent a hand here and there. The industry and transportation systems, largely inherited from the colonial days, were breaking down due to deterioration and mismanagement, and the agriculture, suffering from severe mismanagement as well, couldn’t provide the necessary amounts of even the most basic food supply. Due to deforestation and the long neglect of infrastructure like dams and irrigation systems, monsoon rains and typhoons flooded the fields while in dry periods droughts killed the plants. Food supply to the general population, hitherto provided by the government via a rationing system, shrunk to a trickle and eventually was halted altogether. A famine ensued, killing hundreds of thousands or even millions of people (the published numbers vary greatly as they are all estimates by outsiders). All the while, the money still available was poured into new monuments to Kim Il Sung. His former residence, the Kumsusan Palace near Pyongyang, was turned into his grand mausoleum, where he still rests, embalmed in a glass coffin. From now on, Kim Jong Il was effectively the new leader of the country. He did not take this post officially until 1997, after a three-year mourning period for Kim Il Sung had ended. Even then, he became only the General Secretary of the Worker’s Party and the Chairman of the National Defense Commission. The role of president remained with Kim Il Sung. He received the title “Eternal President” after his demise. Film production did not cease during this period of extreme difficulties. Film was considered too potent a propaganda tool to let it slow down in its efforts to praise the leaders — Kim Il Sung was still eulogized as he lent legitimacy to Kim Jong Il but Kim Jong Il’s leading role became more and more pronounced. 124

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The Nation and Destiny series was continued unabated throughout the decade, telling its tales of people in “alien lands” yearning and eventually embracing North Korea as the best of all countries. While the series was originally launched with the greatest ambitions to produce cinematic propaganda on a truly grand scale, in the time after Kim Il Sung’s death, it may well just have served to reinforce continuity. The Great Leader had passed away but on the screen, things went on like they had before — only now under the wise guidance of Kim Jong Il. It seems that in the immediate years after Kim senior’s demise, the direction of North Korean film was quite uncertain. This is at least suggested by this article on KCNA, published on June 25, 1997: A new turn is being brought about in the Korean cinematographic art in the nineties. Hundreds of feature films have been produced over the five years since the publication of Secretary Kim Jong Il’s work Let Us Bring About a New Turn in the Development of Literature and Art on the Basis of the Successes in the Production of the Multi-Part Feature Film the Nation and Destiny (May 1992). 42 parts of the film The Nation and Destiny have been released up to now. Based on the idea of the song My Country Is Best it shows dramatic lives of men who have different and chequered careers. The film vividly shows the truth that the destiny and bright future of the nation rely on a great leader…. The films My Father, An Obliging Girl, Sisters, Daughter of War Veteran and Young People Bloom Their Native Land depict nobleminded contemporary people who devote themselves to society and the collective…. There are also comic films including Young People, A Bride Comes from Town [aka An Urban Girl Comes to Marry] and People We Met on Taedong River. These films are enriching the Juche film art.1

There hadn’t been “hundreds of feature films” produced between 1992 and 1997. The number of films was much, much smaller, even counting all the installments of Nation and Destiny. But the main point of the KCNA report was different: at the height of the famine, with people dying in scores in all the cities and provinces outside Pyongyang, it cites happiness movies like An Urban Girl Comes to Marry (1993) as contemporary productions still valid in their message to the day. As if the daily reality experienced by the audiences hadn’t grown into a vastly different direction by then.

The Arduous March vs. the Second Grand Chollima March In 1997, Kim Jong Il took over the official leadership of the country. There was no denying anymore that the situation in the country was terrible. Scapegoats were readily found: vicious maneuvers of outside powers, particularly the U.S., were blamed for the poor performance of industry and agriculture, coupled with the floods and droughts plaguing the country. Kim Jong Il desperately needed to show some progress being made to bolster his position. On August 24, 1999, KCNA reported: The second grand Chollima march is in full swing in Korea. The nation’s economic potentials have begun to pay off, hardening the Korean people’s belief in future victory.

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Images from the flyer of Changes of Pyong yang During the Forced March. Grand buildings and highways were not only envisioned but actually built during the worst time of starvation. The grand Chollima upsurge took place in the 1950s after the war. At that time, everything in Korea was destroyed in the three-year war ( June 1950–July 1953) provoked by the U.S. They vouched that Korea could not rise again even in 100 years. However, the Korean people repaired the war damage in three or four years after the war, thanks to the grand Chollima upsurge brought about by the President Kim Il Sung, and realized the industrialization in 14 years, thus demonstrating the dignity of the nation. In recent years, the situation of Korea was more difficult than that in the postwar period. Unprecedented isolation and suffocation moves of the imperialists and the serious natural disasters of consecutive years have adversely affected the nation’s overall economic performance. General Secretary Kim Jong Il personally initiated the second grand Chollima march in order to get rid of the grave consequences as soon as possible and demonstrate the might of Juche Korea once again. He gave on-the-spot guidance to more than 20 units in Jagang Province despite the severe cold of 40 degrees centigrade below zero in January last year, and highly praised the fighting spirit and trait of workers.2

The first Chollima March of the 1950s had been a big North Korean building campaign modeled on Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward.” It was just that the North Korean version of that “leap” didn’t come with the massive amounts of casualties the Chinese original did.

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The North Korean campaign was named after the Chollima horse, a mythical horse that could run 250 kilometers a day. The myth of that Korean horse was itself built upon a Chinese myth of such a horse. Now that Kim Jong Il pulled that old campaign out again, was there really anything he had to show for it? An answer is given in the 20-minute documentary Changes of Pyong yang During the Forced March, made in 1998. The film does show a construction frenzy on the outskirts of Pyongyang with many soldiers employed in doing the work. A highway gets built (with no cars on it once it’s finished), a giant hotel is erected, all at almost superhuman speed. The North Korean Film Export & Import Corporation praised the film, and with it Kim Jong Il, this way: The respected General Kim Jong Il has a far-reaching plan to build Pyongyang, associated with the whole life of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, to be more magnificent as the eternal capital of Kim Il Sung’s Korea. This film shows such things as the September 9 Street, April 25 Hotel, the KPA [Korean People’s Army] April 25 Feature Film Studio and Rimhung Street which the builders of the capital and soldiers of the People’s Army, upholding his idea, built on the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the DPRK. It also shows the new aspect of Pyongyang which has undergone a change as a result of the construction of these things.3

In the midst of the famine, Kim Jong Il tried to show himself as someone who rightly continued the work of Kim Il Sung, who could even outdo his father by adding to the glory of the capital. The title of the documentary doesn’t relate to the new Chollima March, however. This term and the attempts to link the 1990s to the ’50s, never got off the ground very much. The situation was too grave for anyone to buy into it. Instead, the term “Forced March” or, more commonly in North Korean English-language propaganda, the “Arduous March,” became the defining term and campaign of the period, mostly referring to the years 1996 through 1999. Buildings were built in Pyongyang, yes, but for the majority of North Koreans, things just went from bad to worse. The Arduous March was thus much more appropriate. It meant a march through a difficult period which would certainly end in a glorious victory; a catchphrase to keep the masses hopeful that things would work out, that Juche paradise would be achieved eventually if everyone just kept sacrificing, sacrificing and sacrificing for the Leader; a period to endure, a period to work hard with an empty stomach, a period that would separate the chaff from the grain of the true Juche believers. The period had, according to propaganda, historic precedence: after the battle of Pochonbo in June 1937, the Japanese were closing in on Kim Il Sung’s band of guerrillas. But the danger of Kim’s group getting wiped out was the greatest between December 1938 and March 1939, when the Japanese were in real hot pursuit. He then undertook his own 100-day “Arduous March” through the Manchurian mountains to save himself and his troops. Or so he later claimed. If that sounds very much like a tale modeled on Mao Zedong’s legendary Long March in 1934/1935, in which Mao had led his guerrilla army out of the encirclement by Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Army and which led to Mao’s ascent as undisputed leader of the Chinese Communist party, then yes, this was certainly no coincidence. That tale of Kim’s Arduous March had already existed for a long time before the 1990s.

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As a tale of defeat and retreat, it had not received much attention by North Korean propaganda, however. Now was the time to revive the tale. If the Great Leader could overcome the gravest dangers and difficulties during his own Arduous March, it was the duty for all North Koreans to overcome their difficulties of the day, led by Kim Jong Il. To impressively support the massive propaganda in print and at seminars advocating the Arduous March, a movie was needed.

The Forest Sways The movie, or rather movie series, to fulfill this role was The Forest Sways. Parts one to six were directed by Jung Gun Jo and Lee Yong Jin and written by Li Chun Gu and Oh Hyun Rak. Parts seven to twelve were directed by Jung Gun Jo and Kim Hun Chol and written by Li Chun Gu, Hong Won Chol and Che Yung Hak. The first two parts were released in 1997 and their KCNA announcement sounds very much like just another load of the same old Kim Il Sung heroism being served once more: The Forest Sways tells about stories of the historic period before and after the winter of Juche 27 (1938) when the Korean revolution was in the most rigorous trials. It portrays men of the Korean people’s revolutionary army who heroically defended the red flag of the revolution in the spirit of devotedly safeguarding the leader and with ardent patriotism under the command of President Kim Il Sung.4

More to the point, and directly related to the film, Kim Il Sung and the current situation was the description given for the parts made in 1998: The feature film The Forest Sways (parts 3 through 6) gives a truthful depiction of the historical “Arduous March” which had been made by the main unit of the Korean people’s revolutionary army for over 100 days from early December of Juche 27 (1938) to the end of march next year under the wise leadership of President Kim Il Sung. The film vividly shows the spirit of devoted defence of the leader displayed by the anti–Japanese revolutionary fighters and ties of kinship between the leader and his soldiers.5

In August 1999, the completion of four more parts of the series was announced: The Korean Film Studio recently produced parts 9 and 10 of the feature film The Forest Sways. The film deals with the arduous march which was made in the most grim days of the anti– Japanese revolutionary war. Its newly-released parts impressively depict the trust and love shown by President Kim Il Sung for anti–Japanese guerrillas and transparent revolutionary outlook on the leader of Kim Jong Suk, an indomitable communist revolutionary fighter who devotedly fought for the safety of the headquarters, following the President only with belief in him. Parts 7 and 8 show the noble traits of Kim Il Sung, a great man, and the steadfast fighting spirit of the O Jung Hup 7th regiment of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army during the anti–Japanese armed struggle which dedicated its all to safeguarding the headquarters of revolution.6

The final part was released in 2000: Recently the Korean Film Studio produced part 12 of the feature film The Forest Sways. The film was created against the background of the army-people joint meeting held in Beidadingzi at the victorious end of the arduous march made during the anti–Japanese revolutionary war.

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It truthfully depicts the superb strategy of the President Kim Il Sung and his warm love for soldiers, the unshakable view on the leader with which the anti–Japanese heroine Kim Jong Suk defends the headquarters of the revolution and fighters’ noble sense of obligation and comradeship.7

When the Arduous March of the 1990s officially ended in 2000, the movie series also celebrated the victory of Kim Il Sung in his 1930s Arduous March. There was no need to continue the series after 2000. The movie series didn’t circulate much outside of North Korea and was not available for viewing for this book.

The Problem of Alienated Youth In addition to the famine ravishing the country, Kim Jong Il appears to have been very worried about another threatening development in society: the children of the elite began showing symptoms of alienation from the Juche teachings. Western influences spread among them, they started to be disaffected by the work campaigns and getting cynical about the party slogans. This was a problem the movies had to address immediately. Juvenile delinquency developed into another headache. Even the girls in the countryside began to shun the traditional mores. Three films made in 1997 and 1998 dealt with this particular worry. In addition, they managed to be strong motivational movies for a population in distress.

Myself in the Distant Future A widely seen movie released in 1997 was Myself in the Distant Future (directed by Jang In Hak, written by Yui Un Yong). Set in a paradise-like contemporary Pyongyang, it harks back to the old Juche Reality movies: an imperfect citizen, standing in for a whole group of people displaying wrong attitudes and behavior, has to learn the correct Juche way of life the hard way but stands corrected at the end and becomes a model worker. The grim reality faced by the majority of the population is almost completely left out of the movie, though at times very small mentions that “the Party is worried about the farming,” are made, just to reassure the audience that the Party cares, not to show any of the most pressing problems. From the somber start with snow falling, the clock on Pyongyang train station showing midnight on New Year’s, and an abundance of North Korean flags being on display — the viewer knows that he will hear some important message in Myself in the Distant Future. Celebratory music plays as a young man is escorted to a train by people waving tearfully. Once inside the train, the young man tells his story to a journalist in the restaurant car. He actually used to be a bad guy. Flashback and the real start of the movie. Sin Jun (played by Kim Myong Mun) was a fairly lazy young man who believed that all the merits of his labor hero architect father are automatically his as well. He lives in luxury at his parents’ apartment in a Pyongyang

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skyscraper and does nothing but dream, play Nintendo games, listen to dance music (North Korean dance music but it obviously stands in here for the illegal reception of South Korean broadcasts) and argue with his father. The father is flabbergasted by what he has to hear from his son. In one crucial dialogue, he berates his son for taking the luxury he lives in for granted and not doing anything for the improvement of the country. He scolds his son for breaking off his education at the “Institute of Engineering” and having only cared about securing a place at the “University for International Relations.” Failing that, the son has become nothing by today than a simple limo driver at the Foreign Ministry. The dialogue indicates that the son cared only about getting out of the country — or else tried to stay in close contact with foreigners. The father continues his scolding: “The whole country is in the period of the Arduous March and you don’t participate in any way.” “Uhhm, the Arduous March is only a temporary campaign,” the son replies. What an anti-social statement! The “Arduous March” was the main theme of North Korean propaganda throughout the mid– to late 1990s and this guy says it’s “only a temporary campaign”? What a failure of a son does this father have! The plot continues with Sin Jun meeting a beautiful girl he immediately falls in love with, Su Yang (Kim Hye Gyong). To his astonishment, she works in the Shock Brigades that build high-rises at super-human speed. Unbeknownst to him, his father has just met the same girl as she was a model worker on the realization of one of his architectural designs. The girl is just finishing her time as a Shock Brigade laborer and returning to her home village (in the vicinity of Korea’s holy mountain Mount Paektu, where else) to help in the farming work “the Party worries so much about these days.” The Party had all reasons to worry about farm work, indeed; 1997 was the worst year of starvation. Sin Jun, the spoiled kid, volunteers at her farm for a few weeks — his only motivation being to be close to her. At the end of his stay, he confesses his love to her. She rejects him, telling him that working at her own village and making it more successful is more important to her than following him to Pyongyang. They meet again in Pyongyang a while later when she is visiting. He makes a new proposal to her — and he has to hear her real reasons for rejecting him: she was working hard in cold winter with her hands bleeding to build the high-rise he is living in — and he did nothing to deserve that. He is just a lazy fool, depending on his famous father. Now Sin Jun is really moved and wants to change himself. He goes to her village a second time — to settle there. And to do something good for the village and the country — like inventing a wood-fuel tractor. With much help from his mother, he succeeds and proves Sin Jun (Kim Myong Mun) faces the self-criticism the new tractor’s worth by driving it along a wintry forest road that has to session in Myself in the Distant Future.

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stand in as an important mountain pass. He is pulling a trailer loaded with potatoes — and feeding the wood-fire engine with his own shoes to get the tractor going. That makes him a labor hero himself, nets him a medal and gets him the girl. That there was indeed a need to address the problem of alienated elite youth, not willing to play by the rules of Juche anymore, is illustrated by a report on exactly such a youth by the New York Times in July 1996. The newspaper interviewed a real young North Korean convict named Ahn Hyuk for an article titled “Survivors Report Torture in North Korea Labor Camps” after he had managed to defect to the South. Ahn said: “It was very natural in my home for my parents to praise Kim Il-sung [Kim Il Sung].” He grew up as the spoiled son of two senior officials, enjoying every luxury available in North Korea. He even had a radio to listen to South Korean stations — which is prohibited and occasionally looked at pornography or videotapes smuggled in from Japan. He roamed the country without the passes that are required for domestic travel, and even sneaked into China for day trips with the company of other children of high officials. Finally, he said, the government made an example of him for his free-wheeling life and trips to China: arresting him, torturing him and imprisoning him in a concentration camp.8

The Sin Jun of the beginning of the movie is portrayed as a much more harmless character than the Ahn Hyuk the Times presented — but in terms of North Korean cinema presenting domestic characters who had grown up in the bosom of the Party, he was a real baddy. Su Yang, on the other hand, could be straight out of A Bellflower: she loves nothing more than building up her own village — after helping to build up the glory of Pyongyang, that is. Sacrificing herself for her country and her own place is all she cares about — inheriting the position of Hong Su Jung in My Happiness. But there is more to the film. It’s not only “girl awakens lazy guy to his true calling”: Sin Jun does invent a tractor, after all, that works “independently from the expensive oil imports.” He works hard on that vehicle and would never succeed without the extensive help his mother provides. But why does he do that and not something else? Didn’t these same vehicles drive around in post–World War II Germany already? Weren’t they still driving around the poorer rural parts of China in the 1990s? And don’t we see them driving through the fields in North Korea in the same movie — even before Sin Jun “invents” his tractor? Quite some suspension of disbelief is needed on this particular part of the plot. Why this type of tractor was chosen as the gadget on which Sin Jun worked to transform himself remains a mystery. Just mentioned in passing in the summary above, but it’s a potent subtext, was the message: “Eat potatoes instead of rice!” To counter the famine of the 1990s, the North Korean government started a campaign to propagate the planting and eating of potatoes since that is a plant that can survive and provide richer harvests under the cold, mountainous conditions of North Korea than the traditionally planted and consumed rice. Sin Jun, while being in the village, would constantly exhort to his visiting mother sentences like this: “The girls here are especially beautiful because they eat potatoes since a long time ago!” In the happiest moments of village life, they bake potatoes in camp fires and smear their faces with the ashes sticking to the potato peel — then greatly laughing about each other’s ash-smeared face. Of course, it’s potatoes he carries over the pass in his heroic tractor drive. The film certainly addressed a lot of issues. For KCNA, however, the most important

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message the film delivers was that the film “stresses that one should live a meaningful life so that he can recollect his past without remorse.”9 This way, the title Myself in the Distant Future makes perfect sense. In the distant future, people should be able to look back at their current life and be proud of it — proud of having led a successful Juche life. Or, the other way around, young folks who don’t contribute to Juche society now will certainly regret their current lifestyle someday. Smoothing that potentially threatening message was the complicated but sweet romance story carrying it all along. The jury of the 1998 Pyongyang Film Festival awarded the film the Golden Torch, the main prize.

Stalks Grow from the Roots Alienated elite youth were not the only youth-related problem the North faced. Criminal youth gangs posed another problem. According to Andrei Lankov, originally they were not considered a serious threat: The hoodlum subculture has been a part of the North Korean tradition from the 1970s, and a large number of young men from underprivileged households were members of such gangs before they went to the military (typically, at age 18). The gangs are especially prominent in large provincial cities. Some of these cities are reportedly divided into zones, so nobody ventures into the turf of a rival gang. Such an incursion can lead to a violent fight with unpredictable results. The gangs are engaged in criminal activities of various kinds. They pick pockets, steal food from food stalls, and take bicycles and household belongings left in yards … there were some reports of muggings…. However, criminal activity is probably not the major part of a gang member’s life. Group fights with “enemies” from other neighborhoods, daring escapes from police patrols and other risky undertakings provide the young Koreans with the thrill of adventure…. The authorities generally turn a blind eye to the gangs, as long as their activities do not lead to social disruption. It is correctly assumed that most of their members will soon join the army and come back home as reliable members of North Korean society.10

So, if those youth gang members were just young men roughing each other up in daredevil fights and escapes and thus, in a way, preparing for their service as Kim Jong Il’s storm troopers, why would it be necessary to make a movie about reforming them? Did their violence just get out of hand sometimes? Did they step up their criminal activities beyond the limit? These were rough times, after all, in the midst of the famine. In fact, while the old-style gangs described by Lankov certainly continued to exist, a whole new gang subculture developed in the 1990s. Children orphaned by the famine, known as “kotjebi,” were left to fend for themselves. Starting out as individual beggars, they soon formed their own gangs and turned to stealing, mugging and robbing for their survival. By the 2000s, old-style gangs and kotjebi crime had merged into a new beast, the “jebitte.” In 2008, ten years after Stalks Grow from the Roots was made, those “jebitte” gangs had become a serious threat to North Korean society, as the Daily NK reported: North Korean authorities are concerned over increasing gang activity involving “kotjebi” around railway stations and in markets.

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Stalks Grow from the Roots. Ri Yong Ho (left), playing a former hoodlum, and Kim Hye Gyong, who has always been the straight shooter, take care of the baby of a single mother.

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In the late 1990s, those gangs were not yet robbing and stealing to achieve lifestyles otherwise unavailable to them. They fought for food. This, however, could not be mentioned by the movie propaganda. Officially, “kotjebi” simply didn’t exist. The existence of the old-style fighting youth, however, could be easily admitted. They were fighting their little fights and were no danger to society. It’s exactly those folks the film deals with — though they might just stand in for the more serious offenders. Stalks Grow from the Roots was directed by Kim Chun Song and written by Won Yong Shil. Young man Sung Chol (played by Ri Yong Ho) sits on a train to Pyongyang, wearing two big medals on his jacket. Everyone else on the train also has numerous medals pinned on their jackets — they are all on the way to a big party conference in Pyongyang. Sung Chol thinks back on what brought him here … the rest of the film is told in a complicated arrangement of flashbacks. This is strongly reminiscent of Myself in the Distant Future, which also starts with a young hero remembering his troubled past while on a train. The similarities between the two films don’t end there. Like Sin Jun, the hero of Myself in the Distant Future, Sung Chol, is the son of a labor hero who got spoiled in his youth, consequently ends up as a troublemaker and who then pulls himself out of the mess he had brought himself into. Even the female leads are the same: in both films Kim Hye Gyong plays the straight shooting role model girl. To avoid confusion, the plot of the film will be described here largely in chronological order, not in the flashback system employed by the film. Two children, a boy and a girl, become members of the youth organization Young Pioneers. At an outdoor ceremony, the party secretary of the local coal mine wraps the signature red scarves around their necks. A photo is taken of the event. On the same day, the two children and the father of the boy plant a tree on the outskirts of the small town. Much pondering while standing near or sitting under this tree will be done by them separately later in the movie when the tree — which gave the movie the title — has become tall.

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Fast forward about ten years. The girl has grown up into a university student; her name is Yu Jong. She is on an outdoor ice skating rink with a friend. The friend warns her that she just spotted a group of well-known troublemakers and makes her exit. Yu Jong remains standing on the ice and is approached by the gang of hoodlums. They berate her for being an over-ambitious gunner. She slaps the leader of the gang, Sung Chol, in the face and walks away. They don’t recognize each other from the childhood meeting. A few years later, Yu Jong, by now a university lecturer, starts to hold adult education classes at the local coal mine. The party secretary of the mine is still the party secretary who had presided over her Young Pioneer ceremony. On her first day on the job, she hands the secretary a special gift: a framed print of the photo from that ceremony. Alas, she doesn’t know what became of the boy in the picture, she says. The party secretary knows and he sets out to tell her the story of that boy: His father was a highly decorated worker hero, his mother died very early on. The father, feeling sorry for the son, didn’t discipline him when he broke some minor rules. Once the offenses started to get bigger and the authorities became involved, he used his position as a highly respected hero to talk them out of applying any consequences. The son, Sung Chol, began to drink and joined a gang of hooligans. In a brief sequence, their crimes are shown: fighting, stealing a chicken from a farmhouse, pick pocketing a lady at a market, sleeping, passed out drunk, in the park during work time. Eventually, a police officer showed up at the coal mine where Sung Chol worked, to talk to the party secretary. What could be done about that troublesome young man, he asked. Should he be forgiven once more? His father was a hero after all. Sung Chol was lead into the room, his face still bruised from a recent fight. He uttered a few excuses. Right then, his father walked in. He told the officer and the party secretary that he had made a big mistake by spoiling his son. He handed them all his many medals and told them he wanted to return them all. He didn’t deserve them. He felt guilty to have reared such a bad apple. Furthermore, he asked for severe punishment for his son — something finally had to be done. A shocked Sung Chol looked on. The decision was soon made: Sung Chol would be sent to a labor education camp. Sung Chol broke down crying. There are different types of labor education camps in North Korea, from relatively light ones to camps from which nobody ever returns. Sung Chol is obviously being sent to one of the lighter versions. Still, no images of the camp are shown. The party secretary goes on relaying the story and the film cuts to Sung Chol sitting on a train on his way home from the camp. He is full of remorse. His father had written him that he had taken over his job in the coal mine, to make good for the son. Old and ill as he was, he was now working hard deep down in the mine shaft. How could Sung Chol ever look into his father’s face again? He wants to really change for good now. On his train is a group of youths traveling to a construction site to join the “Shock Brigades,” the heavy duty high-rise construction youth brigades. Sung Chol tells their leader his story and begs him to let him join in as well. He is permitted. Sung Chol excels at the construction site. Eventually, he is discharged with a recommendation to enter university — an almost unheard-of feat for a former hoodlum. He returns home and his father is very proud of him. Back home, he encounters his old gang again. They are still living the old, criminal

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way. Sung Chol makes a big decision: he will not enter university. He will take care of the old gang, but he will turn them into model citizens. He starts working at his old coal mine again, and confronts his old pals on the river embankment where they prefer to hang out. After a small violent altercation with a few minor members, the current boss of the gang admits to him that they all had grown tired of living as outcasts but that they couldn’t see any alternative. Society would reject them, they believed, because they have been behaving so badly. Sung Chol tells the gang leader that this is not the case at all. Society would embrace them if they only made an effort. He offers jobs at the coal mine for all. They willingly follow him to the mine and sign up. The story the party secretary tells to Yu Jong ends here. Some people are straight shooters, like she has always been, he tells her. From childhood on, she has always done exactly the right thing. But there are others, he explains, who have to take a different route to find themselves and find their place in society. Those people take detours and sometimes make big mistakes. Still, they deserve their chance, as they will eventually learn from their mistakes. There are different ways of growing tall. Right then, Sung Chol walks into the room. Yu Jong recognizes him as the hoodlum from the ice skating rink and isn’t exactly pleased to meet him. He doesn’t recognize her. The gang has become by now a tough-talking but highly motivated work team, bent on over-fulfilling the set coal quota. Only one gang member is worrisome. The film takes a turn and starts to tell a different story. Yong Sae (Shin Hak Myong) has always been in love with the daughter of the mine foreman. She loves him, too. He believes, however, that her family will never accept him because of his hoodlum past. He leaves for another city. Unbeknownst to him, she is pregnant. Once the baby is born, all the old gang members and factory staff take care of her and the child. Once Yong Sae hears the news that he has become a father, he arranges for a secret meeting with his girlfriend. No, he can’t live with her at the mine, he tells her. He wants to take her and the baby with him. Returning to live in the dormitory at the mine and most certainly not being accepted by her family would be unbearably shameful for him. She assures him of her love but refuses to join him. Desperate, he walks away. There are lots of North Korean movies showing girls or work collectives taking loving care of orphans. This, however, was probably the first film dealing with sex before marriage and a baby resulting from it. Then the boyfriend absconding and leaving the girl and his offspring in the care of others — discussions in the screenwriting phase if this was a proper subject to deal with in a film most certainly were controversial. But, obviously out of a need to address a pressing problem, the topic was included. Driven to despair by his guilt, Yong Sae eventually returns to the mine and takes on his responsibilities, greatly assisted by the always-understanding party secretary, Sung Chol and the others, if not exactly by the girl’s father. Eager to prove his resolve, Yong Sea puts himself in the most dangerous situations of the mine work. Water beaks into the mine and threatens to flood it. Only detonating explosives at the right places will stop it. Yong Sae and Sung Chol are the ones saving the mine in dramatic action. Yong Sae becomes a hero and his girl’s father begins to accept him. Then we are back to Sung Chol sitting on the train to the party congress, the scene opening the film. He holds a big speech in Pyongyang, with Yu Jong sitting in the audience.

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Via a radio announcement they listen to together, the miners learn that Kim Jong Il insisted to meet and have a photo taken with Sung Chol. Not because of the record amount of coal he and his men had produced but because of the big change he underwent and the changes he led others to make. Big jubilation follows, naturally. In the final scenes, we see Sung Chol and Yu Jong meet, he with a red rose in his hand. In the course of the film, there was no love story going on between them. She learned to eventually respect him, though. Will they become a couple now? It’s left to the imagination of the viewer. For the very few minutes shown of bad guy behavior on screen, the film depicts three hours as the culprits atone and work on bettering themselves. The party secretary and all other officials are always understanding, always helpful. It’s like one big family with a strongwilled father … much like North Korea sees itself as a whole. The party secretary stands in for Kim Jong Il and his understanding benevolence … who still needs to hand out stern but loving disciplinary action if necessary. The message is spelled out clearly at the end of the film: “Don’t just show the country your love — with your actions make the country love you.” A slogan obviously derived from John F. Kennedy’s “Don’t ask what the country can do for you, ask what you can do for the country.” The film certainly succeeds in what it wanted to achieve: creating the impression that no matter how bad or misguided someone may have been, there is always room and forgiveness provided for those who truly repent. An important message in a time of starvation and partial breakdown of public order in everywhere outside the showcase capital. Whatever you may have done, if you come back into the bosom of the Party, you will be forgiven, the film seems to say. On that level, it seems to talk straight to the “kotjebi”: “Don’t give up hope! You committed terrible crimes [in order to survive] but the Party and the society will take you back!” There was, of course, no admitting that it was the Party’s politics that brought on the contemporary mess in the first place. In fact, the famine, most rampant in small mining towns like the one featured, is not mentioned at all. To the contrary, big feasts are shown throughout the movie. At every possible occasion, celebrations are held in the mine and the tables are loaded with delicious food. Stalks Grow from the Roots was a more ambitious and possibly more effective propaganda movie than Myself in the Distant Future— a whole group is given salvation here, after all, standing in for a rather big segment of alienated youth. The segment Myself in the Distant Future was aimed at was comparatively small though still a troublesome bunch because of the status they held.

Girls in My Hometown If Myself in the Distant Future and Stalks Grow from the Roots were all about young men who had to find their right place in society, Girls in My Hometown was aimed at young women. The film was released in 1997, directed by Pak Sung Bok and written by Li Chun Gu. Set in a small village in Kangwon Province in the southwest of North Korea, the film starts out with nasty bad girl Un Gyong loudly proclaiming her degenerate Westernized

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views to her sister, Un Ha, as well as her mother. She’s introduced first via her tape recorder on which she plays Western music where “the singers more scream than sing,” as is said in the accompanying dialogue. The exact type of music playing on the recorder is hard to make out. It seems to be generic Western pop. She forces Un Ha to try on a Western dress which actually doesn’t show any cleavage but which still leaves some skin open to view the top of the breasts. Un Ha feels very uneasy in it and covers herself when her village girlfriends stop by for a visit. Un Gyong, who may have a boyfriend who works abroad or who may have lived abroad herself for a time (it isn’t explained where exactly she picked up her wrong views of life), continues to espouse her bad views on life and relationships: modern young women want to marry rich guys, she says, not disabled soldiers as in the past. To sacrifice oneself by marrying a disabled soldier has been a long and — at least in propaganda — highly rewarded tradition for women in North Korea. What would motivate a soldier more to give it all on the battlefield than the knowledge that even if they end up terrifyingly disfigured, they are going to be well taken care of (and provided with sexual gratification) once the battle is over. Un Gyong refuses all that — she puts her personal gratification first. Un Ha, her sister, however is a pure-hearted girl just like all the other girls in the village. She hates the pop music, the revealing dresses, the talk of her sister — and yet, she gets corrupted. She is in love with Song Chol, the Squad Leader of a military platoon that has come to her village to do construction work. The village used to be very poor but thanks to the army and the party working in unison with the civilians, it has become prosperous. An accident blinds Song Chol. Un Ha, his (most definitely very chaste) girlfriend, refuses to see him in the hospital, refuses to play the flute at night outside his hospital room that he has given her. She herself says that she is afraid of getting into a closer relationship with a blind person. Marrying a disabled man would be just too much for her. She couldn’t bear it. That she thinks so is, of course, directly due to the corrupting influence of her sister Un Gyong, who shamelessly propagates selfishness over sacrifice. The young men and soldiers working on the construction site, working hard for the benefit of the villagers, are deeply disappointed that a village girl abandoned the crippled soldier who loves her. They refuse to drink the local brew brought by the village girls to the construction site. “The brew is the same as in the old times,” they say. “The girls have changed.” With the old times, they mean the Korean War. At that time, the local girls selflessly undertook dangerous trips to the soldiers holed up in the mountains to bring them food. When a soldier got crippled, a village girl married him. Enter Si Nae, another and much purer village girl. Un Ha asks her in a dramatic scene, “Would you marry a cripple?” After some deliberation, Si Nae comes to the conclusion that, yes, she would. Si Nae realizes that she had always been secretly in love with Song Chol and now feels it her duty to become his wife after he has been so terribly rejected by Un Ha. She asks her Political Instructor for permission to marry Song Chol. At first he rejects her idea. It turns out that he himself is married to a disabled female soldier and that he knows the hardships such a marriage would entail. Si Nae persists. Song Chol, still in the hospital, doesn’t answer her letters. After Un Ha’s betrayal, he doesn’t want to get disappointed by another girl. He returns to the village once and tells Si

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Nae to back off. He doesn’t trust her. Then he moves back to his mother’s house in the faraway northeast. Si Nae runs away from home knowing that her mother would not approve of the wedding. Once she arrives at Song Chol’s house, she is accepted into the family there — for her true love and persistence. Finally, the wedding takes place, leaving Un Ha deeply ashamed. Un Ha breaks off all ties to her Westernized sister and swears to become a good, traditional village girl again — a girl who would sacrifice her life for the sake of a soldier. The local young men and soldiers of the village begin to respect the girls again. Si Nae had set the example of what a local girl should be. “Sacrifice” is the word the movie centers on. The film makes clear that it is very difficult to live with a disabled soldier and that hard times await all girls doing so. Still, girls are expected to sacrifice themselves and live the hard life for the sake of the country, the unity of people and army and ultimately for the happiness of General Kim Jong Il. The other term strongly in use throughout the film is “change.” Change is bad, tradition is good, the film repeats over and over again. To change means to get corrupted, to become selfish. Not to change means to keep the wartime spirit of selfless sacrifice alive. A spirit especially in need now, in 1997, when the survival of the country was at stake and the unity of the army and the civilians was of the utmost importance. Nothing of the lightheartedness of An Urban Girl Comes to Marry remained in Girls in My Hometown. The heavy-handed message of absolute, unquestioned sacrifice was repeated over and over again … making Girls in My Hometown one of the most mindnumbing and relentless propaganda pictures ever produced in the North. In fact, many of the messages promoted here reflect those of the soldier women turned civilians who keep their military spirit in My Happiness (1987). Both films were made in times of dread and almost desperately demand personal sacrifice at all cost for the survival of the unity of army and the people and thus the survival of the country. In fact, both films clearly spell out that “SACRIFICE equals HAPPINESS” and that “HAPPINESS can only be achieved through SACRIFICE.” George Orwell couldn’t have said it better.

Songun Politics Kim Jong Il had to play real power politics during the time of the Arduous March. Though he was well prepared to reign after his father — and had been assigned to do so by his father — he had to secure his power bases. All his work in propaganda and film certainly helped but his real power base was the military. Though he never received any basic military training, he had held the title of General for a long time and he became the Chairman of the National Defense Commission in 1997, and thus the chief of the military. This post was declared in 1998 to be the highest of the state. North Korea has the fourth largest standing army in the world, with more than one million soldiers on active duty. Every male is conscripted into the military and serves for about ten years. The military is strongly involved in nearly all aspects of North Korean life. Soldiers

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work in construction; soldiers help out in agricultural campaigns; and the army has their own film studio. The propaganda tries to instill the spirit of the never-surrendering, dutiful soldier who gives everything for the leader and the country into every North Korean. A good example of the close relationship between the military and civilian life was already shown in the 1987 film My Happiness about the two young women for whom the Korean War never ends — they work as hard as they did on the frontline in their post-war civilian lives. In the late 1990s, Kim Jong Il finally elevated the military to the very top of society. He created the “Songun Policy,” meaning “Military First Policy.” In classical Marxism, the Working Class had been the main force of the revolution, the main force tasked with building up a Communist society. Kim Jong Il handed that status of revolutionary avant-garde over to the military. Songun meant a break with the remnants of old Marxism and it slowly replaced Juche as well. From the late 1990s on, North Korea became a thoroughly militarized society with Kim Jong Il at the helm.

Forever in Our Memory By 1999, there was no longer any denying that the North Korean agriculture and with it, the food supply system, had collapsed. There was still some food left for the well-off Pyongyang elite but outside the capital, the death toll from starvation was horrendous. Forever in Our Memory (directed by Kang Jung Mo, written by Park Ho Il), released in 1999, was the first film to address the woes of the countryside — and to solve them on screen according to the new political doctrine of Songun: the poorly managed paddy fields were turned into new heroic national battle grounds. The film starts out like a war movie: Regimental Commander Ri Chol Suk (Ri Ik Sung) receives the order to march with his men into a rural area and wage a war for higher agricultural output and to defend the country against droughts and typhoons. Together with the local state farm folks, they start the battle: turning swamps into paddy fields (nobody talks about potatoes in this movie) and planting the rice even after midnight while lighting the fields with torches. When a tractor’s tires go flat, the commander has the tires of his personal jeep planted on the tractor — thus canceling a visit to his ill wife in the hospital. The movie is crowded with a wide array of characters — not all of them perfect heroes. There is, on the one hand, the female boss of the farm who pledged after a visit to the village by Kim Il Sung that she will not marry before they achieve a real bumper harvest. But there is also a soldier (the assistant of Commander Ri Chol Suk) who steals vegetables from the private garden of an old lady. He is dealt with sternly but carefully and he becomes a hero later on to prove that he has learned from his mistake. There is the vice chief of the farm who would occasionally (and illegally) barter rice against needed farm supplies. He is presented as a character who still has to learn a lot about the Juche ways — though there is no mention how he could have otherwise arranged for those necessary supplies. But the main heroes, aside from Commander Ri Chul Suk, are the anonymous soldiers working the fields. For a good reason. Forever in Our Memory is full-force advertising for the internal might of the military — and the proclaimed “unity between military and the

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The Army and the farmers united beat the droughts and floods. A flyer for Forever in Our Memory, with Ri Ik Sung (center), Park Hyung Sun (right) and an unidentified actor.

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people,” with the military being in the lead. In the movie, the military saves the farmers, after all. The farmers on their own had not been strong enough to overcome the catastrophic weather conditions the film blames for all ills. The deed of successfully planting the crops and claiming new arable land is finally done — green paddies up to the horizon — when a drought hits the country. Now, the brave soldiers and farmers carry water in buckets for miles to save the fragile plants. The sun burns with demonic intensity — but suddenly that same sun, still in the midst of the drought, is eulogized by a hymnical musical score. Cut to the farmers carrying water. A girl yells the news to them: “The Dear General has just been here!” Shaken by religious love, they run into the village, and we see a convoy of cars disappearing on the horizon. The happy Regimental Commander tells the farmers that, yes, the Dear General Kim Jong Il has just visited here and he is in good health. The farmers kneel down and swoon over the tire tracks the Leader had left in the dust. The drought overcome, it’s a typhoon that threatens the harvest. The flood is introduced by fierce waves running over the dykes and easily uprooting telephone poles. How do the soldiers and farmers keep their paddy fields dry? By a few thousands of them standing on top of the dyke, their arms linked, yelling “Long live Kim Il Sung!” into the face of the angry ocean and keeping the flood away with their own bodies. No ocean wave can break this spirit of unity between the army and the people! The images of the soldiers and farmers holding back the ocean waves while the flag of the General Kim Jong Il is raised above their heads — a flag displayed only at the most important occasions — look truly apocalyptic, as if the end was really near and only the most desperate sacrifice and love of the Leader could save the nation.

10

The Sunshine Years (2000 –2008) By 1987, the period of military dictatorship in South Korea had ended. In that year, Roh Tae-woo became the first democratically elected president. During his term in office, in 1988 the Olympic Games were held in Seoul, giving the newly achieved economic successes of the South wide international exposure. In 1998, former opposition leader and political prisoner Kim Dae-jung was elected as president. Kim was politically leaning towards social democracy and he greatly admired former social democratic West German chancellor Willy Brandt for improving relations between West and East Germany as well as with the countries of the Eastern Bloc, including the Soviet Union through his Neue Ostpolitik policies of rapprochement and mutual diplomatic, economic and cultural exchange. In the spirit of Brandt, Kim set out to improve relations with North Korea, to bring the two Koreas closer together again. His policy towards the North became known as the Sunshine Policy. In June 2000, Kim traveled to Pyongyang and held a summit meeting with Kim Jong Il — the first ever between the heads of state of the South and the North. Although it was later revealed that Kim Dae-jung’s administration paid several hundred million dollars for Kim’s privilege of meeting Kim Jong Il, at the time expectations and excitement about closer relations with the North ran wildly high in South Korea. Kim Jong Il kept a cooler head. He knew very well that Brandt’s policies of engaging the East had in the long run undermined the political system there and greatly contributed to the downfall of the Eastern regimes. Kim desperately needed the money the South had to offer but any opening of North Korea was clearly out of the question. The North took all the money and aid offered by the South and wasn’t shy about frequently asking for more. It held temporarily back on the use of the worst invectives towards the South, but otherwise life for the average Northerner remained largely unaffected by the Sunshine Policy. The Southern aid went to the coffers of the elite. The end of the famine in about 2000 was not a result of the Sunshine Policy but the result of the complete breakdown of governmental food distribution. In its absence, semi-legal markets began to open where people could sell and barter whatever they could do without in exchange for privately grown food or international/Southern food aid items that found its way there. In the North Korean media, Kim Jong Il was praised for his successes in inter–Korean relations. That Kim Dae-jung had initiated the Sunshine Policy was not mentioned. Breakthroughs like the Summit Meeting and the entry of a unified Korean team marching under the unification flag into the stadium at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games in September 2000 were singularly attributed to the genius of leader Kim Jong Il. 143

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Slow Change and a Return to the Past The movies released in 2000 made no mention of the Sunshine Policy. Nation and Destiny was still getting new installments, as was The Forest Sways. The cold war with the South still played out on the screen as if nothing had changed. KCNA reported in December 2000, The feature film Green Shoulder-Strap reflects the spirit of devoted service to the people and the self-sacrificing spirit displayed by people’s security men. The film tells a true story about a security officer who on a train detects an enemy spy infiltrating into Pyongyang to destabilize the socialist system and dies a heroic death. The film Son Comes Back Home portrays a soldier of the Korean People’s Security Forces who is arrested by the enemy while drifting about in rough storm in the sea on military duty but remains true to his revolutionary faith and comes back to the homeland.1

The enemy in both cases is, of course, the South. It may or may not have been a deliberate decision that none of the above mentioned films played at the Pyongyang Film Festival in September 2000. The only North Korean feature film presented at the festival, The Earth of Love, was strictly anti–Japanese.

The Earth of Love To understand the plot of the film, some background information is necessary. Chongryon, the organization of North Korea–affiliated residents in Japan, has been running schools teaching a North Korean curriculum in Korean to Japanese Koreans since the 1950s. For the children whose parents are willing to expose their offspring to strict North Korean indoctrination, every step in the educational program is provided, from primary schools all the way up the a Chongryon-run university. Female students have been encouraged to wear traditional Korean clothing, the socalled hanbok-dress, which is in Japan generally recognized as a specifically Korean dress. In 1998, in his efforts to build up the Songun military first policy, Kim Jong Il let his army fire a newly developed Taepondong rocket over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. Japan was not informed about the rocket launch. North Korean propaganda then declared that a satellite had been successfully shot into outer space, with the purpose of beaming down revolutionary music. Outside North Korea, the satellite announcement found hardly any believers (no such satellite could be detected in outer space) and the rocket launch was generally considered a military missile test. Japan especially was outraged that the missile went right over the country’s territory without any advance warning. While the Japanese government only registered some complaints with the North Koreans, a few fringe extremist Japanese right-wingers looked for more direct targets to attack in retaliation. The North Korean schools were the most obvious and easiest targets to direct their anger at. Demonstrations took place in front of some schools, threats of violence against teachers and students were made and some students, especially easily identifiable female ones dressed in hanbok were harassed. The movie does not mention the missile issue and just jumps to a poor little girl named Jong Ok dressing in hanbok and living in a land of perpetual rain and misery. Thugs with

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Vicious Japanese thugs attack the poor little Korean girl in The Earth of Love.

baseball bats attack her. They just hate Koreans, period. They beat her until they think she’s dead. She didn’t die but she does receive what looks like a serious spinal injury. She has to move around in a wheelchair now. Her mother tries her best but then she dies. In a desperate search for treatment, Jong Ok is sent to North Korea, the homeland, the mother land. While Japan is portrayed as the country of rain and hate, North Korea proves to be the country of love. Every effort is undertaken to heal the girl. Nurse Kwi Nyo takes special care of Jong Ok. This nurse is really special indeed — she is played by none other than Jang Son Hui, who had been the main actress in Pulgasari. As much loving care and professional treatment as Jong Ok receives, nothing can heal her crippling injuries until she is one day sitting alone in front of the portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in a hospital waiting room. The energy radiating from those pictures overpowers her and she simply forgets her injury. She gets up out of her wheelchair and walks towards the images of the leaders. Right then, Kwi Nyo walks into the room and discovers the miraculous healing that had emanated from the images of the leaders. Jong Ok has not only been healed by just looking at the pictures, she was healed by finally and truly understanding the love of the Leaders to the Korean compatriots. A true miracle had taken place. The North Korean description of the film given in the festival catalogue comes much closer to the North Korean mindset and the message the North wanted to deliver with the movie than what this ignorant foreign viewer could possibly write. Here is what the Pyongyang festival catalogue had to say:

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The Earth of Love. Jong Ok (left) can find healing only through the images of the Great and Dear Leaders. Here, she is seen with nurse Kwi Nyo (played by Jang Son Hui, the lead actress in Pulgasari ). Jong Ok was crippled by brutal atrocities of the Right-wing gangs in Japan. Her mother did her best to make her stand. Her mother passed away leaving her cripple daughter behind her. Whatever is there no the embrace to cure her?! Jong Ok is embraced in the warm bosom of the fatherland. Thanks to the help of Kwi Nyo and other kind-hearted people and the benefits of the system of the socialist public health which values the people, she walks with great strides. She cries out “father!,” looking up to President Kim Il Sung and General Kim Jong Il who established the best socialist system in the world. She is dropping the tears of thanks.”2

Pulgasari Revisited In 1998, at the height of the famine, cash-strapped North Korea contacted via their Chongryon compatriots in Tokyo the Japanese film historian, critic and sometime distributor Fumio Furuya. Furuya was writing under the pen name Edoki Jun for the Japanese edition of Playboy and he was known for his wacky taste. His pen name said it all: Edoki Jun is a cryptic Japanese way of spelling out the name of an American director known for his campy horror movies. Edo = Ed (in Japanese there is always a vowel attached to the consonant, the consonant n being the only exception), “ki” means wood in Japanese. Jun is a common Japanese man’s name but can be read here the American way of “Junior.” That makes the pen name of Furuya, once deciphered, “Ed

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The Japanese video cover of Pulgasari.

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Wood jun.,” the name of the director of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), often cited as being the worst or campiest movie ever made. Somebody who chose this name and had this kind of interests must certainly be interested in North Korean fare. This was obviously the reasoning either in Pyongyang or, more likely, the Tokyo office of Chongryon. The latter certainly knew his writing on the films of Ed Wood and other strange pictures. Furuya was willing to watch and consider the North Korean films offered but was finally interested only in the distribution of one of them: Pulgasari. Advertised as the North Korean Godzilla, Furuya brought Pulgasari via his own, newly formed distribution company Raging Thunder into the Japanese art houses — with overwhelming success. People just loved the campy ways the movie portrayed the Godzilla-like heroic monster — and in the same year the Roland Emmerich–directed first Hollywood adaptation of Godzilla appeared on Japanese screens. The Emmerich film was big budget and had slick special effects — Shin Sang-ok’s wacky picture, however, carried itself on the charm of the old and less-than-perfect Toho Godzillas of the early days. South Korean distributors took notice. Pulgasari, having proved its great potential in Japan, was the obvious choice of one hopeful distribution company. The South Korean distribution rights of the film were bought from North Korea for a big chunk of cash — and in the summer of 2000, Pulgasari was the first North Korean film ever to get theatrically released in South Korea, but with devastating results. Only 500 people showed up in all of movie-crazy Seoul to see the film, which meant theaters were running shows with hardly any people watching. Many theaters pulled the plug on the movie even before the first week was over. South Korean newspapers covering the disaster tried to explain that the low-tech, campy special effects were not attractive to South Korean youngsters who buy the bulk of the tickets. That was certainly true. Concepts like camp had not arrived yet in South Korea. There is another important aspect to the failure of the film, too: Until 1999, Japanese movies were not allowed to be imported into South Korea. Thus, no real Godzilla cult could develop there like the one that had Tokyo audiences embracing the odd-looking Pulgasari. Godzilla’s poorly made South Korean clone Yonggari (1967, directed by Kim Ki-duk, remade in 1999) was of no big help here. Yonggari never established a following in Korea in the way Godzilla did in Japan. Thus, Pulgasari quickly died at the Seoul box office. Nonetheless, in 2001, Pulgasari finally received an American VHS video release, no doubt inspired by Raging Thunder’s successful Japanese theatrical release. The American distributor was Rubbersuit Productions, the kaiju (monster movie) subdivision of Texasbased Asian animation distributor ADV Films which in turn belonged to A.D. Vision. Though American media and fan-based internet reviews of the films were largely dismissive and often ridiculed the movie, this video release established Pulgasari as the most wellknown and most widely seen North Korean film in the Western hemisphere.

North Korean Movies for the South and the International Market As soon as the Sunshine Policy started in the South, people expressed an interest in viewing North Korean films. Despite the Sunshine Policy, however, the National Security

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Law, installed during the time of the military dictatorship, remained valid. It stated clearly that any display and even viewing of North Korean propaganda is strictly prohibited for South Korean citizens. The law is still enforced at the time of this writing. To show films not considered propaganda became possible, however. As early as 1998, the historical movie series Rim Kkok Jong was broadcast on South Korean television. By 2000, clips from North Korean TV, animated shorts and other original Northern material was regularly shown on South Korean TV for educational purposes. After initially receiving a lot of attention, viewers quickly got bored of the North Korean TV outtakes, however. That fact, and the fact that Pulgasari became a box office failure in Seoul, didn’t deter South Korean distribution companies from further trying to make money with Northern product, gambling on the public’s widespread sympathy’s for the “misunderstood brother” up North. In the North, meanwhile, not only the semi-legal private markets flourished. The government itself encouraged the state enterprises to work on a more market-oriented level. Especially enterprises dealing on an international level were told to earn foreign currency for the benefit of the Leader and the country. The film studios were hopeful candidates to do exactly that. Shin Sang-ok had shown that it was possible to achieve great international acclaim with North Korean movies. The recent success of his Pulgasari in Japan proved that North Korean movies could make money even in the capitalist market. With its newly founded subsidiary Koson (HK) Film Video Trading Company Limited, the Korean Film Export & Import Corporation began to operate a branch based in Hong Kong especially geared towards such deals. A period started in which North Korea tried to produce movies geared to make money internationally.

Souls Protest—The North Korean Titanic The first such movie was Souls Protest—The North Korean Titanic (2001). It was nothing less than North Korea’s attempt to hit international markets with its own version of Titanic. The movie Titanic, directed by James Cameron, had been released in 1997 to become the highest-grossing film in history at the time. If Cameron’s film could gross more than a billion dollars worldwide, a North Korean adaptation of very similar subject matter arranged in an almost identical way couldn’t do too bad on the international market, could it? The ship sinking in Souls Protest was the Ukishima Maru, a Japanese ship trying to bring Koreans living in Japan back to Korea in the immediate days following the defeat of Japan in 1945. The ship, bound for Busan, South Korea, sank shortly after it left Maizuru port north of Kyoto. The Japanese government said that the ship accidentally hit an American mine left over from the war. North Korea (much later) claimed that the ship carried mainly forced laborers and that the Japanese government wanted to kill them to prevent them from giving testimony of their suffering. About 3,800 passengers were on board, of which about 550 died. While neither point has been conclusively proven to this date, it was a perfect incident to be exploited in a Northern movie aimed at the South. The relations between South Korea and Japan had soured in the spring and summer of 2001 with the Japanese government

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International flyer for Souls Protest — The North Korean Titanic.

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approving of the publication of a school history book that Koreans claimed to “whitewash Japanese war crimes” and with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visiting Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine — in which the fallen soldiers of all Japanese wars since the Meiji Restoration (1868) are honored, including convicted and executed Japanese war criminals as well as Koreans who had fought for Japan in World War II (the latter being something many Koreans disapprove of ). Demonstrations took place in Seoul railing against Japan and Koizumi — and people there seemed ready to pay money to see something anti–Japanese. Directed by Kim Chun Song, a Japanese-born Korean “who had repatriated to the DPRK,”3 and who had also been the director of Stalks Grow from the Roots (1998), the movie featured more than 10,000 extras who had been recruited from the Korean People’s Army. The director and the main cast and crew had to watch James Cameron’s Titanic more than 100 times to get the details right. Souls Protest features a fictional love story resembling the one between Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in Cameron’s Titanic, it showed off lots of special effects and was generally as grand in style as possible. Back home in the North, the film ran in theaters and on television, and was allegedly a smashing success. Internationally, it played the Moscow Film Festival and the Hong Kong Film Festival in 2001, as well as the Daejong and Jeonju film festivals in South Korea. Koson trading in Hong Kong openly advertised the screenings at the South Korean festivals and spelled out North Korean Titanic in bigger letters than the actual title of the film, Souls Protest, on their flyers. The entrepreneurial folks at Seoul’s Narai Film Company shelled out $320,000 for the South Korean rights. The film seemed like it would be a surefire success. On August 23, 2001, a Japanese court ruled that 15 of the surviving shipwrecked Koreans would receive $375,000 in compensation to be divided among them. It held on to the always-maintained Japanese stance that the ship had hit an American mine left over from the war. On the very next day, Souls Protest was up on the screen in Seoul. That screening, however, was a special event for survivors of the sinking — taking place on the 56th anniversary day of the disaster. It was not the general opening of the film in Seoul. The survivors now living in the South, though, had some disagreements with the film: “‘I didn’t like the propaganda stuff about Kim Il Sung’ said survivor Lee Chul-woo, 75”4 while another survivor criticized the love story: “There was no time for such romance. It was hell.”5 The Narai Film Company had actually agreed with the censorship office to cut out the few minutes of hails to Great Leader Kim Il Sung for the official South Korean release, but they showed the film intact to the survivors. Since that screening, however, the movie has not surfaced again on any South Korean screen. For some mysterious reason, Narai shelved it without even trying to turn a profit with it. At the Hong Kong Film Festival, the hopes had been high: “‘This picture is more than just an entertainment movie. I am going to take measures so that it may be distributed widely among Asian nations because it is valuable as a historical fact teller,’ said the first coordinator and agent in Asia to distribute the DPRK-made film to the rest of the world,” the Chongryon-owned newspaper of pro–North Koreans in Japan, Choson Sinbo, reported under the headline “Korean Titanic Amazes Moscow and Hong Kong Audience; to Be Exported to West.”6 It didn’t happen. Koson Trading wasn’t able to sell the film to any other country than

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South Korea — where it had no general release. Souls Protest may have been a success domestically, but internationally, North Korea’s attempt to emulate the Titanic goldmine failed.

On the Green Carpet Souls Protest won a prize for the best actor at the Pyongyang Film Festival in September 2002. Aside from that, no noteworthy mention of any newly produced North Korean movie was made that year. The country was busy with another grand show: the Arirang Mass Gymnastics Display, held for the first time in that year at a grand sports stadium in Pyongyang. Billed sometimes as the “Greatest Show on Earth,” it featured thousands of gymnastic dancers on the stadium floor while more than 10,000 school children created a large variety of detailed pictures in the stands by holding up colored cards that formed mosaic-patterned images. The Arirang Games were promoted greatly inside the country as a show of unity of the people, with everyone moving perfectly in synch to praise the achievements of the leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, as well as abroad, as a special tourist attraction. Even U.S. citizens, usually not allowed into the country as tourists, could book Arirang visits through specialized tour operators based in Beijing and beyond. North Korea had staged mass gymnastic displays before; in fact, the participation in mass gymnastic shows was a long established tradition for the Pyongyang youth. This time, things were much bigger than ever before and the international press took notice. Reporters flocked to the 2002 Games and cabled their astonishment and fascination back to their papers and news agencies, often coupled with their wonder about the actual lives of the participants of the games. Hadn’t North Korea just barely survived a major famine? How could they set up such a spectacle? The film On the Green Carpet was poised to answer that question. It was North Korea’s next stab at international cinema recognition. On the Green Carpet (directed by Rim Chang Bom and Jon Kwang Il, 2001) was actually not about the Arirang Games, as they were staged only from 2002 on. It was about the still grand, but compared to Arirang rather humble, May Day Mass Gymnastics show in 2000. The film received an international premiere at the 2001 Moscow Film Festival but didn’t arouse any international press attention there. With the Arirang Games being internationally promoted and gaining widespread international attention, however, On the Green Carpet was the only film related to mass gymnastics North Korea had at its disposal. They took a stab at it and tried to cash in on the picture. In February 2004, a special screening for the film was arranged at the Berlin Film Festival. Sheila Johnston reported about the screening on the website of the International Federation of Film Critics (better known as FIPRESCI): On the Green Carpet was tucked away as a special one-off event deep in the program schedule, where it was billed simply as a Korean film. And it was shown without subtitles, with a German-only voice-over commentary. However, despite these disincentives to see it, the packed screening excited enormous interest and a terrific furor. The film’s title refers to the turf of the stadium which hosts North Korea’s mass synchronized gymnastics each year on 1 May. Against this backdrop, there unfolds a comedy about the romance between a coach who is shepherding a posse of schoolchildren through intensive preparations for the event and a former colleague who has become his superior…. She feels he

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Flyer for On the Green Carpet, featuring Ri Yong Ho (center).

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North Korean Cinema is demanding too much of his tiny charges. But the kids are willing to go to any lengths to please their leader, Kim Jong-Il, the sun around which they all revolve like stars in a parallel solar system. The story culminates in a lavish and astonishing display of their abilities. In a contemporary Hollywood film, the vast crowds of spectators and participants would be conjured up with digital technology. Here, they were real: these scenes were shot at one of North Korea’s actual games…. The film presented a rosy picture of everyday life at the easternmost pole of the axis of evil. This was a land of plenty … a place full of smiling faces, which constantly professed undying love for and devotion to their glorious “father-leader.”7

Berlin turned out to be the wrong place to present the film, though. According to Johnston, “The result certainly pressed some buttons with the predominantly German audience. The Q&A session after the screening began with a handful of pointed walk-outs and a fusillade of attacks on the film as hagiographic, Nazi-style propaganda. Jang Won Jun, the head of the Korean Film Export and Import Corporation, deflected these criticisms, commenting merely that he was not a politician.”8 Still, the show itself could be seen as a sign of North Korea opening up towards the outside world. Johnston writes, “North Korea watchers, both inside and outside the country, have commented on the regime’s apparent readiness to open up a little to the West. The Berlin screening of On the Green Carpet could be seen as one small leaf in this olive branch. Another sign was the eagerness of North Korean officials to attract movies and directors to the biennial Pyongyang Film Festival.”9 Johnston ended her review by pointing out that “Judging by this single film, North Korea’s cinema could definitely benefit from exposure to outside influences … On the Green Carpet, with its flat, high-key lighting, functional editing and over-fondness for the zoom lens, could have been made forty years ago; although the subject might be superficially similar, it was executed with none of the technical brilliance of a Leni Riefenstahl movie.”10 With Leni Riefenstahl, Johnston of course refers to the director of Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, Germany, 1935), the famous documentary of the 1934 Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally featuring not only Adolf Hitler and his consorts but plenty of rigidly choreographed mass marching scenes of tens of thousands of members of various National Socialist organizations. Seeing the choreography of the mass gymnastics, many Germans were certainly reminded of the few outtakes they had been able to see of the Riefenstahl film —Triumph des Willens is still considered too powerful by German authorities and screenings are limited to restricted educational events. In any case, if the North Koreans learned anything from that contentious screening it was one thing: the Berlin screening confirmed that their own filmmaking was not convincing on an international level, that films like On the Green Carpet had no chance to succeed internationally. What they needed was foreign expertise to raise the level of their filmmaking and its international exposure, but they didn’t need a Leni Riefenstahl. What they needed was a skilled Western filmmaker who understood the sensibilities of international audiences and could present both the Arirang Games and the society behind it in a way that would earn North Korea the international admiration it so desperately craved. In fact, the North Koreans had already found exactly this filmmaker. His movie on the Arirang Games was already in post-production and would soon be ready to hit international screens.

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A State of Mind— A British Documentary Daniel Gordon had started out as a British TV director covering sports events. With the help of Nick Bonner, a Briton who runs the Beijing-based travel agency Koryo Tours, specializing in group tours to North Korea, he got in contact with the North Korean authorities and was permitted to shoot the documentary The Game of Their Lives, on the surprising success the North Korean soccer team had at the 1966 World Cup in England. The film, produced by Gordon’s own company VeryMuchSo Productions in collaboration with the BBC, was released in 2002. It featured interviews with the surviving members of the North Korean team as well as testimonials from British soccer fans and commentators. In 1966, the North Korean team had advanced to the quarterfinals after beating the much-hyped and apparently very arrogant Italian team. The North Koreans had a 3–0 lead over the Portuguese in the quarterfinal game before the Portuguese bounced back and won. It was one of the most dramatic events in North Korean sports history and people in Pyongyang remembered it well. The film played well in North Korean theaters and exhilarated the audiences. For the first time, world-class, top-notch film techniques were applied to a North Korean theme — with the North Koreans being the heroes in the movie. In Britain, the film won numerous awards and was hailed as truly innovative filmmaking. Via BBC TV as well as art house theatrical screenings worldwide, it had a total viewership unmatched by any North Korean domestic production or international collaboration. The Game of Their Lives made Daniel Gordon an immediate star in North Korea. After that success, he would get free reign to do almost anything he wanted to film in North Korea. In early 2003, he returned to North Korea to shoot the film that was to become A State of Mind— his take on the Arirang Games and North Korean society in general. A State of Mind was produced again by VeryMuchSo in “association” (as the opening credits spell out) with the BBC, Nick Bonner’s Koryo Tours travel agency (which was very active organizing and promoting tours to the Arirang Games) and the Korea Film Export & Import Corporation in Pyongyang (responsible for all international movie deals with North Korea). Before the film is discussed, it is important to consider the general and political international moves of North Korea at the time. Once South Korean president Kim Dae-jung had started his Sunshine Policy towards the North, North Korea took the opportunity and the sympathetic press the country suddenly received internationally to start its own program of “openness” and new international relations. While North Korea had been diplomatically isolated from Western nations for decades, and diplomatic relations with Eastern Europe had been broken off after the breakdown of the socialist governments there, now was a time for expanding its international relationships. In the wake of South Korea’s Sunshine Policy, diplomatic relations were arranged (or restored) with almost all European countries. New North Korean embassies mushroomed from Rome to London and beyond; the old embassy to East Germany had, after the German reunification, been a low-grade diplomatic mission under the protection of China, but now became a regular embassy to a unified Germany. Not only South Korea was hopeful that North Korea would finally “open up.” Most

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of Europe shared that hope and the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in October 2000, and her personal meeting with Kim Jong Il, raised hopes in the U.S. as well that the North would soon come out of its shell. Most famously, Kim Jong Il and Albright exchanged e-mail addresses, at Kim’s request, attesting to Kim’s embracing of modern communication standards. In 2001, George W. Bush took over the U.S. presidency. He famously labeled North Korea as part of a hostile Axis of Evil, along with Iran and Iraq, an axis his government would have to deal with seriously. This put South Korea and Europe at odds with the U.S. Both Europe and South Korea insisted on building up peaceful relations with North Korea. After some months of internal policy review after its inauguration, the Bush administration quietly agreed with the softer, hope-filled policies of Europe and South Korea. It was exactly this political backdrop which made the filming of A State of Mind possible. Daniel Gordon received permission to closely document the daily lives of two girls in their early teens and their hard training for their final participation in the 2003 Arirang Games. The family of one girl belongs to the “working class” (her father is a construction crane operator). The father of the other one is a university teacher, thus considered to belong to the “intellectual class.” The fact that both of them live right in the heart of downtown Pyongyang makes clear, however, that the families of both are considered to be in “very good standing” by the authorities — otherwise they would never have been given permission to live where they live. Their apartments both look very middle class and there is always plenty of food on the table. The film, after introducing the girls, proceeds to closely document their lives from February 2003 (starting out with the February 16 holiday — Kim Jong Il’s birthday) all the way through to the actual Arirang performances in October of that year. Their families are introduced; the film team accompanies the girls on family outings and school trips. Everyone on screen is talking frankly about their hopes, their worries, their experiences and their problems. Everyone on screen appears very likeable and they all seem to be just like people anywhere in the world. Sometimes the girls are lazy and frustrated with the endless gymnastic training. They would rather watch an episode of the Squirrel and Hedgehog animation series on TV than do their homework. The parents are strict and quickly get their daughters back to their duties. Meanwhile, the parents tell of the hardships they had to endure during the Arduous March and the grandparents recall the horrors of the Korean War. Nothing has been forgotten but today everyone strives to make the best out of their lives, to have a happy family live and to build up the country. The film ends with mesmerizing scenes of the real Arirang Games the girls were participating in. Scenes that a Leni Riefenstahl couldn’t have shot better. The cinematography, the editing, the optical effects were all top-notch — and helped to introduce North Korea as an interesting but unfortunately misunderstood country to the outside world. This message was exactly what North Korea wanted to spread through its collaboration with Daniel Gordon and his filmmaking team. Indeed, in the climate of the Sunshine Policy, audiences in Britain where the film opened in 2004, and audiences in the rest of the world where it received much art house

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cinema and TV exposure from 2005 on, happily bought into this message. The film also opened in South Korea to very sympathetic reviews in 2005. George W. Bush was wrong, the international audiences and critics agreed. Those North Koreans are hard-working, honest people just like us; they don’t belong into any Axis of Evil. They have the same little family quibbles like people anywhere (e.g., children sometimes need to be disciplined), they were hurt by the war and other problems in the past and now want nothing else than to build up their country to be as powerful and beneficial to everyone living there as possible. North Koreans are people just like us, everyone seemed to agree. Whether intended by Gordon or not, the massive success of the film in the West, South Korea and also Japan, proved to be a major propaganda victory for North Korea. Finally, there was a movie propagating North Korea as a happy, modern and trustworthy country with a sincere, hard-working and loveable population! This was exactly the way North Korea wanted to be seen as at the time. To domestic North Korean audiences, as well as the more perceptive North Korea watchers, the film played on a very different level, though. As cute as the girls appear to be, as open as the talking is, all messages relayed by any of the on-screen talkers could have been lifted from any old propaganda picture. The main motivation of the girls for their hard gymnastic training is not to excel at the Arirang Games, but to make the “General” (Kim Jong Il) happy with their performances. The parents speak out frankly about the hardships of the Arduous March, but lay all the blame for their suffering at the feet of the “American Imperialists.” The film features electrical blackouts in the evening and everyone in the room, before getting the candles lit, shouts out, “Damn Americans!” Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are holy figures hailed throughout the film. Happiness derives from the Leader, and only the Leader, and we must do everything to make the Leader happy, all interviewees stress over and over again. At the very end, an insert informs the viewer that the Leader himself didn’t show up for the Games, which must have deeply disappointed the girls. But that’s life — and they certainly accepted the fact without complaint. The talk of the interviewees about the hardships, the need to sacrifice everything for the pleasure of the Leader — it’s not that different at all from what the scripts of movies like My Happiness and Girls in My Hometown so emphatically espoused. Just that it here all looked so much more presentable to both domestic audiences and outside viewers than what the North Koreans had ever been able to put on film itself. Daniel Gordon soon received permission to film his next North Korea documentary, Crossing the Line, released in 2006 and dealing with the life of James Joseph Dresnok, an American defector who had arrived in North Korea in 1962 and who was by then the last American defector living in the country. This film was clearly aimed at an international audience only. Dresnok’s fellow North Korea–bound U.S. Army defector Charles Robert Jenkins had shortly before escaped the country and publicly denounced North Korea. He also had called Dresnok in various interviews a violent bully doing the North Koreans’ bidding. The film gives Dresnok plenty of time to refute Jenkins’s claims. It was most likely not a subject of much interest to North Korean audiences, but highly valuable for North Korea’s international propaganda.

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The sheer impact of A State of Mind must have been a total shock for the North Korean film industry. Instead of a Juche-believing, Leader-loving homegrown film director, a foreigner could do what they themselves had never achieved — capture vast international audiences by propagating North Korea, and fascinate them to the point that they came to see North Korea in decidedly favorable terms.

Domestic Productions of the Early 2000s While the North Korean film studios had been working full force throughout the years of the Arduous March, the slowly progressing recovery of the economy and the general improvement of living conditions through semi-legal markets left the film industry with not many stories to tell. While Daniel Gordon found interesting topics wherever he looked, North Korean screenwriters were scratching their heads. The Nation and Destiny film series was quietly petering out, and Souls Protest hadn’t been the international success it was supposed to become at all. Exhaustion set in. KCNA, the news agency that had to report on so many newly made films in the late 1990s, just reported about screenings of old movies at official functions. The very few new releases deemed worthy to report on were just riffs on old topics. On February 2, 2002, KCNA reported: The Korean Film Studio recently released the new feature film A Waiting Girl. The film portrays a heroine looking after the native home of a soldier with a pure heart and love for soldiers of the Korean People’s Army, which impressively shows how young people should love each other in the era of the army-based policy. The film stresses that the love of young people will beautifully shine when it is based on the spirit of the era of the army-based policy and that it is in fuller bloom under the loving care of leader Kim Jong Il.11

On December 5, 2003, KCNA wrote under the headline “Achievements Made in Arts and Literature”: “Many feature films of high ideological and artistic value have been produced this year. Among them are Our Life, Mother’s Happiness, Ding of Love, Notes of a Woman Soldier and This Is Where My Life Was Settled.”12 KCNA elaborated a little more on December 8: Cinema art has greeted a heyday in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the era of the Songun-based politics. In recent years, tens of feature films including Military Service, True Life Continues, Footsteps, Ding of Love, Mother’s Happiness and Notes of a Woman Soldier have been released as masterpieces. Notes of a Woman Soldier, based on the military service of a recruit, gives a philosophical answer to a profound socio-political question — what does the loyalty to the fatherland in the Songun era mean and how should we do to live for the fatherland? Leader Kim Jong Il saw the movie more than once and highly praised the filmmakers for their philosophical discovery. Another movie A Photo (two parts) represents the last years of Kim Chaek, whom President Kim Il Sung had remembered all his life. It shows that those who devote themselves to their leader are his true comrades required by the revolution and the era. The masterpieces produced in the Songun era are very popular among servicepersons and people for their fresh and meaningful themes.13

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In 2004 and 2005, no reports about any new movies were made by KCNA. None of the films mentioned in the KCNA reports quoted above were shown abroad or even at the Pyongyang Film Festival. None of them were available to this writer either. One decidedly domestic film from those years could be viewed, however. Our Fragrance was not worth any mention in the annals of KCNA, and the subject matter, namely the ridicule of someone who adopts Western customs, had already been dealt with in the early 1980s, in the Problem with My … (Neighbor’s Family, etc.) series, for example. It was just updated here, and without much imagination. It’s still an interesting movie, illustrating the internal politics and propaganda of the period very well.

Our Fragrance Though North Korea pretended in the Sunshine Years to “open up” to the outside world, the internal propaganda didn’t change at all. All foreign influences were still seen as bad influences. Playing out in modern day Pyongyang, the story told in Our Fragrance (2004, directed by Jon Jong Pal, written by Ri Suk Gyong) is not a love story. It’s a marriage story. In old Korean fashion, the two families have to decide whether the partner is right. One family strictly adheres to traditional Korean customs. The grandson on the marriage path is a kimchi specialist, the fermented cabbage side-dish offered at every Korean meal. Both in the North and South, kimchi is seen as the most Korean of all dishes. Grandfather subscribes to the traditions the most. Though he lives in a modern Pyongyang high-rise, he truly lives the Korean way. Or rather, he surrounds himself with only old-style Korean decorations, consumes only Korean foods and drinks and keeps alive traditions like bowing and eating at a separate low small table. Otherwise he is a modern citizen. The family of the bride, however, prefers Western style. Their apartment looks decidedly tacky and pretentious, the father always dresses in a gym suit while at home. They invite the grandfather of the groom-to-be over and the visit becomes a disaster played out as comedy: the guest doesn’t know what to make of the offered handshake, he slips off the leather sofa, he dislikes the Western-style food offered and gets dizzy quickly from the Champagne poured from bottles that had gushed out some of their contents over his jacket when they were opened. This meeting is actually the most fun part to watch of the whole picture, along with the moments when the bride experiences her epiphany. A group of Western tourists arrives at a sort of county fair. They are led to the kimchi stand … and her bridegroom is explaining the kimchi to them. He offers up a great speech, linking the ancient history of kimchi to the current policies of Kim Jong Il by explaining how kimchi represents the essence of Korean-ness and how true Korean-ness is exemplified by the Leader. The Western tourists, speaking English under a Korean voiceover, are impressed and immediately declare their love for traditional Korean culture because it is so pure. The bride happens to be near the scene, overhears the talk and the reaction of the foreigners and decides to change the way of her family. If those real foreigners were so enraptured by the purity of the Korean ways, why would her family abandon their heritage and settle for fake–Western ways?

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Our Fragrance. Grandfather (Kim Un Hong) likes his life modern, but deeply rooted in Korean tradition.

A return visit to the house of the bridegroom’s grandfather follows. The bride’s family is all reformed and the women decked out in traditional Korean clothing. A real old-fashioned Korean meal takes place, involving plenty of old Korean liquor (from which nobody gets dizzy)— the wedding is finally settled. As uninspired as the movie looks, it makes one point absolutely clear: don’t look to the outside world for any inspiration. The outside world is ugly and doesn’t fit Koreans. The foreigners of the tour group on view are the best example. They all look as if they had been cast on Times Square in about 1976: big hair, big mustaches, outrageous T-shirts, jeans jackets of yore, oversized sunglasses. They are a bunch looking absolutely alien to North Koreans, who are presented looking clean cut in every film. In short, while North Korea “opened up” on a diplomatic and international propaganda

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level, internally the message continually handed out was that Korean culture, under the Leadership of Kim Jong Il, was the best in the world and that any deviance from the ways prescribed by the Leader would lead to damnation or at least ridicule, as shown in this movie.

A Schoolgirl’s Diary— Another Stab at International Success On August 4, 2006, KCNA reported: The Korean Film Studio recently produced a new feature film Diary of a Girl Student 14 to be listed as a masterpiece in the Songun era. A preview of the film was held at the People’s Palace of Culture on Thursday. It was appreciated by Kim Yong Nam [the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly and thus nominally the head of state], Pak Pong Ju [the Premier of North Korea], Choe Thae Bok [Chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly], Yang Hyong Sop [vice president of the Presidium of the SPA] and others. The film makes an impressive and truthful representation of the life of an ordinary scien-

The Schoolgirl’s Diary: An image from the 2006 Pyongyang Film Festival catalogue, featuring Pak Mi Hyang.

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North Korean Cinema tist’s family in a diary style. It perfectly answers the questions as to where lie the pleasure and happiness of the Korean people in the Songun era and what is the genuine ideal of the younger generation. The audience is deeply impressed to watch the movie telling about the touching stories about pleasant and unpleasant things that happen in the scientist’s family. Watching the movie, they feel as if they were in the same world as the leading parts of the film. Impressive scenes, emotional and meditative melody and truthful acting clearly show part of the efflorescing Korean moviedom in the new century.15

Five days later, on August 9, KCNA gushed: The newly released feature film Diary of a Girl Student has been screened at cinema houses in Pyongyang from the last Sunday. The number of cinemagoers reaches tens of thousands every day. TV billboard and hoardings on the facade of the cinemas further arouse interest of people. The plazas of the Taedongmun, Kaeson, Rakrang and other cinema houses are jammed with movie-fans from several hours before the screening. The film truthfully reflecting the life of a scientist’s family moves the audience to laughing and tears. An official of the Songyo Cinema House said to KCNA that the ever growing audience has compelled them to increase the times of screening. Kim Yong Ho, director of the Pyongyang City Film Dissemination and Management Office, said that he is so busy these days with continuous visitors and telephone calls for cinema tickets.16

Already the following day, August 10, KCNA wrote under the headline “Film Diary of a Girl Student, Close Companion of Life”: The newly produced feature film Diary of a Girl Student is screened before full houses in Pyongyang every day, evoking lively response from people of all walks of life. The film, which embodies the Juche-oriented idea of aesthetics of leader Kim Jong Il, is a model one to which new unique methods of description are boldly introduced. Busy as he was with continuous inspection tour of frontline army units, he improved its script and guided its production to become a masterpiece of the times. The film … gives perfect answers to the questions of where the people in the Songun era should get joy and happiness and on what is the real ideal of the young people…. Minister of Culture Kang Nung Su remarked that … the film was the fine fruit borne of the wise leadership of Kim Jong Il, a great master in art.17

KCNA had been reporting on films considered important on a more or less regular basis before, but three articles within a week on a single movie? That was a first. The whole figurehead government was attending the screenings? Kim Jong Il personally had “improved its script and guided its production to become a masterpiece of the times”? A truly unprecedented masterpiece must have come to life on screen. In addition, it featured a recalcitrant school girl instead of a devoted revolutionary in the eternal service of Kim Il Sung? What had happened to make a film on a subject matter like this the event of the decade, involving even Kim Jong Il on a personal level? The answer appears to be rather obvious: A State of Mind, the Daniel Gordon documentary, had had unprecedented domestic and international impact and appeal and A Schoolgirl’s Diary was North Korea’s attempt to top Gordon’s success by taking a page or two from his book, and telling a truly modern story. Writer An Jun Bo and director Jang In Hak (who had previously helmed Myself in the

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Distant Future, 1997) concentrated especially on the resistance against the demanded daily hard striving that the two girls in A State of Mind had so freely expressed — and then overcome. What they also took from the Gordon movie was the lightness of approach. No heavy-handed propaganda and proselytizing here, just an easygoing telling of an everyday story, a tale like it plays out on any given day among the Pyongyang middle class. Su Ryon (Pak Mi Hyang) is a girl in her early teens (just like the ones featured in A State of Mind ) and she has a lot of reasons to be unhappy. Her scientist father is always absent. Her mother has her own demanding job at a research library and at night, she helps father by sitting down alone and translating texts. Her elder sister is busy playing on her youth soccer team. Life is hard even among the middle class. There are blackouts and the food is very simple. It’s all due to the “embargo of the American imperialists,” of course. In school, typical rivalries play out. The girl sitting next to Su Ryon in the classroom one day shows her the newspaper: her father is mentioned in there in a small text. He had received a doctor title. Soon, the family of that girl moves out of the unfashionable neighborhood of small old houses and into a nearby new high-rise — due to the promotion of her father. As a result, Su Ryon starts to get resentful of her parents. She’s a nobody at school, has to live in an unfashionable old house and her father is nothing to brag about; he doesn’t even show up at home. How can she survive the constant showing-off of her classmates on the school yard, the bitching and bullying going on there? Su Ryon is not the outgoing sports-type like her sister. Instead, she’s rather introverted and turns to her diary to find relief from the bitterness she feels by expressing it in writing. Su Ryon is clearly not a Juche character in terms of self-reliance. She doesn’t go out to change her situation, though she wins the school yard rivalry on her own by her cleverness and wits. Finally, the big news arrives: her father and his team had the great breakthrough in their research. A whole page is devoted to them in the newspaper and Kim Jong Il’s congratulations and praises are printed on the same page. As a reward for the father’s hard work, the family can move into the best high-rise the area has to offer. Now, eventually, Su Ryon realizes why she had been wrong to feel abandoned by her father for such a long time: he had something really important to do! Something that might change the lives of all the people for the better! Why had she been so selfish?! She wanted her father for herself alone — while the whole nation needed him! She finally learned her big lesson. A Schoolgirl’s Diary was shown wherever a screen existed. A reported eight million viewers saw the movie in 2006 alone, a third of the entire population. At the Pyongyang International Film Festival in September 2006, A Schoolgirl’s Diary was the main North Korean entry. But the five-member international jury, including Roza Film Studio director Galina Ebtysenko from Russia, German producer and head of Bioskop Film, Hans Eberhard Junkersdorf, and Beijing Film Studio director Wang Haowei, didn’t hand it any prize. James Velaise, the boss of French distribution company Pretty Pictures, however,

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smelled a deal: A Schoolgirl’s Diary could have international impact, he thought. He bought the French distribution rights for the film — and returned for the 2008 festival to buy the world rights. The film’s release in France received some press attention but not nearly as much as when A State of Mind was released. The movie died a quick death at the French box office. Undeterred, Velaise started to release a DVD box set of North Korean films. Besides of A Schoolgirl’s Diary, the set contained Flower Girl (1972), The Tale of Chun Hyang (1980) and A Bellflower (1987). Interestingly, all these films center on young women. Even so, it didn’t help much with the sales. Velaise then got British film sales agency Wavelength Pictures on board to cover the English-language market. Wavelength released A Schoolgirl’s Diary and Flower Girl on DVD with English subtitles but not the other two movies. There was apparently no market for them. Eight million domestic viewers for A Schoolgirl’s Diary? Kim Jong Il has his hands directly in the production? The whole government is present at the premiere? And then, the picture disappears with less than a whimper on the European market? If Kim Jong Il followed that development in the international news, he must have been extremely frustrated.

The End of the Sunshine Period The second biggest production of 2006 was Pyong yang Nalpharam, having reportedly attracted six million paying viewers at the box office. The anti–Japanese martial action picture received minimal international notice. Variety senior film critic Derek Elley was present in Pyongyang and provided this description in typical Variety lingo: Japanese butt gets roundly kicked in Pyong yang Nalpharam, a routine period actioner from North Korea with flashes of interest for Asiaphile auds. Eighth feature by former d.p. Pyo Gwang recalls Hong Kong chopsockies of the ’70s, as patriotic Korean martial artists battle attempts by nasty Nipponese to get their mitts on precious Korean martial arts tomes. Local B.O. in August was a reported 6 million admissions, and pic has made a local star of willowy lead Ri Ryeong-hun, 25.18

Elley uses the South Korean spelling for North Korean names in his text, which is customary for Variety. The only available report of any film released in 2007 was a short notice by KCNA on September 13: “The April 25 Film Studio of the Korean People’s Army recently produced new feature film Kang Ho Yong. “The film impressively tells about the noble ideological and moral world of Kang Ho Yong who threw himself amongst enemy troops with a grenade in his mouth despite serious wounds on his arms and legs in a battle to defend a stronghold of strategic and military importance during the past Fatherland Liberation War [Korean War].”19 This movie was certainly an interesting comment on the ongoing Sunshine Policy of South Korea. In 2004, former human rights activist Roh Moo-hyun had taken over the South Korean presidency. He greatly intensified the Sunshine Policy, he constantly sent large sums of money and other aid to the North, and he bent over backwards to be as accommodating towards the North as possible. From October 2 to October 4, 2007, he finally had a Summit Meeting with Kim Jong

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The martial arts movie Pyong yang Nalpharam (with Ri Ryong Hun) played the 2006 Pyongyang Film Festival.

Il in Pyongyang. He offered yet more aid, promised more concessions by the South. Anything Kim Jong Il might ask for. At exactly the same time, Kang Ho Yong played the Northern theaters, hailing a suicide bomber tearing Southerners apart during the war. Though President Roh was certainly not invited to a screening, the timing of the film’s release showed clearly what Kim Jong Il thought of the Sunshine Policy: It was a great opportunity to extract money and concessions from the South without straying from traditional North Korean policies. The South remained the enemy, the smiling photo ops of Kim and Roh with the Southern press at the Summit were just business … or rather deception. While the curious coincidence of Roh’s visit and the release of Kang Ho Yong slipped by the attention of the South Korean press and public, general dissatisfaction with the results of the Sunshine Policy got the better of South Korean voters. At the next regularly scheduled presidential election in South Korea, in December 2007, conservative candidate Lee Myungbak won by a landslide. Lee immediately ended the Sunshine Policy and unconditional aid to the North, aiming for a policy of “reciprocity” towards the North — there would be no more concessions if the North didn’t make any in return.

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North Korea didn’t comment on the election for several weeks, obviously having been caught by surprise. Then the insults started to fly. “Traitor of the nation” was one of the lesser invectives hurled towards Lee by the KCNA. Films are not made overnight, however. Therefore, the movies released in 2008 shall here still be discussed as being conceived or realized during the Sunshine period.

Report from the Pyongyang Film Festival 2008 The first person to report any new developments in the North Korean film world was Derek Elley, who visited the Pyongyang Film Festival in September 2008. Under the headline “Pyongyang pleases, teases and perplexes,” Elley wrote on September 29, 2008, for the nowdefunct Asia-oriented Variety online outlet varietyasiaonline.com: Though only one new North Korean film unspooled during the fest, held biannually in the country’s capital, some 6–7 new features (one industry source even put the figure as high as 10) are said to be ready and awaiting approval (or reshoots) prior to release later this year or early next…. The sole North Korean feature shown at PIFF, The Kites Flying in the Sky by Phyo Kwang [Pyo Gwang] and Kim Hyon Chol, drew a ho-hum reception from foreign guests and industryites. True story of a former marathon champ who’s devoted her life to raising orphans was reckoned to lack the technical and dramatic smarts that made Schoolgirl’s Diary— the “discovery” of PIFF 2006 — workable as a curio in the West…. However, Kites has been a big hit locally. Officially preemed February 16, it became the first movie to be shown on TV (several times) prior to general release in June. It’s also one of the rare films that required no reshoots prior to approval.20

The story also reported that the film industry had been shut down for eight months in 2005, upon Kim’s orders, to educate writers, directors and the like. The resulting greatly improved films were reportedly still in the pipeline in 2008. That a foreign journalist was informed about it could only mean that some serious improvements were under way in the North Korean film industry, or at least that there were reasonable expectations for such improvements.

Foreign Films: The New Competition Serious improvements were indeed necessary to keep audiences interested in domestic product. Foreign and especially South Korean videos of feature films and TV series had been smuggled into the country in ever larger numbers since the 1990s. While they were at first popular, especially amongst the children of the Pyongyang elite, by about 2000 they had flooded the country. As elsewhere in the world, the Chinese discarded their old VHS players by the late 1990s and replaced them with DVD players. Prices for the obsolete VHS players went into free-fall. Clever Chinese and North Korean merchants soon discovered that there was still a big market for VHS: North Korea. The machines were sold at affordable rates in the newly opened semi-legal markets in the North Korean border cities and soon found their way into the homes of people all over the country. With the players came the tapes.

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Suddenly, North Korean cinemas and the official television station were not the only places to see movies. It was, of course, illegal to own and watch videos of foreign and especially South Korean films and television shows. But since they were so much better than anything the North itself had to offer, their popularity skyrocketed, despite the severe punishment awaiting anyone caught with foreign tapes. The Northern film industry was ill prepared for the influx of the competing material. Kim Jong Il and his cadre immediately realized the political and ideological risks for the regime accompanying imported videos, which contained dangerous foreign influences. Various crack-down campaigns failed to stem the flood. The film industry had to react and produce films that stood their ground against the foreign tapes. That Kim Jong Il shut down his film industry only in 2005 can be seen as a very delayed reaction, one that only came after all attempts to shut out the unwanted competition had come to nothing. A Schoolgirl’s Diary, released the year after the industry shutdown, can be seen as a serious attempt to adjust North Korean cinema to the new situation. But had Schoolgirl been the beginning of a new trend or just the singular occurrence of a once-a-decade quality film?

Films of a New Quality? KCNA went into a flurry of reporting new releases towards the end of 2008. The first report came out on October 31: The April 25 Film Studio of the Korean People’s Army produced feature film Call of Naval Port. The film impressively represents the noble spiritual world of a non-commissioned officer in extra service of a naval unit who has contributed to the strengthening of the unit’s combat capability, devoting his life to defending the sea of the country with the honor of having had the peerlessly great persons at his post. Through the hero’s representation the film shows the true character of a human being in the Songun era who has carried out his revolutionary duty with clear conscience at a naval port of the country, firmly determined to bring pleasure to the Party and the leader at all times.21

North and South Korea had some serious naval skirmishes in the Yellow Sea during the 2000s, resulting in casualties on both sides. Due to the Sunshine Policy, the South glossed over them as quickly as possible. The North turned them into a heroic, anti–South movie tale. The next film release was reported by KCNA on November 14: “The April 25 Film Studio of the Korean People’s Army has recently produced feature film Follow What We Are Doing: The film impressively depicts a commanding officer of a KPA sub-unit dedicating his all to rounding up the combat readiness, single-mindedly determined to train his soldiers as human bullets and bombs devotedly defending the leader. Hero of the film Song Chol, who was appointed as a platoon leader after graduating from a military academy, helped the soldiers keenly realize how dear the socialist system is to them and what a great and benevolent country they are standing guard over.

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North Korean Cinema He leads all of them to get prepared as all-round soldiers capable of creditably carrying out any combat duty under any circumstances by thoroughly implementing the training assignments in order to repay the warm loving care shown by Supreme Commander Kim Jong Il for the servicepersons while making ceaseless journeys to inspect the front. By truthfully portraying the hero and soldiers of the platoon the film shows that the source of great mental power and the invincible might of the KPA servicepersons lies in preparing themselves as a-match-for-a hundred fighters, always longing to see the great Songun brilliant commander.22

On December 12, KCNA announced that “a new feature film, The Lieutenant in Those Days, was produced by the April 25 Film Studio of the Korean People’s Army.” The film impressively deals with the noble spiritual world of a lieutenant of the KPA who devotes his all to increasing the combat capability of the subunit by inheriting the soul of the heroic company leader who fought to defend Wolmi Island in the period of the Fatherland Liberation War and a heroic company leader in the Songun era who saved his comrades from the jaw of death at the cost of his life during a combat drill. Through the depiction of the hero of the film it philosophically proves the truth that the worth of a genuine life of a soldier does not lie in what rank an army officer holds but in how devotedly he serves the army and what feats he performs for the country.23

No doubt, all of those films were conceived and production was started during the time of the South’s Sunshine Policy. Yet all were anti–South military propaganda. More importantly, though, could those films be the beginning of the releases of new material after the industry shutdown? While the KCNA articles don’t reveal too much about the actual films, what they reveal sounds all too familiar: those movies were just more of the same old same. It should be noted, however, that they all originated from the April 25 Army Film Studio. The Korean Film Studio, the main and most prestigious studio, didn’t release anything in 2008.

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Post-Sunshine: The Most Recent Films (2009 –2011) In April 2009, KCNA announced the release of A Country I Saw — Part Two and Three (directed by Pak Jong Ju and Ko Hak Rim). This introduced the serialization of the 1988 feature film of the same name in which a Japanese professor travels to North Korea and discovers the true happiness of the Juche nation. On April 3, 2010, KCNA announced parts four and five of the same series and this time also delivered a description: The film makes an artistic representation of the fact that the DPRK has safeguarded the sovereignty of the country and exalted the dignity of the nation with the might of Songun despite the persistent hostile policy pursued by the imperialists including the Japanese reactionaries towards the DPRK. The U.S., Japan and south Korean puppet group put unprecedented international pressure on the DPRK in the wake of its satellite launch for peaceful purposes…. The film emphasizes that only victory and glory are in store for Juche Korea holding in high esteem General Secretary Kim Jong Il, illustrious commander born of Heaven possessed of matchless pluck and grit.1

The Pyongyang Film Festival in September 2010 didn’t include any parts of A Country I Saw in competition but showed parts two and three in a special screening. Also shown in a special screening was Bright Sunshine, aka Lovely Sunshine (Part One), directed by U Yu Gwang. The latter film, again a production of the April 25 Army Film Studio, received a small note from KCNA on July 20: The film impressively shows, through portrayal of the heroine and other servicepersons’ wives, that the contest of art groups of servicepersons’ wives, which came into being under the meticulous leadership and care of Kim Jong Il, is a stage of love that puts them forward as women revolutionaries and the second bugler in the era of Songun and trains them to be creators of the Songun culture.2

On July 29, KCNA wrote under the headline “Symposium on Feature Film Held”: A symposium on the Juche-oriented literary and art idea for the Korean feature film Lovely Sunshine (Part 1) took place on Thursday. Present there were leading officials in the field of culture and the arts, creators, artistes and teachers and researchers of universities. Speakers at the symposium referred to the fact that the creators and artistes have zealously conducted the creative work to produce a movie on the contest of art groups of servicemen’s families, true to the noble intention of General Secretary Kim Jong Il…. They called upon all creators and artistes to produce more masterpieces which fully reflect the spirit of the era and are conducive to the development of the Juche-based cinematic art.3

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Part two of this film was released in November 2010. Another five productions of the Korean Film Studio, released in late 2010 and early 2011, were briefly reported on by KCNA. From the descriptions, almost none of them sound like they are of much interest. They all sound like repetitions of previously well-workedover praises of Kim Jong Il and the devotion of his people to him — with one exception. Brothers’ Feelings was described as a new feature film … produced by the Korean Film Studio on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the entry of the Chinese People’s Volunteers into the Korean front. The film impressively deals with the feats the brave fighters of the Chinese People’s Volunteers including Hero Huang Qiguang performed by displaying bravery in the battle on the Sanggam Pass after rushing to the Korean front under the banner of resisting America and aiding Korea, safeguarding the home and defending the motherland.4

This was a first. While North Korean propaganda had always admitted that “Chinese volunteers” had helped during the Korean War, their role had always been very much downplayed. According to the party line, Kim Il Sung and his forces had “won” the Korean War all by themselves. Now suddenly a movie about a Chinese hero in the Korean War? It was not a major shift in general propaganda, though. Most likely it was just a little concession to win additional favors from China. After the end of the Sunshine Policy, Kim Jong Il needed China more than ever before. KCNA realized quickly that the name Huang Qiguang didn’t mean anything to its readers and added on October 27 (without referring to the film at all and by using a different spelling of the name of the Chinese hero): … There is a secondary school named after a Chinese martyr, Huang Jieguang [Qiguang] in Kosong County, Kangwon Province. Huang was a member of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) who died a heroic death in the Korean war ( June 1950–July 1953) against the U.S. imperialist aggression forces. The Party and Government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea awarded the internationalist fighter the title of DPRK Hero and had Ryomsong Senior Middle School named after Huang Jieguang on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the CPV’s entry into the Korean war to add luster to his feats. Now it is called Huang Jieguang Secondary School. President Kim Il Sung and General Secretary Kim Jong Il sent educational and cultural equipment to the school in several installments for its development. Kim Il Sung, when meeting teachers and students of the school on an excursion tour near Kuryong Falls in Mt. Kumgang, gave them detailed instructions as regards education and had a photo taken with them. The school, known as an exemplary one in the country, boasts of physical, chemical and all other necessary laboratories and service facilities. China has donated numbers of teaching aids and books to the school, which has been visited by many Chinese guests. It has also been visited by lots of local people to mark the 60th anniversary of the CPV’s entry into the Korean war.5

Were A Country I Saw (parts 2–5), Lovely Sunshine, Brothers’ Feelings and the few other productions released in late 2010 really the movies that had their production halted by Kim Jong Il, in order to re-educate the writers and directors, as Derek Elley had been told in Pyongyang? None of those films was available for review at the time of writing. One production, released in December 2009, could be obtained and is an example of a rather prestigious work from the very end of the decade: Song of the East Sea.

DVD cover of Song of the East Sea.

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North Korean Cinema On December 22, 2009, KCNA proudly announced: A feature film Song of East Sea (Parts 1 and 2) was recently produced by the Korean Film Studio. The preview of the film took place at Taedongmun Cinema on Tuesday. Appreciating the film were senior party and state officials, the chairpersons of the friendly parties, officials of ministries and national institutions and working people in Pyongyang. The film makes an artistic depiction of the historical fact that a new era of the Juche-oriented overseas compatriots movement was ushered in and the desire of Koreans in Japan for their repatriation to the socialist homeland came true thanks to the outstanding idea and wise leadership of President Kim Il Sung…. Watching the film with deep emotion, the audience keenly realize that the socialist homeland built by the President and glorified by General Secretary Kim Jong Il is the cradle of a genuine life and happiness of all Koreans.6

For better or worse, this is the film that has to serve in assessing the standards of the most recent North Korean film making. The film opens with a ship in an extremely stormy sea — the East Sea (of Korea) which separates Korea from Japan and which lends the movie its title. Internationally, that body of water is known as the Sea of Japan. On board the wretched steamer are chained Korean victims of Japanese colonial politics. Having been forced onto the boat, they are now transported to forced labor in a mine and quarry in Japan. Upon arrival, they are subjected to the worst abuse imaginable. Anyone rebelling against the murderous regime of the Japanese thugs ruling the mine is thrown into a huge pot of boiling water. The laborers are beaten constantly by the guards and when the guards want to have fun, they blow up an upper section of the quarry and let the boulders rain down on the Koreans below. Suddenly, the “home country” is liberated, also setting the Koreans in Japan free. All they want to do is go home. In large numbers, they congregate at a port and board a ship. Alas, an American military boat arrives and the commanding officer tells the assembled Koreans (in English) that they are not allowed to leave. What has happened? Had Japan somehow and mysteriously been taken over by the U.S. while Korea, on the other hand, managed to liberate itself, somehow setting the Korean laborers free in the process? For a North Korean, that might be a silly question. Kim Il Sung had liberated Korea, of course! Those poor folks trapped in Japan just weren’t allowed by their vicious captors to learn about the Great Leader. Japan suddenly controlled by America? In an imperialist war, evil Americans took over evil Japan. They are all the same, anyway. The Koreans are free at last, however, or at least freed from the work in the mine. Slowly a leader among the Koreans starts to emerge — Han Tok Su. He starts to organize the Koreans held in the cruel, alien land where it always rains and where the night hardly ever ends. A big blow to his emerging organization comes with the news from Seoul that the Republic of Korea was formed in 1948, another devilish act of the imperialist Americans. By then, Han Tok Su had already helped to form the League of Koreans in Japan (Choren) and they were happily flying the flag of North Korea from their Tokyo headquarters — as the flag of a unified Korea. Unable to leave the wicked islands, they open a school for the poor children — they have to be taught according to their own culture after all. The devilish Japanese burn down the school (one young woman can only at the last minute rescue the small North Korean flags hanging inside) and their police brutally raid

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and destroy the headquarters of the organization. Protests ensue and the protestors are gunned down mercilessly by Japanese police. Peaceful women and their children die in endless numbers. In this moment of deepest desperation, a messenger from Pyongyang arrives, carrying a letter from Kim Il Sung. Suddenly, the world turns bright! When Han Tok Su enters a meeting of Koreans while holding up the first portrait of Kim Il Sung they have ever seen, they all break out in tears of rapture. At the same time, another evil force had formed: a Korean organization supporting the South! Some of them were really bad guys but most were just led in the wrong direction by lies. Their first leader and his son especially will learn at the hands of Japanese thugs that only the North can provide real salvation. Next, Han Tok Su forms the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon), in 1955, with the direct support of Kim Il Sung. Inspired by his small children, who really want to go home and can’t stand being in Japan any longer, Han Tok Su is finally able to arrange the “Homecoming Project.” The Koreans could finally go home! The first ship to leave Japan went from the port of Niigata on the west coast. Shortly before departure, Han visits an especially downtrodden community of Koreans in the mountains near Niigata. They live in caves, dress in rags and generally look like the inhabitants of a Rim Kkok Jong–style rebel village in the middle ages. Ashamed as they are of their poor existence, they nonetheless maintain their own “school”— a blackboard on which Korean hangul writing is taught to the children. Along with thousands of other Koreans, those cave people go on the boat to return to the fatherland. The eternal bliss of living in the care of the Leader will await them there. Meanwhile, an aging Japanese premier and a frustrated American ambassador begrudgingly admit their defeat. The North really got the propaganda victory and all the world is witness that Japan’s Koreans wanted nothing else than going to the warm and welcoming bosom of the Leader. However, Han Tok Su happily remains behind; there are still many more Koreans he has to send home. Han Tok Su (1907–2001) was indeed a historical person and the founder of Chongryon. Certain cornerstone developments of the Korean community in Japan mentioned in the film also took place in reality … though they are, of course, presented in the movie in a heavily dramatized way. Subtlety is certainly not a strength of the movie. All Japanese are invariably evil and the Americans become their evil overlords. Life is hell in Japan and only the holy love of the Leader back home can save the poor Koreans who had been taken there. Once a photo of Kim Il Sung is removed from its protective covers, rapture takes place, with hymnic humming on the soundtrack included. All true Koreans in Japan wish for nothing else than to be repatriated to the North. In short, it’s old-fashioned, heavy-handed propaganda. It might have made some party cadres nostalgic for the old times, but did it have any potential to compete with the imported movies a large percentage of the population by now watched on a regular basis at home? Most likely not. To them, it probably was nothing but a government exercise in vintage propaganda, easily dismissed as a picture designed to please a few old party heads in Pyongyang. While the plot takes place in Japan, none of the filming took place there. In that regard, Song of the East Sea was not on the same level as Thaw and A Silver Hairpin (both 1985), movies that had actually used Japan as shooting location.

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Judging by the KCNA reports of the late 2000s, and by viewing Song of the East Sea, by 2010 North Korean cinema was in a deep crisis. It had reverted to propaganda styles pre-dating Shin Sang-ok, while having nothing new to say. By then, cheap Chinese DVD players had replaced the VHS players even in North Korea, furthering even more influx of South Korean and foreign films. All the North Korean Film Studios could do was to react with a show of impotent defiance, even as many moviegoers were opting to abandon their product altogether. North Korea will no doubt continue to produce movies as long as the current regime, led by Kim Jong Il’s son, is in power. It simply has to. No matter how unconvincing and vacuous the movies are, there have to be movies on the screens of the country. Anything else would rightly be considered a serious breakdown of one of the (still) most prestigious propaganda outlets.

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Ten Zan, an Italian Coproduction: Ferdinando Baldi’s Ultimate Mission If one discounts the Soviet assistance to North Korea’s first film, My Home Village, and other likely but uncredited Soviet support in the very beginning of North Korean cinema, the earliest documented international co-production from North Korea was with France and titled Moranbong. The online publication Film Business Asia mentioned a screening of the film in its report on the 2010 Pyongyang Film Festival: “A major cultural event was the first screening in North Korea of the 1959 French–North Korean co-production Moranbong, directed by Jean-Claude Bonnardot and written by leftist playwright/director Armand Gatti. A print of the recently rediscovered black-and-white war drama-romance, set and shot in Kaesong and Pyongyang in the late ’50s, was made by Paris’ Centre National de la Cinematographie.”1 After participating in this film, North Korea closed the door to outside filmmakers, and it was only re-opened when Shin Sang-ok set out to internationalize North Korean cinema. While he was staying in the North, two co-productions with the Chongryon Film Studio in Tokyo were shot in Japan: A Silver Hairpin and Thaw (both 1985). This was followed by A Mother’s Hope (1987), again with the Chongryon Film Studio. Other co-productions with Japan included Bird (1992, directed by Rim Chang Bom, written by Kim Se Ryun) and Woman Warrior of Koryo (1997), made in collaboration with Masao Kobayashi’s Canario Entertainment Ltd., directed by Jang Yong Bok and written by Kim Se Il. Co-productions with the Soviet Union included Eternal Comrade-in-Arms (1985, directed by Om Gil Son and Elder Urazvaev, written by Paek In Jun and Alexandr Bojarski), as well as the war movie From Spring to Summer (directed by Pak Sung Bok and Nikita Orlov) and the historical drama Rescued on the Shore, directed by Ryo Ho Son and Ariya Dashiev. The most widely seen and discussed North Korean international co-production today, however, is the 1988 production Ten Zan —The Ultimate Mission by Italian director Ferdinando Baldi. This is largely due to the availability of the movie on video. This was not yet the case when I first saw the film in 1999 and it still wasn’t when I interviewed Mr. Baldi in 2002. Ten Zan begins with aerial shots of a rugged coastline dotted with an abundance of tiny islands. It cuts to two amphibious landing crafts plowing through the water. In bold white letters, the opening credits start to roll: 175

Ferdinando Baldi’s Ten Zan in a North Korean movie catalogue.

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AMERINDA EST. PRESENTS FRANK ZAGARINO AND MARK GREGORY IN TEN ZAN — THE ULTIMATE MISSION WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY TED KAPLAN. STARRING SABRINA SYAN, ROM KRISTOFF, CHARLES BORROMEL

Cut to the landing crafts carrying a bunch of uniformed Asian men through a coastal dune landscape towards a poor Asian village of straw-covered mud-brick huts. The vehicles stop on top of a dune overlooking the village. Two soldiers toss a barrel from one of the tanks. It slowly rolls down to the village and hits the wooden wall of a barn. An evil-looking man aims a machine gun and shoots at the barrel. It explodes, setting the barn afire. The soldiers storm into the village, firing wildly. The villagers scream and try to escape. The soldiers run after two girls. They catch them and line them up with their backs to a landing craft. A helicopter lands and a white man with an arrogant expression emerges from it. He walks straight to the girls. “Not this one,” he says in English, these being the first words spoken in the film, shoving her aside. “This is the one.” He grabs the girl’s chin and looks into her acne-ravaged face. Soldiers from the top of the vehicle grab her, pull her inside and drive away, uprooting some trees on the way. With a start like this, few Western viewers would expect the movie to be anything else than a cheap American adventure production, playing out as a story set in an unidentified,

The title shot of Ten Zan.

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Mark Gregory (left) and Frank Zagarino get ready for battle in Ten Zan.

mysterious Asian fantasy land, especially since the dialogue throughout is in English. Aficionados of Italian exploitation cinema would know, however, that “Ted Kaplan” was one of the pseudonyms Italian pulp director Ferdinando Baldi liked to use, alongside noms de plume like “Ferdy Baldwin,” “Free Baldwin” and “Sam Livingstone.” They would also know that his cast and crew would also use English-sounding pseudonyms — a common practice in Italian exploitation cinema during the 1970s and ’80s. If they would be on top of the game, they would know that “Mark Gregory” was Marco Di Gregorio and that “Sabrina Syan” was Sabrina Siani (aka Sabrina Seggiani). Both of them were hardworking Italian B-picture faces, though this movie was Siani’s last. Zagarino, on the other hand, was an American actor who was just starting out. He’s still acting in action movies that never make into theaters but are quite popular among the video/DVD–watching crowd. Italian exploitation meets North Korea! Previously, Italian exploitation had met the Amazon jungle in Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1979), Joe D’Amato’s Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977) and in Cannibal Ferox by Umberto Lenzi (1980). There was no place too strange for those wild Italians to indulge in exotic nudity, violence and cannibalism, always hoping to make a quick buck from the patrons of European train station cinemas and American grindhouses. But while the Amazon jungle provided nearly absolute freedom to realize even the wildest and goriest scripts, the situation in North Korea was very different. Here, the Italian team met a professional film industry used to running every detail of production according to the strict principles of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.

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The Pohyong Temple. The ancient Buddhist temple serves as lair of the evil mastermind in Ten Zan.

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But before going into the production background, first a bit more about the story the movie tells, with a little location spotting on the side…. The bad guys have taken the girl away. An older white man, Professor Larson (Charles Borromel), hires Ricky (Mark Gregory) and his partner Lou (Frank Zagarino) to eliminate those evil mercenaries that kidnap young women “for the research and development of new stimulants,” as he says. In quick succession, Lou gets kidnapped and freed again, in the process saved from a hatchet-wielding attacker by a cute girl shooting a really cool crossbow. During a weirdly low-speed car chase later, Larson meets Lou in his laboratory full of stuffed animals and delivers a longer speech, explaining to Lou the assignment. Those bad guys, he says, kidnap young women to distill a substance from their throats (?!) that can enter the “nucleus of the cell — the DNA,” a process which only the “most perfect” people will survive, all others “self-destruct.” All that is done, he continues, for the “breeding of übermenschen — the new master race.” Lou, he makes clear, has to put a stop to this business. A few fistfights later, Maddy, the girl with the cool crossbow, by now part of the Lou and Ricky team, is kidnapped in the subway. (Yes, the Pyongyang subway!) The bad guys, led by a sexy blond young woman named Glenda (Sabrina Syan) and a skinny mercenary named Jason (Rom Kristoff ), put her in their base camp, joining the other girls they have already locked up there. Lou and Ricky, however, learn quickly of the location of the camp and set off to rescue her. Up to this point, the plot does kind of make sense. But now, suddenly, Glenda tells Jason that “my father wants to see you.” Her father is holed up in an old Buddhist temple. It’s actually Pohyong Temple in the Myohyang Mountains, a beautiful old structure with a 13-story stone pagoda sporting hundreds of tiny bells, which would be an important Buddhist center and tourist attraction were it not located in North Korea. Jason and Glenda arrive. She says, “Over there,” and remains behind. “Over there,” in the main temple building, Jason meets none other than Professor Larson, who is busy studying some ancient murals with a book and a magnifying glass. Larson tells Jason, “Remove all traces of our activities from the camp in Massok.” Jason says, “That’s not enough. The camp in Massok must be completely destroyed.” Somehow, this drives Larson mad. He says, “You want to destroy the work of my life? The destruction of the weak and the creation of a master race — that was the dream of my life!” He tells Jason that he knows that Jason is impotent, which makes Jason so angry that he shoots Larson. Can you follow? Larson had hired Lou and Ricky to destroy bad guy Jason’s operation. Now, it turns out, he was the boss of it. Why would he hire somebody to destroy it all? (That question also puzzled the director of the movie when I asked him about it.) Jason returns to his base camp, just in time to escape an attack by Lou and Ricky who finish off a lot of extras and free all the kidnapped girls. There is a happy reunion of Maddy and the two good guys. Glenda shows up and has to “confess something” to the good guys, telling them the location of the Massok camp. It’s almost a wrap from here. Lou, Ricky and Maddy compete with Jason in the destruction of the Massok camp — they all seem to love explosions. Jason destroys it to eliminate

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evidence. The good guys destroy it because, well, who knows? In any case, the good guys kill off all baddies, including Jason. Business finished. All quiet. A bird in the air. Ricky says, “The final solution!” Lou responds, “And no loose ends,” before taking off in a boat with Maddy while Ricky drives his jeep into the sunset. Final credits roll. Final solution … and no loose ends? As it is, the movie is extremely confusing and makes no sense at all. Why does Larson hire the “good guys” to destroy his own empire? And what is “Ten Zan”? Of the latter, nothing in the film refers to it except a short dialogue scene between Lou and Ricky after they have finished all preparations for the attack on the “base camp”: LOU: “It’s time. I will see you at Ten Zan. That’s what the marines said when on Iwo Jima.” RICKY: “The mountain of paradise, instead it turned out to be hell.” LOU: “It was a way of saying ‘Good Luck.’” RICKY: “I will see you at Ten Zan then.”

Ten Zan (in American documents usually spelled Tenzan) was indeed the nickname of a small hill on Iwo Jima. It became a landmark during the epic World War II battle between American and Japanese forces on that tiny Pacific Island, with its name translating as Heavenly Mountain. It was the last stronghold of the Japanese, and it was the Japanese soldiers who called the hill Ten Zan. The Americans called it the Devil’s Peak. But what did that have to do with the movie? Since the movie is such an oddity, let’s delve a little further into its background.

Ferdinando Baldi, the Director Baldi was an old workhorse of the Italian exploitation scene. Born in 1927, he had made a lot of peplum films in the early 1960s, films that told stories about life in the Roman Empire. For example, he employed Orson Welles as King Saul in his successful David and Goliath (1960), and when that genre lost its popularity, he moved, along with a lot of other Italian directors, into making Spaghetti Westerns. His masterpiece in that genre was Texas, Addio (aka The Avenger, 1966), starring Franco Nero. Other noteworthy contributions to the genre were Viva Django (aka Django Prepare a Coffin, 1968), starring Terence Hill, Horst Frank and George Eastman, and the rather strange Blindman (1971), in which Baldi directed former Beatle Ringo Starr. But soon Spaghetti Westerns went out of fashion, too, and giallo movies (slasher/psychopath pictures) became all the rage. Baldi left his mark in that genre as well, with both the 1976 Nove ospiti per un delitto and the 1979 La ragazza del vagone letto (aka Terror Express, Torture Train or Horrorsex im Nachtexpress), the latter starring Werner Pochath as the leader of a gang that takes over a section of a night train and rapes and tortures the passengers. With the Western Comin’ at Ya! (1981) and the adventure movie Il tesoro delle quatro corone (aka Treasure of the Four Crowns, 1983), Baldi even ventured into 3-D filmmaking. But by this time, Italian exploitation cinema was already in free fall, a doomed industry. Some directors went on to try their luck in extreme gore, like Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust, 1979) and Lucio Fulci (New York Ripper, 1982), while others resorted to cheap action pictures. Baldi did the latter. Amongst a slew of super low-budget movies, he shot a cheap Viet-

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nam war action pic named War Bus in the Philippines in 1985, financed with American money. Not exactly a success with the critics but the film did well on the video market — and it made some money there. By the spring of 1988, he had already finished shooting his follow-up picture, Un maledetto soldato (aka Just a Damned Soldier), but his picture on display at the Cannes Film Festival that year was still the tried and tested War Bus. A North Korean delegation attended the show.

Interview with Ferdinando Baldi Having always been curious about the development and making of Ten Zan, I met up with Mr. Baldi in a coffee house in Rome in February 2002. He had told me on the phone before that he doesn’t own a video of the film and that he hadn’t seen the film since finishing production. I brought him a copy of a VHS tape I had obtained in Pyong yang. Johannes Schönherr: Lorenzo Codelli of the Udine Far East Film Festival did an interview2 with you and you told him that you made that film War Bus and that War Bus got you involved with the North Koreans. Can you tell me something about how you got in contact with them? Ferdinando Baldi: We showed War Bus in Cannes, in France. The North Koreans were there. Looking. They liked the picture. They said, “Why don’t we shoot something in Korea?” Let me confess, I thought the idea of going to the North of Korea very strange but I said, “Okay, let me think.” We talked to some people at their embassy here in Rome and to the manager of their film company, anyway, with my producer, they started to find the terms of business. I said, “I absolutely want to see what will happen.” So, I arrived in North Korea with a script that had no real relation to reality.

Ferdinando Baldi, director of Ten Zan (photograph by Tomoko Katayama).

JS: The script was about the Pacific War? FB: Yes. About the battle of Ten Zan. Ten Zan is a classic. It’s a mountain on an island in the Pacific where the Americans had a big battle with the Japanese. When I arrived in North Korea, the script was only a direction …

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like, where to go with the project and to see if the North Koreans were really interested in the picture. They started to discuss it in Korea again. They don’t speak English there, some spoke French. They gave me a young boy and I said, “Okay, you are my assistant.” They said, “We have to go over the script again.” They made calls. For about one month I tried to save the basics of my script. At the same time, they totally rewrote it. Finally, we agreed on something. But I said, “Before we do the final script, is it possible to see the locations?” “The locations? Right.” They scratched their heads. “How can we do that? Well, we can go there only once.” (Baldi went to Pyong yang together with production manager Nino Milano. Cast and crew arrived in Pyong yang four weeks later for the start of shooting.) JS: You were in Pyongyang all that time? FB: In Pyongyang, yes. In one hotel in Pyongyang. You know Pyongyang? JS: Yes. I stayed there at the Pyongyang Hotel and at the Koryo Hotel, the big twintower hotel. FB: The Koryo Hotel, that’s it. I was staying there. And, finally, we went to see the locations. It was very difficult. It would take a lot of time getting trucks and all that. There were many delays. I think that was good for us. To have some time to create a relation with them. Especially to my assistant — I thought, the gent is very good, so young. They invited us to some places and we could see the situation there. Finally, we started to shoot. For eight weeks, we did the picture. Very difficult. Because some time, in the morning, some authorities showed up and said, “At this place, shooting is impossible.” So, we were obliged to change. I asked for trucks, for four or five of them. They sent only two. But finally we finished shooting. I can tell you, it was an experience, unbelievable. You never forget the contact with the people there. North Korea was the only place where I was shocked and at the same time, I got a very good feeling with the North Koreans I worked with. I invited them to a projection of the film here in Rome. Six of them, the assistant, directing manager…. They came, they were my guests. They were happy. And they went back to North Korea. But you cannot phone them there, you can’t write them, the contact was cut then. The business stopped. JS: Going back to the script: It started out as a story about the Pacific War but in the end, the movie is set in current times. FB: The North Koreans changed it to what it became. JS: There are some parts I could never understand. Like Professor Larson hires the two mercenaries, the Frank Zagarino character and his sidekick, to destroy some of his own operation. In the end, everything is destroyed. But why does he hire them to destroy his own operation? FB: Listen, there was a problem there. I can’t remember exactly. It was a problem of production. We did something wrong. We did not see the rushes. We couldn’t see the rushes. Nobody could say, “What are we doing here?” I don’t know what happened — but something happened. Now, when I see it again (knocking on the video tape I gave him which was sitting on the table), maybe, maybe I remember the reason for this. In this case, I will tell you by phone, if I remember the real reason. Well, something happened back then but after seeing the film again, I will tell you the truth what happened. Okay?

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JS: In the credits in the beginning, it says “Amerinda Est. Productions.” Who was that? An Italian company? Was the film a co-production? FB: It was an Italian company. The film was a co-production between that company and North Korea. Amerinda was a part of some big company. They funded the co-production. JS: But the film was never released in Italy? FB: No. Because they started to fight about money. Amerinda and the North Koreans. Like, it’s my business — your business, who can do what in Germany, in France, in Italy. I totally forgot what it was all about. JS: What was your first impression when you went to Pyongyang? FB: It was fantastic. Very, very clean. JS: And no traffic. FB: Sure. No smoke. You know, very wide. Only one thing disturbed me there. Every day, we went outside of Pyongyang to shoot and every day, there was this long row of people walking in the streets, thousands of people. Walking in the streets. JS:I have seen the same. FB: Yes. Well, why? I couldn’t understand. So, I asked my assistant. He knew the reason and he showed it to me: they were all soldiers on work assignments. They would work on the construction of some road, walking out there every day into the middle of nowhere to do all the construction work by hand! But the people there are so pure! Very kind! There was no confusion … and no cars. No cars at all! Everyone walking! JS: You always had a guide with you? FB: Yes. JS: I also always had a guide around me when I went there. Every visitor has. But when I went there, the foreigners always played that game of trying to find a way to run away… FB: Yes, of course, but we couldn’t do that because they were watching us very, very closely. After a while, they would say, okay, okay, let’s go out together. But all in all, they controlled us very strictly. And of course, where would you go? First of all, there are no stores. We asked to buy something. You know, we ate at the hotel for days and days, always Korean food. So we asked to go out and buy some food in the supermarket. No supermarket. We asked, can we just go out? They said, “No, no.” But, someday we found a big department store at the square near the train station. But there was only one line, a big line of girls. I looked again — it was only women waiting in that line. Why? We wanted to find out. The people saw that we were foreigners and said, “Go, go, go, you can’t buy anything here!” Suddenly we were in front of the line and we could see what they sold — they would sell only two things: one was red lipstick, the other one white lipstick! Two things for sale — that was all. JS: Makes sense that it was only girls in the queue… FB: Yes, because, the government decided, it’s the year of the lips. We thought, “That’s funny!” But believe me, it was strange to see a thousand people there just to buy something for the lips. It was amazing but interesting.

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JS: Actually, I was in that same department store next to the train station. But there were no customers at that time and the sales ladies just said: “Go to the hotel, go to the hotel! Not here!” But they had nothing to sell anyway. FB: You can buy things only in the hotel. Same for us. But we started to ask many things about Pyongyang. Like, we asked the young girls waiting the tables about their life. But they wouldn’t answer our questions. And if we asked, “Are you married?” they would go, “What, me, married?!” Why? I later found out that you can marry only when you are 27 years old. I asked my assistant, “Are you married?” He said, “No.” “What are you doing then until you are 27? Do you have a fiancée or something?” He goes, “Yes.” “And do you live with her?” “No.” “When can you see her?” “Not until she is 27.” “And she can wait all that time? And you really don’t meet her some days, some nights?” Maybe he met her every once in a while but he said, “No.” That was very difficult to understand. JS: A question about the actors. I understand you could choose the Western actors but there are also a lot of Asians in the film. Are they North Koreans? Could you choose them? FB: Yes, they are North Koreans. There is only one production agency in North Korea. They decided about the Korean actors. They said, “This one, this one, this one…” JS: What about Frank Zagarino? He is American… FB: You know, Zagarino, he got in trouble. Because he likes to take photos. You know the Americans: “Picture! Picture! Picture!” is all they think. One day, they stopped him and led him away. I discussed with the North Koreans and asked, “Why? This is impossible!” They said, “He’s American! He’s a spy!” Finally, the Italian embassy in Beijing got involved and got him released after two days in jail. JS: What did Zagarino say about the jail? FB: Naturally, he was very angry about the North Koreans. JS: Did he tell you any details about the jail? FB: Not really. He would just go on and on ranting… Time to change the tape and to order another cappuccino. Rather jokingly, I asked Baldi: “Did you ever meet Kim Jong Il? You know, he’s a big movie fan.” He made a serious face and I was quick to turn the tape recorder back on. FB: One day, the director of the movie business came, the chief, and he said, “On Sunday, you are invited by our president. To meet him.” JS: So that was Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il? FB: No, no, the old one. JS: Kim Il Sung. FB: So, on that day, they came with a truck and they showed us where he was born, where he lived when he was young, the school he went to, and a tree, a big tree, where he started to create the political philosophy, you know the… JS: Juche philosophy. FB: Yes… And the little house, farm house, where his parents lived. After all that touring, they sent us to big museum. In the mountains. Very big.

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JS: At Mount Myohyang? Near Pohyong Temple? The Friendship Museum? FB: Yes. They showed us the gifts he got from other presidents. After a couple of hours, they took us to the presidential palace. There, an authority came to us, I don’t know, some vice-minister or something, and he said he had to read a message from Kim Il Sung to us, saying “Our president welcomes you, he thanks you for coming but he apologizes because he cannot meet us.” Because he had the Chinese ambassador there or something. He said, “Kim Il Sung likes to send you a picture of himself for everyone.” (Baldi gesticulated to describe the size of the picture—it seemed to be the same size as the standard Kim Il Sung portraits hanging on all office walls in North Korea.) That was it — the only relation I had to Kim Il Sung. But I saw him another time at a big parade on the main square in Pyongyang. Thousands and thousands of people were there and we saw him just from very far away. JS: And the young one? Kim Jong Il? Because Kim Jong Il loves movies and he loves to come to the movie sets. Did he show up at your set? FB: Yes. Just to get to know the actors. He was very kind. He showed up a few times. JS: He just showed up? FB: Yes, yes. JS: Without announcement? FB: No, no, nothing else. That’s all… But he was a young guy then. I’m talking about the 1980s. JS: Did you talk to him? FB: No, no. JS: He just spoke to the actors? FB: He spoke to the actors. He says, “Hello, hello…” JS: So, he did not say, “Shoot the movie this way or that way?” FB: No, no. JS: Because he likes to do that with North Korean films. FB: No, no, he didn’t. But the assistant director, he said all the time when Kim Jong Il was there, “Yes … no problem … right…” (Baldi really did not seem comfortable discussing this subject. Did Kim Jong Il really show up in front of the foreign staff ? Kenpachiro Satsuma, the Godzilla suit actor working on Pulgasari, told me in an interview that in his case too, Kim Jong Il came to the set but absolutely stayed away from all the foreigners — he was strictly meeting only the Koreans working on the film.3) JS: Your assistant director was Pak Jong Ju? FB: Don’t ask me about Korean names. Back then I was able to say his name correctly. Pak something? Pok? Pok? … Pak! That’s right! JS: Pak Jong Ju. I got his name from the North Koreans. He was your assistant and made sure you did the movie the way the North Koreans wanted it? FB: No. First of all, the North Koreans wanted to learn something. At the same time, he was a happy assistant. A very good boy. He had some problem with his family. Living with 10 or 15 persons in one room … very, very difficult situation. But I couldn’t help him.

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JS: How was the language situation on the set? FB: I was talking in English, usually. And many times, we used translators to speak to the Korean actors. Also, my second assistant spoke French. With Pak, I tried to speak English, but, you know, they don’t know much English. So, it was difficult. JS: You used a lot of interesting locations in the movie. Like the Koryo Hotel. I could see the reception desk with that world map behind it in the movie. FB: Yes, we did that because it was impossible to shoot at another place. We shot at the hotel where we were staying. JS: You also shot in the subway. FB: The subway was the best. It was like, a gift from the Russian government. Very big. We don’t have that in Europe. JS: And I recognized the temple, Pohyong Temple. Where Jason shoots Professor Larson. Actually, I saw the movie first and then went to the temple with a tour group that included some friends who had also seen the movie. The North Koreans wanted to explain to us, “This is this Buddha and that is that Buddha,” but I explained to everyone around, “Look. Professor Larson was standing there and Jason was standing there…” FB: (Laughing very loudly.) That’s funny… JS: Where was that beach the movie starts with? FB: In the South. Very close to the border to South Korea. JS: Near Kaesong? FB: Exactly. JS: It’s a very beautiful landscape…. What was your final impression of North Korea? Were you kind of glad to go out of there? In the end? FB: Hah! It was crazy. In the long shot, it was very frustrating. It had been a difficult time there. JS: Because, those two times I went there, when I walked out of the airport in Beijing after coming from Pyongyang, and I could suddenly walk around freely, with no guide around, it was like “I’m back in the free world!” FB: Yes, that’s what it feels like! I shot many movies in many parts of the world but North Korea was a unique experience. JS: Then all the post-production was done here in Rome? FB: Yes. JS: Then you did the screening for the North Koreans here, sent them the picture and that was the end of it? FB: Yes. JS: If you compare Ten Zan to your other films, what’s your impression of it? FB: It was very difficult. I couldn’t do the film the way I wanted. JS: Would you go there again to make another movie? FB: I used to say, “Yes.” But now, I think, it’s impossible. I’m too old now to work

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under these conditions. Back then, I was much younger, I was able to sort of pull it off … and as I found out later, thousands of people were starving to death in North Korea back then already. JS: It became worse. In 1988, the North Koreans still had the support of the Soviet Union and China. That changed soon after. FB: That’s right. JS: Do you still follow up the news from there? Many friends of mine who went there, and also including me, can never stop getting the news from there, reading the official North Korean news for breakfast but also the South Korean news denouncing the situation in the North. We know lots of people are dying in North Korea but for every visitor having been there, a certain — very troubled — fascination with that place remains somewhere in the mind. FB: Right, because it’s such a strange, unusual place. I turned the tape recorder off. Baldi had told me that he an appointment in one of the nearby RAI television centers and was in a hurry to get there. One final photo of the two of us, another pledge by him that he would get back to me after watching the tape and he left. I called him a week later. He had seen the tape I had given him and was very confused. He said: “I was shocked when I saw it! The North Koreans must have re-cut the film after we gave it to them. I will find out. I ordered a tape of our original cut from the Italian producer. I can tell you more once I have seen that.” I called him several more times over the following weeks. He always found a reason why he hadn’t been able to watch the original cut. The film had actually been released theatrically in the 1980s in a few countries, Finland being one of them. In other markets, it was simply tossed out to the public on video. I managed to get hold of the Japanese video version, released under the title Nasake-muyou no senshi, which roughly translates to Merciless Fighters. Aside from the different title and the Japanese subtitles, it’s exactly the same as the version of Ten Zan I had seen in Pyong yang, the same as the version on the tape I had given to Baldi. Toshiba, the Japanese release company, certainly bought the film from the Italians — not from the North Koreans. There is only one explanation as to why the film features such a self-contradictory story: Baldi shot nonsense in the first place … in a strange land and under intense pressure from a strict government he couldn’t really figure out. There was no way to turn his material shot in North Korea into anything even remotely sane, even with the most advanced post-production methods. But then, sanity and reason have always been the last thing Italian exploitation directors had on their minds! Hell, Baldi went out there, to one of the most inhospitable countries on Earth, shooting whatever he could! He was “a true example of globetrotting Italian filmmakers’ daredevil vitality,”4 even as Italian cinema was dying all around him. Ferdinando Baldi passed away in November 2007. Ten Zan was his last film.

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Audience Perspectives: Interviews with North Korean Defectors Books on film always spend a lot of pages on directors and movie stars, on movie plots and aesthetics, on movie politics and on the production history of the films. This book is no exception. However, the voice of the most important participants in the movie experience is most often overlooked: the voice of the audience. What do the people who actually watch the films, the people the films are aimed at, think about the movies made for them? I’m grateful to the Daily NK,1 a Seoul-based online news outlet operated by North Korean defectors and their supporters, for providing me with access to three North Korean defectors who candidly talked about their experiences and feelings watching films while living in North Korea. All of the defectors insisted upon absolute anonymity for fear of repercussions to their remaining family members back home. Therefore, I call them here only A, B and C.

Interview with Miss A Miss A was originally from Sinuiju, North Korea’s main border town to China, located on the Yalu River across from the Chinese city of Dandong. Sinuiju has a population of about 350,000. Miss A came to Seoul in the first half of the 2000s. She had gone through some very traumatic experiences in North Korea. She had told the Daily NK about them but would not be willing to mention them here. We agreed to speak strictly about movies. A booklet I had printed to announce my tour of North Korean films through European festivals and cinemas in 2000 lay on the table. It contained the data and descriptions of ten North Korean films, and proved to be helpful during the interview. Johannes Schönherr: Sinuiju is one of North Korea’s bigger cities. What did young people do there when they went out at night? What were the entertainment options? Miss A: There was one movie theater, the Sinuiju theater. Young people were really looking forward to seeing new movies. Young people like new movies. Especially in Sinuiju because there are many universities, so there are many university students who also like movies. Since Shin Sang-ok, the South Korean director entered North Korea, the movie trends have been changed. From that time on, we could see more open and more interesting movies. 189

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Otherwise, for entertainment, there was the Yalu River Entertainment Park. You can see it from Dandong. JS: Isn’t there a big ferry wheel there? You can see it from Dandong. A: Yes, that’s it. It’s a small amusement park. There is also some culture villa there that you can see from China. Young people just gathered in that park, hanging out, playing around. JS: What kind of movies could you see in Sinuiju? Was it all North Korean films or also foreign movies? A: I can’t remember the exact year, maybe 1996 or ’97, but I remember seeing a Russian film at the Sinuiju Theater. I can’t remember the title. The general story was ... a former cadre of the Soviet Union who really loved the old Soviet system went to a rural area to farm and to live there. But a group of gangsters came to him, to kick him out and to develop his land. He tried to keep and maintain his land. This movie was sort of propaganda to promote the communist system. Besides that, we could see foreign movies on North Korean television until the late 1980s. Then, that was stopped. Only for Pyongyang citizens there is a local channel, called Mansudae Channel, which shows mainly movies, foreign movies among them. We couldn’t watch that channel in Sinuiju. JS: What were the most popular North Korean films? What were the films young people wanted to see? A: There was an action movie named Order No. 027. That was one of the most popular movies. Also, in the early 1980s, The Tale of Chun Hyang was very popular among people. It was a traditional love story. Shin Sang-ok directed a movie based on the same love story, Love, Love, My Love. It was extremely popular. The main actress in The Tale of Chung Hyan was Kim Yong Suk. Her face was that of a traditional beautiful Korean woman. Round face ... but Jang Son Hui, was a new actress in Shin Sang-ok’s Love, Love, My Love. She had a sharp face, it’s a bit of a modern and Western-style face. That was not so popular with the audience but the movie was still popular. The most attractive thing for audiences about Shin Sang-ok’s movie was that it was a bit erotic. JS: Jang Son Hui was also the main actress in Pulgasari. A: I haven’t seen Pulgasari. It was too crowded in the theater. I tried and went there but I didn’t succeed. It was so crowded, so popular. I don’t remember the exact time and neither the title of the movie but it must have been in the late 1990s. There was one movie playing, a really popular movie. The theater was so crowded, so full of people, that an accident happened. People were killed just by pressure, getting trampled to death. JS: Speaking of Shin Sang-ok ... What did people in the North know about him? What were they told about his escape? A: We had regularly scheduled lectures for the workers at their workplaces. At those lectures at the time and also in a special lecture by the party secretary, they told us that Shin ran away with a huge amount of government money. He went to a foreign country to check out movies and there he ran away with the money, they said.

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JS: Did people know that Pulgasari was a Shin Sang-ok movie? [Pulgasari premiered after Shin’s escape and is officially credited to Chong Gon Jo.] A: It’s news to me that Pulgasari was a Shin Sang-ok film. I hear this from you for the first time. JS: Shin was in many cases acting more like a producer than an actual director. He didn’t appear in the credits when the film was released. Neither is the Japanese special effects team mentioned in the credits. The same team worked on Pulgasari that also made the Godzilla movies. A: Actually, I was in a Shin Sang-ok movie. In the summer of 1984, I was in the military reserve and my unit was recruited to be extras in Thousand Miles Along the Railroad. In the movie, we were setting up a railway track and were rolling big rocks. It took several days to film that one scene. It was very impressive. We also heard stories about Shin’s private life. When he arrived on Sunan Airport [Pyongyang Airport] one time, Jang Son Hui worked as a stewardess on the plane. He just saw her and immediately picked her up and turned her into an actress. She then played the main role in Love, Love, My Love. After making that movie, she had to go through the socalled “revolutionary training.” She was expelled to the countryside and had to do hard labor because there was a rumor that she had had a love affair with the main actor of the movie [Ri Hak Chol]. Shin Sang-ok opened North Korean cinema towards more erotic ways. JS: In the Shin Sang-ok era, films often featured actual foreign locations like Japan or Czechoslovakia. Did people go to see them for that reason? Like using the films as a window to the world? A: People whispered that South Korean people could make better and more realistic movies than we ourselves. Also, they could see through the movies elements of capitalist society. Even though Shin Sang-ok didn’t go beyond the general outline of revolutionary propaganda, he did try to give hints and to show different things. Through his films, we could see the life of people in other countries including South Korea — and we could see that they live better than we did in North Korea. Also, there is a series of movies called Nation and Destiny. In those movies they show the life of Koreans overseas. When we saw the scenes of the restaurants or hotels in those movies, we just whispered among friends how life at those places might be. JS: More recently, a lot of videos went over from China, including South Korean films. How were they received? Were there like parties where young people would watch them together? A: This started in the late 1990s. In my case, after work one of my friends would invite me to their house to see Korean movies. We watched many South Korean movies but also old American films. We just closed the door and the curtains and sat down. Around seven or eight friends would usually gather and then we watched American or South Korean films all night. The regulations of the National Security Agency and the People’s Safety Ministry against that were very strict but we did it anyway. The information on what we did never leaked out.

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Also, we were living right on the Chinese border. In Sinuiju, people can use Chinese cell phones. The airwaves of Chinese TV also reach the city. Already back in about 1995, we tuned the channels on our TV sets and then we could watch Chinese TV. I watched many Chinese movies that way. It’s just natural. People are curious. JS: North Korean movies are often very heavy on the propaganda side. Did you choose foreign films to get away from that constant propaganda? A: In the early 1980s, we just watched our films and documentaries and accepted them the way they were. We thought that that’s how movies are. But after the Shin Sang-ok era, we had new eyes. Then, we could judge which movies are interesting and which are not. When they showed political documentaries or political propaganda stories on TV, we just turned it off. We thought, it’s just a routine, we didn’t care about those broadcasts. We knew, they were not interesting. We just ignored them. But now, I got a question for you: have you seen A Bellflower ? JS: Yes. A: How long was it? (Fortunately I had my European tour booklet right there on the table. The film was in it.) JS: It says here 92 minutes. A: Why I ask is that I had heard the rumor that there were two versions of that movie. A domestic and an international one. The international one was made to earn foreign currency. The domestic version was 92 minutes but the international one was two and a half hours. The domestic one was boring even though it shows a love story. But it wasn’t direct and there were no kiss scenes. But in the international long version, there were really romantic and so many erotic scenes. To earn money, the authorities made the film that way. JS: That’s a rumor, I think. I got the only English subtitled print the [North] Korea Film Export & Import Corporation had at their disposal. It was boring propaganda and there was nothing erotic in it. (It is interesting to note that such a rumor existed in North Korea at the time at all. The government went into hardcore propaganda mode after Shin Sang-ok had left — but what they got out of their efforts was a rumor that the most important propaganda picture of the day was just the short domestic version of an internationally distributed erotic flick.) A: People also said that some foreign movies were imported just for the officials. From Japan for example ... (Her giggling at the mention of the word “Japan” seemed to indicate that those movies were thought of as being highly erotic or even pornographic.) JS: I have a question regarding Forever in Our Memory. A: That was impressive, yes. I saw it on TV. JS: There is one scene in it ... I always wondered about it. A drought is killing the countryside. Soldiers carry water in buckets to the corn fields. The sun is merciless and hot. So hot, actually, that the main hero breaks down under it while carrying the water. Then suddenly, that same sun is turned into a symbol for Kim Jong Il who right at this moment visits the village. He meets with the main hero though you actually

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only see Kim’s tire tracks in the dust after he has left. It looks like very strong propaganda but is it really? Do you think there is a hidden subversive message here? Kim Jong Il — symbolized by the sun — is killing the country? A: I can’t remember that scene. There are so many similar scenes like that. JS: Why I ask is that in Eastern Europe film directors often tried to include hidden subversive messages into their films. It was a kind of game and the audiences were looking for that kind of thing. I wonder if in the post–Shin Sang-ok–era directors in North Korea played similar games with the authorities? Sending out secret messages to the audience which could not be detected by the officials because they were covered up by what appeared to be heavy propaganda at first glance? A: For me as an ordinary woman it would have been very hard to see through that. We were just taught that the whole world consisted of our regime and our country. We couldn’t think outside of that. We knew certain elements of the outside world through foreign movies but that would not be enough to catch such twists. Especially not for me as I was just a very ordinary worker then. There were people who listened to South Korean short wave radio broadcasts and things like that. Maybe they had a different viewpoint. To be frank, I had some horrible experiences in North Korea and then I just tried to get over them, tried to forget. Now I regret that. I should have remembered the details better. It would be helpful now here for my work at the Daily NK.

Interview with Miss B Miss B was originally from Pyong yang. She grew up in the capital. Johannes Schönherr: Can you tell me a bit about watching movies in Pyongyang? Miss B: I was a student during the Shin Sang-ok era. At that time, movies were very popular. When a new movie came out, we all tried to buy tickets. We could see the really new movies, the ones with the love scenes, the kiss scenes. Thousand Miles Along the Railroad was a very important film then. It was a revolution in North Korean movie history. Before the Shin Sang-ok era, the movie plots were really transparent and simple. Even if we saw only the first half of a movie, we already knew the whole story. The plots were always the same. The main character went through many hardships and was always saved at the end through Kim Il Sung’s love. Because of the character’s loyalty to Kim Il Sung, he could always overcome those difficulties. That was not so attractive to us. Shin Sang-ok brought a more realistic approach to cinema. His films were closer to real people’s lives. JS: He also introduced new genres like the action film with Hong Kil Dong and the monster movie with Pulgasari. He brought many outside influences into North Korean cinema, I think. B: In my university days, I was crazy for Shin Sang-ok films. His films were really attractive to people. Although his fantasy genre films had some capitalist touches, some

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people went to see films like Love, Love, My Love more than twenty times. The traditional films were so boring, we wanted to see Shin’s films. JS: How did you like Hong Kil Dong for example? B: Personally, this movie was quite significant for me. I sang the theme song of the movie [composed by Jon Chang Il] at my wedding ceremony. The main actor [Ri Yong Ho] and the character he plays became heroes among girls in their 20s. He was my hero, too. Even though he had strong charisma as a fighter, in love he had a really obedient attitude. He showed pure love. North Korean society was male-dominated, we had never seen a man so smooth and tender and with such soft emotions, a man who could really express his love to his partner. He was unique. Before that, we could see martial arts only in fights against the American imperialists, in war movies. JS: Speaking of earlier films, what did you think about the Flower Girl ? B: This was a very popular movie in the 1970s. I saw it when they did a screening at the factory where my parents worked, in the factory theater. It was so sad. The theater was turned into a sea of tears. Because the main character, the girl, was so poor, had to suffer the abuses of the landlord, everyone felt very sympathetic with her. JS: After Shin Sang-ok left North Korea, North Korean cinema became very conservative again. B: Soon after Shin left, the Songun [Military First] policy was introduced. Movies just showed military life or the loyalty of the soldiers for the regime. There wasn’t anything interesting in those movies. They didn’t reflect our daily lives, they were not realistic movies. We didn’t like them. JS: In 1987, a movie called My Happiness was released. It had a very strange propaganda scene: The boyfriend of one of the two girls who are the main characters returns from the Korean War. There had been rumors that he was killed in action, later it was said that he had lost his legs. Now, he returns and is all healthy, his legs intact. The girl asks him what happened. He tells her that in the field hospital, the doctors and nurses operating on him removed parts of their own bones, chunks of their own flesh and used them to repair his shredded legs. After the operation, they were all were limping. “In what a great society we live!” he can only say to this. What did people think of this kind of scenes? Did they take them seriously? B: People accepted those movies just as movies, as fiction. Among close friends, they would say, “It’s ridiculous, it’s just a movie.” While watching the movies, people felt with the main characters. But they knew that it’s only movies. The propaganda is just a movie scene for them. Their mind was already set by propaganda, they were already brainwashed. Propaganda was just natural for them. There wasn’t anything strange about it. Like when people here see a Hollywood movie now. There is a happy end. People accept it because it’s a movie. JS: What was the situation on TV like? B: In Pyongyang, we had the Mansudae channel. It was only broadcasting during the

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weekends and it could only be received in Pyongyang. From 5 P.M. on, they always showed two movies per day. During the 1980s, from about 1983 to 1987, roughly the time Shin Sang-ok was active in North Korea, they often showed Eastern European films. These movies were very popular. There were no pedestrians in the streets. Everyone went home to watch the foreign movies. The audience in the theaters also decreased during those times. Since the 1990s, after the collapse of the Eastern European bloc, they have been showing Chinese movies on the Mansudae channel. JS: What kind of Chinese movies? B: Martial arts movies. Also the movie versions of classical tales. But also contemporary movies that showed how China developed. Among us university students, we discussed the economic developments in China a lot, we discussed if China is still really a socialist country. For us, those movies were very interesting. Seeing the movies, we also discussed why and how the Cultural Revolution was criticized in China. But at the same time, in the early 1990s, the Mansudae channel also began showing Indian movies. They were so popular! They were so memorable! I still can remember many scenes from those movies. There was also a Chinese TV soap opera called Woman Is Not a Moon. They showed that series through the central state television. It was hugely popular. But its run was not completed. The complete series has 16 parts but we could see only the first seven. Then it was stopped. The story it told was a love story set in the time of China’s economic opening. But the authorities didn’t want us to see the details of that period.3 People even stopped working to see those movies. They turned on the TV sets at their workplaces and watched. I recorded a lot of those movies with my VCR. JS: There were also foreign videos coming in from China? B: That was later. When I was living in China in the mid–2000s, my sister’s husband visited me. He didn’t want to defect, he visited China with official permission. I asked him many questions about the situation in North Korea then. He told me about the people watching foreign films on DVD, about the porno movies on DVD flowing into North Korea through China. The authorities don’t provide electricity around the clock, only at specific times. When the power is on, people don’t watch North Korean television anymore. They gather in one place, like my sister’s home, pull down the curtain and secretly watch the Chinese or South Korean movies or TV dramas. I asked how many people came and he said, they had maximum capacity for 30 people in that living room. After several screenings, one of the viewers reported them to the authorities. The authorities went to my sister’s house and inspected the whole house. But they couldn’t find any real evidence, they couldn’t prove anything. She got away just paying a fine. JS: What are the most popular foreign films at screenings like that? B: Movies starring Jackie Chan or Chow Yun Fat or Jet Lee. The Hong Kong action movies from the 1980s were very popular. Through my brother-in-law I learned that although the system in North Korea was still powerful, the mindset of the people had changed. They don’t like to see North Korean movies anymore.

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Foreign films don’t focus on political propaganda, they show real emotion, they show the truth and reality of people’s lives, they show love. People have a great interest in seeing the world, different countries and cultures through the movies. I remember the movie The Separation which was shot at an overseas location. When they showed the overseas city, the streets of Paris in that case, it was really shocking for me. I had believed that Pyongyang is the best city in the world. The perfect and the best, the ideal city. Then we suddenly saw a much more developed city on screen. JS: Was it known to North Koreans at the time where the film was actually shot? There is documentary footage from Paris in it but all the fiction parts were shot in Prague which was in the Eastern bloc then. B: We got the information at that time that it was all Paris. Another example was the series Nation and Destiny. People who saw the series were shocked by the sights of the foreign cities. Of this series only the parts that actually featured foreign locations were popular. Especially the parts on Yun I-sang, the composer who moved to Germany, on Choi Duk-shin, the South Korean Chondoist leader and the ones on Choi Hong-hi, the taekwondo master who had moved to Canada. People didn’t care much about the rest of the series. JS: In The Separation and in many other films, Seoul is shown as a place where it is always dark, where it always rains, the only cars on the streets are American military trucks and people form long lines in front of the employment office. What was your reaction when you first saw South Korean films that featured the actual cityscape of Seoul? B: We knew that Seoul was a capitalist city and was very polarized. A city where rich people are really rich and the poor very poor. But we didn’t look at Seoul as this kind of gloomy place. They show restaurants and night life in Seoul and also Paris — this was the interesting part to us. At our private parties we were listening and dancing to the same music that is played in the movie — dancing in the same fashion like in the movie. (The music in the movie nightclub scenes of The Separation was played by an ABBA cover band.) JS: Then there were of course the movies made in collaboration with Chongryon in Japan. A Silver Hairpin and Thaw. They were actually shot in Japan. They show Koreans living in Japan in quite luxury situations, especially Thaw does. There the Koreans in Japan live in big houses, own big cars ... B: Yes, we were impressed by the high standards of life in Japan as shown in these movies. Actually, the hairstyle of the leading actress of Thaw became very popular in North Korea — long, straight hair. That went against Kim Il Sung’s personal taste what women’s hairstyle should be like. Regulation teams were formed by the authorities. They wore headbands that had “regulation team” written on them. They brought scissors with them and they came to the universities. If they found a girl with long hair they cut it off right on the street.

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Interview with Mr. C I was told that Mr. C had been a journalist working for the so-called “Third Broadcast” in the mountainous northeastern province of Ryanggang. His detailed knowledge of the North Korean movie industry, however, leads to the assumption that he was more involved in the industry than he wanted to admit. Ryanggang province is the area where the holy mountain of the nation, Mt. Paekto, is located. The area is on the border to China. The “Third Broadcast” is piped via speakers connected to cables into every North Korean household. In the daytime, it is always on. One can turn down the volume but it is not possible to turn it off. Known as “yuusen,” this form of broadcasting has a long tradition in Japan. It is transmitted through telephone lines and still exists in the Japanese countryside to this day. It continues to get piped into small stores to keep people updated on local information like culture events, cleaning campaigns and the like and to give quick warnings about typhoons, floods and other impending disasters. For the most part, in Japan today, it just plays music, though. Japan introduced this kind of wire broadcast to Korea in the colonial times and in the North, the government discovered soon after Kim Il Sung’s 1945 takeover that it could be used as a very special propaganda tool with only a few modifications. The “Third Broadcast” became relentless and uninterrupted in the propaganda fed to its own population while the outside world couldn’t listen in. For fear that his voice might be recognized by the North Korean authorities, Mr. C did not want to have the interview tape recorded. It is here reconstructed from my notes taken during the interview. Johannes Schönherr: Did the Third Broadcast report regularly on the new movies coming out? Mr. C: No. We did only very rarely any movie reports. There were movie reports on general TV, though. What we did, if we reported on movies, we would focus on the content, on how the movie related to society. We would also focus on the screenplay writers. The audience knew well about the screenplay writers. They were considered to be the creative heads behind the films. They always got top billing in the movie credits. The name of the studio is also spelled out in the credits but people rarely cared which studio produced which movie. Like the April 25 Army Film Studio didn’t only produce war movies, they also made general interest movies. So, which studio had produced a certain movie was not so important to the audience. There was almost no interest in the directors. Film was considered state-financed team work. There was a big interest in the actors, though. JS: You often went to catch the new productions in the theater? C: Until the early 1990s I often went to the movies. Up to then, many movies were made. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they produced only two or three new movies per year. They had no money anymore. The salaries of the screenplay writers were cut off. Only the top writers can earn money now. The general writers don’t, they are in a terrible situation these days.

198

North Korean Cinema

JS: What do they approximately earn? C: The basic salary of a writer is similar to that of an office worker, on average about 3,000 Won a month. That buys about three kilograms of rice. Novelists can get up to 50,000 Won per book besides the monthly wage. Work as a writer in North Korea is tough. Writers are subject to serious inspections, many were punished for their works. Now here, these are not hard facts but it’s what I heard about three famous writers: Ri Chun Gu wrote the screenplay for A Bellflower (1987) and won a very prestigious award for it. He also wrote the famous movie A Checkered Life (two parts, released in 1989 and 1990, directed by Chae Pung Gi). Finally, he wrote a movie called The Man Who Remained in My Heart (1989, directed by Ko Hak Rim). The plot tells the story of a man whose wife dies and who then marries a young girl. This was considered too impure. In 1989, right after the release of the movie, Ri was sent to Taehongdan county in Ryanggang province [the province where C was from] to do hard work in the countryside. His work as a writer has stopped since then. Then there was Ri Hui Chan, he had written They Met on the Taedong River (1993). He suddenly stopped working in the mid–1990s, reason unknown. The most interesting case however is the one of Li Jin U. His writing was basically just copying Soviet movies. He wrote a lot of war movies, including Wolmi Island (1982), which was also based on an already existing Soviet film. He had written many rather touching movies, some of them without overly ideological parts. People liked that kind of movies the best. But he was criticized because he was often absent from obligatory party meetings. Regular people go to mandatory meetings once a week, artists once every two days. The authorities believe that artists have an easy life. Therefore, they evaluate them on a stricter basis. Artists have to do extra studies on Saturdays, studying the works of Kim Il Sung, of course. They get lots of extra assignments. Li was lazy in that regard. He then wrote the spy series Unknown Heroes (1978–81) and Red Maple Leaves (also a spy movie series). Rumor has it that he had access to secret materials while researching the movies and that he leaked some of the secrets to the Russians. He was secretly executed, the reason was not revealed. There are also many stories about relationships between actresses and directors that led to punishment. Actress U In Hui, who had played the female lead in Peony (1971) was executed in 1974 for improper behavior. The actual reasons were of a political nature, of course.4 Actors and actresses all had to undergo special education courses to experience reality. That “Reality Experience” meant that they had to work for three to six months in agriculture or in a factory once every three to five years. To experience how the population lives. If the actors or actresses showed flaws in their daily lives, they would be sent to the countryside, to farms or mines, as a punishment. That happened to almost every actor and actress, mostly because of love affairs. The regulations in this regard were very strict. Shin Sang-ok, for example, had an affair with Jang Son Hui and she was then sent to the countryside.5 Then there was Kim Won Jun, a famous actor who had been the lead in the Workers parts of Nation and Destiny. The public was told that he died from a chronic disease. In reality, he died of starvation during the famine.

13. Audience Perspectives: Interviews with North Korean Defectors

199

JS: I have a question about a rather strange occurrence I encountered in Pyongyang in 2000. I bought a book there called Korean Film Art, it was published in Pyongyang in 1985 and gives details about a lot of North Korean movies. Strangely, one double page was glued together, in all copies and both in the English and the French editions. It was not a good glue and with a little water I could wash it out. This revealed that the film they tried to hide was The 14th Winter (directed by Kim Yong Ho, written by Li Chun Gu). Do you know anything about why they might have wanted to hide that film? C : That film tells the real story of Paek Sol Hui, she’s played by the same actress who starred in the Flower Girl, Hong Yong Hui. That actress has been known to be a mistress of Kim Jong Il. Anyway, Paek Sol Hui studied plants and their capacity to produce oil for 14 years. She wanted to help resolve the food problem. So, they made the movie about her in the early 1980s. She had always worked closely with Workers Party AgriPaek Sol Hui worked hard for 14 years to help solve the cultural Secretary So Gwan Hui. food problems — so hard that the movie The 14th Winter At the height of the famine in the was made about her. Later she ended up in a prison camp, but was released after Kim Jong Il took another look at 1990s, he was blamed for the catthe film. Here, former Flower Girl star Hong Yong Hui astrophic mismanagement of the plays Paek Sol Hui. agriculture that led to the famine. He was executed in 1997.6 One of his associates, Paek Sol Hui, was arrested and put into the Taedong Prison Camp in 1998. She was accused of being involved in So Gwan Hui’s “political plot.” One day, Kim Jong Il watched the then old movie The 14th Winter again and thought that it was a really good movie. He asked his staff what had become of Paek Sol Hui. They reported to him that she’s in prison. Kim Jong Il got her released immediately — because he liked the movie. That was in 2003. So, she spent five years in prison. JS: That fits very well with the timing of the glued-up pages. In 2000, all copies of the book were glued. I lost that copy and asked a friend who went to the Pyongyang Film Festival in 2006 to buy me a new one. He did — and at that time, they sold the book without trying to hide The 14th Winter. Are there other examples for the sudden prohibition of well-known movies? C: The Rim Kkok Jong series was extremely popular in North Korea. It was prohibited in 1997. The movie shows the courage of the farmers in a rebellion in medieval times, fighting against the landlords and the yangban [aristrocrats]. Rim Kkok Jong was their leader. People said: “The movie shows exactly our situation.” That’s why it was prohibited. Most movies are written and made according to Kim Jong Il’s tastes, on his orders.

200

North Korean Cinema

When Kim Jong Il watched Soviet spy movies, he asked: “Why don’t we have spy movies?” So Unknown Heroes was made. Nation and Destiny was also made according to a Kim Jong Il decree. Kim Jong Il watched Titanic, so then Souls Protest was made. JS: What was Shin Sang-ok’s impact on North Korean cinema? C: His movies were a revolution. Thanks to him, a lot of new techniques developed. Hong Kil Dong was simply shattering. There had never been any such action movie in North Korea before. His most popular films, aside from Hong Kil Dong, were Thousand Miles Along the Railroad and Red Wings [directed by Jang Yong Bok], the latter being about a pilot. Love, Love, My Love was not so popular but the title music was. Then there was The Tale of Shim Chong. It’s a story taken from a children’s fairytale and it features an undersea palace where Shim Chong meets the queen of the undersea world. Shing Sang-ok used many European actors for that undersea scene. He was severely criticized for that. Because he spent too much money on them. That movie was then prohibited. After Shin defected, there was a nationwide campaign with lectures about him targeting every single North Korean, down to the neighborhood committees. JS: Another famous defector was Kim Hye Yong. Didn’t she act in several movies? C: Kim Hye Yong was not a public person in North Korea and she was not an actress. She had studied singing, not acting. But she wasn’t a real singer, either. Every factory has its own singing club, she might have been in one of those. She just made up impressive stories after her defection.7 JS: Do you think that North Korean films sometimes deliberately contain subversive elements? C: In the 1990s, there was a trend to write historical screenplays, to avoid mentioning current times. Ancient kings were criticized. But this was then prohibited. JS: What is the situation of the North Korean cinema now? C: Since the late 1990s, North Korean movies are not so popular anymore. Before that, people loved them. Now, they have to force the people to see new movies by making them attending group shows. The reason for that is the influx of foreign films. South Korean movies circulate a lot. Western movies with Korean subtitles are the most popular. South Korean TV soap operas are also very, very popular.

Appendix: Original Korean Film Titles English Title

Romanized Title

Again to the Front An Jung Gung Shoots Ito Hirobumi Arirang A Bellflower Bird Blast Furnace Boy Partisans

Tto tashi jeonseoneuro 또 다시 전선으로 An Jung-geun Leedeungpakmun-eul ssoda 안중근 이등박문을 쏘다 Arirang 아리랑 Doraji kkot 도라지 꽃 Sea 새 Yonggwangno 용광로 Sonyeon ppalchisan 소년 빨치산

Breakwater Bright Sunshine Brothers’ Feelings Call of Naval Port

Bangpaje Haebit balgara Hyeongje-ui jeong Gunhang-ui bureumsori

방파제 햇빛 밝아라 형제의 정 군항의 부름소리

Centre Forward Changes of Pyongyang During the Forced March A Checkered Life A Country I Saw

Bosimrok Ganghenggungil-eso byeonmodoen Pyeongyang Gokjeolmaneun unmyeong Naega bon nara

보심록

Daughter of War Veteran The Defenders of Height 1211 Ding of Love The Earth of Love

Robyeongeui ttal 1211 goji bangwijadeul Sarangui jongsori Sarangui daeji

로병의 딸 1211고지 방위자들 사랑의 종소리 사랑의 대지

An Emissary of No Return Eternal Comrade-in-Arms Evergreen Tree The Evil Night A Far-Off Islet Fate of Kum Hui & Un Hui Female Medical Doctor Five Guerilla Brothers A Flourishing Village Flower Girl Follow What We Are Doing Footsteps

Doraoji aneun milsa Yeongwonhan jeonu Sangroksu Agya Meolliineun seom Geumhuiwa eunhuiui unmyeong [existence of the movie is not proven] Yugyeokdaeui ohyeongje Kkotpineun maeul Kkotpaneun cheonyeo Urireul jikyeobora Balgeoreum

돌아오지 않은 밀사 영원한 전우 상록수 악야 멀리있는 섬 금희와 은희의 운명

201

Korean Title

강행군길에서 변모된 평양 곡절많은 운명 내가 본 나라

유격대의 오형제 꽃피는 마을 꽃파는 처녀 우리를 지켜보라 발걸음

202

Appendix: Original Korean Film Titles

English Title

Romanized Title

Korean Title

The Forest Sways

Supeun seolleinda

숲은 설레인다

Forever in Our Memory

Chueoksoge yeongwonhari

추억속에 영원하리

The 14th Winter

Yeolnebeonjjea gyeoul

열네번째 겨울

From Spring to Summer

Bombuteo yorreumkkaji

봄부터 여름까지

Girls in My Hometown

Naegohyangui cheonyeodeul

내고향의 처녀들

Green Shoulder-Strap

Pureun gyeonjang

푸른 견장

Hong Kil Dong

Hong Gil Dong

홍길동

Kang Ho Yong

Gang Ho Yong

강호용

The Kites Flying in the Sky

Haneuleul naneun yeondeul

하늘을 나는 연들

Korea

Joseon

조선

The Lieutenant in Those Days

Geunalui jungwi

그날의 중위

Lightning and Thunder

Beongewa uroe

번개와 우뢰

Love, Love, My Love

Sarang sarang nae sarang

사랑 사랑 내사랑

The Man Who Remained in My Heart

Shimjange namneun saram

심장에 남는 사람

Military Service

Bokmuui gil

복무의 길

Moranbong

Moranbong

모란봉

Mother’s Happiness

Eomeoniui heangbok

어머니의 행복

A Mother’s Hope

Emeoniui sowon

어머니의 소원

My Happiness

Naie hengbok

나의행복

My Home Village

Naegohyang

내고향

My New Family

Sea gajeong

새 가정

Myself in the Distant Future

Meonhunalui naui moseub

먼후날의 나의 모습

The Name Given by the Era

Sidaega juneun ireum

시대가 주는 이름

Namgang Village Women

Namgangmaeul nyeoseongdeul

남강마을 녀성들

Nation and Destiny (Cha Hong Gi)

Minjokgwa unmeong Cha Hong-gi

민족과 운명（차홍기）

Nation and Destiny (Choe Hyon)

Minjokgwa unmeong Choe-hyeon

민족과 운명 （최현）

Lovely Sunshine —see Bright Sunshine

Nation and Destiny (Choe Hyon Duk) Minjokgwa unmeong Choe Hyeon-deog

민족과 운명（최현덕）

Nation and Destiny (Ho Jong Sun)

Minjokgwa unmeong Heo Jeong-sun

민족과 운명（허정순）

Nation and Destiny (Japanese Women Naturalized in DPRK)

Minjokgwa unmeong Gwihwahan illbonui nyeoseong pyeon

민족과 운명（귀화한 일본의 녀성편）

Nation and Destiny (KAPF Writers)

Minjokgoa unmyong KAPF jakgapyeon

민족과 운명（카프작가편）

Nation and Destiny (Parts of Peasants)

Minjokgwa unmeong Nongmin pyeon

민족과 운명（농민 편）

Nation and Destiny (Ri Jong Mo)

Minjokgwa unmeong Ri Jong-mo

민족과 운명（리정모）

Nation and Destiny (Workers)

Minjokgwa unmeong Rodonggyegeubpyeon 민족과 운명（로동계급편）

Nation and Destiny (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow)

Minjokgwa unmeong Eojae oneul geurigo neail

민족과 운명（어제 오늘 그 리 고 내일）

Nation and Destiny (Yun Sang Min)

Minjokgwa unmeong Yun Sang-min

민족과 운명（윤상민）

Notes of a Woman Soldier

Nyeobyeongsaui sugi

녀병사의 수기

An Obliging Girl

Gomaeun cheonyeo

고마운 처녀

Oh, Youth

Cheongchuniyeo

청춘이여

Appendix: Original Korean Film Titles

203

English Title

Romanized Title

Korean Title

On the Green Carpet

Pureun judanueseo

푸른 주단우에서

Onjongryon

Onjeongryeong

온정령

Orang River

Orangcheon

어랑천

Order No. 027

Myeongryeong-027ho

명령-027호

Our Fragrance

Uriui hyanggi

우리의 향기

Our Life

Wuriui seongmeong

우리의 생명

Paek Il Hong

Paek Il-hong

백일홍

Peony

Morankkot

목란꽃

A Photo

Hanjangui Sajin

한장의 사진

The Problem in My Wife’s Parents’ Home

Cheogajip munje

처가집 문제

The Problem in Our Family

Urijip munje

우리집 문제

The Problem of Elder Brother’s Family

Hyeongnimjip munje

형님집 문제

The Problem of Our Downstairs Neighbor

Yeodongsaeng munje

여동생 문제

The Problem of Our Upstairs Neighbor

Iutjip munje

이웃집 문제

The Problem of Son-in-Law’s Family

Sawiui munje

사위의 문제

Pulgasari

Bulgasari

불가사리

Pyongyang Nalpharam

Pyongyang Nalparam

평양날파람

A Red Agitator

Bulgeun seondongwon

붉은 선동원

The Red Flower

Bulgunkot

붉은꽃

Red Maple Leaves

Bulgeundanpounglip

붉은 단풍잎

Red Wings

Bulgeun nalgae

붉은 날개

Rescued on the Shore

Guwonui giseuk

구원의 기슭

Revenge in the Tiger Cage

Yeosu 407ho

여수 407호

Rhee Syng-man and the Independence Movement

Dongnip hyeophoe-wa cheongnyeon Lee Seung-man

독립협회와 청년 이승만

Rice

Ssal

쌀

Righteous Struggle

Uirujeok guta

의리적 구타

Rim Kkok Jong

Rim Kkeok Jeong

림꺽정

Rim Kkok Jong (Sworn Brothers)

Rim Kkeok Jeong Uihyeongje pyeon

림꺽정（의형제 편）

Rim Kkok Jong (Lesson of Blood)

Rim Kkeok Jeong Piui gyohun

림꺽정（피의 교훈）

The Road I Found

Naega chajeun gil

내가 찾은 길

Rose and Wild Dog

Jangmiwa deulgae

장미와 들개

Run and Run

Joseoni dallyeora

조선이 달려라

Runaway

Talchulgi

탈출기

Salt

Sogeum

소금

Scenery of Seoul in War

Gyeongseongjeonsiui gyeong

경성전시의 경

A Schoolgirl’s Diary

Han nyeohakseangui ilgi

한 녀학생의 일기

Scouts

Jeongchalbyeong

정찰병

Sea of Blood

Pibada

피바다

204

Appendix: Original Korean Film Titles

English Title

Romanized Title

Korean Title

The Separation

Haeuju unjeok kkakji

해우주 언적 깍지

A Silver Hairpin

Eunbinyeo

은비녀

Sisters

Jameadeul

자매들

Adeuleun dorawatta

아들은 돌아 왔다

Song Chung-hyan

Seong Chun-hyang

성춘향

Song of the East Sea

Dongheaui norae

동해의 노래

Souls Protest

Saraitneun yeonghondeul

살아있는 영혼들

The Spinner

Jeonbanggong

정방공

Squirrel and Hedgehog

Daramiwa goseumdochi

다람이와 고슴도치

Stalks Grow from the Roots

Julgineun ppurieso jaranda

줄기는 뿌리에서 자란다

The Star of Korea

Joseonui byeol

조선의 별

The Tale of Chunhyang (1935)

Chun Hyan jeon

춘향전

The Tale of Chunhyang (1980)

Chun Hyan jeon

춘향전

The Tale of Hung Pu

Heung Pu jeon

흥부전

A Tale of Noblemen

Rangban jeon

랑반전

The Tale of Shim Chong

Shim Cheong jeon

심청전

Ten Zan — the Ultimate Mission

Majimak immu

마지막 임무

Thaw

Bombnari nunsuki

봄날의 눈석이

They Met on the Taedong River

Daedonggangeso mannan saramdeul

대동강에서 만난 사람들

This is Where My Life Was Settled

Nae salmi dacheul nerin kot

내 삶이 닻을 내린 곳

Thousand Miles Along the Railroad

Cheolgireul ttara cheonmanri

철길을 따라 천만리

Traces of Life

Sengui heunjeok

생의 흔적

True Life Continues

Ieoganeun chamdoen salm

이어가는 참된 삶

Unknown Heroes

Ireumeobneun yeongungdeul

이름없는 영웅들

Snow Melts in Spring —see Thaw Son Comes Back Home

An Urban Girl Comes to Get Married

Doshicheonyeo sijipwayo

도시처녀 시집와요

Viva Freedom!

Jayu manse

자유만세

A Waiting Girl

Gidarineun cheonyeo

기다리는 처녀

Wandering

Yurang

유랑

We Are the Happiest

Sesange bureomeobseora

세상에 부럼없어라

We Must Not Return

Doraseolsu eobda

돌아설수없다

Wolmi Island

Wolmido

월미도

Woman Warrior of Koryo

Goryonyeomusa

고려녀무사

Yonggari

Yonggari

용가리

Young People Bloom Their Native Land

Hagsengmingyeondae apeuro

학생민견대 앞으로

Youth in Ship “Sea Gull”

ho cheongnyeondeul

호 청년들

Young People —see Oh, Youth

Chapter Notes The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the official North Korean news agency, is quoted extensively throughout the book. The regular website of KCNA is http://www. kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm. The best way to look for information on the KCNA site however is the search engine NK News — Database of North Korean Propaganda. It searches exclusively through the KCNA site and can be found here: http://www.nk-news.net/search.php. This search engine is a wonderful tool, fun to use and very precise. It is highly recommended to everyone interested in researching North Korea.

Chapter 1 1. Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), 13 September 2000. 2. This is the studio where French-Canadian Guy Delisle worked as animation supervisor for two months in 2001. He recounts this experience in his graphic novel Pyong yang: A Journey in North Korea, (Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2007). 3. Sunny Lee, “US cartoons ‘made in North Korea,’” Asia Times Online, 14 March 2007, http://www.atim es.com/atimes/Korea/IC14Dg03.html. 4. BBC News online, 5 September 2001. 5. Hyanjin Lee, Contemporary Korean Cinema — Identity, Culture and Politics (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 41. 6. Derek Elley, “Pyongyang pleases, teases and perplexes,” Variety Asia Online, 29 September 2008. The website is now defunct. 7. Ko Soo-suk, “Only Movies the Party Thinks Will Be Good for You,” Korea Joongang Daily online, 22 April 2001, http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=1887976. 8. Andrei Lankov, North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), p. 62.

Chapter 2 1. Charles K Armstrong, “The Origins of North Korean Cinema: Art and Propaganda in the Democratic People’s Republic,” in Acta Koreana, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Daegu, Korea: Academia Koreana of Keimyung University, 2002), p. 5. 2. Ibid., p. 5. 3. Ibid., p. 6. 4. Andrei Lankov, “Communist Kim Il-sung’s Manchurian struggle in 1930–40s,” Korea Times, 5 December 2010. 5. Ibid. 6. Armstrong, p. 4. 7. Korean Film Art (Pyongyang: Korean Film Export and Import Corporation, 1985). This book has no page numbers. 8. Armstrong, p. 18.

Chapter 3 1. Korean Film Art.

205

206

Chapter Notes

Chapter 4 1. Armstrong, p. 5. 2. Armstrong, p. 18. 3. Chollima is a mythical horse that could leap 1000 ri (250 km/150 miles). The myth originated in China but was appropriated by the North Koreans in the 1950s. In 1958, Kim Il Sung started the first “Chollima movement” for the development of the North Korean economy, a campaign to work harder for the fastest possible progress. More such “Chollima movements” followed and today the Chollima horse is considered a symbol of North Korean progress. A giant Chollima statue is one of the most famous landmarks of Pyongyang. 4. Korean Film Art.

Chapter 5 1. Great Man and Cinema (Pyongyang: Korea Film Export and Import Corporation, 1998), p. 1. 2. Ibid., pp. 10–12. 3. Korean Film Art. 4. Great Man and Cinema, p. 23. 5. Korean Film Art. 6. An Nam Hui, “People’s Artiste Om Kil Son,” Korea Today Monthly Journal, October 2008, http:// 175.45.176.14/ko/periodic/todaykorea/index.php?contents+3806+2008-10+114+22. 7. Ibid. 8. Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Babelsberg, Schriftgutbestand Fernsehen, Internationaler Programmaustausch, Filmakten Korea/Der Weg, den ich fand. Translation by Johannes Schönherr. 9. Ibid. 10. Kim Jong Il, On the Art of Cinema (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1989; reprint from the original, published 11 April 1973), p. 2. 11. Kim Jong Il, On the Art of Cinema, p. 90. 12. Korean Film Art. 13. Larry Allen Abshier, Jerry Wayne Parrish, James Joseph Dresnok and Charles Robert Jenkins were U.S. Army personnel stationed on the DMZ in the early 1960s. They all defected separately to the North due to personal problems with the U.S. Army. Instead of being routed through the country to exile elsewhere, as they had hoped, they were kept in the North and used for internal propaganda purposes. Abshier died in Pyongyang in 1983 and Parrish died there in 1996. Jenkins married a kidnapped Japanese woman who was allowed to temporarily return to Japan in 2002, where she remained. Jenkins traveled to Indonesia in 2004, ostensibly in an effort to persuade his wife to return to Pyongyang. Instead, he followed her to Japan, where he is living today. Dresnok remains in Pyongyang to this day. He was the subject of the documentary Crossing the Line (Daniel Gordon, 2006). 14. Charles Robert Jenkins, with Jim Frederick, The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008), p. 97. 15. KCNA, 11 March 2011. 16. Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee, Our Escape Has Not Yet Ended (Uri-ui Talchul-eun Kkeunnaji Anatda), Part 1 (Seoul: Wolgan Joseonsa, 2001), p. 255; quoted in: Suk-Young Kim, Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2010), p. 30. 17. Korean Film Art. 18. Unfortunately, the 1959 North Korean version of the same tale was not available for viewing to this writer.

Chapter 6 1. Hyo-in Yi, Korean Film Directors: Shin Sang-ok (Seoul: Seoul Selection, 2008), p. 86. 2. Ibid., p. 52. 3. “North Korean movies’ propaganda role,” BBC News — World Edition, 18 August 2003, http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3142257.stm. 4. Tetsuo Nishida, Kyokoo no Eizoo (Fictional Image) (Tokyo: Hihyoo-Sha), 1988. 5. Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee, Our Escape Has Not Yet Ended, p. 249; quoted in Suk-Young Kim, Illusive Utopia, p. 20.

Chapter Notes

207

6. Ibid., Shin and Choi, p. 339–40, quoted by Kim, p. 328. 7. Ibid. 8. Steven Chung, Sin Sang-ok and Postwar Korean Mass Culture (Irvine: University of California, 2008); dissertation, p. 195. 9. Satsuma Kenpachiro, Gojira ga mita kita chosen (North Korea Seen Through the Eyes of Godzilla) (Tokyo: NESCO, 1988). 10. Alex Spillius, “The Dictator’s Cut,” South China Morning Post Magazine, 13 April 2003, p. 21. 11. Ibid. 12. Mike Thomson, “Kidnapped by North Korea,” BBC News, UK Edition, 5 March 2003, http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2821221.stm. 13. John Gorenfeld, “The Producer from Hell,” The Guardian, 4 April 2003, http://www.guardian. co.uk/film/2003/apr/04/artsfeatures1. 14. Ibid., Thomson.

Chapter 8 1. Internet Movie Database, User Review for Hong Kil Dong (1986), http://www.imdb.com/title/ tt0254387/usercomments. 2. Lee Seok Young, “Regime Clamps Down on Movie Theme Song,” Daily NK, 18 May 2011, http:// www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=7695. 3. Shin Sang-ok and Choi Eun-hee, Our Escape, p. 251–252; quoted in Suk-Young Kim, Illusive Utopia, p. 29. 4. Suk-Young Kim, Illusive Utopia, p. 120. 5. Moon Sung Hwee, “Untold Behind Story of North Korean Celebrity,” Daily NK, 22 March 2008, http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk02900&num=3401. 6. Kim Jong Il, On the Art of the Cinema (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1973, reprinted 1989), p. 75. 7. Korean Film Art. 8. Korean Film, They Met on the Taedong River (Pyongyang: Korea Film Export & Import Corporation, undated flyer). 9. North Korean Films: Special Screenings (Busan: 8th Pusan International Film Festival, 2003, program announcement flyer). 10. The largest film series ever produced worldwide until then had been the Japanese series Otoko wa tsurai yo (It’s Tough Being a Man), directed by Yoji Yamada. It ran from 1969 to 1995 and ended after the production of 48 episodes when main actor Kiyoshi Atsumi died. When production of Nation and Destiny started, the series had already arrived at part 44. Kim Jong Il was well aware of the Japanese series. He is said to be an admirer of Yoji Yamada. At the Pyongyang Film Festival in 2000, Yamada was a guest of honor. 11. “Artistic Answers to the Destiny of the Nation,” Democratic People’s Republic of Korea magazine, September 2001, p. 27. 12. The Nation and Destiny, Parts 17–32 (Pyongyang: Korea Film Export & Import Corporation) undated brochure, inside cover. 13. The Nation and Destiny, Parts 1–4 (Pyongyang: Korea Film Export & Import Corporation), undated brochure. 14. Choi Duk Shin obituary, New York Times 19 November 1989. 15. The Nation and Destiny, Parts 17–32, p. 19. 16. KCNA, 17 December 1998. 17. KCNA, 7 January 1998. 18. KCNA, 7 January 2001. 19. KCNA, 7 July 2002. 20. KCNA, 21 September 2000. 21. KCNA, 4 April 2008.

Chapter 9 1. KCNA, 25 June 1997. 2. KCNA, 24 August 1999. 3. Changes of Pyong yang during the Forced March (Pyongyang: Korea Film Export & Import Corporation, undated flyer). 4. KCNA, 7 January 1998.

208

Chapter Notes

5. KCNA, 17 December 1998. 6. KCNA, 24 August 1999. 7. KCNA, 31 May 2000. 8. Nicholas D. Kristof, “Survivors Report Torture in North Korea Labor Camps,” New York Times, 14 July 1996. 9. KCNA, 7 January 1998. 10. Andrei Lankov, pp. 99 and 100. 11. Moon Sung Hwee, “Youth Gang Membership Rising in North Korea,” Daily NK, 21 August 2008, http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=3991.

Chapter 10 1. KCNA, 18 December 2000. 2. The 7th Pyong yang Film Festival of Non-Aligned and Other Developing Countries: Film Album (Pyongyang: The Management of the Pyongyang Film Festival of Non-Aligned and Other Developing Nations, 2000). 3. “Korean Titanic Amazes Moscow And Hong Kong Audience; To Be Exported to West,” The People’s Korea, English version of Choson Sinbo, 2001, http://www1.korea-np.co.jp/pk/165th_issue/2001072515.htm. 4. Choe Sang-hun, “Film, court ruling bring to light 1945 ship tragedy in Korea,” Detroit News, 25 August 2001. 5. Ibid. 6. “Korean Titanic Amazes Moscow and Hong Kong Audience.” 7. Sheila Johnston, “North Korean Cinematography in Berlin: Rosy Picture of Everyday Life,” website of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI), 2004, http://controling.fipresci.org/festivals/ archive/2004/berlin_2004/bln_04_sjohnston.htm. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. KCNA, 2 February 2002. 12. KCNA, 5 December 2003. 13. KCNA, 8 December 2003. 14. Diary of a Girl Student is a literal translation of the Korean title, used only by KCNA in the early days of reporting on the picture. The Pyongyang Film Festival in September 2006 showed the film under the title A Schoolgirl’s Diary— which then became the official international release title. The film is thus being referred to here under the international title. 15. KCNA, 4 August 2006. 16. KCNA, 9 August 2006. 17. KCNA, 10 August 2006. 18. Derek Elley, “Film Review: Pyongyang Nalpharam,” http://www.variety.com/review/VE11179317 21?refcatid=31. 19. KCNA, 13 September 2007. 20. Variety Asia Online, 29 September 2008. The site is now defunct. 21. KCNA, 31 October 2008. 22. KCNA, 14 November 2008. 23. KCNA, 12 December 2008.

Chapter 11 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

KCNA 3 April 2010. KCNA, 20 July 2010. KCNA, 29 July 2010. KCNA, 24 October 2010. KCNA, 27 October 2010. KCNA, 22 December 2009.

Chapter 12 1. “Walking Runs Off with Pyongyang Prize,” Film Business Asia, 26 September 2010, http://www.film biz.asia/news/walking-runs-off-with-pyongyang-prize.

Chapter Notes

209

2. Lorenzo Codelli, “An Interview with Ferdinando Baldi,” Far East Film Festival II catalogue (Udine, Italy: April 2000), p. 117. 3. Johannes Schönherr, “Godzilla Goes to North Korea: an Interview with Kenpachiro Satsuma,” in Matthew Edwards (ed), Film Out of Bounds ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007). 4. Lorenzo Codelli, “Ten Zan — The Ultimate Mission,” in Far East Film Festival II catalogue, p. 71.

Chapter 13 1. Daily NK website: http://www.dailynk.com/english/. 2. A Chinese North Korean from Sinuiju living in Dandong confirmed the ongoing existence of the theater in a conversation with this author in April 2010. North Korea has a small Chinese minority. Though they have no chances to succeed in an official career in North Korea, they have considerably more personal freedom than regular North Koreans. This includes the right to freely travel to China as well as the right to take up residency there. 3. The TV series was apparently based on Bai Fenxhi’s feminist play An Old Friend Comes in a Stormy Night (Feng yu guren lai), premiered in 1983. It contains the famous line: “A woman is not a moon. She doesn’t need to depend on someone else’s light to glow.” 4. The Chosun Ilbo wrote on 28 July 2010: “In 1974, a popular North Korean actress named Woo Inhee [U In Hui] was found unconscious in an exhaust-filled car after having an affair with a man who was born in Japan. The man died in the car but Woo survived and was forced to stand in front of a committee for an ideological criticism session. Rather than blaming herself, Woo revealed that she had been sleeping with high-ranking movie industry officials in return for top roles in films. She was executed by firing squad soon after.” http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2010/07/28/2010072801069.html. The same newspaper had written on 8 August 2009: “Woo In-hui [U In Hui], an actress [was] publicly executed for openly speaking about her relationship with Kim Jong Il.” http://english.chosun.com/site/data/ html_dir/2009/08/08/2009080800150.html 5. Defector Miss A had claimed that Jang Son Hui had an affair with Ri Hak Chol, her partner in Shin Sang-ok’s Love, Love, My Love. However, both report that Jang was sent to the countryside for punishment. 6. Numerous press reports confirm this fact. See, for example, Yong Kwon, “Pyongyang purge echoes Stalin,” Asia Times Online, 15 June 2010. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/LF15Dg01.html. 7. See, “Fear of Freedom,” Asia Week, April 1999: “Similar hopes of finding a normal life is what brought Kim Hye Young, current darling of the defector circuit, to South Korea last August [1998]. A rising star in Pyongyang, she appeared in such films as Female Medical Doctor and plays like Strong and Righteous People. Movie actresses are favored by North Korean head honcho Kim Jong Il, who made films while climbing the rungs to Dear Leaderhood. But Kim Hye Young’s parents felt her career would be stifled in the North, where pretty women often become pleasure girls for senior cadres” (http://www-cgi.cnn.com/ ASIANOW/asiaweek/99/0409/feat9-2.html). Her attempted acting career South Korea failed. She became somewhat known as a singer in the South.

Bibliography Armstrong, Charles K. “The Origins of North Korean Cinema: Art and Propaganda in the Democratic People’s Republic,” in Acta Koreana, Vol. 5, No. 1. Daegu, Korea: Academia Koreana of Keimyung University, 2002. Borders Within —What It Means to Live in Japan. Yamagata: Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, 2005. Delisle, Guy. Pyong yang: A Journey in North Korea. Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2007. Demick, Barbara. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2009. Great Man and Cinema. Pyongyang: Korea Film Export and Import Corporation, 1998. Jenkins, Charles Robert, with Jim Frederick. The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, CourtMartial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Kim Dong-ho (publisher). Shin Sang-ok: Prince of Korean Cinema, Leading the Desire of the Masses. Busan: Pusan International Film Festival, 2001. Kim Jong Il. On the Art of the Cinema. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1989 (reprint from the original, published 11 April 1973). Kim, Suk-Young, Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010 Korean Film. Pyongyang: Korea Film Export and Import Corporation, 1998. Korean Film Art. Pyongyang: Korean Film Export and Import Corporation, 1985. Lankov, Andrei. North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007. Lee, Hyangjin. Contemporary Korean Cinema — Identity, Culture and Politics. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000. Martin, Bradley K. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. New York: St. Martin’s Press, Thomas Dunne Books, 2004. Myers, B.R. The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves — And Why It Matters. Brooklyn, New York: Melville House, 2009. The 7th Pyong yang Film Festival of Non-Aligned and Other Developing Countries: Film Album. Pyongyang: The Management of the Pyongyang Film Festival of Non-Aligned and Other Developing Nations, 2000. Yi Hyo-in. Korean Film Directors: Shin Sang-ok. Seoul: Seoul Selection, 2008.

210

Index Numbers in bold italics indicate pages with photographs. Abshier, Larry Allen 63 Again to the Front 32 Ag ya (novel) 73 Albright, Madeleine 156 Amerinda Est. (production company) 177, 184 An Hun Bo 162 An Jung Gun 50, 51 An Jung Gun Shoots Ito Hirobumi 50, 51, 53, 58, 64 Anhyang Academy of Cinema 74 April 25 Army Film Studio 13, 14, 127, 164, 167–169, 197 April 26 Children Film Studio 13 Arduous March 102, 125, 127– 130, 139, 157 Arirang 26, 72 Arirang Mass Gymnastics Display 152, 154–157 Armstrong, Charles 26, 31, 38 The Avenger 181 Baldi, Ferdinando 2, 175, 176, 178, 181, 182, 183–188 Barrandov Film Studio 77 Barron, Brian 18 Battleship Potemkin 28 Bavaria Studio 82 BBC 75, 89, 155 Beijing Film Studio 163 A Bellflower 99, 103, 104, 105, 107, 112, 130, 164, 192, 198 Bend It Like Beckham 12 Berlin Film Festival 152 Berlin Wall 6, 108 Bioskop Film 163 Bird 175 Blast Furnace 31, 38 Blindman 181 Bloody Conference (stage play) 76 Bojarski, Alexandr 175

Bonnardot, Jean-Claude 175 Bonner, Nick 155 Borromel, Charles 177, 180 Boy Partisans 32 Brabec, Vladimir 61 Brandt, Willy 143 Breaking the Silence 12 Breakwater 85 Bright Sunshine 169 Brothers’ Feelings 170 Burgeson, Scott vi Bush, George W. 156, 157 Call of Navy Port 167 Cameron, James 151 Canario Entertainment Ltd. (production company) 175 Cannibal Ferox 178 Cannibal Holocaust 178, 181 Centre Forward 85 Cha Sung Chol 92 Chabarovsk 28, 43 Chadha, Gurinder 12 Chae Pung Gi 39, 198 Chae Sam Suk 58 Chan, Jackie 195 Chang Yong Bok 61 Changes of Pyong yang During the Forced March 126, 127 Chaplin, Charlie 72 Che Yung Hak 128 A Checkered Life 198 Chen Sang In 45, 53 Chiang Kai-shek 127 Cho Gyong Suk 87 Cho Gyong Sun 66, 107, 119 Choe Chang Sop 87 Choe Chang Su 101, 102, 116 Choe Hyon 122 Choe Ik Gyu 46, 47, 48 Choe Jun Gyong 117 Choe Sang Gun 119 Choe Sang Su 66

211

Choe Sun Kyu 69 Choe Thae Bok 161 Choe Yong Su 39 Choi Duk-shin 117, 119, 196 Choi Eun-hee 5, 6, 73, 74, 75, 77, 79–82, 89, 90 Choi Hong-hi 119, 121, 196 Choi In-hyeon 99 Choi In-kyu 72 Choi Suh-hae 79 Chollima 39, 127 Chollima March 125–127 Chon Dong Min 32 Chong Chun Ran 58 Chong Gon Jo 84, 191 Chong Myong Sun 39 Chongryon 94–96, 121, 144, 146, 148, 151, 172 Chongryon Film Studio 94, 98, 175 Choren 94, 172 Chosen Soren 94, 121 Choson Sinbo (newspaper) 94, 95, 151 Chosun Central TV 102 Chosun Ilbo (newspaper) 101 Chow Yun Fat Chung, Steven 82 Cirque de Corée 92 Codelli, Lorenzo 182 Comin’ at Ya 181 Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland 101 Contemporary Korean Cinema (book) 18 A Country I Saw 110, 169, 170 Crossing the Line 157 Daejong Film Festival 151 Daily NK (online publication) vi, 102, 107, 132, 189, 193 D’Amato, Joe 178

212 Dashiev, Ariya 175 Daughter of War Veteran 125 David and Goliath 181 The Defenders of Height 1211 32, 33 Deng Xiaoping 99 Deodato, Ruggero 178, 181 Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Babelsberg 51, 52 DiCaprio, Leonardo 151 Ding of Love 158 Disney 14 Django Prepare a Coffin 181 Documentary Film Studio 13 Dongguk University vi Dresnok, James Joseph 63, 157 The Earth of Love 18, 144, 145, 146 Eastman, George 181 Ebtysenko, Galina 163 Edoki Jun (pen name of Fumio Furuya) 146 Edwards, Matthew vi Eisenstein, Sergei 28 Elley, Derek 12, 18, 164, 166, 170 Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals 178 An Emissary of No Return 76, 93 Emmerich, Roland 148 Eternal Comrade-in-Arms 175 Evergreen Tree 74 The Evil Night 73 Evita 12 A Far-Off Islet 110, 111, 112 The Fate of Kum Hui and Un Hui 53, 58, 59 Feature Film List (booklet) 20, 23 February 8 Film Studio 13 Female Medical Doctor 209 Fictional Image (book) 75 Film Business Asia (website) 12, 175 Film International (magazine) vi Film Out of Bounds (book) vi FIPRESCI 152 Five Guerilla Brothers 47 A Flourishing Village 40, 41 Flower Girl 49, 50, 51, 55, 58, 65, 79, 81, 164, 194, 199 Follow What We Are Doing 167 Footsteps 158 The Forest Sways 128, 144 Forever in Our Memory 140, 141, 192 The 14th Winter 199

Index Frank, Horst 181 From Spring to Summer 175 Fulci, Lucio 181 Furuya, Fumio 146, 148 The Game of Their Lives 155 Gatti, Armand 175 General Association of Korean Residents in Japan 94, 121, 172 Girls in My Hometown 137, 139, 157 Go Chun Son 87 Godzilla ( Japan) 82, 84, 148, 191 Godzilla (United States) 148 Goethe Institute 12 Gong Li 12 Gorbachev, Mikhail 99 Gordon, Daniel 155–158, 162, 163 Gorenstein, John 90 Great Man and Cinema (booklet) 43, 45, 47, 55 Green Shoulder-Strap 144 Gregory, Mark 177, 178, 180 The Guardian (newspaper) 90 Gwak Yeong-ju 73 Ham Un Bong 32 Han Bok Gyu 40 Han Kil Myong 113 Han Song 32, 38 Han Soon Hee 108 Han Tok Su 172, 173 Hill, Terence 181 Hitler, Adolf 154 Ho Hon 121 Ho Jong Suk 121 Hokkanen, Jouni vi, 14 Hollywood 148, 154 Hong Gil-dong 99 Hong Kil Dong 99, 100, 101–103, 193, 194, 200 Hong Kong Film Festival 151 Hong Myeong-hui 101 Hong Won Chol 128 Hong Yong Hui 49, 50, 199 Hood, Robin 99 Horrorsex im Nachtexpress 181 Hoxha, Enver 35 Huang Qiguang ( aka Jieguang) 170 Illusive Utopia (book) 75, 79, 107 Im Hwa 26, 35 Im Hwa-su 73 Incheon Landing 65 The Invisible Crosshairs 61 Ito, Hirobumi 50, 51, 76

Jang In Hak 129, 162 Jang Son Hui 2, 78, 82, 145, 146, 190, 191, 198 Jang Won Jun 154 Jang Yong Bok 101, 175, 200 Jenkins, Charles Robert 62, 63, 157 Jeonju Film Festival 151 Jo Kyong Sun 103 Johnston, Sheila 152, 154 Jon Chang Il 194 Jon Kwang Il 152 Jon Jong Pal 159 Joongang Ilbo (newspaper) 24 Jung Gun Cho 128 Jung Ki Mo 91 Junkersdorf, Hans Eberhard 163 Just a Damned Soldier 182 Kaesong Cinema 24, 162 Kando 79, 80 Kang Ho Yong 164, 165 Kang Hong Sik 29 Kang Jung Mo 140 Kang Nung Su 10, 162 KAPF 26, 27, 35, 121 Kaplan, Ted (pseudonym of Ferdinando Baldi) 177, 178 Karl, Christian vi, 73 Karlovy Vary Film Festival 50, 51, 77, 98 Katayama, Tomoko 182 Kennedy, John F. 137 Kim Chaek 158 Kim Chol 87, 88 Kim Chun Song 134, 151 Kim Dae-jung 10, 74, 143, 155 Kim Gwan Dok 61 Kim Gwang-ju 73 Kim Gwang Nam 41 Kim Hui Bong 119 Kim Hui-gap 73 Kim Hun Chol 128 Kim Hye Gyong 130, 133, 134 Kim Hye Yong 200 Kim Hyok 64 Kim Hyon Chol 166 Kim Il Sung 4–7, 15, 27–33, 35, 38, 43, 46–50, 54, 62, 64, 65, 76, 79–81, 83, 84, 95, 96, 99, 103, 106, 108, 110, 112, 120, 121, 122, 124–129, 131, 145, 146, 151, 152, 162, 170, 172, 173, 185, 186, 196–198 Kim Il Sung Square 105 Kim Il Sung University 43 Kim Jae Ho 32 Kim Jong Chi 94 Kim Jong Hwa 62, 104, 105 Kim Jong Il 1–3, 5–7, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 42, 43, 44, 45–47, 49–

Index 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 61, 64, 65, 68, 71, 72, 75–77, 79, 89, 90, 91, 99, 103, 106–110, 115, 124–129, 137, 139, 140, 142– 146, 152, 154, 156–159, 161– 165, 167–170, 172, 174, 185, 186, 192, 193, 199, 200 Kim Jong Nam 45 Kim Jong Suk 43, 129 Kim Jong Un 1 Kim Ki-duk 148 Kim Kil In 85, 99, 112 Kim Ku-kyong 26 Kim Myong Mun 129, 130 Kim Ok Hui 104 Kim Ryong Jo 104 Kim Ryong Rin 41, 61, 113 Kim Se Il 175 Kim Se Ryun 85, 87, 99, 101, 110, 119, 175 Kim Song Gyo 35 Kim Suk-Young 75, 79, 107 Kim Sung Chu 27, 65 Kim Sung Gu 29, 68 Kim Un Hong 160 Kim Un Suk 91 Kim Won Gyun 122 Kim Won Jun 198 Kim Yong Ho 40, 104, 119, 162, 199 Kim Yong Kun 31 Kim Yong Nam 161 Kim Yong Suk (actress) 69, 70, 190 Kim Yong Suk (party official) 45 The Kites Flying in the Sky 166 Ko Hak Rim 61, 94, 96, 97, 110, 119, 169, 198 Ko Hwi Ung 94 Kobayashi, Masao 175 Koizumi, Junichiro 151 Korea (documentary) 73 Korea Film Export & Import Corporation 23, 33, 127, 149, 154, 155, 192 Korea Today (online publication) 50 Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) 2, 3, 18, 23, 64, 122, 123, 125, 128, 130, 144, 158, 159, 161, 162, 164, 166–169, 172, 174 Korean Film Arts Club 26 Korean Film Directors: Shin Sangok (book) 73 Korean Film Studio 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 23, 29, 44, 62, 64, 98, 122, 128, 158, 168, 170, 172 Korean Scriptwriting Company 14, 29 Koryo Hotel 13, 183, 187

Koryo Tours 155 Košice Peace Marathon 87 Koson (HK) Film Video Trading Company Limited 149, 151 Kristoff, Rom 177, 180 Kumsusan Palace 124 Kwon Eun-kyoung vi Lankov, Andrei 25, 27, 132 League of Koreans in Japan 94, 172 Lee, Hyangjin 18 Lee, Jet 195 Lee Myung-bak 165 Lee Myung-ja vi Lee Yong Jin 128 Lenin, Vladimir 28 Lenzi, Umberto 178 Li Chun Gu 107, 119, 128, 137, 199 Li Gi Song 32 Li In Mun 51 Li Jin U 61, 66, 198 Li Jong Ryol 32 Li Jong Sun 64 Li Song Wan 36 The Lieutenant in Those Days 168 Lightning and Thunder 19 Love, Love, My Love 58, 77, 78, 190, 191, 194, 200 Lovely Sunshine 169, 170 MacArthur, Douglas 66 Madonna 12 Un maledetto soldato 182 The Man Who Remained in My Heart 198 The Man with the Movie Camera 28 Manchuria 17, 26, 27, 30, 65, 74, 79, 122, 127 Mansudae Hill 60 Mao Anying 33 Mao Zedong 32, 33, 35, 126, 127 McCune-Reischauer 3 Milano, Nino 183 Military Service 158 Min Chong Sik 31 Mindan 96, 121 Mokran Video 38, 123 Monma, Takashi 13 Moranbong 175 Moscow Film Festival 81, 151, 152 Mother’s Happiness 158 A Mother’s Hope 98, 175 Mount Paektu 29, 30, 43, 130 Müller-Stahl, Armin 61 Mun Ye Bong 29, 30

213 My Country Is Best (song) 115, 117, 125 My Father 125 My Happiness 99, 104, 105, 106, 130, 139, 140, 157, 194 My Home Village 4, 29, 30, 31, 43, 44, 47, 48, 175 My New Family 39 Myself in the Distant Future 129, 130, 132, 134, 137, 162 Na Un-kyu 26, 72 The Name Given by the Era 23 Nameless Heroes 61 Namgang Village Women 32 Narai Film Company 151 Nasake-muyou no senshi 188 Nation and Destiny 7, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 125, 144, 158, 191, 196, 198, 200 Nation and Destiny (Cha Hong Gi) 119, 121 Nation and Destiny (Choe Hyon) 120, 122 Nation and Destiny (Choe Hyon Dok) 117 Nation and Destiny (Hi Jong Sun) 121 Nation and Destiny ( Japanese Women Naturalized in DPRK) 121 Nation and Destiny (KAPF Writers) 122 Nation and Destiny (Parts of Peasants) 123 Nation and Destiny (Ri Jong Mo) 121 Nation and Destiny (Workers) 122, 198 Nation and Destiny (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) 122 Nation and Destiny (Yun Sang Min) 119 National Security Law 148 Nenov, Todor 101 Nero, Franco 181 Neverending Story 82 New York Ripper 181 New York Times 130 Nishida, Tetsuo 75 Non-Alignment Movement 106 North Korea Seen Through the Eyes of Godzilla (book) 84 North Korean Titanic 149, 150 Northern Limit Line 105 Notes of a Woman Soldier 158 Nove ospiti per un delitto 181 O Byong Cho 38 O Hon Rok 94 O Hye Yong 104

214 O Jin Hung 119 O, Youth 110 An Obliging Girl 110, 125 Oh Hyon Rak 128 Oh Mi Ran 85, 103, 104, 107 Om Gil Son 50, 53, 58, 64, 175 On the Art of the Cinema (book) 54, 55, 56, 108 On the Green Carpet 152, 153, 154 Onjongryong 45 Orang River 32, 34 Order No. 027 91, 92, 190 Orlov, Nikita 175 Orwell, George 139 Our Fragrance 159, 160 Our Life 158 Paek Il Hong 45 Paek In Jun 68, 175 Paek Sol Hui 199 Pak Dae Sik 32 Pak Hak 33, 49, 53, 58, 110 Pak Jong Ju 119, 169, 186 Pak Mi Hyang 161, 163 Pak Pong Ju 161 Pak Sung Bok 87, 137, 175 Panmunchon 32, 62 Park Chang Song 92 Park Chung-hee 73, 74, 117, 119 Park Ho Il 140 Park Hyung Sun 141 Park Mi Hwa 93 Parrish, Jerry Wayne 61 Peony 198 A Photo 158 Plan 9 from Outer Space 148 Playboy (magazine) 146 Pochath, Werner 181 Pochonbo (battle) 27, 28, 127 Pohyong Temple 179, 186, 187 Pretty Pictures (distribution company) 163 The Problem in My Wife’s Family 56 The Problem of Elder Brother’s Family 56 The Problem of Our Downstair Neighbor 56, 57, 159 The Problem of Our Family 56, 57 The Problem of Our Upstair Neighbor 56, 57 The Problem of Son-in-Law’s Family 56 Pudovkin, Vsevolod 28 Pulgasari 2, 82, 83, 84, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 186, 190, 191, 193 Pusan International Film Festival 12, 73, 112

Index Puyi 27 Pyo Gwang 164, 166 Pyon Mi Hyang 19 Pyongyang Film Festival 1, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 24, 43, 99, 106, 132, 144, 152, 154, 159, 163, 166, 175, 199 Pyongyang International Cinema House 9, 10, 13, 23 Pyong yang Nalpharam 164, 165 Pyongyang University of Dramatic and Cinematic Arts 14, 112 La ragazza del vagone letto 181 Raging Thunder (distribution company) 148 Rakwon Cinema 24, 25 A Red Agitator 39 The Red Flower 39 Red Maple Leaves 198 Red Wings 200 The Reluctant Communist (book) 63 Rescued on the Shore 175 Revenge in the Tiger Cage 74 Rhee Syng-man 27, 29, 32, 62, 73 Rhee Syng-man and the Independence Movement 73 Ri Chan 122 Ri Chun Gu 96, 103, 198 Ri Dong Myong 87 Ri Gwon 83 Ri Hak Chol 78, 191 Ri Hui Chan 92, 112, 198 Ri Ik Sung 140, 141 Ri In Mo 121 Ri Jun 76 Ri Kun Ho 114 Ri Kyong Hui 114 Ri Ryong Hun 164, 165 Ri Sang Uk 91 Ri Suk Gyong 159 Ri Won Bok 19 Ri Yong Ho 100, 101, 133, 134, 153, 194 Rice 74 Riefenstahl, Leni 154, 156 Righteous Struggle 26 Rim Chang Bom 96, 152, 175 Rim Kkok Jong 101, 102, 103, 149, 172, 199 Rim Kkok Jong (Lesson of Blood) 101 Rim Kkok Jong (Sworn Brothers) 101 Ritsumeikan University vi The Road I Found 45, 51, 52 Roh Moo-hyun 164, 165 Roh Tae-woo 143

Romeo and Juliet 97 Rose and Wild Dog 74 Roza Film Studio 163 Rubbersuit Productions (distribution company) 148 Run and Run 87, 88 Runaway 79, 80, 81 Ryo Ho Son 61, 175 Ryo Un Gak 94 Sadeghi, Afshin 11 Salt 80, 81 Satsuma, Kenpachiro 84, 186 Scenery of Seoul in War 26 A Schoolgirl’s Diary 161, 162– 164, 166, 167 Scouts 32, 33, 91 Sea of Blood 14, 46, 47, 48, 55, 79 SEK (studio) 13 The Separation 92, 93, 196 Sheen, Simon (pseudonym of Shin Sang-ok) 90 Shin Dong-heon 99 Shin Film (studio, North Korea) 75, 76 Shin Film (studio, South Korea) 73, 74 Shin Hak Myong 136 Shin Sang-ok 2, 5, 6, 58, 65, 72, 73, 74–76, 77, 79–87, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 103, 106, 148, 149, 174, 175, 190, 191, 193–195, 198, 200 Siegmund, Mark vi A Silver Hairpin 94, 95, 173, 175, 196 Sin Sang Ho 119 Sin Sang-ok and Postwar Korean Mass Culture (dissertation) 82 Sinuiju 24, 189, 190, 192 Sisters 110, 125 Snow Melts in Spring 96 So Gwan Hui 199 So Kyong Sob 94 Social System Studies (magazine) vi Son Comes Back Home 144 Song Chun-hyang 77 Song for General Kim Jong Il (song) 122 Song Hye Rim 45, 53 Song of General Kim Il Sung (song) 122 Song of the East Sea 170, 171, 172–174 Song Yong 36 Souls Protest 7, 149, 150, 151, 152, 158, 200 South China Morning Post 89

Index Spillius, Alex 89 The Spinner 38, 39 Squirrel and Hedgehog 156 Stalin, Joseph 28, 32, 35, 42 Stalks Grow from the Roots 132, 133, 134, 137, 151 The Star of Korea 64, 65, 101 Starr, Ringo 181 A State of Mind 155, 156, 158, 162–164 Storm Over Asia 28 Stravinsky, Igor 119 Stretcher Platoon Leader 21 Suh Gwan Hee 108 Sunshine Policy 7, 143, 148, 155, 156, 164, 165, 167, 168 Syan, Sabrina 177, 178, 180 Taedong River 9, 23, 112 Taedongmun Cinema 23, 162, 172 The Tale of Chun Hyang (1935) 29 The Tale of Chun Hyang (1980) 68, 69, 70, 71, 77, 112, 164, 190 The Tale of Hung Pu 35, 36, 37, 38, 44, 68 A Tale of Noblemen 38 The Tale of Shim Chong 81, 200 Tangun 29 Ten Zan —The Ultimate Mission 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 183–188 Terror Express 181 Il tesoro delle quatro corone 181 Texas, Addio 181 Thaw 96, 97, 98, 172, 175, 196 They Met on the Taedong River 112, 113, 125, 198 Third Broadcast (radio) 197

The Thirty Cases of Major Zeman 61 This Is Where My Life Was Settled 158 Thomson, Mike 89, 90 Thousand Miles Along the Railroad 85, 86, 87, 99, 103, 191, 193, 200 Titanic 149, 152, 200 Tito, Josip Broz 35 Toho Studio 84, 148 Tokyo University of Fine Arts 72 Tora-san 12 Torture Train 181 Traces of Life 107, 108 Treasure of the Four Crowns 181 Triumph des Willens 154 Triumph of the Will 154 True Life Continues 158 U In Hui 198 U Yu Gwang 169 Udine Far East Film Festival 182 An Unattached Unit 22 Eine unendliche Geschichte 82 Unknown Heroes 61, 63, 64, 66, 94, 101, 198, 200 Das unsichtbare Visier 61 Unsung Heroes 61 Urazvaev, Elder 175 An Urban Girl Comes to Marry 112, 114, 125, 137 Variety (magazine) 12, 18, 164, 166 Velaise, James 163, 164 Vertov, Dziga 28 VeryMuchSo Productions (production company) 155 Viatskoe 28, 43

215 Viva Django 181 Viva Freedom! 72 von Karajan, Herbert 119 A Waiting Girl 158 Wandering 26, 35 Wang Haowei 163 War Bus 182 Wavelength Pictures (film sales agency) 164 We Are the Happiest 109, 110 Welles, Orson 181 Winslet, Kate 151 Wolmi Island 65, 66, 67, 70, 198 Woman Is Not a Moon 195 Woman Warrior of Koryo 175 Won Yong Shil 134 Wood, Ed ( Jr.) 148 The World Today (BBC program) 75 Yamada, Yoji 12 Yang Hye Ryon 46, 47 Yang Hyong Sop 161 Yanggak Island 9, 13 Yeltsin, Boris 124 Yi Hyo-in 73, 74 Yi Pil-u 29 Yonggari 148 Young People 125 Young People Bloom Their Native Land 125 Youth in Ship “Sea Gull” 39 Yu Won Jun 68, 77, 93, 120 Yui Un Yong 129 Yun I-sang 119, 196 Yun Ryong Gyu 32, 68, 77 Zagarino, Frank 177, 178, 180, 183, 185