Reading North Koreans
What literature is available in North Korea? What do North Koreans enjoy reading, and in what format do they read? From Gone with the Wind to detective novels, Immanuel Kim provides an overview of reading in the DPRK.
It was yet another humid mid-August day 2015, and the stuffy airplane cabin of Air Koryo (DPRK’s airline) didn’t improve matters. I was a bit anxious even though this was my second trip to North Korea via Shenyang, China. This particular trip was different. I was going to meet one of the most celebrated authors in the DPRK, Nam-nyong Paek, to get permission to translate his best-selling novel.
After having read all of his novels and short stories, I had decided to translate one of his novels called Friend (1988), which was a “best-seller” in that country at the time—so much so that the novel was adapted into a television series. However, with the final episode left, the state halted the entire production because of its sensitive topic on divorce and an ambiguous ending. I couldn’t wait to meet the author and interview him. I was fanning myself to fight the stuffiness when I noticed a North Korean man reading a novel in translation: Gone with the Wind, part 3. I couldn’t contain my curiosity, so I asked, “How are you enjoying the novel?” He responded, “It’s not bad, but I don’t really know what is happening. I haven’t read parts 1 and 2.”
There are two large categories of best-selling novels in North Korea. The first is the list of suggested titles from the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (wpk), and the second is the people’s choice. One can imagine what the WPK’s suggested titles might be about: the cult of personality of the leaders, heavy doses of nationalism, praising socialism and the party, and other politically driven narratives about outstanding revolutionaries in the country. These novels (along with short stories, poems, songs, movies, etc.) are printed in the annual DPRK almanac for the people to read. It also lists publications that have been awarded the Kim Il Sung Literary Award (much like the Pulitzer Prize), which are a must-read if one is a self-proclaimed devout citizen of North Korea.
On the back of most novels there is a number ranging from two thousand to one hundred thousand, which is the number of copies that have been printed for circulation. The higher the number, the higher the political ideology of the narrative. For example, writer Haksu Choi’s Pyongyang Time (1978) was allowed fifty thousand copies for circulation. The novel was about a strong collective effort of the citizens who rebuilt the befallen capital city of Pyongyang after the Korean War in 1950. Under the guidance of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, locals gathered cheerfully to build houses, beautify the city, and erect monuments to celebrate the WPK and its leader. Author Choi unsurprisingly received the Kim Il Sung Literary Award, and the novel was adapted into a film.
However, party-suggested titles are not always fan favorites. While some titles are noteworthy to read, most are saccharine praises of the leader, the party, and the country written by sycophants who want to climb the literary ladder to reach political success. These titles are, of course, well known in North Korea—“classics,” if you will—and many people will claim to have read them (though this is unverifiable). Some of these titles have made it into the K–12 academic curriculum, particularly the ones about the leaders. In fact, there is a select group of writers who are commissioned to write novels solely on the lives of the leaders. The Immortal History series is about Kim Il Sung, the Immortal Leadership series is about Kim Jong Il, and, most recently, the Immortal Journey is about Kim Jong Un. Many of these novels about the leaders read like hagiographies of Catholic saints—the amazing revolutionary feats of Kim Il Sung that saved the country from the imperialist grip of the Americans, for example. The North Korean Writers’ Union, as of yet, does not appear to have any plans to discontinue these types of novels for quite some time.
The second category of best-sellers is the people’s favorite, the popular, word-of-mouth novels that require weeks, if not months, to acquire. As one might imagine, these novels are not printed in large quantities because they supposedly lack the correct political consciousness or do not satisfy the party line. That is not to say that these novels are dissident writings or counterrevolutionary in any way. On the contrary, all writers are state employees, and they are supposedly advocates of the political system. These novels contain WPK directives at the bare minimum; they might have the leaders appear in the narrative (though most do not); and the plot contains elements of collectivity and national pride. The commonality among these popular novels is the underlying “risqué” plot. Some of the popular plots include desiring to move to the city from the countryside (which goes against party-assigned living accommodations); romantic plots (which should not happen because true love should be about the leaders); rifts between parents and children (considered a familial impiety); rifts between workers and their managers (a social impropriety); divorce, extramarital affairs, and other social problems. Nam-nyong Paek wrote Friend, which is about a couple’s divorce and corrupt officials. The novel was indubitably a best-seller in the late 1980s.
The most evident indicator of a people’s favorite best-seller is the poor physical condition of the novel—the tattered front cover, pages falling apart, and missing volumes.
The most evident indicator of a people’s best-seller is the poor physical condition of the novel—the tattered front cover, pages falling apart, and missing volumes (if it was published as a multivolume novel). Author Paek told me an anecdote about his novel: He was on a city bus and saw a young woman reading his book. He was pleased to see someone reading his novel, but he was even more pleased to see that his novel had stains on the cover and the pages were falling apart. He approached the woman and asked her if he could take her copy of the book in exchange for a new one from his office. Paek wanted to take her copy of the novel and frame it because, to him, a tattered copy of his book is better than any literary award from the party. What he didn’t realize was that she had no idea that he was the author of the novel she was reading. To her, he was a strange old man on a bus, asking for her book. She refused his offer, got off at the next stop, and resumed reading where she had left off. When he told me this story, I immediately recalled the North Korean man on the plane, reading Gone with the Wind. He was so immersed in the novel but had no idea what was happening because he hadn’t read the first two parts.
Defectors have recalled the popularity of Gone with the Wind in the early 2010s and the near impossibility of reading all three parts. As these parts are passed along from reader to reader, they get lost in the loan process. Many have read one or two of the three-part series but seldom have read it in its entirety. Why Gone with the Wind? It is unclear why the WPK would permit the translation and publication of an American classic, as it goes against the party’s political ideology. It is important to note, though, that North Korea has published other European classics that had been translated into Korean and circulated widely in the DPRK such as Balzac’s Père Goriot, Daudet’s short stories, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Hugo’s Les Misérables, and Heinrich Heine’s poems, to list a few. These European works most likely met the ideological message that the North Korean government wanted to convey to its people. For example, the party could have warned its people to be wary of the capitalist greed for money in Balzac’s Père Goriot while celebrating Daudet’s portrayal of humble provincial life in his short stories. They could have taken Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and warned them about the materialistic rivalry between upper-class families while romanticizing the revolution of the working class in Hugo’s Les Misérables.
In the case of Gone with the Wind, it might have been to show a civil war caused by avaricious capitalists from the Union, which is the way North Korea teaches its people about the cause of the Korean War—another civil war that was caused by the evil capitalist Americans from the southern border. North Korean readers perhaps have found similar and relatable tropes: civil war, nation divided over ideology, poor and destitute living conditions, among others. The popularity of Gone with the Wind might have started off with relatable tropes, but defectors have recalled the appeal of the sly and manipulative Scarlett O’Hara, who “played” the game of getting what she wanted from men in authoritative positions. Although it doesn’t end well for Scarlett, there is a strong, individualistic, and heroine-esque quality in her through which North Korean readers could live vicariously. The popularity of Gone with the Wind might have been a one-off moment among North Korean readers in the early 2010s, and it certainly could be seen as something the party had not intended.
Such was the case with Paek’s Friend. The story centers on a strong female character who demands a divorce from her uninspiring husband. The narrative tension in the novel is not only between the female character and her husband but also between her and the judge at the court who presides over divorce cases. In other words, it is a classic battle between an individual and the state, the underdog tale. The beauty of this novel, unlike other North Korean novels, is that it ends ambiguously. Most novels end with individuals understanding party directives and becoming more politically conscious. Under any other circumstance, Friend should have ended with the female character recognizing that divorce would harm the family’s unity and would therefore be detrimental to society. However, Friend ends with an open-ended possibility, with the uncertainty of remaining married, with a dissatisfied woman living in a male-dominated world. This is perhaps the reason why the WPK did not allow many copies and why the novel did not make it on the list of party-suggested titles in the almanac. On the other hand, this is perhaps the reason why the novel was a fan favorite.
After my interview with Paek, we went down to the bookstore located in the hotel where I was staying. Most of the bookstores in hotels serve as gift shops, which means that many of the titles would be the typical propagandistic novels, speeches by the leaders, picture books about the country and monuments, and translations of these aforementioned books—mostly into English, Chinese, and Japanese. The size of the bookstore is nowhere near any Barnes and Noble in the States. The one inside my hotel was about the size of a hotel room with a selection as wide as a magazine stand inside airports. It did not appear to market to the locals but only tourists at the hotel. Many books were souvenir types translated into English: speeches by the leaders, guidebooks of Pyongyang, and other propaganda works. Paek was not pleased with the selection of novels in that bookstore. He helped me purchase some books, but he warned me that even these weren’t that good. On the shelf, I saw many detective novels and other paperbacks that one would find at a magazine stand, which Paek considers to be cheap thrillers.
Popular books in North Korea cater to different demographics and interest groups. For example, detective novels are a widely circulated genre along with graphic novels. As a side note, there aren’t any sexualized, Danielle Steel–like romance novels with a half-naked man holding a woman on the cover, as overt sexuality is forbidden. Although Paek might not find detective novels to be “artistic,” they need to be recognized as artworks that impact society and a diverse readership just as much as his writings have in the past. The concept of circulation, popularity, and readership will continue to change as North Korea becomes more digitized.
North Korea was forced to join the digital world with the shortage of paper. It’s already been nearly two decades since newspapers were no longer circulated to stands and instead posted on large kiosks for people to read on the street, subway station, or other public places. While these newspaper kiosks still exist, North Korea has further transitioned to projecting the news on public television and even mobile phones. The so-called “lowbrow” cultural products such as graphic novels, detective novels, and other books would be printed on low-quality paper, whereas the so-called “highbrow” books about the leaders would be printed on fine paper. With digital media, there is no need to conserve paper, and the traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores have already become fossils and used as showcases of the past or even museum exhibits.
Digital media in North Korea is a self-contained universe, in that the information that citizens receive from the government is tightly controlled and censored. The DPRK uses the intranet as opposed to the internet. The intranet is information circulated within the country and nothing from beyond its border. In short, North Korean citizens cannot open a Google browser to search for information that they desire (at least not yet). Although some elites have access to Google and other sites, the majority do not. They have their own browser and search engine that allows them to tap into their own resources. This does not mean that North Koreans are unaware of what is happening around the world. They receive news from China, South Korea, and Japan. It just means that they don’t use the same system as most countries in the world.
Much like the rest of the world, North Korea’s readership has grown impatient with the analog system of waiting months for the next story or novel.
When I first visited North Korea in 2008, many people were reading newspapers, books, and magazines on the street while walking, on park benches, inside the subway, inside an elevator, and of course at the library. The last time I visited in 2015, most were on their mobile phones reading the latest news and other materials—some on their laptops or tablets reading on a Kindle-like program. Technology has not only advanced for North Koreans to keep up with the times; it has become a necessary lifestyle transition as it’s more convenient for the government to disseminate information digitally and quickly. Much like the rest of the world, North Korea’s readership has grown impatient with the analog system of waiting months for the next story or novel. The days of reading a popular novel that is tattered and falling apart might be over. North Koreans today are one click and one swipe away from accessing a clean, bright, intact novel in the palm of their hands.
Washington, DC
