The Theater of Oppression

This week I finished reading A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power by Paul Fischer. The subtitle sums it up, but the full details of the story are incredible.

During Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il's over-long reigns as dictators of North Korea, they made a policy of drug trafficking, terrorism, and kidnapping foreign citizens, while starving, imprisoning, and systematically brainwashing their own. The stories of suffering in North Korea, all gained from accounts related by escapees from the secretive country, are bizarre and saddening.

Actress Choi Eun-hee was a survivor of the Korean War, and she and her director husband, Shin Sang-ok, lived in South Korea afterward making films. They divorced after Shin's public affair with a younger actress, and when Choi disappeared, there were accusations that Shin was behind it. Then Shin himself was taken, and for several years they were kept apart in North Korea as an attempt was made to reeducate them. No one knew what had happened to them, and neither Choi nor Shin knew what had happened to the other until they were reunited by Kim Jong-Il as part of his plan to use them for propaganda creation.

Choi and Shin - aren't they cute together?

Kim Jong-Il was a lover of film, and spent a large part of his country's money on creating a library of pirated films for his own personal enjoyment. He took Choi and Shin in an attempt to prop up the lackluster North Korean film industry, a propaganda machine for his father's reign, and later for his own.

I've read one other journalistic account of life behind the DMZ (the extraordinary Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea), and George Orwell's Oceania pales in comparison. North Korea is a country where for decades the Great Leader (Il-Sung) and the Dear Leader (Jong-Il) paraded their citizenry like puppets, all the while expecting them to swallow astonishing lies. For example:

[....] the Central News Agency exhorted the Korean people to celebrate [Kim Jong-Il's] fortieth birthday two years in a row, as if nothing had happened.

This wasn't out of vanity, but simply to place Kim Jong-Il's birth at the numerically significant 30 years after his father's, instead of 29 years. It's the least outrageous of the lies told by the Kim regime.

The story of Choi and Shin's lives before and after captivity is fascinating, and I highly recommend this book to anyone who has never read anything about North Korea. The author cites many news articles in his bibliography, and I suggest taking a look at those as well.

One thing this story does, more than anything, is show what value art can have in the lives of people who are oppressed and suffering:

There is an old Asian saying that 'drop by drop, the water perforates the stone.' Kim Jong-Il had kidnapped Shin Sang-Ok and Choi Eun-Hee to help promote his regime and tighten his control on his people's thoughts. Instead, Shin and Choi's movies were drops of water, each one slowly but surely wearing away the Kims' supremacy. (278)

I certainly hope this proves true, and that the corrupt Kim dynasty will one day face a reckoning - not from a foreign power, but from within. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and read this book!

Choi with Marilyn Monroe, 1954

Shades of Grey

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"1.1.19.02.006: Team sports are mandatory in order to build character. Character is there to give purpose to team sports." - p. 255

Sent to Chromatacia's backwaters to count chairs, ambitious Eddie Russett slowly uncovers the truth about his hue-obsessed society.

Where to begin? The world of this book is as endlessly complex and clever as Fforde's surreal Thursday Next series. Chromatacia's inhabitants are obsessed with color: the color you are able to see (red, blue, green, etc.) determines your rank in the Colortocracy. Night is a terrifying emptiness, since no one can see in the dark. Artificial color production drives village life. Everyone is expected to appreciate the "simple pleasures of relentless toil" and devote their lives to supporting the community, accepting their genetically determined places in the hierarchy.

Then there are the interminable Rules of Munsell, which must be obeyed to the letter - no matter how absurd or nit-picky they seem to be. (One notable lapse in the Rules has led to a severe spoon shortage, which makes the utensils more precious than gold.) Every year there are Leapbacks - erasures of technology and knowledge, designed to simplify society. (Much like the Ministry of Truth's Newspeak in Orwell's 1984, and  obviously named to recall Mao's Great Leap Forward) In short, it's an entire society run like an English boarding school: rigorous dress codes, mealtimes, required activities, strict standards of behavior, and punishments for infractions.

Eddie Russett knows how to navigate the Rules to his advantage. He's slightly engaged to a wealthy Oxblood from the highest echelons of the Colortocracy, and things look good for his future. But his habit of questioning tradition gets him shipped out to the boonies where he runs across a colorblind Grey named Jane, who has a charmingly retroussé nose...and Russett unwittingly begins to unravel the mysteries at the dark heart of his seemingly placid society.

Fforde excels at high-concept stories with fun characters and plenty of wit. His humor and writing style remind me of Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog. There are also echoes of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, and Chromatacia echoes the bizarre real-life dystopia of North Korea in Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. The humor may get dark, but it never feels cynical thanks to the likable narrator. I can't believe I have to wait until 2015 for the sequel, Painting by Numbers. That's totally beige.

Quotable:
"It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended with my being eaten by a carnivorous plant. It wasn't really what I'd planned for myself - I'd hoped to marry in the Oxbloods and join their dynastic string empire." - p. 1

UPDATE: "A Boot Stamping on a Human Face"

Considering the disturbing threats coming out of North Korea lately, I though that this incredible TED Talk by North Korean refugee Hyeonseo Lee is especially timely and moving:

Her account accords perfectly with the story told in Demick's book, which I reviewed last month.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A journalist recounts the stories of defectors from North Korea in an attempt to understand what is happening in one of the most oppressive and regressive societies in the world.

The North Korean government stifles every aspect of its people's lives and the result is famine, death, and distrust between neighbors and family members. The Worker's Party rules over every human interaction with a brutal regime of brain-washing (I use the term intentionally), intimidation, and absurd demands that citizens demonstrate unconditional love for their dynasty of Dear Leaders and the communist ideals they claim to uphold. Going into North Korea is like traveling back in time, observers say.

In spite of this, people find a way to survive and connect with each other, and though it seems cliched the stories are a testament to the resilience of human beings. My favorite story--one with a bittersweet ending--is of two young lovers who secretly meet in nights made dark by constant power outages; who send letters through the tortuous mail system; who sneak train rides without travel permits to see each other for a few short hours.

Demick makes it clear that leaving North Korea is not necessarily the happy ending we might take it for. Defectors find that in spite of the wealth and plenty of South Korea, life is still a struggle as they learn to adapt and overcome the damage done to them by their totalitarian homeland. Many still have family members left behind in North Korea, and the grief of separation is difficult to imagine.

More than anything, Demick's final description of North Korea reminds me of the famous quote from 1984: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever." How long will forever be, in this case? And if eventually the North Korea government does fall (as it has been predicted to for the past twenty years), how will a country as deeply impoverished as North Korea ever catch up to the rest of the world, even with the aid of their neighbors?

Demick leaves us with these questions, but I believe that the answers lie in the survival stories of the defectors she interviews: the strong family ties, willingness to work hard, and the ability to adapt to difficult circumstances will be the greatest assets North Koreans have once they are allowed to make their long march back into the present.

Update:

Demick's book ends before the death of Kim Jong Il and the rise of his son Kim Jong Un. Here is a recent article she wrote for the Los Angeles Times, detailing the continued insanity of this brutal dynasty.