Sirk has said: “You can’t make films about something; you can only make films with something: with people, with light, with flowers, with mirrors, with blood, in fact with all the crazy things that are worth it.”
“We are the victims of history,” Madame wrote in her autobiography. She wasn’t just talking about herself and Shin, but about all Koreans. “We survived for fifty years, but it feels like we survived for five hundred.”
Choi Eun-hee and Shin Sang-ok’s lives are written into a political and geographic triangle: Communist dictator, right-wing dictator, and the United States. North, South, and West. Hollywood’s influence on Shin Films, which was crushed by General Park and resurrected in North Korea. Within the same triangle are the atomic bomb and monster movies. The bomb was created in the United States, dropped on Japan, and is now being developed in North Korea. In North Korea, Godzilla became Pulgasari who became Galgameth in Hollywood.
* * *
THE TRAIN ROLLS into the station of the Chinese border town of Dandong. After North Korea, the colours here seem shockingly bright. The cars are new — they flash and shine. Billboards clutter the façades. On one sign, an adorable manga policeman encourages drivers to use their seatbelts. Kawaii is invading China.
By the time the train leaves Dandong, we are famished. The Bromma boys are sitting in the dining car, gorging on food. Elias has suddenly become their butler. Dressed in an undershirt, he runs around with a wine bottle and serves them. As soon as we take a seat at a table, the waitress snorts at us and shouts: “Go away!” Her teeth point straight out. We try to get help from Bruno, whose size commands respect and who speaks a little Chinese, but Bruno mumbles and the waitress won’t listen. We refuse to leave our seats and cast jealous glances at the Bromma boys’ teeming table. We are too hungry to give up, and soon the waitress relents and starts procuring rice dishes and Chinese red wine, brusquely setting them on the table.
Darkness falls and we retreat into our compartment. As we drift off, we are woken by a female border control officer who sticks electric thermometers into our ears without a word.
WE ARRIVE IN Beijing the next afternoon. When we step off the train with our baggage, the platform is crowded. Someone shouts that we have to show our tickets in order to leave the station. We have a joint ticket, but we aren’t sure which one of us has it. Everyone in the group starts to jog; a few fall behind and it becomes difficult to figure out who’s who. At the gate, there’s no one asking for a ticket and we are let through without question. Our fellow travellers scatter without us noticing. No goodbyes or exchanging of email addresses. The group melds with the masses. Andrei disappears with his luggage full of unique water samples and other valuable liquids from the hidden world. Bruno and the Swedish fighter pilot are so tall that their heads stick up above the crowd. We watch them move along as if they are suspended from an aerial ropeway, until they are out of sight. The Bromma boys are already hailing a taxi outside the station. The last we see of the group is Ari’s grey flat cap gliding away through the crowd.
We are left standing outside the train station. We look around. People are noticeably rounder and taller here than in North Korea; they almost look over-nourished. Their body language is different. A few saunter along, undisciplined. Everyone seems to be moving at their own pace.
By the square outside the station there’s a large billboard for a Hello Kitty stage play. Hello Kitty wears a gold rococo gown and her boyfriend, Dear Daniel, is wearing a crown. They are the king and queen of the universe. And they have come to bring us joy and song.
EPILOGUE
2008–2014
DURING NORTH KOREA’S sixtieth birthday celebrations in September 2008, the international media wondered where Kim Jong-il was hiding. He didn’t make an appearance at the enormous military parade on Kim Il-sung Square. It was assumed that he was gravely ill; French and Chinese neurological specialists were flown in to Pyongyang. The press was fed a few images of the leader to quell the speculation around his condition. In one of the pictures, the trees have spring leaves; in another his shadow falls in the wrong direction.
In the late autumn, images were published of Kim Jong-il looking gaunt, one hand stiffly posed and crooked in his pocket — a sign of a stroke. The pictures were unique in their open depiction of the leader’s physical demise. At about the same time, songs were being sung in North Korea praising a new General Kim. He was a general whose power “brings joy to the rivers and mountains.”
ON APRIL 5, 2009, North Korea launched a three-stage rocket. The North Korean government was irritated by the protests from neighbouring countries. The KCNA quoted a spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who explained that they would promptly reinstate their nuclear weapons program and begin making plutonium again “to handle the increased military threat from enemy powers.” On May 25, they conducted another underground atomic test explosion near Kilju.
IN 2009, AN enormous sign was held up during a parade in Pyongyang that read: “we cannot live away from his breast” — a sign that from then on was shown whenever “General Kim Jong-il’s Song” played on television.
That September, a Taiwanese tourist took a picture of a poster that congratulated the people for having not only the general to tend to their well-being, but also “The Young General Kim Jong-un.” The text read that the young general carried the bloodline of Mount Baekdu, which proved that he belonged to the ruling dynasty.
In November, North Korean diplomats were again arrested for smuggling when Swedish customs officers confiscated 230,000 cigarettes. In December the diplomats, a married couple, were sentenced to eight months in prison, which they had to serve because they were not accredited in Sweden.
THROUGHOUT 2010, THE South Korean state published full-page ads in the daily newspapers of all the countries that had supported the UN operation during the Korean War — a reminder that war had broken out sixty years ago. It proclaimed thanks to all the countries who fought under the UN flag, as well as those who gave humanitarian aid.
AT THE END of March 2010, a severe crisis between South and North Korea arose after the South Korean battleship ROKS Cheonan sank to the bottom of the Yellow Sea near Baengnyeong Island, in South Korean territory at the inter-Korean maritime border. Forty-six seamen died. A team of international experts carrying out the South Korean–led investigation concluded that the battleship had been hit by a torpedo fired from a North Korean midget submarine. North Korea denied any involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan. Even Russian experts, the Chinese government, and critics in South Korea questioned the findings of the investigation.
THE NORTH KOREAN national soccer team did not fare well during the World Cup in South Africa later that summer. After a good match against Brazil (North Korea 1–Brazil 2), the mood brightened and it was decided that the next match against Portugal would be broadcast live. It was the first time in history that a soccer game was broadcast live in the country, but it was a disaster and North Korea lost 7–0. During the last part of the match, the North Korean commentator did not say a word. When the team returned to Pyongyang, the coach, Kim Jong-hun, was fired and the whole team was interrogated at a six-hour-long general meeting at the People’s Palace of Culture in Pyongyang. The coach was accused of having betrayed the leader’s son Kim Jong-un but he managed to avoid the work camp. He had to start over as a construction worker.
IN MID-SEPTEMBER 2010, the Japanese wrestling star Antonio Inoki, who we had run into in the lobby of the Yanggakdo Hotel, was awarded the North Korean Friendship Medal in Pyongyang. On his way home, he broke the news that the North Korean Workers’ Party Conference, which was scheduled for early September, had been postponed. When the conference was finally held on September 28, it was the first time in thirty years that such a meeting had taken place. During the conference, their “superior leadership body” was chosen. Kim Jong-un was named a four-star general, along with Kim Jong-il’s sister
Kim Kyong-hui. Kim Jong-un was also sworn into the party’s Central Committee and was made a member of the Central Military Commission. When January 8 was suddenly declared a national holiday, Western media speculated that the date was the new general’s birthday. Then South Korean counterintelligence found a document used in the education of North Korean troops calling Kim Jong-un a “legendary person” and a “genius of geniuses,” as well as emphasizing that he had the same holy blood as the Dear Leader.
If all went well, then North Korea would be able to maintain the dynastic continuity that Ernst Kantorowicz spoke of. The rituals of transition had been set in motion by placing the heir as a novice by the ruler’s side. In North Korea, it had never been publicly stated how many children Kim Jong-il had or with which women; these women and children were called by name even less often. Now, with quick side-to-side movements, they had to shine the spotlight on both the current ruler and the heir apparent. The state news agency allowed a photograph to be published in conjunction with the conference in which the son has a somewhat brighter light shining on him.
A massive heroification process lay ahead of them. Stories about and tributes to the ascendant leader had to be presented on all levels and in all places: the daycare centres, the factories, the offices, and the fields. In our age — an age North Korea does belong to — this is a job for the media, which in North Korea still means television, radio, and newspapers. On the radio and in the speakers in people’s homes, Kim Jong-un’s geniality had to be passed down and sung about every day. Every day the people would have to hear the crackling of that intense, melodramatic voice as it praised his superhuman abilities.
But Kim Jong-un also had to be raised up to the level of a god without overshadowing the still-living leader. It was a difficult task, since the operation had to be coordinated with the ruler’s health. Two kings and their two bodies — their physical and political bodies — had to be symbolically bridged. During this transition phase, there is always a risk of rebellion among the people. The transfer of power had probably already happened in de facto terms, but it had to be executed as carefully as possible in public in order to avoid the paralysis of the last succession, or worse — a revolution. This time there wasn’t a presidential post to give to the dead leader. That post is filled for eternity.
IN OCTOBER 2010 the founder of Juche Thought, the defector Hwang Jang-yop, was found dead in his bathtub in his apartment in Seoul. Hwang was eighty-seven years old. He had long been the target of assassination attempts and death threats, but the police insisted he died of natural causes. Soon after his death, police arrested a North Korean agent who had entered South Korea as a defector. This agent had been sent to assassinate Hwang. It was thirteen years since Hwang had defected, but North Korea never forgives. However, an autopsy concluded that the Juche philosopher died of a heart attack, and so the North Koreans were robbed of their revenge.
ON NOVEMBER 21, the New York Times reported that the North Korean authorities had presented a new ultra-modern uranium enrichment facility to the American nuclear scientist Siegfried S. Hecker. Hecker was stunned to silence when faced with the hundreds of centrifuges and the control rooms, and he later confirmed that the plant could easily be adapted to produce highly enriched uranium, which is used in the manufacturing of nuclear weapons.
Two days later, a minor war broke out between North and South Korea. Pyongyang had warned the South against continuing their military exercises in the waters around the South Korean island Yeonpyeong. When the South Korean government refused, the North Korean military fired dozens of artillery shells at the island. Houses burned and the population fled in fishing boats. South Korea responded with gunfire and bombs, and President Lee Myung-bak threatened “severe retribution.” North Korea in turn threatened further attacks if the neighbouring country trespassed on the disputed sea boundaries “by even 0.001 millimetres.”
ON DECEMBER 19, 2011, Kim Jong-il’s death was announced on KCTV. The message was delivered by Ri Chun-hee, North Korea’s most famous news anchor. Ri had also relayed the news of Kim Il-sung’s death seventeen years earlier. She cried throughout the broadcast, just as she had then.
Reports from the state news bureau told of strange natural phenomena. Bears woke from their winter sleep and could be seen wandering sorrowfully among wolves. Magpies and cranes circled around statues of Kim Il-sung. In the early morning on the very day of his death, December 17, the ice on Mount Baekdu’s crater lake unleashed a roaring sound, whereupon a furious snowstorm raged over the landscape. Nature’s convulsions of sorrow broke at dawn: all fell still, and the light of a blood-red sun stained the peaks of the revolutionary mountain. Great masses of people gathered at the monuments in Pyongyang and howled in sorrow. People fell to their knees and pounded their fists on the stone steps.
On December 28 the hearse was driven through Pyongyang’s snow-covered streets, and every one of the city’s residents seemed to be out in the cold to say goodbye to the Dear Leader.
The following day, Kim Jong-un was proclaimed the Great Successor.
IN APRIL 2012, Kim Jong-un was named First Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea. At the same time, the position of General Secretary became forever occupied, as Kim Jong-il, like his father, was honoured with an eternal title. Kim Jong-un delivered his first speech, which was a clear sign of his new role as leader. In contrast to his father, he was outgoing and spoke directly to the people.
The year 2012 also marked the centenary of Kim Il-sung’s birth. In honour of the Day of the Sun celebrations, the state scheduled a long-range missile test, but it failed. According to North Korea, the aim of the launch was to shoot down an orbiting satellite. The United States and Japan said it was really a poorly veiled test that, yet again, threatened the security of the region. In December, North Korea’s luck turned around and it managed to launch a rocket into orbit, causing a great swell of national pride. During the autumn, the official North Korean rhetoric was full of bombastic threats toward the rest of the world. It was asserted that their missiles would have no problem reaching the continental United States.
Twenty-five years after construction began, the country met their goal of finishing the Ryugyong Hotel (“the Death Star”) in time for the centennial. Well, the immense glass façade was finished, and the hotel achieved its full expression as a structure that looked like it was straight out of a science fiction movie. Inside, however, it was still empty. Pictures were published showing the bare concrete of the garage-like lobby.
ON FEBRUARY 12, 2013, the country carried out its third nuclear weapons test, again at Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site in Kilju. The United Nations Security Council implemented new sanctions as punishment, and the United States and South Korea ramped up their military training exercises. Pyongyang’s senior military leaders called a meeting after two U.S. B-2 bombers, flying out of bases in Missouri, carried out simulated bombing raids on North Korean targets on an island off the coast of South Korea. The North Korean government considered this act a declaration of war. It was announced that operations would be resumed at the nuclear energy facility in Yongbyon, which had been closed since 2007, and short-range ballistic missiles tests would begin.
The KCNA published pictures that smacked of the Cold War. Kim Jong-un appeared to be at a command centre, strategizing at a glossy desk, with three large, identical telephones at his side. He seemed to be plotting military action against the United States. In the background of one of the images is a map marked with targets for a rocket attack bearing the text U.S. MAINLAND STRIKE PLAN. The generals that surround the leader are holding notepads, awaiting orders. Over 100,000 soldiers, fists clenched, gathered on Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang to proclaim their hatred of the United States.
DURING THE SECOND half of 2013, North Korea’s aggressive line asserting that it was in a state of war abruptly shifted. The industrial zone in Kaesong, which had been closed off to South Koreans since April, was r
eopened. The KCNA claimed that Buddhists had gathered in all of the temples in North Korea to pray for reunification.
In December, a bloody purge of the upper echelons of the North Korean government began. Of the seven men who had escorted Kim Jong-il’s hearse on foot, five disappeared within a short amount of time. Some lost their positions; others were executed. One of those executed — Jang Song-thaek — was considered the second-most powerful person in the country, after the leader. Furthermore, he had blood ties to the ruling clan — he was married to Kim Jong-un’s aunt Kim Kyong-hui. Jang was accused of being a corrupt, drug-addled Casanova and a traitor who had tried to build his own platform of power within the party. The long list of accusations is fascinating. He was said to have amassed wealth by instructing his underlings to sell “coal and other precious underground resources.” He was accused of gambling at a casino, distributing pornography, and opposing the construction of new monuments. Not least, he is said to have tried to stop the installation of a mosaic depicting Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, and to have ordered that Kim Jong-un’s signature be chiselled in granite in the wrong place on an official building, so that it was cast in shadow.
Kim Chol, vice-minister of the North Korean Army, was another unlucky dignitary. In his case, there were no official accusations, only speculation. The South Korean media suggested that the reason Kim Chol was executed was because he had not displayed a sufficient amount of grief after the death of Kim Jong-il. He’d been caught carousing during the “one hundred days of mourning” and was judged harshly by Kim Jong-un. According to the Chosun Ilbo he was executed via launched explosive on a mortar range. On the orders of the leader, they were to leave “no trace of him behind, down to his hair.”
All Monsters Must Die Page 19
