IN A 2007 interview in the Japan Times, Hikita Tenko revealed what had happened during the trips she made to North Korea.
In 1988, she visited Pyongyang to perform at the Spring Friendship Art Festival. She discovered that the city was in the process of building a special Princess Tenko theatre. Her hosts suggested that it would be best for her to settle in Pyongyang.
But she didn’t have any plans to move to North Korea. She was Japan’s most famous illusionist and performed across the globe, and she spent long periods of time in the United States. In 1994, 165,000 people saw her shows at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
After some discussion, she was allowed to go back to Japan, on the condition that she would return in a few months. Tenko didn’t want to go back to North Korea, but she was subjected to an intense campaign of persuasion. Mysterious things happened in her home. A highly collectible Mickey Mouse figurine was stolen from her car. After a while, she found it in her apartment. Then her family was put under pressure, and in 2000 she finally gave in and decided to return to Pyongyang, where she performed for Kim Jong-il and was invited to his palace.
“What did you talk about with Kim Jong-il?” asked the reporter for the Japan Times.
“Well, about the world of entertainment and about illusion . . . but also ordinary things,” Tenko replied.
She was given a snowy-white Pungsan, an ancient and rare breed of North Korean hunting dog. The two other puppies from the litter were given to South Korea’s then-president, Kim Dae-jung, during his historic visit with Kim Jong-il in June of that same year.
What did he see in Princess Tenko? Was he entranced by her extravagant aesthetic? Or did it have something to do with the act of illusion itself — the ability to defy the laws of physics and turn fantasy into reality? Were the magic acts more real and more convincing than film? Maybe it had something to do with her eternal youth and beauty, or the mysterious assumption of identities throughout her career? Hikita Tenko seemed to have mastered the art of creating an image of herself, and then imitating that same image.
After her meeting with the North Korean leader, Tenko was informed that it had been decided that she would move to Pyongyang. An excellent solution for all, it was agreed. Everything had been arranged to the highest standard: she was going to be given a beautiful house with domestic staff; a theatre that was specially equipped for grand illusions had been built for her. But Princess Tenko didn’t want to be the singing nightingale trapped in the emperor’s palace. She protested, but felt powerless. Soon she fell ill. North Korean doctors furnished her with medicine that made her even weaker. The German doctor Norbert Vollertsen paid her a series of visits at the hospital. He was working for the German relief organization Cap Anamur in North Korea and would later write a report about the terrible living conditions in the countryside. During one visit, Vollersten advised her to stop taking her medicine. But the North Korean doctors flew into a rage and forced the German to leave the room.
Hikita Tenko spent one month in the hospital in Pyongyang before she was on her feet again. She explained to the guards that she had to travel to the United States to record the final voiceover for the animated Princess Tenko series. For this, she was irreplaceable. She swore that she would return immediately. Princess Tenko slipped out of Kim Jong-il’s cage and flew home to Japan. There, she was assigned a police escort. The Japanese secret service wanted to know every detail about her visit with Kim Jong-il.
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CUTENESS AND FEAR. There’s an important similarity between Godzilla and Pulgasari: the ambiguous treatment of fear as a theme. In both films, the monsters are expected to be terrifying: they are harbingers of destruction, they run wild, and they can eradicate all things human. But they also have another, palliative side. By the 1960s movies, the Japanese Godzilla monster was furnished with far fewer teeth. Its eyes were bigger and its mouth was turned up into something of a smile. The costume was rounded out to give a softer impression, and the monster’s battles were inspired by wrestling matches and animated series. The wrestling star Rikidōzan was incredibly popular at the time and the fights were modelled on his matches. When Monster Zero was being shot in 1965, the film crew protested Godzilla’s victory dance after it knocks out the terrifying three-headed lizard King Ghidorah. It was far too ridiculous, they said. But Tsuburaya insisted the dance would make the children happy.
In Pulgasari, Shin stressed this ambivalence between fear and cuteness by portraying the monster as a playful and, frankly, cute character. As a baby, Pulgasari is an animated doll with playful eyes. In one scene, the monster jokes around with the heroine and her brother, and they laugh delightedly at its hijinks.
IN THE PERIOD after Shin Sang-ok escaped from North Korea, the monster’s journey into cuteness reached its final destination. In 1986, Shin and Madame were given U.S. residency permits. They had the opportunity to withdraw from the spotlight and live out their days quietly, but Shin wasn’t made for sipping ice tea under an umbrella. In the coming years, Shin was hired to direct 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up, the third film in a series of American children’s movies, and he was also made an executive producer on 3 Ninjas Kick Back and 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain.
In 1996, he wrote the script for Galgameth, a benign fantasy film. The film was released without fanfare and went straight to video, ending up among the rows of other neglected VHS tapes in the children’s section of video stores. But those who know the film’s backstory understand its value. Galgameth is the last branch of the monster family tree that began with Godzilla in Japan, continued with Pulgasari in North Korea, and ended there in Hollywood. And it was Shin Sang-ok who was responsible for this fantastic arc.
Most of the film was shot in a castle in Romania. In contrast to Pulgasari, the production is virtually flawless. The story follows a little prince who wakes up sad. The king is dead. The prince has cried himself to sleep, still shielded from the grim knowledge that his father didn’t die of natural causes. The power-hungry black knight, El El, poisoned him and is preparing to usurp the throne. But before the beloved father died, he presented his son with a valuable gift: a small stone sculpture of a strange creature. He called it Galgameth. When the prince’s tears land on the sculpture something happens and, during the night, the figure is cloaked in a cloud of stardust.
In the light of dawn, the prince discovers something moving under his blanket. A little lizard-like creature is there, looking at him with round, playful eyes. The prince regards the monster with surprise. The creature leaps onto the chandelier and sinks its teeth in: the monster has an appetite for iron. It doesn’t take long for the creature to grow several times its original size. Neither sword nor lance can pierce his armour-like body. Galgameth leads the charge against the black knight. The people are victorious, but the monster has to sacrifice itself for the cause. All monsters must die.
AFTER YEARS IN a work camp and then being forced to make films in North Korea, it’s almost incomprehensible that the director would choose to recreate the creative visions of his prison warden. Was he diminishing cruelty by embracing childishness and cuteness?
During a visit to Tokyo in 2006, we contacted Godzilla actor Kenpachiro Satsuma’s agent and found out that in the mid-1990s Shin had made inquiries as to whether Satsuma would consider wearing the Galgameth costume. Kenpachiro politely declined.
Perhaps Shin had a vision — the same actor in three different monster suits representing three political systems.
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IT IS THE morning of our last day in North Korea. The bus takes us to the train station and we are guided to the platform, past the queueing North Koreans, who have to present their travel documents before they are let through. Masses of people are on the go. For the first time, we find ourselves among regular citizens. A tense and overwrought mood pervades the station. Travelling isn’t part of daily life; you have to have a special permit.
Mr.
Song and Ms. Kim manage to get us on a Chinese train to Beijing. The train’s cars are comfortable. The guides look relieved; they have completed their assignment. They say farewell and everyone in the group shakes their hands. Mr. Song jokes and laughs, then he and Ms. Kim plod off.
We take this rare opportunity to see more of the station and film the crowd. When we raise our camera, people look at us suspiciously and with hostility. Suddenly, Mr. Song leaps out from the shadows. “What are you doing?” he asks sharply. He gives us a disappointed look that says: What opportunists!
Mr. Song and Ms. Kim escort us back to our train car and wait until we roll out of the station. Ms. Kim waves and smiles inscrutably; she is wearing her pink dress. Mr. Song isn’t smiling, but he’s raised his hand somewhere in between the signal to stop and a farewell.
WE ROLL SLOWLY through Pyongyang’s suburbs. It’s unclear where the countryside begins. We see railway workers covered in soot fixing the tracks; women washing clothes in a ditch. Houses out here are in worse condition than in Pyongyang. The plaster is flaking off the walls and they’re not being maintained. We pass by rice paddies and cornfields. Little egrets stand still as statues, watching for frogs. Farmers stack newly harvested corn on tarps. This is our eighth day in the country and in a few hours we’ll be crossing over the border to China. We can hardly say that we’ve come to understand what life is like here. We know that everything they eat is grown here, that essentially all their tools are manufactured here, and the work is done by hand. On a good day, they have a domestic beer after a long day’s work and then sleep under a Vinalon blanket. Kim Il-sung is the light in their isolated solar system. Their history is passed down with his radiance. Anything that threatens to overshadow this radiance must be eradicated. No acts of heroism, other than his, are possible.
But what is really going on in the minds of the people living in this country?
We didn’t think we’d find an answer to this question during our trip, but the question is always on our minds.
Twenty-four million people live in North Korea. They live completely different lives, depending on where they are in the social hierarchy, and they live in different realities and think different thoughts. They are not robots. For many, life must be a daily struggle for survival. Not just for those in the work camps, but also those in isolated rural areas that don’t have access to relief consignments because they are the people who belong to the “hostile class.”
The Chinese government fears an invasion of North Korean refugees should the borders to the country open up, and wants things to stay as they are. In South Korea, fewer and fewer seem to think reunification is possible. And in the West, we shake our heads at North Korea. The country is absurd. Human rights activists around the world are sidelined on the North Korea question, because they disrupt the existing “balance of terror” while attempts are made to lure Kim Jong-il to the negotiation table for six-party talks with China, the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Russia. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-il continues to threaten to unleash his atomic monster.
When we look out the window at the landscape rushing past us, everything feels veiled and distant. But would it have helped if we had been here eighty times eight days? Would we have gotten a better understanding? Madame and Shin were here for eight years but were never allowed to engage in conversation with North Koreans who weren’t high-ranking.
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AFTER FOUR YEARS in Hollywood, the longing for South Korea grew too strong for Choi Eun-hee and Shin Sang-ok. They tried to return in 1988 but were barred from entering the country; the suspicion around them was too great. The following year they were allowed entry after passing a lie detector test and handing over the gifts they had been given by Kim Jong-il. South Korean officials made a point of taking Shin’s Rolex, because it was assumed to be a present from the North Korean leader.
Years of ostracism followed. It was if they had been infected by their close contact with the enemy. But in spite of everything, Shin was still a legendary director. No one could deny his contribution to South Korean cinema. There was only one way for him to gain acceptance and demonstrate his loyalty: to serve those in power. His 1990 film Mayumi: Virgin Terrorist was his ideological penance. Mayumi is often cited as his worst film, grotesque in its patriotism and shameless in its propaganda on behalf of the South Korean regime. The film is about the 1987 bombing of a South Korean passenger plane by a North Korean agent — the same story that would later provide the foundation for the mega-hit Shiri.
IN 1994 THE couple was finally able to settle permanently in Seoul. The film that Shin made that year had completely different political content. Disappeared (Jeungbal) is a searing criticism of the political violence during General Park’s reign. The kidnapping theme is explored here, but the perpetrator is not Kim Jong-il — it’s Park’s agents. The story is about the former head of South Korean security, who is about to publish his memoir. But he is kidnapped in Paris and taken to the presidential palace, the Blue House in Seoul. While in captivity, the man has flashbacks of the military coup that brought the dictator to power. Perhaps Disappeared was Shin’s revenge on General Park, who once tried to end his film career.
IN 1998, PULGASARI was shown in a few theatres in Japan. The film was marketed as “forbidden for a decade.” Kim Jong-il’s idea of reproducing the monster as a plastic toy was finally realized by his arch-enemy. The Tokyo company Marmit made three versions — one red, one black, and one in gold — which could only be bought in cinemas.
During Kim Dae-jung’s presidency (1998–2003), there was a period of détente between the countries, until 2008, when Lee Myung-bak, “The Bulldozer,” came into power. Certain exchanges were made possible on both sides, not least the reunion of a few families who had been torn apart during the war. In 2000, Pulgasari was shown in South Korea for the first time, but it flopped. No one was interested.
That same year, a reporter from the Financial Times wrote that Kim Jong-il’s image was being reappraised in South Korea after a decade of the Sunshine Policy. What had previously been considered pathetic — his short, chubby body, his blow-dried hair, his platform shoes — had now become a cherished combination: “South Korean schoolchildren are emailing pictures of Mr Kim as a cute cartoon figure and comparing him to the Teletubbies because he ‘has a pot belly and is cheerful.’”
Kim Jong-il’s first-born son, Kim Jong-nam, so longed for cuteness that in 2001, at the age of thirty, he tried to sneak into Japan using a fake passport in order to visit Disneyland. He was caught at customs. In his fake passport he had given himself a Chinese alias: Pang Xiong, or “Fat Bear.”
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THE CUSTOMS PROCEDURE at the border is thorough. We share a compartment with Nils and the tattooed baker. The agents rummage through our luggage. Our camera is inspected. The customs officers look at all the pictures on the digital cameras. Pictures that are not suitable are deleted, but it happens randomly. No one gets to keep pictures of ox-drawn carts — that might imply the country is behind in its development. A few images of certain military men are approved, but our pictures of the colonel who was supposed to show us the wall in the fog are deleted without hesitation. The customs officer points at our analogue SLRs. When he understands that there’s nothing to look at, he simply shrugs. We are worried about our video camera, which contains the most interesting material. Our first instinct was to hide it under a blanket, but then we changed our minds. We left it out in the open on the table. No one asked to view its contents.
AFTER A FEW hours of inspection, the train rolls over the bridge to China. The last we see of North Korea is an empty playground with a rusty carousel. Out in the middle of the Yalu River we pass a bridge that suddenly stops short. The bridge was bombed during the Korean War. The Chinese have rebuilt their side, but the North Koreans have shown no interested in rebuilding the bridge to China. We see Chinese people standing on the bridge, binoculars in hand, searching
for a glimpse of life on the other side.
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IN 2006, SHIN SANG-OK died after battling the hepatitis that he had contracted in the North Korean prison camp. His life moved in cycles and circles. The same went for Madame. Her private life had been entangled in her acting life, and she came to embody a transitional character, a synthesis between the traditional Korean housewife and a modern, independent woman. She depicted the trials and ambiguities of female life during the post-war period. In Confessions of a College Student (1958), she played a lawyer who risks her career defending divorced women. Madame based her character on South Korea’s first female lawyer, Lee Tai-young. They became lifelong friends. Madame called her “my second mother.”
Madame’s portrait of Sonya in Flower in Hell contrasts with the widow in My Mother and Her Guest (Sarangbang sonnimgwa eomeoni ) — her favourite among her own films. Whereas the widow is swaddled in her hanbok with her hair done in a widow’s style, in a tight bun at her neck, Sonya wanders around in high heels and a low-cut dress. The widow can’t admit her feelings for her guest. She is a prisoner of all the things that belong to her previous life: photographs, flowers, a piano.
Melodrama draws in audiences by tightening its grip on their emotions. Its aim is to make tears run. Melodrama isn’t slick; it’s stylized. Douglas Sirk, the great director of Hollywood melodrama, said that the genre “should function for society as Socrates’s dialogues and Euripides’s melodramas did in ancient Athens.” Melodrama plays us as if we were its instrument. We feel it in our bodies. There is also a sacramental element: fear and empathy reach their climax in the sacrifice of one of the characters in the story, a victim whose death cleanses someone else’s life.
In melodrama, material things have a strong presence; clothes become transitional objects and markers for the dramatic changes in a character’s mind. In his essay titled “Imitation of Life,” Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the most important directors in New German Cinema, says that Sirk’s films are all about what it is possible to say and do in a restricted space. Fassbinder saw what almost no one else saw in Sirk, the German-American director of “weepies” — namely, that the characters in Sirk’s films are placed in settings that are shaped by their social situations and have an exactness; you know the limitations of each room. Fassbinder writes:
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