A Capitalist in North Korea: My Seven Years in the Hermit Kingdom

by Felix Abt

  Mr. Kim’s superior, Mr. Son, looked at him sternly, disapproving of his remarks. Mr. Son probably thought exactly the same thing. But Mr. Kim was not supposed to express his emotions about a foreigner in front of another foreigner. Reading between the lines, I understand what both of them were really thinking. What Korean would ever want to become like them?

  Meanwhile, patriotic songs were constantly blaring on public loud speakers, on television, and at military parades. But one piece in particular got stuck in my head, played over and over as the country’s most popular melody. At a gymnastics performance, the tune buzzed on once again, prompting me to turn to a friend for an explanation. Mr. Pang, a chief beer brewer working at a beer factory, responded that he was shocked that this Swiss expatriate wasn’t familiar with it.

  “You don’t know this tune?” he answered with genuine surprise. “It’s called ‘No Motherland Without You.’”

  “What is it about then?” I inquired.

  He went into an impassioned but short speech, showing off his patriotism for the fatherland. “It’s about our General Kim Jong Il. It says without him we cannot exist as he has extraordinary talents and virtues, and that’s why we Koreans love him. It was him who further developed the Juche idea created by our Great Leader president Kim Il Sung, and it was him who introduced the Songun (military-first) politics to protect our motherland and the Korean people.”

  Mr. Pang then translated the core sentence that is repeated in the song: “We cannot exist without you, Comrade Kim Jong Il! The motherland cannot exist without you!”

  For all his faults, Kim Il Sung did everything in his power to preserve Korean arts and culture.

  His ideas were even supported by ardent overseas Koreans who opposed the regime. North Koreans consider themselves to this day as ethnically pure and intrinsically superior, far more than other nationalistic regimes in Japan and China. They believe that they are the world’s most upright people living in the world’s most exceptional nation. It’s only a natural extension that they revere the Great Leader as a holy savior, the most dazzling leader of all time. A history of foreign dominance by China, Japan and the US has, in the eyes of the North Koreans, wrecked the purity of their southern neighbors: today, North Koreans have taken sole guardianship of what they see as true ‘Koreanness’.

  The attitude is reflected in North Korean propaganda, and taking a look at the myriad of posters and leaflets reveals much about the mindset. Pyongyang is home to the Party’s Propaganda and Agitation Department, which controls far-reaching ideological campaigns. The state sees propaganda as particularly valuable, giving it the needed resources that take up a good chunk of the gross national product—although the precise data haven’t been published.

  To be fair, all over the world businesses engage in another form of propaganda: advertising. The only difference is that it advances a cause of consumerism, rather than politics. North Korea had banned the un-socialist practice until 2002, when advertisements were allowed. The opening suggests at least a partial embrace of market ideas. Still, it’s only a little creek compared to the vast sea of state-sponsored misinformation: PyongSu, my pharmaceutical company launched its first radio commercial for its painkiller PyongSu Spirin in 2005. For a short while in 2009, television stations surprised their viewers by broadcasting commercials for beer, ginseng, hairclips, and a Korean restaurant.

  The government has, unfortunately, not resumed TV commercials since then, part of a ploy by the same hardliners who pushed for a disastrous currency devaluation in 2009. Yet, it wasn’t a complete reversal of its new policy: The state didn’t clamp down on printed advertising allowing PyongSu and other North Korean companies to continue distributing flyers and catalogues and advertising its products and services on the country’s intranet. TV advertising was perhaps perceived as politically too sensitive by the conservative old guard since foreign visitors as well as South Koreans could watch and observe it.

  However, propaganda continues to be an everyday message blurted in front of the North Korean people. And it plays a significant role in their lives.

  After Kim Jong Il died in December 2011, party mouthpieces shot off a new emergent ode called “Footsteps”—and it wasn’t the jazz standard performed by John Coltrane. The piece was written for Kim Jong Un, and its title signified that he was marching in the heroic footsteps of his deceased father. North Koreans attribute the song with son Kim’s emergent legacy. Of course, pretty much every beautiful melody on TV, radio and in Karaoke rooms are not free from ideology and propaganda. Most of them appeal to patriots, the party, the army. They often wax philosophical on the sufferings under the yoke of the Japanese colonialists or praise the leaders.

  Numerous books and articles portray the country’s leaders as wise, benevolent and modest. Here is an excerpt about Kim Il Sung, a collection of parables taken from Anecdotes of Kim Il Sung’s Life* published in 2007.

  His Old Canvas Shoes

  One summer day in 1965, during an inspection of Changsong County, Kim Il Sung summoned the officials of the Sinuiju Footwear Factory to discuss the supply of shoes for the people. After stressing the need to produce attractive and durable shoes in large quantities, he showed his own canvas shoes, or cloth shoes with rubber soles, to the officials, saying, “Sinuiju brand, aren’t they? They are well made. Comfortable and durable, indeed.”

  The officials looked wide-eyed at the shoes, unable to remember when they had manufactured them. The shoes were discolored from many washings, the rubber at the toes was crumpled, and they had repaired insoles. “I bought them about five years ago, but I keep them because they have not worn out,” said the leader.

  The officials felt guilty of their lack of sense of economization. As they were working at a footwear factory, they would frequently hand in their shoes, slightly faded or worn out, for new ones.

  *Authors: Kim Kwang Il, Pak Hak Il, Han Jong Yong. Published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang

  A propaganda state?

  It is true that Bible-like allegories have a profound impact on how North Koreans see themselves and the world, as told to me by countless locals. Posters are also a potent venue: they are the regime’s most visible form of propaganda, painted with bright colors, meaningful symbols and images, and large fonts. Simple but commanding language is used.

  Barbara Demick, the author of the widely acclaimed 2010 book Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea mentioned that in his book 1984, “George Orwell wrote of a world where the only color to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea.”1 But her statement isn’t entirely true. Half a decade before she wrote this, we had already plastered our pharmaceutical factory with a green color, because it was a well-known pharmaceutical symbol in continental Europe. Nobody would hinder us from doing so.

  “Colors only on propaganda posters” as claimed by North Korea watchers and book authors fond of Orwellian and other stereotypes? Not quite. Life has become more colorful in North Korea over the last 10 years. While there are still many gray-scaled buildings, this picture shows one example of the shift.

  Around the same time, other buildings were being repainted in Pyongyang in a wider variety of colors. People could be seen over the years with more colorful clothes, not only during holidays, as is tradition. More young students carried colorful Hello Kitty and other fancy school bags. The gap between Barbara Demick’s Orwellian stereotype and the reality on the ground was widening a little every year.

  The signs are hung up everywhere you go: in school buildings, hospitals, factories and farms, in magazines, paintings, films, theaters, operas, on TV and radio, and on public loudspeakers. It’s difficult to escape the gaze of a nationalistic worker or national leader peering down at you from his poster, urging absolute loyalty to the pure Korean race.

  Posters are addressed to different groups of people. For farmers, they offer a resounding call to the fields, to boost food production amid chronic shortages. For ind
ustrial laborers, the placards urge no able body to sit idle in the withering factories, but rather encourage them to double their efforts for a strong and prosperous nation. Students are pushed to become skillful scientists who can develop sophisticated technologies and to propel the country into “a brilliant new era,” to quote a common catchphrase on the posters. Nobody is left out: other targets include grandchildren being urged to care for their grandparents, or cautioning rascals about doing something dangerous.

  That’s not to say the propaganda is trite and childlike. Sometimes, the party is clever in how it plays with imported foreign ideas. In response to George Bush’s declaration of the “Axis of Evil” in 2002, one North Korean poster launched subtle counter-propaganda: “The world turns with Korea as its axis.” Of course, not all North Koreans believed the world actually revolved around their country.

  Even the newspapers play a prominent role in spreading state ideas. In North Korea state-run publications do not compete to break the fastest and hardest-hitting news. The mass media’s purpose is spelled out in the Constitution: it defines the press as “strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat, bolstering the political unity and ideological conformity of the people, and rallying them behind the Party and the Great Leader in the cause of revolution.” North Korea’s media correspondingly carries strict proof-reading procedures. Any journalist committing an ideological “error” is quite certain to be sent to a harsh wasteland to be thoroughly “revolutionized.”

  Every administrative district in North Korea is home to a so-called “immortality column,” a reference to the immortal heroes of the revolution. Statues of Kim Il Sung adorn the special zones, usually found in provincial capitals and places of national significance. All of the effigies display the same tagline: “The Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung will be with us forever.”

  Some propaganda slogans

  Instilling a sense of loyalty in the Workers’ Party of Korea (created in the 1980s, still fully valid):

  “What the Party decides, we do.”

  Worshipping the Best:

  “Worship the Great Leader, General Kim Il Sung, like the eternal sun.”

  “Let’s thoroughly arm more and more through the revolutionary ideas of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung.”

  “The Great Leader Kim Il Sung will be with us forever.”

  “Hurray for General Kim Jong Il, the sun of the 21st century.”

  “Thank you to General Kim Jong Il, our loving father.”

  “Let us become human bullets and bombs guarding the Great Leader General Kim Jong Il with our lives!”

  “Let us defend the Party Central Committee headed by the respected comrade Kim Jong Un, at the cost of our lives.”

  “Let us become revolutionary soldiers boundlessly loyal to the Party and Great Leader!”

  “Let’s accept our party’s Son Gun (army first) revolution loyally.”

  “Our [Leader/Ideology/Military/System] Is the Best”

  Calling to uphold Juche and Son Gun (Army first) politics:

  “Let’s stick to self-sufficiency and nationalism in revolutions and construction!”

  “Our country’s socialism is the best!”

  “Ideology, technology, and culture according to the demands of Juche!”

  “Spread the ideological, fight, speed, and skill battles (this is a literal translation from Korean, but it roughly means the battles fought everywhere such as against imperialist enemies and to build up the country). Let’s use Juche Korea’s wisdom and bravery.”

  “Let us complete the Juche revolutionary cause under the leadership of the respected comrade Kim Jung Un!”

  “Living methods, fighting spirit, new ideas, all according to the needs of Son Gun.

  Son Gun politics. The DPR Korea moves the world.”

  Promoting Korean culture devoid of any impure foreign content:

  “Let’s make the beautiful Korean clothes a way of life.”

  “Let’s establish a social spirit for enjoying our people’s clothes.”

  “Let’s actively promote our people’s traditional folk games.”

  Parents and teachers are asked to make Korean children more intelligent and able than they already are:

  “Let’s actively develop children’s intelligence.”

  “Let’s learn how to swim starting young.”

  “Let’s all become expert swimmers.”

  This quote adorns every book shop and library.

  A propaganda poster at the school of the Chongsanri farm, a model farm shown to foreign tourists, praising a North Korean kids’ game:

  “It is exciting to play soldiers beating and seizing the Americans!”

  Messages directed at farmers - the first one issued years ago expressing a wish that has yet to be fulfilled:

  “Let’s send more tractors, cars, and modern farming machines to the farm villages for the working class.”

  “Let’s raise a great number of goats in every family.”

  “Let’s raise a lot of livestock through multiple methods.”

  “Let’s expand goat rearing and create more grassland in accordance with the party.”

  “Let us turn grass into meat!”

  “Let’s grow more sunflowers.”

  “Prevention and more prevention. Let’s fully establish a veterinary system for the prevention of epidemics!”

  Messages on posters, in newspapers and on loudspeakers urge voters to take part in elections held every five years. Elections are mostly a formality, though: citizens elect the candidate for their district chosen by the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, which is dominated by the Workers’ Party of Korea.

  “July 24 is day of elections for deputies to provincial (municipal), city (district) and county people’s assemblies.”

  “Let’s demonstrate the power of single-hearted unity.”

  “Let’s all vote yes.”

  The first message below urged people to work at the speed of the mythical Korean Pegasus, a campaign to make Pyongyang look modern by 2012 (when the 100th birthday of founder president Kim Il Sung was celebrated):

  “Let’s develop Pyongyang, the capital city of the revolution, into a world-class city.”

  “Electric power, coal, the metal industry, and the railroad are important to the revitalization of the people’s economy.”

  “Let’s construct small and medium power plants everywhere in our country and get energy everywhere.”

  “Work and live with the mind and spirit of Pegasus!”

  “The 21st century is the age of information (communications) industry.”

  “Radical Turn in People’s Livelihood Improvement!” (The slogan, several years old and regularly repeated, is hopefully realized some day in the not too far distant future).

  Calling upon families to avoid wasting resources:

  “In your family, let’s conserve every drop of water.” (The poster shows a mother closing a dripping water tap.)

  These messages should make clear that North Korea is invincible thanks to its military might:

  “Just as it began, the revolution advances and is victorious, through the barrel of a gun.”

  “The reunified fatherland is at the tip of our bayonets.”

  “Nobody in the world can defeat us.”

  “Let’s be invincible in every fight.”

  “Let’s achieve even more supremacy.”

  “Our missile program is a guarantee for world peace and security.”

  Calling for reunification of North and South:

  “Kimjongilia, the flower of reunification.” Poster depicting united Korea in the shape of a sea of Kimjongilia flowers.

  “Let’s quickly end the agony of division.” Poster with grandmother still waiting for reunification.

  “Between our people, let’s rush towards a majestic and prosperous strong unified country.”

  Messages to keep people alert about the threats posed by the DPRK’s worst enemies fro
m day one of its existence: