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

by Felix Abt

  “When provoking a war of aggression, we will hit back, beginning with the U.S.”

  “Let’s take revenge a thousand times on the U.S. imperialist wolves.”

  “If the American imperialists attack us let us wipe them off the map forever!”

  “Death to U.S. imperialists, our sworn enemy!”

  “Let’s prepare thoroughly in order to defeat the invaders. The Japanese invaders slaughtered innocent, law-abiding citizens. 1,000,000 slaughtered/killed; 6,000,000 forced arrests; 2,000,000 sex slaves.”

  Life in color

  Seeing propaganda spread across every nook and cranny of North Korea society, it’s easy to pass off North Koreans as mindless drones. But would the logic make sense if it were reversed? Do Americans get brainwashed cravings for McDonald’s and Starbuck’s with their logos smothered all over the country, and drop everything to salute to every American flag?

  Actually, North Koreans simply walk by propaganda posters—including new ones—without so much as a glance. Like their American counterparts who constantly drive by advertising billboards and are inundated with Internet banners, North Koreans are accustomed to the messages at political training courses, mass rallies, and in the mass media and blurted out on loudspeakers. The propaganda is reiterated - again and again – until the slogans are known by heart (just like how most young Americans bandy about the old McDonald’s tagline, “I’m lovin’ it.”)

  A recent U.S. government-funded study titled A Quiet Opening: North Koreans in a Changing Media Environment reads: “While it remains the most closed media environment in the world, North Korea has, to a significant extent, opened unofficially since the late 1990s. North Koreans today have significantly greater access to outside information than they did 20 years ago.” Young North Koreans in particular are overall better informed and take official propaganda with a grain of salt. They’re less respectful of the state and less fearful of repression.

  North Korea historian Andrei Lankov even argues that state subjugation overall has significantly diminished over the last two decades, and that propaganda has lost some of its power of persuasion. He also stressed that “contrary to media portrayals in recent years, North Korea has actually become a less repressive place to live.”2 Keep in mind, though, that North Koreans rarely gossip about politics, and that the country is still a very authoritarian state despite the loosening.

  Propaganda posters 20 or 30 years earlier portrayed North Korea as an industrial powerhouse, with steel mills and factories running at full capacity. South Korea was depicted as a poor agrarian country with grimly and oppressive American soldiers. Taking account of the latest developments on the Korean peninsula largely known to North Koreans newer propaganda posters are portraying the South in a reverse mode as a place where people are being suffocated by air poisoned by its numerous factories and vehicles and deafened by an infernal noise whereas North Korea is shown as a pristine, quiet natural paradise.

  A proud North Korean patriot on a windy day displays his medals, signifying that he’s upheld the lofty ideals of the revolution all his life (left). His children and grandchildren (right) are also proud. But living in a society that today is better educated and better informed, they dream of a better life and don’t bother with politics.

  Compare the everyday experiences and struggles of North Koreans with the Orientalist stereotypes coming out of the West. In 2012, Stanford professor Adam Johnson wrote a novel set in North Korea, but included just about every negative generalization he could find on the country. He and his publishers promoted the book as “insight” into North Korea. So much for insight: he claimed that in North Korea “no one has read a book that’s not propaganda for 60 years,” a patronizing falsehood. My staff, along with all sorts of other North Koreans I’ve met, have read foreign books such as Alexandre Dumas’s thriller The Count of Monte Cristo or Ernest Hemingway’s short stories Men Without Women, and some of them could even recite lengthy passages that were full of wisdom. At home and sometimes at their universities, they watched foreign movies like Gone with the Wind and Titanic.

  Over the years, more kids carried around backpacks and bags adorned with Mickey and Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck. Nobody complained that the harmless characters were Miguk Nom, the Korean phrase used in official propaganda that means “American bastards.” The kids also enjoyed watching Jungle Book, The Lion King and Spiderman. I have listened to North Korean orchestras play all sorts of Western classics; the most memorable for me was “Gwine to Run All Night,” more widely known as “Camptown Races.” It was not composed by some communist maniac, but by Stephen Collins Foster, the most famous songwriter of the United States in the 19th century often called the “father of American music”. A former U.S. State Department official summed up the situation clearly: “We know less about North Korea than they know about us.”

  Journalist Melanie Kirkpatrick, a longtime member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, published another North Korea book in September 2012. In her propaganda she portrays North Korea as a “hellhole” that is “rife with suffering and starvation.” The country, she added, “keeps its citizens in the dark ages.” “Foreigners and foreign goods are kept out,” is another tall claim of hers. Had that been true I would, of course, not have been able to sell foreign goods in North Korea.

  Another American literature professor who teaches in South Korea, Bryan R. Myers, summarized North Korea propaganda in a more thoughtful—even if flawed—way in his 2010 book, The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters. His problem was that he took the propaganda more seriously than North Koreans did. His claims were shaky: he argued that the basis of North Korean ideology is race, not the more commonly cited mix of socialism, Juche and Songun. He even called Juche “window-dressing” for foreigners, a rather absurd claim given the reality that the state carried out huge efforts to teach Juche to its people.

  During exhibitions students from different universities approached me at my exhibition booth to practice English. I often asked them what trade they wanted to exercise and why when they finish university. The answer was often quite patriotic: “I want to be an electrical engineer to help electrify my country to stand on its own feet in accordance with the Juche idea.” or “I want to be a medical doctor to help my countrymen to be healthier. I agree with our Juche idea which aims at strengthening our health system and at making it independent from foreign countries.” These were legitimate answers, and didn’t fit into any narrative of “window-dressing.”

  A few other claims are questionable. Myers claimed that the North Korean personality cult is an idea imposed by Japanese colonialists. I think the concept arose out of Stalin’s personality cult, or even more from a historical undercurrent stretching back to thousands of years of Chinese overlord emperors. Myers doesn’t fully address how three decades of a Japanese administration could upend these more entrenched forces at work.

  Myers further claims that the party, in its propaganda, portrays North Korea’s leadership as motherly figures, not fathers. But he doesn’t explain, then, why the Korean War is called the “Fatherland Liberation War” instead of the “Motherland Liberation War.” The North Koreans that talked to me about the “Father of the nation” or the “Father of all Koreans,” referring to their leader, never mentioned any mothers of the nation.

  Staff of my company reminded me that company bosses in North Korea were expected to behave like good “fathers” with the staff. I used to reply half-jokingly that I, as their father, would expect the respect and obedience from my large family—as is typical in a traditional Confucian Korean family. Had my staff called me “mother,” Myers would have been believable. The expression “father” was not only used for the English translation but also in Korean.

  Foreign experts tend to overestimate the impact of propaganda in North Korea. Even the nationwide propaganda campaigns against smoking, supported by the World Health Organization, showed little results. The bar keeper at
this bar was aware of the health hazards, but her customers simply ignored them.

  Other North Korea experts such as Professor Leonid Petrov or Professor Victor Cha3 have continued to ponder the country’s isolation, especially whether this collapse would come about from information entering the country. It completely escaped their attention that years before in the mid-2000s, a quiet but radical “information revolution” had already taken place in North Korea. Memory sticks and USBs became popular when they were more affordable. Foreign music, movies and even e-books were stored or exchanged on these easily-concealed sticks. More people started talking about famous movies; I was surprised that they knew films like Kill Bill 1 and 2 or The Pianist.

  At the beginning of my stay in North Korea, I offered nice gifts to prospective partners, such as a pair of fine leather shoes, a bottle of Scotch whisky or a large box of Dunhill cigarette packs for the men. For the ladies, I handed over a beautiful silk scarf, a brand-name perfume or a piece of jewelry. But when people became so keen on getting a USB to watch foreign movies, I stopped offering expensive presents and gave them those tiny electronics. One male recipient laughingly told me that USBs have become so popular that bra-wearing women would carry them under the bra to have them well-cushioned. He didn’t tell the full truth. They were being kept away from preying authorities who would have loved to know what was stored on these accessories.

  Glory of the nation

  The Arirang Mass Games, as the popular event is called, takes place in the May Day stadium in Pyongyang, holding enough room for an audience of 150,000 people. Every year, more than 100,000 participants attend—double the number of spectators. The Guinness Book of World Records ranked the spectacle in 2007 as the world’s largest performance.

  A poster welcomes visitors to the extraordinary mass spectacle, Arirang.

  Thousands of gymnasts perform acrobatics, synchronizing their maneuvers to create wonderful kaleidoscopes on the field. Students form giant changing mosaics by turning the 150 pages, to name another example, of large books in their hands. For Koreans, such glamor brings razzle-dazzle to an otherwise colorless life; the games also give tasks to the unemployed or underemployed, of whom North Korea harbors a great number. People around me seemed happier around the time of Arirang each year.

  According to Rodong Sinmun, the party mouthpiece, millions of North Koreans and foreigners have witnessed the games, although the numbers don’t quite add up and are probably part of a propaganda push. Still, it’s safe to say that hundreds of thousands of people, if not more, have performed and watched the games. I visited for the first time in 2002, when the tradition started, and a few more times in the years after that.

  The exhibition was bedazzling, and probably quite effective propaganda that raised the profile of the DPRK. More importantly, though, it presented one interpretation of Korean history as seen by the party and its leaders; the games reflected on how they felt their nation should be regarded by the masses: the dancing and gymnastics, all in unison, gave off an image that North Korea was a happy, socialist country and a paradise. The appearance of solidarity further reflects on a notion that North Korea could mercilessly crush and destroy any foreign invader, with the entire nation standing behind a single cause.

  During my first visit, I was still unfamiliar with North Korea and didn’t full understand what was going on. There were so many symbols displayed, but as a foreigner I couldn’t quite follow them. As time went by I learned to better understand the Korean symbolism which played an important role in these mass games but also in many other circumstances. The sea of red flowers, for example, represented the working class, the purple color stood for Kim Il Sung as a purple orchid had been named after him as Kimilsungia. Or the rising sun was a symbol for Kim Il Sung, venerated as the sun of humanity.

  I paid around 150 Euros for the second best possible ticket, one step below the best seating. Twice, I was driving my car with staff to the stadium, when I was stopped every 30 meters or so, by officials asking for ID. Before walking into the stadium, they ordered me to leave my mobile phone, camera, wallet, and keys in the car; it was obvious that Arirang attracted a high-ranking guest. Indeed, I was sitting about 20 rows behind the Dear Leader himself, Kim Jong Il. He was sitting in the front row with a foreign guest and a line-up of Korean dignitaries, surrounded by plainclothed secret service officers.

  This Arirang scene depicts happy children nourished because they drink soy milk. A North Korean cadre, who was familiar with South Korea from foreign press clippings, told me that the North’s soy milk is pure and natural unlike the South’s soy milk which is sweetened and falsified with artificial flavors. Of course, remember that North Koreans see items in their home country as more authentic than those in the depraved south.

  Popular ice skaters perform a show on Kim Jong Il’s birthday, on February 16. All sorts of sport and festivities are unveiled on this day, one of the country’s most important national holidays.

  Outside the ice rink I found an advertisement for Dunhill cigarettes, considered the smoking equivalent of a “Rolex” in North Korea. The most popular cigarette, though, was “Craven A.” Both brands belonged to British-American Tobacco Company (BAT), which set up a factory in North Korea. Strangely, the market was one of their most profitable until political pressure from London made them sell it to a Singaporean business.

  The Flowers of Pyongyang

  Flower exhibitions, sometimes consisting of thousands of blossoms, carried heavy symbolism during the two most revered public holidays: the birthday of Kim Jong Il on February 16 and the birthday of Kim Il Sung on April 15. Government agencies, organizations and individuals exhibited flowers outside their buildings. Two species of flower were exhibited in the Kimilsungia-Kimjongilia Exhibition Hall, a building made of bricks and mortar but that had some characteristics of a green house. The center was appropriately named after the Kimilsungia and the Kimjongilia species. Kimilsungia was bred by an Indonesian botanist in 1965 and the Kimjongilia by a Japanese one in 1985, and both offered them as gifts to North Korea.

  I observed a flower exhibition of Kim Il Sung’s birthday on April 15, 2008. In addition to the two dynastic flowers, the government put on display 7,000 various trees, plants and flowers representing several hundred species. Everywhere the eye could see, ministry buildings, hospitals and People’s Army offices showed off their flowers on two floors of exhibition space. The booths also carried national symbols such as country and party flags, and reproduction models of important national monuments. In the center of the exhibition a plaque read: “The great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung will always be with us,” “Juche” and Kim Il Sung’s quote “The people are my God.”

  I understood how pivotal this day was to the North Korean people, so I decided to chip in on behalf of PyongSu. At the two main exhibitions every year, I brought along flower pots of the best quality, and presented them with a placard displaying my name and the PyongSu logo. The Ministry of Public Health placed my donation at their booth, and they became famous around the country because they were the only flower pots offered by a foreign boss of a domestic enterprise. When journalists interviewed me, I offered praise for the showcase and added my own advertising angle: that our quality and service-minded pharmaceutical company could never be absent from such a prestigious exhibition.

  Of course, the press spun my commentary into an entertaining propaganda twist, but I didn’t mind. Later on television, a euphoric reporter described me planting and growing the flowers myself – and, to add, with the loving care that is usual for patriotic Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia flower growers. I did not mind the propaganda. On the contrary, it helped boost our sales more than any advertising campaign could ever have achieved.

  Kimjongilia flowers donated by this tributary foreigner. The relatively small gesture was paid back multiple times.

  The slogans of this propaganda poster from 2007 reveal one priority for North Korea’s government: “Let us quickly advance the modernization
of the light industry. Let us produce a lot of good quality consumer goods.” It displays pharmaceuticals with the logo “PS” (PyongSu). The government picked PyongSu not for political propaganda, but because it legitimately felt that we were, at the time, the country’s model pharmaceutical company—and the only one acknowledged by the World Health Organization of having achieved an international industry standard called Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP).

  Western journalists have continued to write to this day that there are no advertisements to be seen in North Korea. The exception, they often write, are displayed on billboards promoting domestically assembled cars and the Koryo Link, a mobile phone telecom joint venture between the North Korean telecom and the Egyptian Orascom company.

  In 2006 the government-run Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) published a fascinating news item about the newly founded Korea Advertising Company. The group reported that the company, “which is doing commodity and trade advertising activities in a uniform way, makes and sets up advertising mediums of various forms and contents in streets, stadiums and international exhibitions and extensively advertising them through newspapers, TV and internet at the request of local and foreign industrial establishments and companies.” Today, the advertising firm belongs to the Foreign Trade Ministry, and is run by a former student of my pet project, the Pyongyang Business School. No matter how harsh the socialist regime, those journalists should remember that where there are markets, there are advertisements. And by looking at opportunities in the advertising industry, North Korea made quite a leap that signifies deeper market changes.