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having been conceived primarily for the benefit of foreign audiences, its universal-humanist principles—“man is the master of all things,” etc—are too difficult to reconcile with the de facto ideology of paranoid nationalism. The personality cult is not always front and center either; some movies contain only one or two explicit references to the Leader. Much of the country’s visual art may appear completely apolitical to the foreign eye. The North Korean is trained to “read” these works differently. Happiness (Haengbok, 1978), for example, shows a girl asleep in bed, her well-groomed head resting on a lace-edged pillow as she clutches a present too precious to unwrap. While the average American may respond by thinking, “Isn’t she sweet?” the North Korean is meant to think, “Aren’t our children sweet?” and “Aren’t we lucky to live so well under the Leader?” (For the gift is of course from none other.)

Similarly, every act of kindness depicted is meant to demonstrate the unique goodness of the race. When a mother in the historical film Sea of Blood (P’ibada, 1968) skips supper so that her child may eat, much as mothers around the world do every day, the North Korean viewer sheds a tear at the unique intensity of a Korean mother’s love.† The celebration of the race’s selflessness routinely trumps the dictates of realism. In one popular movie a KPA soldier with a shattered leg goes under the knife. He worries that he will be crippled for life, but when he wakes up his leg is fine. Wait: the medical staff around him are hobbling! It turns out that they have donated parts of their own flesh and bone to reconstruct his limb.48

Happiness, 1978

For decades romance was but the spoonful of sugar helping the propaganda message go down. Now that the party must compete with smuggled South Korean videos and DVD’s for public attention, the romantic element has come to the fore, but when one person falls for another, it is usually because the other is such a model citizen. In a television drama broadcast in 2001, an aging bachelor in Pyongyang shows little interest in the young beauty he encounters in a hardware store until he finds out that she has volunteered to work in the same collective potato farm. (Since the launch of the “potato revolution” in the late 1990s, the regime has glorified citizens who relocate to the remote northeastern region where most potatoes are farmed.) He proposes marriage to her that very day, she accepts, and they go off to celebrate with his mother and her aunt. Naturally, no fathers are in sight.49

Lovers are rarely shown even touching each other; the Text draws the line at encouraging adult instincts. Where the Soviet or Chinese hero’s celibacy reflects his total mastery of himself, the North Korean hero’s is the cheerful abstinence of the child race. Special pride is taken in the chastity of the peninsula’s womenfolk, who in historical narratives are shown fending off lecherous foreigners. Even scenes of childbirth are evidently taboo. To be sure, the more “literary” kind of fiction hints at a sensual element:

The two walked side by side on the waterway embankment.… Full of merriment Ch’o’ae walked close at Su’ungi’s side. He felt as if his heart would burst from his ribs. From Ch’o’ae’s slim and firm body, and her soft and gleaming hair, which came down to just below her ears, came a fragrance that chased the smell of dank water far away. Smelling this rich fragrance and feeling her soft body next to his, he walked on, exhilarated. Each was silent, as if trying to hide the excitement bestowed on them by this time together. Only the sound of their footsteps broke the deep silence of the night.50

And Hong Sŏk-chung’s novel Hwang Jin’i (2002), which deals with a famous sixteenth century courtesan of that name, is downright raunchy in parts, but then, more latitude has always been granted to those depicting the decadent, Chinese-influenced “feudal” past. (The book may also have been written with a view to the ROK market.)51

But judging from refugee testimony, North Koreans are no fonder of the