The Cleanest Race - B. R. Myers [29]
While the party does not explicitly deny the existence of conflict inside the republic, it contends that conflict is not “typical” of North Korean life and therefore unworthy of depiction. There are few of the harsh clashes between rural and urban values, older and younger generations, chauvinist husbands and progressive wives, etc, that were so common in Soviet propaganda. Though divorce and light spousal abuse have ceased to be taboo topics, they are attributed to such innocuous reasons as one partner’s excessive dedication to the workplace: “You only know about production, not about living,” complains the wife in the TV drama Family (Kajǒng, 2001).54
Mid-level bureaucrats are sometimes criticized as a social class, but individual North Koreans are never singled out as true villains. (The media, for their part, never report on crimes committed in the DPRK; since the 1960s, victims of political purges have simply become non-people.) There are, however, plenty of mildly flawed individuals to be found in narratives: girls who spend too much time on their appearance, say, or men who “abandon” their mountain village to chase dreams of life in the city. Being Korean and thus inherently virtuous, these characters are easily reformed. A soldier who fails to sweep the floor of his tent sees that a comrade has done the job for him—and bursts into tears of repentance. (This plot device is now so stale that even Kim Jong Il has complained about it.)55 As a result, a serene and idyllic quality attaches to most portrayals of contemporary life. Depictions of the food shortage treat it, as we shall see in a later chapter, as a period of dramatic belt-tightening that is now over and done with. When storytellers want to criticize downright illegal or subversive activity they must resort to fables or cartoons with animal figures. (This is one reason why the North’s animation industry is so advanced.) A warning against fleeing to China, for example, is expressed as a tale of a squirrel who ventures too far abroad.56
The lack of conflict makes North Korean narratives seem dull even in comparison to Soviet fiction. Rather than try to stimulate curiosity about what will happen next, directors and writers try to make one wonder what has already happened. Films introduce characters in a certain situation (getting a medal, say), then go back and forth in time to explain how they got there.57 Nowhere in the world do writers make such heavy use of the flashback. But we should beware of assuming that people in the DPRK find these narratives as dull as we do. The Korean aesthetic has traditionally been very tolerant of convention and formula. (South Korean broadcasters rework the same few soap-opera plots every year.) According to refugee testimony, however, most North Koreans prefer stories set either in the “Yankee colony” or in pre-revolutionary times, with real villains and conflict.
The country’s favorite movie, by all accounts, is The Flower Girl (Kkot’ p’anǔn ch’ǒnyǒ, 1972), which was filmed a few years after the staging of a “revolutionary opera”—allegedly penned by Kim Il Sung in his youth—under the same title.† The virginal heroine’s white-bloused form graces the republic’s currency, and she is routinely invoked by bachelors as the kind of woman they want to marry. (Some credit for the character’s appeal must go to the beautiful Hong Myŏng-hŭi, who acted the part while still a teenager.) Set in the colonial era and filmed in nightmarish