The Cleanest Race - B. R. Myers [45]
Friendly nations such as Laos are therefore presented almost exclusively as tributary states. Their main function in the Text is to be described as hosting Juche study conferences, sending eulogies to the Leader, congratulating the DPRK on important anniversaries, and so on. China remains a unique case inasmuch as the main news media describe it in favorable terms (albeit with virtually no coverage of Chinese life) without misrepresenting it as looking to Pyongyang for inspiration and guidance. Nor are visits from Chinese leaders and diplomats described, as all other visits from foreigners are, in terms of servile pilgrimages. Since the end of South Korea’s munificent Sunshine Policy in 2008, the propaganda apparatus has devoted unprecedented space and time to celebrating the Beijing-Pyongyang alliance, even if the growing scale of Chinese investment in the DPRK remains a taboo topic.
But no amount of economic and military aid can earn a foreign country the sort of good will that extends to parts of the Text intended exclusively for domestic consumption. While Chinese visitors to the war museum in Pyongyang are shown exhibits acknowledging their country’s enormous sacrifice, locals are taken on another route where they see and hear no mention of it. A similar approach marks treatment of the DPRK’s neighbor to the north-east. Visits from Russian delegations and military choruses enjoy pride of place on the nightly news, while in less prominent sources of propaganda the USSR, for all its decades of patronage, is looked back on with contempt. Khrushchev is denounced as a “traitor,” one of the “fake communists” who betrayed world socialism.1 In a historical novel, Kim Il Sung chuckles about how he learned Soviet secrets by getting Brezhnev drunk.2 There are frequent (and for the foreign reader unsettling) sneers about how the USSR collapsed “without firing a shot.”3
Typical of the disdain shown even to the friendliest foreigners is a panoramic painting of a procession of exultant visitors to 1989’s Pyongyang World Youth Games.4 Whatever direction they happen to be looking in, their faces are all partly obscured by a sinister shadow. A fat Caucasian woman wears a low-cut blouse, while a few African women sport what appear to be halter-tops: even in today’s DPRK such clothing is considered indecent. Here and there, unsavory-looking men show long sideburns and denim, more signs of Western decadence. The only well-groomed and attractive person in view, and the only one whose face is evenly lit, is the Korean guide—a girl, naturally—who leads the way in traditional dress. There are no Koreans in the procession proper; the pure race must be kept apart.5 On the rare occasions in the Text when foreigners and locals meet, the former employ highly respectful, sometimes obsequious Korean, while the latter respond informally as if to subordinates.6 Real fraternity between the pure and the impure is impossible; the DPRK’s so-called Friendship Museum contains only gifts given by foreigners—“offered up,” as the Text always puts it—to the Leaders.7
While the Text strongly implies that all foreigners are inferior, and occasionally criticizes the Jews’ influence on world affairs, it subjects only the Japanese and Americans to routine vituperation.† As might be expected, the “Japs” (oenom) feature mainly in accounts of the colonial era. In contrast to Soviet depictions of the Germans in World War II, the Text does not distinguish between colonial-era Japanese according to class; all are inherently rapacious. It follows that they have no right to humane treatment. In this scene from a classic novel of the 1950s, one of Kim Il Sung’s guerillas exacts retribution on an unarmed prisoner.
Kǔmch’ŏl could feel his bitter heart begin to open, the heart that could only open at the sight of Japs’ blood.… The Jap’s neck glistened greasily like a pig’s. When Kǔmch’ŏl saw it the fire in his breast raged intensely.… He yanked