The Cleanest Race - B. R. Myers [48]
A poster commemorating the Sinch’ŏn massacre of October 1950 “Let us not forget the grudge over Sinch’ŏn!”
Above: The iconic photograph of the USS Pueblo crew after their capture in 1968. Below: The poster reads: “If the US imperialist indiscriminately lash out, they will not be able to escape the fate of the USS Pueblo!”
Gloating over the capture of the USS Pueblo in 1968 is more truly felt. History books treat it as the shining highlight of North Korea’s long-running confrontation with the United States. The photograph of the hapless crew with their hands in the air is the single most iconic image of the enemy; there are even postage stamps of it. The short story Snowstorm in Pyongyang (P’yŏngyang ŭi nŭnbora, 2000) contrasts the Pueblo prisoners’ filth and depravity with the purity of the child race. Frequent showers do nothing to alleviate the Yankees’ nauseating stench, so that a KPA soldier finally refuses to go on cutting their hair. 20 In a half-revolted, half-jeering tone, the narrator tells the scandalous back stories of the captured “bastards.” One crewmember, it is claimed, felt so disillusioned by the incestuous goings on in his family that he “began sleeping with whatever women came his way. Tiring of that, he became gay.”21
The Text regards homosexuality as a characteristically American “perversion.” Here one of the Pueblo’s crew pleads for the right to indulge it in captivity.
“Captain, sir, homosexuality is how I fulfill myself as a person. Since it does no harm to your esteemed government or esteemed nation, it is unfair for Jonathan and me to be prevented from doing something that is part of our private life.”
[The North Korean soldier responds,] “This is the territory of our republic, where people enjoy lives befitting human beings. On this soil none of that sort of activity will be tolerated.”22
The US government having apologized for spying, the prisoners are led off. At the same time a snowstorm rages, “as if intent on sweeping the country clean of all the filthy ugly revolting traces” left behind by the Yankees.23
Let us turn now to the Text’s treatment of the ongoing nuclear dispute. Here too the contrast to Soviet propaganda is stark. Where Moscow always professed a respect for international law, the North Koreans reject the notion that a pure race should be bound by the dictates of an impure world. The Text thus cheerfully admits that the DPRK joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985 only to “use” it for the country’s own ends, whereupon it “ignored” or “scorned” the treaty’s stipulations.24 The “diplomatic warriors” of the DPRK’s Foreign Ministry roam the world at will, barging into the offices of frightened officials to make blunt, rude demands. In the following passage from one of the most highly celebrated novels of 1997, Deputy Foreign Minister Mun Sŏn-gyu (a thinly disguised version of Kang Sŏk-chu, who held the title at the time) calls on Hans Blix in Vienna.25
Mun sat down and, before the IAEA Director General could open his mouth, said in English, “I have come to rigorously protest the agency’s discriminatory pressure on us.”
Hans Blix was stunned. They had not even exchanged greetings according to diplomatic custom. This was almost unheard of in international relations. But before he could find words to express himself, Mun protested again.
“How could the agency send us such an unfair agreement? And why do you keep applying pressure on us to sign it?”
“Well, hold on there … this is so sudden … it’s a little.…” Blix seemed to be thinking rapidly. He needed to figure out how best to respond to Mun’s straightforward attack [….]
Mun continued in the same unyielding tone. “Last year the head of our treaty office gave a detailed clarification of our position [….] So why did the agency send