Travels In North Korea

The final frontier in the world when it comes to tourism, North Korea’s forbidden status to foreigners hasn’t stopped historians and graphic novelists documenting what life is like inside the most closed country on the planet.

Currently making my way through Under The Loving Care Of The Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty, Bradley Martin’s monumental history of Kim Il-sung’s creation of the Hermit Kingdom. Martin’s writing style is refreshingly colloquial for a historian, yet it’s evident this is the culmination of decades of research and fascination with the most closed country on the planet. A nation completely insulated from outside contact, perpetually paranoid about the threat of war from “American imperialists”, and, indeed, anyone else, an economy shattered by years of mismanagement and prioritising of endless military expansion – it’s the stuff of 1984 made very, very real. The recent floods which have supposedly killed thousands but which cannot be verified, and the almost yearly famines that kill hundreds more, indicate the increasing pressure on the regime which some have speculated may collapse imminently.

North Korea’s time capsule quality and the eerie regimentation and subjugation of its people has made it an unlikely tourist attraction, with a steady trickle of tourists going to the country each year to witness somewhere that is undeniably different from the rest of the world and wholly untouched by Western consumerism. I idly looked up hotels in Pyongyang on TripAdvisor.com, where readers review the hotels they’ve stayed at, and to my surprise I found a a solitary hotel review already on there! It’s from someone visiting on business as far as I can work out, and it’s strange to think of people going to North Korea on business at all, so sealed off does the country seem.

However, when I took a break from Martin’s history book I read Guy Delisle’s graphic novel Pyongyang, which is a real life account of his two month stay in the North Korean capital as an animation supervisor. Much of the animation work in the States is subcontracted to both South and North Korea, who can naturally do it far cheaper. Clearly the North Koreans must do it for almost nothing – more’s the pity for people like Delisle, who’ve seen their entire industry outsourced overseas and have to spend months away from their families to follow the work across the world. Delisle’s loss is our gain, though, as his graphic novel beautifully captures the sheer oddness of being a Western guest in North Korea, the near total confinement to his hotel, the almost impossibility of getting his Korean minders to communicate straightforwardly, the continual brainwashing about the Great Leader and Dear Leader all around him – Delisle captures it all in short, sharp black and white illustrations. He makes little attempt at analysis or political commentary as asides to telling the story of what it was like to be there – and the absence of any heavyhanded moralising makes the novel all the more effective. There are some great moments of humour too and Delisle is genuinely curious to try and learn about his hosts’ country, but can never get past the facade of worship for the Great Leader. I only wish he’d added a coda showing his journey home and trying to explain his trip to his wife and kids – the jolt of returning to normality would have been an interesting ending.

I imagine if someone offered to send me to North Korea I’d go out of sheer curiosity, but I also imagine it would be a profoundly unsettling experience that, beyond the kitsch of revolutionary culture and the cartoon ideas of villainy to which Kim and his cronies are often reduced, would only hint at the tragedy that’s befallen the North Korean people for the last half century and seen the Korean peninsula ripped in two.

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