Pyongyang: A journey in North Korea is Guy Delisle (a Quebecois, now living in France) graphuc memoir of two months spent working in the North Korean capital for a French animation company outsourcing work to the North Koreans. It is a fascinating look at North Korea and its regime. While he is not in NK for very long, Delisle observes the expat community of NK, and the dictatorial regime's forceful propaganda machine. All foreigners seem to be kept in a very closed bubble constantly watched by their assigned guides. The author takes a copy of Orwell's 1984 and observes the parallel. It is apt because the regime seems to permeate in all aspects. It is the most closed country in the world, and it is rather frightening the extent in which the whole population seems to live in a bubble themselves. Without any outside media and severe limited ability to travel and educate themselves, many seem to genuinely believe the personal cult and god-like presence of the Kims even if one of them is dead. The cult of personality is rather creepy. Though there is little choice, but to pretend to believe because the dictatorship has some of the worse human rights violations globally. A lot of what the memoir describes is not creepy. Nothing can last forever, and the NK regime certainly won't. It will be interesting when that happens since the country is in a time warp. It's like how people go to Cuba and say it looks the 1950s, but North Korea and its population seem to be still in the 50s since they are limited in communications, food security, electricity, industrialisation and manufacturing. Since the culture is protected is by the government, art is monitored. This is especially significant in that all its neighbours are accelerating at a very fast rate in the globalisation. Having read on North Korea a bit from my studies, I would recommend further reading of the subject if you are intrigued after this short, but interesting read.
Showing posts with label Delisle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Delisle. Show all posts
Monday, July 7, 2008
Pyongyang review by Athena
Pyongyang: A journey in North Korea is Guy Delisle (a Quebecois, now living in France) graphuc memoir of two months spent working in the North Korean capital for a French animation company outsourcing work to the North Koreans. It is a fascinating look at North Korea and its regime. While he is not in NK for very long, Delisle observes the expat community of NK, and the dictatorial regime's forceful propaganda machine. All foreigners seem to be kept in a very closed bubble constantly watched by their assigned guides. The author takes a copy of Orwell's 1984 and observes the parallel. It is apt because the regime seems to permeate in all aspects. It is the most closed country in the world, and it is rather frightening the extent in which the whole population seems to live in a bubble themselves. Without any outside media and severe limited ability to travel and educate themselves, many seem to genuinely believe the personal cult and god-like presence of the Kims even if one of them is dead. The cult of personality is rather creepy. Though there is little choice, but to pretend to believe because the dictatorship has some of the worse human rights violations globally. A lot of what the memoir describes is not creepy. Nothing can last forever, and the NK regime certainly won't. It will be interesting when that happens since the country is in a time warp. It's like how people go to Cuba and say it looks the 1950s, but North Korea and its population seem to be still in the 50s since they are limited in communications, food security, electricity, industrialisation and manufacturing. Since the culture is protected is by the government, art is monitored. This is especially significant in that all its neighbours are accelerating at a very fast rate in the globalisation. Having read on North Korea a bit from my studies, I would recommend further reading of the subject if you are intrigued after this short, but interesting read.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea - J's Review
Delisle does a wonderful job of capturing the bizarreness of life in a totalitarian country, one that lives almost outside of the world, shut off from the west, and especially its sworn enemy, the United States. He describes a bleak, strangled society where the people live in such poverty that up to 1/3 of the population receive food from foreign aid, the average person works 6 days a week, and on the 7th 'volunteers' to do labor for the betterment of society, such tasks as picking up garbage, painting bridges, watering vast lawns with buckets of water. This is a society best described as cult-like, where the very calendar begins at the time of the glorious leader's (Kim Il Sun, Kim Jong Il's father) conception. (Wiki says the calendar starts with his birth, not conception. Not sure which is correct.)
Delisle's time away from work was spent being chaperoned around the city, as foreigners are not allowed to be in public without translators and guides who ensure they see only what they are meant to see, hear only what they are meant to hear. There is one radio station, no internet, no TV. Voices over loudspeakers blast out propaganda to encourage workers in their daily toil, everyone is required to wear pins of the glorious leader or his son, and small infractions can cause a person to 'disappear '.
I found this book to be very interesting as a glimpse into such a repressed and strange country, but there wasn't much of a story there, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I did Persepolis, which had a much more narrative quality to it. If you're interested in getting a peek into a mysterious country that very few foreigners see, I would recommend this book as an easy primer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
