Korea (North): Glorious socialist transformation of Birmingham man as Juche thought conquers imperialism through the great leader’s tofu revolution
To truly understand this week’s Armchair Travels you must start by tuning into the North Korean playlist. The titles are enough to fill you with revolutionary fervour, especially hits like “Advancing in Socialism”, “That’s thanks to the leader’s care”, and “Excellent horse-like lady”. They are the perfect background to learning about the hermit kingdom, though if you are more interested in music you may actually like, try this excellent Andy Kershaw radio show, which I originally heard back in the 1990s, and which is less patronising than most anti-North Korean propaganda. For while its true that North Koreans only get to see a skewed view of the world, we must accept that our own world-view is also always biased…
Take the time, for example to read this week’s excellent novel “The Friend” and you are welcomed into a country more complex than the “mass hunger, tyrannical ruler, insane law, top-level choreography” version of North Korea we are used to seeing. It is, admittedly, an anti-divorce novel, written to remind the populace that married couples should stay together for the good of the nation. But it does this in a surprisingly gentle and reasoned way! It is the story of a judge deciding whether to grant a divorce to a hard working factory man and his wife whose singing skills have taken her from the factory floor to the stage. To make his judgement, he delves into the history of human relationships, including analysing why marriage is so often appalling for women. The book challenges the Disneyfied version of love at first sight and relationships that last without hard work and struggle. I loved experiencing nuanced propaganda, which is so much more convincing than the shouty “If the US imperialist aggressors stupidly attack us, they will be severely punished” kind.
This week’s film Comrade Kim goes flying was much the same… This time a star coalminer who is also an incredible acrobat heads to the capital Pyongyang and, after experiencing hardship and arrogance, achieves the coveted triple somersault after her co-coalminers remind her that “the working class can do anything!” You can read about the film here, but you should really just watch it, just to spend a couple of hours in a world where everyone smiles, the streets are clean and people achieve their dreams. So is it propaganda? According to the filmmaker Bonner, this is the first North Korean film that ISN’T propaganda as “A young woman strives to achieve her goal, and it’s for herself rather than the greater glory of the state, and without the mystical beneficence of the Great Leaders.” The second film I watched “My brothers and sisters in the North,” also does a great job of showing another side to this much maligned country… which is not to say that the problems aren’t real, just that it is easier to remove the scales from your own eyes than that of a Communist nation.
North Korea is so regularly and badly affected by famine that vegetarianism is quite normal. One of their favourite dishes Injo-gogi-bap was created during the 1994–1998 famine when meat was particularly hard to find. It is basically tofu sheets filled with rice and flavoured with pickled cucumber and chillies. There are few ways to do it, and I tried them all! Delicious. Nicer even than Naengmyeon, cold noodle soup, which I made with some difficulty, based on this recipe and some stock I found at my local Korean supermarket.
Not surprisingly, it was not possible for me to find North Korean beer or soju for less than £300 and so I had to resort to South Korean versions, a shame, which I will hopefully one day put right. For those who don’t know, soju means burned liquor and is kind of like a low-alcohol rice vodka. I chose Hallasan 17% which includes bamboo tea and volcanic water — it was made on Jeju Island, in South, South Korea — where I will head to now!
