North Korean literature
Reading is a popular pastime in North Korea, where literacy and books enjoy a high cultural standing, elevated by the regime's efforts to disseminate propaganda as texts.
Koreans viewed Russian literature very differently from Western audiences, searching for Confucian undertones of social engineering.
He accomplished this by denouncing all things "foreign" in literature in a speech entitled "On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work".
[9] According to B. R. Myers, the work of Cho Ki-chon in the late 1940s exemplifies particular traits of the early cult of personality of Kim Il-sung built upon Soviet Marxism–Leninism and bloc conformity.
[10] While Cho's Kim Il Sung is a brilliant strategist who has masculine qualities like strength and intellect, in Han's works he embodies traditional Korean virtues of innocence and naivety having "mastered Marxism–Leninism with his heart, not his brain".
[12] According to "court poet" and now defector Jang Jin-sung, prior to 1994, when Supreme Leader Kim Il Sung was alive, the art of the novel was preeminent.
[3] The DPRK Ministry of Culture [ko] promoted North Korean literature in Russia and China during the Cold War era.
Among the novelists translated into Russian and Chinese were: Works published in Choson Munhak [ko], the Korean Writers' Alliance's monthly literary journal, are accessible by subscription abroad.
As a result, North Korean publishing authorities would employ a policy of favoring collective creations of creative teams and withholding the names of individual contributors.
[1] As Ha-yun Jung puts it, "[i]f there is an underground network of dissident writers secretly circulating their writings under the watchful eyes of the Workers' Party, the world has not heard from them yet".
In 2006, Words Without Borders included the works of four North Korean writers, translated into English, in its anthology Literature from the "Axis of Evil".
Lim Hwa-won's short story "The Fifth Photograph" is told from the perspective of a North Korean woman who visits post-Soviet Russia in the early 1990s, and finds a country in a state of moral turmoil for having turned its back on socialism.
The narrator blames insidious American influence for Russia's woes, and emphasises the need for strong ideological commitment in North Korea.
Byungu Chon's poem "Falling Persimmons" evokes the emotional suffering caused by the partition of Korea, and hopes for reunification.
Regardless, most writers remain relatively obscure: their pictures or biographical details are not made known to the reading public and mentions in anthologies and interviews are rare.
Tatiana Gabroussenko describes how, when she interviewed such defectors, she:[1] repeatedly came across experienced school teachers of literature who would claim, for instance, that Na Do-hyang, whose works they once studied and then taught, had allegedly belonged to KAPF (Korean Proletarian Artist Federation), or that New Spring in Seokkaeul was written by Lee Gi-yeong [Ri Ki-yong].
[19] A recurring storyline is the protagonist's initial misunderstanding of a hard-working person as emotionally cold and eventual realisation that hard work is in fact an instance of love felt for the nation.
[22] During the Kim Jong Il era and the economic hardship following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a mystique of work emerged as a main propaganda theme in North Korean novels, which portrayed brave North Koreans who “worked for spiritual enlightenment rather than for material gain.” A prominent example of such novels was Song Sangwŏn's Taking Up Bayonets (MR: Ch’onggŏm ŭl tŭlgo) (2002).
For instance, Rim Hwawon's representative short story, "The Fifth Photo" follows the ordeal of a Russian girl in a post-Soviet world.
One reason for such a technique is that description of nature might be one of the few areas of artistic expression where authors enjoy relative freedom from political constraints.
[33][34] These "escape-from-North-Korea" narratives have sold well in democratic countries as a foil for the "worst kind of government imaginable", emphasizing Orwellian 1984 bizarre aspects.
