Sunglasses in NK Fiction: Symbol of Badassery or Overwork?

The propaganda video promoting North Korea's latest missile launch has caught a lot of attention in the "North Korea is so weird" media circles. In this video sunglasses play a major role: Kim Jong Un not only wears them, but removes them in dramatic fashion at a climactic moment.

This reminded me of a passage I recently came across in the 2015 novel "Shine the Dawn" [ 아침은 빛나라 ] by Rim Bong Ch'ŏl. Part 1 Chapter 4 follows the adventures of Ryonha Machine Tool Factory engineer Ri Jŏng and senior researcher Ahn Shi Hak as they travel to Singapore to demonstrate their new CNC technology at a trade show.

Strolling the streets one evening after dinner,  Ri spotted a stall selling some sunglasses of the sort gangsters wear [깽들이 끼고다니는것과 비슷한 안경], and he bought a pair. Ahn Shi Hak's eyes widened, wondering if his companion had such proclivities.

When Ri showed up the next day wearing the glasses to an interview, Ahn fumed, saying it was inappropriate for a diplomatic venue...

It was only during Ri’s meeting with a Singaporean broker that Ahn got a vague sense for why Ri had stubbornly insisted on wearing those sunglasses. His counterpart was wearing the same kind. They were glazed like the kind a blind man wears, and gazing into them gradually one’s opponent would be overcome with anxiety. It was like stepping on the bottom of an unknown well.

To compare it to a battle, it was like one person lying down in a trench with only his gun poking out, while the opponent was up on the parapet shooting with his whole body exposed. Their counterpart, whose company had branches in various parts of Southeast Asia specializing in electronics and machinery trade, had clearly done his research on them.

The salesmen and the foreign broker get down to business. At a key moment in the negotiations, Ri whips off his sunglasses and coolly stares down his opponent. The move has the desired effect, throwing the broker off guard.

From the above, it would seem North Koreans, like South Koreans and Japanese, have an impression of sunglasses [색안경] as something that only foreign gangsters wear. 

This may seem puzzling given that the leader Kims - and only the leader Kims - are often shown wearing sunglasses. Actually Kim Il Sung never wore them, but Kim Jong Il began wearing them from the 1990s (reportedly for medical reasons). This excerpt from the 2002 novel Successor by Paek Nam Nyong gives some idea of how this was interpreted domestically. In the novel's first chapter, which takes place in the 1970s, KJI has just returned from a guidance tour of remote Chagang Province, and his father was waiting up for him:

   The Great Leader walked back over to the sofa where Comrade Kim Jong-il was sitting and stopped.  “Take off your glasses.”

  "Hmm?... "

  Comrade Kim Jong-il hesitated for a moment and then took off his tinted lenses [연한 색안경].

  “Your eyes are bloodshot. You’re not in good health. You knew I’d be worried, so you put on sunglasses.”

  “It’s nothing.”

    The Great Leader could not take His loving eyes off Comrade Kim Jong-il. “It’s been ten years since you started working with the Party Central Committee…” When the Great Leader thought of Comrade Kim Jong-il working so hard to lighten His burden, dedicating so much energy to pulling the locomotive of the Party and revolution without rest, His eyes welled up with tears.

I haven't seen any overt references to KJU wearing sunglasses in stories, but he appears with them in domestic media images often enough. This 2016 article recounts how KJI wore sunglasses to conceal his bloodshot eyes and prevent people from worrying about him, and the implication may be that KJU now suffers the same problem.  

With these few exceptions, sunglasses are generally only worn by foreign characters (often associated with looking "like a mafia boss" [ 마피아두목처럼]), or occasionally by blind people.