New Translated NK Fiction Anthology: Hidden Heroes

Earlier this year, Anthem Press published an anthology of North Korean short fiction selected and translated into English by North Korean literature scholars Immanuel Kim and Benoit Berthelier. Titled Hidden Heroes: Anthology of North Korean Fiction, the book sets out to showcase stories of everyday North Koreans' struggles that were part of the "hidden heroes" theme campaign launched by the Korean Writers' Union in 1980. As Kim & Berthelier describe it in their introduction: "While past heroes basked in fame and glory proportional to their extraordinary deeds, the new hidden heroes humbly worked their mundane jobs and diligently carried out their political duties. They assisted the collective without anyone knowing and yet were presented as essential to the functioning of the country’s socialist system." This movement coincided with something of a renaissance in North Korean literary quality in the 1980s and early 1990s, generating stories far more lyrically expressive and less dogmatic than anything seen on the pages of Chosŏn Munhak today. 

Two of the ten stories included in this book were previously summarized right here on this very blog way back in 2016-17, in two of my earliest efforts: A Shift Manager's Day (a.k.a. "A Day in the Life of a Female Manager") and Neighbors. This seemingly incredible coincidence becomes less incredible when I remember where I found those particular stories - they were both in an anthology of North Korean short stories "Where the Cuckoo Bird Sings" [뻐꾹새가 노래하는 곳] put out by South Korean publisher Sallimtŏ in 1994. Such a publication was possible in the early 1990s, at the height of a renaissance in inter-Korean cultural exchange, but as I recall the publisher was later raided by the NIS and charged with illegally possessing North Korean materials in violation of the National Security Law. A friend in Seoul lent me an old copy, and in the first year of this blog that was one of the few sources of North Korean fiction available to me. I also reviewed "Fragrance of Life" from that same anthology.

Comparing the two anthologies, I see that Kim and Berthelier's selection overlaps with Sallimtŏ on a total of three stories: in addition to the two already mentioned, they also included '행운'에 대한 기대 by Han Ung Bin, which they translated as "Hoping for Luck to Strike". Coincidentally, Sallimtŏ is the same press that in 1995 published a South Korean edition of Paek Nam Nyong's "Friend", the same novel later translated into English and published to great acclaim by Immanuel Kim. Of all the gin joints in all the world...

The editors of "Hidden Heroes" say they made a conscious decision to avoid stories about the leader Kims, as these "would have further reinforced and entrenched preconceptions of North Korean literature as mere hagiographical propaganda when [...] the cult-of-personality genre is only practiced by a few chosen authors and does not constitute the majority of literary production." This may be true if one looks at the totality of North Korean literature from 1945 onward, giving equal weight to each title, and limiting the definition of "Leader hagiographies" to stories that literally feature one of the leader Kims as a speaking character. 

However, not all North Korean literature is created equal. The leader-centric novels of the three "Imperishable" series receive far greater attention, larger print runs on better quality paper with longer-lasting binding, more reprintings, far wider circulation, and greater emphasis in required educational curricula than any other novels. The “few chosen authors” who write Kim stories include all of the most celebrated names in contemporary North Korean literature. Aside from the Imperishable Series novels, short stories published in the monthly journal Chosŏn Munhak featuring the leaders can be up to twice as long as other stories and always come first in the print order. 

Moreover, even stories by lower-ranked authors who cannot portray the leaders directly almost always have a core political message pointing back to the Leader or Party. In this blog, we have seen time and again how lower-ranked authors work around their restrictions by creating a character clearly modeled on the leader who guides the protagonists toward the necessary epiphany, or by having the protagonist find inspiration at a pivotal moment by seeing the Leader's car tracks or recalling one of his famous quotations or listening to an inspirational song mix or orchestra recording sent over by the Leader, etc. 

In addition, it should be pointed out that politics-heavy stories have become more pervasive in the Kim Jong Un era, and the time frame of the selection hints at the difficulty the editors had avoiding such contents. None of the stories included in "Hidden Heroes" are particularly fresh – the newest was originally published in 2009, and most are over thirty years old. Of course, since these ten stories were allegedly selected for their representation of the "hidden heroes" movement, which started in 1980, it is possible that this simply reflects the limits of the movement's lifespan. However, as someone who generally covers more recent output, I assess that the "hidden heroes" theme is still very much alive in North Korean literary fiction today – the difference is that the quality of the prose has declined sharply since the 1990s, and such stories have grown more overtly dogmatic with stronger political messages. As examples from this blog, I could point to "Night Path" (July 2016),"Morning of Departure" (September 2016), and "Our Heavens" (November 2017). 

The editors endeavored to avoid "selecting texts primarily based on their appeal to foreign readers" since this "would have required us to justify a collection of historically and stylistically unrelated works compiled based on the aesthetic criteria of a foreign readership." I am not sure if they entirely succeeded in this regard. The fact that no recent "hidden heroes" stories are included suggests to me that the selections were made for their literary quality at the expense of representativeness. Certainly, the editors of the overlapping Sallimtŏ anthology made no bones about deliberately choosing the highest-quality stories by South Korean standards in order to show off the very best of North Korean short fiction in hopes of fostering a sense of common humanity and respect, while studiously avoiding stories with off-putting political contents. 

I remember how I struggled with those Sallimtŏ stories because of their challenging vocabulary and advanced literary idioms, and how everything got so much easier once I finally got access to the more recent fiction with its simplistic grammar, repetitive vocabulary, and too-proper speech. I also remember showing one of the Sallimtŏ stories to a young North Korean defector friend who was totally blown away by the quality of the writing. She said she had never seen anything like it in her 17 years of actually living in North Korea and reading the officially assigned texts.

Of course, it would do little good to take up time and space translating a bunch of dogmatic ideological stories about the glorious achievements of the Korean Workers Party and its heroic leaders. The editors are correct in saying that to do so would only magnify already well-cemented stereotypes about North Korea. However, I do wish they had included one or two stories from the last decade to show the contrast in quality and give a better sense of the current status and trajectory of North Korean fiction. Doing so would also help insulate them from prickly "well-actually" critiques by negative nellies like myself. As it stands, readers are likely to come away from this anthology with an unrealistically rose-tinted impression of contemporary North Korean literature that overlooks the very real problems that come with putting an all-powerful political party in charge of all literary production.

Anyway, it was fun for me to look back on these stories that I had wallowed through back when I was still really struggling with the grammar and idioms of literary North Korean language. I remember back then I had a thing about not gendering characters based solely on their names or professions, which meant I had to wait for the story to use a term like "sister" "husband" "그녀" etc or else hunt for clues in speech patterns. It seems that Kim & Berthelier's translations support all of my guesses. I screwed up some of the textile-weaving vocabulary in "A Shift Manager's Day", but otherwise I think I did all right. I will say I found the experience of reading North Korean literature in English to be much more boring than doing it in Korean, sort of like doing a Monday crossword after you've gotten used to the Saturday ones. Which makes me feel a lot more sympathy for the poor people who have to read this stuff in their native language.

Personally my favorite part of the book, and probably its most useful contribution for most researchers, is the short introductions preceding each story. These give important context about the real socio-political issues at play behind each story as well as biographical details about the authors and their career paths. I only wish there were citations for some of those biographical details, so one could know for certain if they are relying on official North Korean publications or more independent sources, like the exile interviews in Tatiana Gabroussenko's Soldiers on the Cultural Front. We have seen before how official North Korean biographies can exaggerate or omit important details, sometimes to emphasize an author's humble and "ordinary" origins, and sometimes for no clear reason.

Full disclosure: Immanuel Kim is a friend of mine, and Benoit Berthelier was an early supplier of many stories reviewed on this blog.