As we have seen before, North Korean literary works can sometimes be unintentionally humorous. However, there are also certain works that are intentionally labeled as "satire" [풍자] by the Party's own publishers. Stories and poems with the "satire" label are rare in North Korean literary magazines nowadays, but they appeared with some regularity in the early 2000s, often lampooning the US president, like this poem and this story previously reviewed.
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"Sense of Civilization" [문명감각] by Kim Ch'ŏng Nam was published as a satirical short story [풍자단편소설] in Chosŏn Munhak in August 2000. It tells the tale of a well-heeled South Korean couple who try a little too hard to imitate Americans, with tragicomic results. The thrust of story's humor is aimed at a certain type of South Korean elite in the Northern imagination, but along the way it also reveals some prevailing attitudes about marital dynamics, masculinity, aesthetic beauty, cosmetic surgery, globalization, and what it means to "look American."
The protagonists are Paek Sŏng-dal, a Harvard-educated South Korean Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and his wife Mun Myŏng-suk. They enjoy a comfortable elite lifestyle, driven around in a black Ford and living in the “high-ranking officials’ housing district” [고관촌] in a big house surrounded by barbed wire [철책], with a garden "designed in exactingly American style" and servants to attend to their every whim. Myŏng-suk goes to great lengths to “look just like an American,” which to her means White. She maintains a milky complexion, wears a blonde wig and “the clothes and makeup of an American woman,” speaks exclusively in English wherever she goes, and dotes on her pet dog.
Myŏng-suk is disappointed in her husband, whose career has stagnated for years in various vice ministerial positions. Their plan to improve matters hinges on getting him a spot in the official entourage for the president’s upcoming trip to the US. Once there, he hopes to “actively engage in ‘backstage diplomacy’ with influential figures in US politics, paving the way for a promotion to the ministerial level or higher.” Myŏng-suk promises: “If you go to America as part of the ‘President's’ entourage, I'll even get a nose job to look just like any American woman and help you with your work there.” |
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The couple’s other big concern lately has been getting their beloved daughter Alice accepted into a certain ballet school in America, but they’ve just received the crushing news that she was rejected in the final round. The school's rejection letter stated that she “came up short on the entrance exam and personality test”. But Paek still thinks they can work something out once he wins that coveted spot in the president’s entourage.
Paek has been firmly under his wife’s heel since they met as students at Harvard. People at work have taken to calling him "Madame's Shadow" [마담의 그림자] and "Wife's Manservant" [처의 노복]. One time he answered the phone with such flustered servility (“Yes… I see… I understand… I’ll get right on it!”) that everyone assumed it was the president calling, but it turned out to be his wife. |
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Tall and elegant, Myŏng-suk even competed in a national beauty pageant but lost because her nose was slightly too small. She scorns her fellow Koreans as “unenlightened creatures” [미개한 <한국>것들] and once caused a mini-riot by loudly proclaiming, “I consider it shameful that I was born ‘Korean’ and not American!” ('Korean' is in scare quotes because she uses the South Korean word 한국, which was not normalized in North Korean usage until 2024).
When Paek arrives home and admits he has not yet secured a spot in the entourage, Myŏng-suk subjects her husband to the sort of withering harangue that Korean dramas excel at, doling out such epithets as "무골충" (spineless) and "멍텅구리" (dunderhead). Rather than arguing back, Paek immediately admits his inadequacy and begs for her help. “Whenever he spoke to his wife, for some reason, Paek always became so humble that even he himself found it absurd. He seemed to have long ago forgotten his pride, his self-esteem, and his own sense of self, without even realizing it.”
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Annoyed by her husband's lack of initiative, Myŏng-su dashes off in search of more appealing company and calls on her friend Thomas at the American Cultural Center. She finds him in his office, entertaining himself watching a flipped-over cockroach struggling on his desk.
“Haha… Mr. Thomas, have you ever tried the ‘Jolly Game’ where you cut the wings off a fly and watch it crawl?”
“I just finished that ‘Game’. The fly died right away with its wings cut off. It was a weak thing. [...] Come, Madam, sit!” Thomas gestured to an armchair by the window. The woman sat with her legs crossed, carelessly revealing pale white legs to above her knees.
"Madam, would you like cognac or whiskey?"
"I'll take the cognac."
"Ah, yes, you like your cognac strong, don’t you, Madam." Thomas chuckled softly, returning with a fancy-labeled bottle and glasses from the cabinet. "Madam, it's strange, but every time I sit with you, it feels like a bright spring day. Like I always say, you're a flower that never wilts!" Thomas gave the blonde a furtive smile as he set the glasses on the table and poured.
After some more flirting and drinking, Myŏng-suk dishes about her recent troubles: her daughter's rejection from ballet school, her husband's fading hopes for promotion, her own sense of helplessness. Thomas listens sympathetically and then makes a quick call to the US embassy, easily securing spots for the couple in the president's travel entourage. Myŏng-suk is incandescent with joy, and together they raise a toast to her family's future happiness and "the prosperity of mighty America".
Thomas helps Myŏng-suk schedule a surgery for the very next day at Severance Hospital, selected because it was "founded by an American" and Thomas knows a cosmetic surgeon there, his good friend Dr. John. The following morning, Myŏng-suk and her husband meet with Dr. John to discuss the surgical options.
"Ah, these days, silicone resin is generally used instead of traditional grafting. That's what most of our clients request."
"Then I’ll have the same!" exclaimed the woman, her white nose visibly trembling.
Vice Minister Paek, who had been nodding off beside her, suddenly spoke up. “That’s right! That's the one. If it's what they do in American hospitals, the pinnacle of modern medicine…”
“Understood. We’re decided on silicone resin then. But the most important thing is the proportions, that is, how much to lift the nose and enlarge it in proportion to the current facial shape, for the best aesthetic effect… Madam, that’s up to you!” Dr. John concluded in a workmanlike manner, scrutinizing the woman’s face like a portrait artist contemplating a subject.
“Well, I’ll leave that to the esteemed Dr. John. I simply ask that you make me look exactly like those American women. That’s all I want!”
Myŏng-suk orders her husband to skedaddle back to work as she is prepped for surgery. The procedure is painful but successful. Afterward, she cannot stop admiring herself in the mirror: "Lustrous blonde hair, long eyelashes, a large nose rising high from a milky white face… the unmistakable image of an American woman."
Paek bolted up as if smacked with a rolling pin, still holding his cup, and stared at her bewildered. "What's with you all of a sudden? You know full well I spray world-famous French cologne over my whole body every day..."
"Then why do you stink worse and worse lately?!" the woman tossed her well-groomed blonde locks in disgust.
"Huh, I dunno... Did this all start after you had the nose job?"
"Ah, now I get it..." Paek crowed as if he'd made some kind of significant discovery, taking a satisfied look at the woman's prominent nose. "This is excellent proof that your nose has now become a perfect American woman's nose!"
Dr. John examines her and discovers that her surgical incision has become badly infected, to the point that the tissues inside her nose are actually rotting away. "Madam, why didn't you come see me before it got to this point?" he demands. "Well, I simply trusted in modern American medical science," she wails in reply.
The trip to America is off; she needs emergency restoration surgery. Thomas hastily assures her that she is still welcome to visit America anytime, but he cannot seem to get away fast enough. Before the couple can even absorb this horrific turn of events, they get another shock: an urgent telegram [지급전보] informs them that their daughter in America has committed suicide. This triggers Myŏng-suk to have a psychotic break.
The story ends with Paek collapsing from a cerebral hemorrhage as his hallucinating wife raves: "Ahaha, we've finally arrived in America, the America we've missed for so long... Ahahaha, darling, you were right! The moment we entered America, that disgusting, putrid smell vanished, and now I feel so refreshed... Oh, here's our daughter running towards us. Hey, Alice! Alice!"
In the Year 2000
It's important to take the timing of this story into account. Published just two months after the historic leadership summit between Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong Il, it was a heady, optimistic time for inter-Korean relations in which various cultural, economic, and infrastructure cooperation plans were being mapped out. Aside from the summit itself, many other meaningful inter-Korean exchanges took place in that era, including joint concerts, reunions of separated families, joint development of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, Mt. Kumgang tourism, annual "unification festivals" in Pyongyang from 2001-2007, numerous exhibition sporting events on both sides, and even, in 2005, an Inter-Korean Writers’ Conference [민족작가대회] in Pyongyang where North and South Korean literary writers got to mingle for the first (and sadly last) time.
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| North and South delegations singing the unification song at June 2000 summit banquet (src) |
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| South Korean Kim Hun (left) and North Korean Nam Dae Hyŏn emotionally reconnect at the 2005 Inter-Korean Writers’ Conference. They were once elementary school classmates in Seoul, and both became celebrated novelists on opposite sides (src) |
As these various unprecedented projects were being set in motion, for Pyongyang's elites 2000 would have been a year full of complicated and uncomfortable emotions, as many of them had their first close encounters with significant numbers of mid-level South Korean officials, administrators, investors, event planners, and other visitors. Even with the authorities doing their level best to control interactions and stick to the script, there would no doubt have been some unpredictable moments of cultural dissonance.
Many South Korean attendees, particularly at the earlier joint concerts, expressed dismay at the profound cultural and linguistic differences they observed. Over five decades of division, both sides had changed as they moved within different foreign cultural spheres on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain. Exacerbating the problem, propaganda on both sides had been stubbornly promoting an exaggerated vision of common inherited traits and unbreakable fraternal bonds, which was a good strategy for restoring goodwill after so much bloodshed and hostility, but at the same time raised untenable expectations for a smooth reintegration. Some South Korean commentators at the time lamented that the North Korean culture on display seemed more Chinese or Russian, their dance and theater performances confusing or even offensive bastardizations of Korean traditional forms. There must have been similar reactions going in the opposite direction on the other side. To the North Koreans, the Southerners must have seemed intolerably Americanized.
American Cultural Center
The inclusion of the American Cultural Center [서울주재 미국문화원] is interesting and, if taken literally, sets the time frame of the story back quite a bit. As the pro-democracy movement got more intertwined with anti-US sentiment after the Kwangju Massacre, the ACC became a focal point for student activism and featured in some of the more violent clashes of the 1980s. There were arson attacks on the ACCs in Kwangju and Pusan in 1980 and 1982 respectively, a deadly bombing at the one in Taegu in 1983, and the Seoul ACC was occupied for a four-day student sit-in in 1985. That building, which seems to be the one described in the story, was shuttered from 1985 and repurposed in 1990.
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| Student sit-in at the American Cultural Center in Seoul, May 1985 (src) |
I won't speculate about why the author would choose to name this institution, or what North Korean readers are expected to make of it. But certainly any South Korean radical leftist worth their salt would recognize the name, and probably wonder why it is depicted as if still operating 15 years after its very prominent demise.
Cultural aesthetics of noses
The real quote from 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal is "The nose of Cleopatra: if it had been shorter, the whole face of the earth would have changed." Long noses were considered attractive in Cleopatra's time, so what Pascal meant was that if Cleopatra had been slightly less attractive due to a smaller nose, she might not have seduced Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.
Much like those ancient Romans, many South Koreans have a clear and outspoken preference for "high" (i.e. big but straight) noses, which can be hard for some Westerners to reckon with. This blogger has been the unhappy recipient of many "compliments" from strangers about my own gigantic schnoz over the years, in both Japan and South Korea.
Here are some real South Korean rhinoplasty advertisements to give you the idea of what is desired:
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Additional Links
For more examples of "officially sanctioned humor" in authoritarian dictatorships, check out this excellent 2015 paper which gives side-by-side analyses of works from Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia: "Laughing Out Loud: 'Official' Humour in Three Dictatorships" (https://www.jstor.org/stable/43917314)
