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 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" "그 녀자" etc or else hunt for clues in speech patterns. It seems that Kim & Berthelier's translations support all of my guesses. 

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.

North Korean Literature in the News!

This past year has been a really rewarding one for us here at North Korean Literature in English. After years of toiling in obscurity, we are finally starting to see some international attention brought to this project.

Src: Politico

First, I have been able to reach out to several individuals – diplomats, reporters, and retired US military – who have actual named roles in North Korean historical novels. All have reacted with bemused chagrin to the translated excerpts I showed them, but after getting over the initial shock, they have really helped me to get a sense of the real historical circumstances behind the events and personalities depicted in the stories.

One such person is former CNN journalist Mike Chinoy, who has made numerous reporting trips to North Korea and was with the first American news team to broadcast live from Pyongyang. He was so amused to learn that he had a role a North Korean novel, he wrote an article about the experience which posted on CNN.

Then, last month I was able to get a portion of novelist/defector Kim Ju-song's memoir published in The Dial, with my own translation. Part of the excerpt covers his job at the Korean Writers' Union and their locked-up collection of forbidden foreign literature, which I previously blogged about. Kim's is one of the best-written defector memoirs I've ever read, and it really sheds light on the inner workings of North Korea's system of state-run literary production. I'm hoping this exposure will make it easier for us to find a publisher to translate the whole thing into English. 

Forbidden Titles from Foreign Lands: Nazis, First Ladies and Fidel

In an earlier post, I introduced Kim Ju-song's memoir on writing fiction for the North Korean Writer's Union. In his book, he described a secret stash of Western literature kept at the KWU offices where he worked for North Korean writers to reference.

I was recently able to contact Kim Ju-song and get more details on this mysterious "100-copy collection" (100部図書). He sent me a few precious images that he had, showing cover art and a few preface pages. He writes, "These are some books from the 100-copy collection. These kinds of restricted materials are also available to Party officers and various Party organs such as State Security (FBI) and Public Security (police)... These images came from a certain party branch office."

According to Kim, most of these books are translations of existing books published in other countries; some are compilations of several books into one volume. The cover art seems to be original to North Korea. The authors and original titles are never mentioned, but with a little detective work it is often possible to determine what the original text likely was.

"The Nazi Conspiracy"

This appears to be a spy novel disguised as a true account of imperialist intrigue. The Korean preface to this book reads:

   In all of human history, there has never been a war that was not accompanied by a separate, secret war. Secret wars are constantly ongoing, even in so-called peaceful times.
   The secret war known as the 'dark gentlemen's world' is a conventional tool of imperialists, employing all kinds of espionage and intelligence actions enabled by modern technology, with various plots and cunning schemes involving murder, sabotage and arson.
   Through their secret war the imperialists gather information of all sorts – political, economic, military and so on – in order to uncover secrets and corrupt the popular will in pursuit of their military and political objectives.
   'The Nazi Conspiracy' is one such real-world example.
   Today the US-Japan imperialists' secret plots have reached an extreme point.
   In order to confront this, it is more vital than ever that we raise our revolutionary consciousness.
   The editorial division will continue to introduce real-world examples of espionage under the series title 'Secret Wars.' 

"White House Wives"

This book purports to tell about America's First Ladies. I only have the cover, but I like to imagine that perhaps this is where the author of "Enchantment" got the idea that Rosalynn Carter had "Spanish blood" and earned the nickname "ultra-political Rosalynn." It is unclear if it is a translation of a single book or a compilation of several sources.

"Fidel and Religion"

This appears to be a Korean translation of the book "Fidel and Religion," originally published in Spanish in 1986. Communist Cuba's approach to culture and religion offers important insights that would likely be of interest to North Korean Party cadres.

"The KGB and Power"

This is a translation of a KGB defector's memoir. From the Korean preface:

   This volume is a translated and edited version of a book published in Russia. The author was a long-serving member of the Cheka (State Security or KGB), formerly heading the 5th Directorate and serving as 1st deputy director before retiring in the Gorbachev era. In this memoir he looks back on his life in the Cheka organization and offers his own analysis of what caused the once-powerful Soviet Union to collapse and the Soviet Communist Party to fall apart.
   Due to the author's limited political understanding, the book is deficient in many areas, but it still has some value as a reference material.

"Sun Yat-sen"

I have no further information about this book, but it appears to be an autobiography of Sun Yat-sen, China's first modern president and nationalist leader. I can imagine many reasons why information about early China's pre-communist history would be restricted for average North Koreans.

Translator's note: Why are some pronouns capitalized?

In the process of translating North Korean fiction, attempting to capture this complex hybrid of political communication, literature, and religious text, I've been forced to make several editorial choices.

The first was that, since I simply did not have time to translate entire stories, I would simply summarize the boring sections and put greater effort into translating the particularly interesting sections verbatim, taking as much care as possible to faithfully represent the original Korean text. These "faithful representations" are indented to distinguish them from summary text and editorial commentary.

But faithful representation is particularly difficult with certain aspects of Korean that simply do not exist in English. For instance, the use of honorific/humble speech is of particular importance in these stories - Kim Jong Un uses honorific speech so rarely that when he does so it makes a crucial statement about the social status of the individual he is addressing. And yet there is no good way of rendering such distinctions in English.  I have occasionally used parenthetical notes for this purpose.

Text from "Our Heavens"

Another aspect that I deemed too important to ignore was the various titles and ways of addressing the Leaders in the texts - particularly as these change over time. Kim Jong Il, for instance, has by turns been "The Dear Leader," "The Great Leader," and most recently "The General." Kim Jong Un is now usually "The Dear Leader," "The Supreme Commander," or "Comrade Kim Jong Un." But when the author uses a pronoun to represent one of the leaders, it is always "그이" (honorific for "him"). This is one of the key distinctions between South and North Korean; South Korean writing uses "그이" to refer to various people particularly worthy of massive respect, such as famous philosophers, kings and gods. North Korea uses this term exclusively to refer to the Leader Kims.

I decided that the closest (albeit imperfect) English equivalent would be the capitalized "He" used to refer to certain deities in religious texts. Therefore, in the indented verbatim texts, wherever you see a capitalized male pronoun, this indicates that the original Korean used the term 그이.

"The Crow that Passed by" (2017): A nice children's poem about the Trump White House

"The Crow that Passed by" (떠나간 까마귀) is a poem by Ri Wan Gi that appeared in the literary magazine Adong Munhak (Children's Literature) in November of 2017.  It is interesting in that it mentions Trump by name and also references his "Make America Great" slogan (강대한 미국을 만들기). Actually, the phrase could more accurately be translated as "Make a Powerful America" but I think they were aiming for the former. This is my first attempt at translating poetry, and I found it unexpectedly difficult, so apologies for the somewhat stilted language.

Many thanks to @FahySandra for finding this poem in a South Korean archive and sending it to me and @NKResearcher for providing the missing stanzas.

The Crow that Passed by

떠나간 까마귀

Ri Wan Gi

Hearing the delicious rumor 

That at the White House there were some tasty corpses

The crow flew from far away.

Settling on the White House roof

He muttered, "The rumors were true,

The corpse smell is ripe."

He flitted back and forth

"Aha, it’s coming from that window."

The crow settled on a nearby branch. 

Within the room, Trump

was making a rambling speech

to his sycophantic aides:

"To make America great,

We must annihilate Korea through war."

"Eh? War?"

The crow, well over a hundred years old,

Witness to numerous battlefields, 

pricked his ears.

"Mr President! All those bastards

Who opposed your war drive have departed."

At the flunky's words

The man called Mr President screeched even louder

"All those shitheads who resigned from the White House,

One by one - they're all maniacs."

The crow nodded his head,

"Seems there were quite a few 'maniacs' there."

One person stepped forward from the side

And spoke up,

"But Mr President, Congress

Is griping that a war with well-armed Korea

Would bring nuclear catastrophe to American soil.

What a bunch of idiots."

The President trembled with rage

"To make America great,

We must wage war

Against those crazy nonsense-spewing bastards."

At Trumps’ bawling, like the chime of a broken gong,

The crow grimaced

"Ow my ears, such a racket!

Crying war, war…

For real, this president is crazy for war."

Right then the plump fellow 

Jumped up, not wanting to be overlooked.

"Mr President! Korea has tested

H-bomb equipped ICBMs

With complete success

Threatening destruction before the UN General Assembly

How can we patch this up?

Even congressmen are holding anti-Trump rallies;

Such a pain in the butt."

Frothing at the mouth, the President stamped about,

"So those bastards 

Don’t want to make America great!

It’s all the busywork of lunatics."

Meanwhile huge crowds

assembled in the streets

Calling down with Trump, who drives sane men mad;

Screaming: Drag forth lunatic Trump, that walking corpse,

Who has plunged America into crisis and danger

The protest column plunged wildly forward

Toward the White House

Suddenly the crow
Who'd been salivating over the corpse smell
Took offense at the racket
"Pfooey, messing with such a rotten corpse, even I'd go nuts
Much as I do enjoy corpses
The stench of such a demented corpse
It's utterly loathsome
Gack, ptooey!

And so he spread his wings
And flew away
From the house of the crazy old lunatic

"Fragrance of Life": Love among the Scientists of North Korea

"Fragrance of Life" (삶의 향기) is a short story by Jŏng Hyŏn Chŏl (정현철) that appeared in a collection of "Best North Korean Short Stories" published by Sallimteo (살림터) Press here in South Korea in 1994. Incidentally, Sallimteo was investigated in 2000 for violations of South Korea's National Security Law; its chief representative was arrested and numerous "original North Korean documents" were confiscated from his home.

The original story was published in Chosun Munhak in November 1991, and the contents are considerably more literary in character than the stories I've reviewed previously and of less obvious propaganda value. The prose is also much more challenging to my limited reading comprehension abilities, with lots of unfamiliar idiomatic expressions and unusual metaphors. The characters are relatively "ordinary" people, a family of engineers, and there are no appearances by members of the Kim family.

A North Korean couple. Source: KEI

The story is unusual in presenting a more nuanced representation of gender roles in North Korea today that stands somewhat in contrast to the official propaganda. Like most communist states, North Korea has historically boasted about making great advances in gender equality, breaking free of the "feudal vestiges" that still hinder capitalist societies and giving women equal opportunities in the workforce while socializing many of the burdens of childrearing. The reality, as we know from numerous reports, is quite different - this is one of the themes of Dr. Lim's current research.

This story depicts a society still grappling with the challenges of gender equality in the very male-dominated field of engineering. It also illuminates some different views of marriage and the qualities of an ideal partner among the North Korean intellectual class.

The Plot

Ahn Cheon Ju, a successful engineer, returns from a month-long business trip to find his wife waiting at home with some startling news. She shows him a photo she found among their son's things, showing him with a pretty young girl. "It seems Young Hon has a girlfriend," she tells him. He asks her how she can be sure, and she confesses that she came across their son's diary when cleaning his room.

Ahn is nonplussed; just two months ago his son had brusquely rejected the girl he had arranged to introduce to him, the daughter of a colleague. The boy had always been willful; Ahn recalls a time when he tried to get rid of a corn in his foot by digging it out himself with a knife. He came home with a bloody rag around the wound and was roundly scolded about the dangers of infection. Nevertheless soon after that he tried again, this time pouring lye over the wound and ending up in the hospital. When his father asked if he'd learned his lesson, he replied: "Yes, I got rid of the corn, and the lye killed it down to the root."

Ahn asks his wife what she thinks of this match, and she says if Young Hon likes her then she approves. Ahn wonders what happened to the dutiful wife who "followed his lead in everything and never had a contrary opinion."  He quizzes her about this girl, and learns that she apparently works in the same research lab as their son.

This makes Ahn think back to how he met his own wife.  30 years ago, when he was working on his thesis, he spent several months at a provincial machine factory. As a young bachelor who had lost his parents in the war, he relied on the kindness of a young woman, a circuitry tracer living in the factory dormitory,  to assist with the various "trifling tasks of single life" (독신생활에서 제기는 자질부레한 일들). The woman always kindly complied, and over time he developed feelings for her, eventually asking her to come back with him to Pyongyang. As his wife, she had helped edit his papers and illustrate his designs, contributing greatly to his professional success.

Hoping to find a similarly helpful wife for his son, he tried to fix him up with the daughter of a friend, but the boy rejected her. Now he has apparently found a girl on his own, one who might not be any professional help to him and might have her own goals.

   Ahn Cheon Ju was worried. When the boy graduated middle school, he refused to apply to an industrial school where his father could help him, and instead chose machinist's college, rambling on about independence and free will and such. Where did he get this stubbornness from?

 Ahn repairs to his son's room to think, and comes across the diary. A little guiltily, he begins to read it. First he reads about his son's reaction to the date he set him up on.

  Out of consideration for my father's honor, since he already set up a time and place, I had hefted the obligation like a heavy load on my shoulders and agreed to it, so now I had no choice but to meet and talk to her a bit. Of course, as a bachelor I did feel a little bit of curiosity about her.
  To my apologetic greeting that she must be busy, she replied, "Not at all, we had an appointment. And it got me out of volunteer labor constructing the road to unification (통일거리 건설지원사업) for a while," she said with a grin.
  Yet... despite her blunt speech, our conversation was stunted and clumsy.
  As we parted, I suddenly thought to ask something that had been bothering me since I left home. "Comrade, what do you want to do in the future?"
   "Do?"
   "You know, what hopes and dreams do you have?"
   "Oh, you! What would a woman like me ever want to do?" She answered glibly. She didn't even seem to be embarrassed or resentful of her powerlessness to do anything but follow the fate she had been born to as a woman and could not avoid.

Ahn feels that this is all rather silly of his son, expecting a mere girl to have some big life goal.  But the diary continues for several pages on this theme, writing that "blindly obeying and following is not how two people combine into a single cell working for the good of society." (The notion of a "social cell" - 사회의 한 세포 - is a recurrent theme in North Korean writing).

This reminds Ahn of something that happened early in his marriage. Working side by side, one day he absently reached over and knocked some papers off his wife's desk, revealing several brilliantly drawn illustrations underneath; one showed a family picnicking amid an autumn leaves. He asked his wife where these came from, and she replied that she drew them in her spare time. He had been amazed to discover that his wife had this hidden talent that she never spoke of.

Next, he reads about how Young Hon first met his beau, at work. His first invention, an automatic pressure stabilizer, had recently been published and a young chemical lab assistant named Sumi came into his office and rather bluntly pointed out a serious design flaw in his invention. The two work together on the problem late into the evening, and Young Hon learns that she not merely a lab assistant but already in her last year of college. She is also working on an ambitious invention of her own.

Reading the diary, Ahn feels that this is indeed an admirable woman, although he is worried that she has too much of her own ambitions to commit the sacrifices needed to raise a family. He remembers a time when their son was young and often sick, and his wife had to miss too many days of work caring for him. She finally had to quit her job at the art production company (미술창작사) and transfer to the local publication distributor (동 출판물 보급원), which would give her more time. The transfer was only to be temporary, until their son was older, but then after that Ahn needed her help to get his dissertation ready for publication. They kept saying "It's just until next year," but she ended up spending the rest of her working life as a publication distributor.

Disturbed, Ahn decides to step outside for a walk through the snow (snow seems to be a major recurrent theme in North Korean literature). As he walks, he comes across a young couple having a snowball fight. There is a long, extended play-by-play description of this fight, but the takeaway seems to be: young couples today have more fun during courtship than Ahn's generation did.

Next he encounters a work colleague walking with his family of four. He asks what brings them out on such a night, and learns  the wife just completed her doctorate and they are on their way to her commencement ceremony. There is heavy symbolism in the sight of four sets of footprints trailing behind the family through the snow, compared with Ahn's solitary footprints. Ahn suddenly wonders why it never occurred to him to ask his wife to join him on his walk. He ruefully recalls the times his son begged to have a family trip to the museum, and he begged off claiming to be "too busy." He hurries home, and resumes reading his son's diary.

[from the diary] "Every individual has a calling. But women who do not fully devote themselves to achieving their own societal calling, believing that their portion includes their husband's career and honor, and that upon marriage their own hopes and beliefs must meld with their husband's - such women remain as the shame of our era. Even more regrettable is the fact that even now women are expected to obey without question, and such submissive women are praised as 'good wives' by many."

Ahn skips forward several pages, and reads about his son helping Sumi with her invention, gathering materials for her and even nursing her when she falls ill from overwork. As he reads, he gets a clearer picture of how this girl's work is inspiring and worthwhile, and how deeply his son feels for her. Finally, he reads the last entry:

   My father will soon return from his business trip. When he does, what position will he take? Mother has already accepted us.
   My mother, almost unrecognizably changed! From the day she came to Pyongyang as a young circuit tracer to participate in the Technology Revolutionary's Contest and ended up starting a family, she began to change.
   Mother listened to the story of our love and then, as if unburdening all the feelings buried in her heart, exclaimed, "Love her! Help her dreams to come true through your love!"
   This is the true soul of my mother, who never got to achieve her own dreams. Thinking that this was the wish of her own tearful life, my throat tightened up.  In this world there is nothing hotter than a mother's tears, and there is nothing more desperate than a mother's hopes. Ah, love; we humans need it as much as water - no, as much as air - and my mother has been starving for it her whole life!

Reading this, Ahn is overwhelmed at his failure as a husband and a father, and filled with regret for his wife's artistic talent he allowed to go to waste.

Ahn looks up from the diary to see his wife standing quietly in the doorway. "Did you read it?" she asks. "Yes," he replies, and the story ends with the pair looking meaningfully at each other.

Primary Purpose

As mentioned, this story contrasts with the externally-directed propaganda depicting North Korea as an advanced gender-equitable society in which women have transcended their traditional feudal roles. Rather, this story falls into the category of educational propaganda or morality play; by illustrating a social problem (gender inequality) in the household of one of society's most vaunted classes (scientists), it highlights the universality of the problem and urges people to rectify such behavior if it exists in their own homes.

The story also flips traditional Korean notions of elder = teacher and youth = student, as the son turns out to have more advanced social consciousness than his very respectable, highly educated father. It thus retains a perception that society is inevitably making forward progress, as youths embrace more modern (i.e. superior) gender roles within their family structures and in the courtship process.

North Korean Idioms

This story was full of unfamiliar idiomatic expressions and proverbs, many of which could not be found in standard South Korean dictionaries. Thanks to my North Korean students Brian and Jade for helping interpret the following:

아홉 살에는 아홉 동네의 미움을 산다
Literal: A nine-year-old has nine villages' hatred
Meaning: Young people are naturally contrarian and make enemies easily

물에 술 타고 술에 물 탄 것 같다
Literal: Like liquor mixed into water, or water mixed into liquor
Meaning: either way it doesn't matter; Six of one, half a dozen of the other

두알배기 밤알처럼
Literal: Like a pair of chestnuts
Meaning: A well-matched couple

옥으로 만든 등잔이라도 기름을 넣아야 불이 키다
Lit: Even a jade lamp needs oil to light
Meaning: Even someone with great inherent talent needs to work hard to succeed

물은 길을 째는 방향으로 흐르고 호박넌출은 올리는 대로 모양이 잡혀진다
Lit: Water flows down the easiest path, and a pumpkin vine takes shape as it grows
Meaning: People get set in their ways over time.

수수 한 말 실에 꿰는 것보다 힘들다
Lit: Harder than threading a grain of sorghum
Meaning: Very difficult to do

달과 사랑은 둥그래졌다가는 인차 기울어지는 것이다
Lit: Both love and the moon get rounder before falling away.
Meaning: Love ebbs and fades.

I'm not sure if the last one is a North Korean idiom or an invention of the author, but it represents a distinctly Korean sort of imagery.

Finding one's match in North Korea

Ahn recalls the story of how he met his wife:

One evening there was a factory party at which the workers played a version of Blind Man's Bluff, with the men wearing blindfolds and fumbling after the women, who desperately tried to avoid them. It was jokingly tossed about that the pair who caught each other would get married. Ahn suddenly realized he was quite determined to capture the young circuit tracer who had been so helpful to him in his daily chores.

Walking home from the party with her, Ahn got up the nerve to ask her to come back to Pyongyang with him. Startled at the sudden proposal, she remarked, "but.. I'm just a circuit tracer..." To which Ahn replied that that gave him all the more reason. She asked him for some time to think about it, but finally consented.

   The two made a cozy pair. As the saying goes, a good wife is half of the key to happiness. His faithful wife earnestly copied out all of his many papers and textbook manuscripts and acquired various reference materials for his research. Just as behind every man is a good woman, his wife's tireless devotion to supporting his research was the reason he was able to finish his doctorate at such a young age, along with all the other successful inventions he had accumulated since. And they never once had an argument.

He tried to fix his son up with a good wife:

  Ahn had endeavored to find a similar woman for his son to marry. The girl's father had been his friend for many years; he had visited their house many times and been greatly impressed by the parents'  virtuous hearts and the girl's prodigious work ethic. The two fathers had first negotiated amongst themselves. It took his wife's gentle urging, "Your father already promised..." to get the boy to agree out of respect to meet her once, but it ended there.
   It was maddening that he could turn down this very modest and tranquil girl, who could have directly helped her husband's research. It seemed that his son was unprepared for the sacrifices required by a life of scientific research. A scientist has no right to waste precious time on things like a personal life and love...  While he didn't totally approve, there were those like the great scientist Isaac Newton who lived as a bachelor for all of his 85 years, undoubtedly for the purpose of achieving his life's work.  But this boy... from an early age he had been excitable, always begging to go out on picnics or to the theater. ... He was as sensitive as a thermometer, quick to change moods or get emotional. Ahn didn't object to young love, but it would do no good to fall totally head-over-heals and neglect science...

Contrast this with how his son met his girlfriend:

  When my first invention appeared in this month's issue of Invent, the whole research institute came to congratulate me. My lab had been overflowing with raucous celebration all day and finally settled down only around quitting time. I was gazing out the window, savoring the feelings of pride and happiness at my first invention. A knock sounded at the door. Who could it be at this hour?
  There at the door stood a young woman, an assistant from the chemistry lab.  "I came to discuss something with you," she said upon entering.
  "Discuss? What is the problem?" As I spoke the question I noticed she had this month's Invent in her hand.
  "I read about your 'automatic pressure stabilizer.' But if you use a spring activator with the condition of constant exposure to hot steam from a lye reaction, wouldn't the device only function for about one month before breaking down?"
  Ah, of course! I blushed deeply. I hadn't thought of that! I looked at her with gratitude, noticing how her long eyelashes gave her eyes a glimmering light.  What was this comrade's name?  Sumi something? But such a simple thing - I'd been so careless.  I had only focused on the problem of regulating pressure and had given no thought to how long it would last.
  "Thank you, comrade Sumi!"
  It was hard to reconcile the fact that a mere lab assistant had pointed out this flaw. The girl spoke so bluntly without a polite word of congratulations. I had hardly given her a passing though before now, knowing her only as one of the many lab assistants at our institute.
  "So, my thought is..." she continued, revealing several sheets of paper on which she had already drawn up a potential solution. ... She had clearly been working on it all day, ignoring her own duties.
  We debated as the evening wore on, and talked more on the walk home. I noticed her bag was so full of books that the clasp would not shut.
  "Why don't you go to college?" I asked, thinking she was wasted as a mere lab assistant.
  "But I do. I'm in my final year at the factory college."
  "Oh, really?!" I walked slower, hoping to extend our time together. She seemed to feel the same way, as her steps did not quicken. Our silent communion made my heart quicken.
  "I must get this gas-fired heat regulator to work by the end of this year,"  she muttered. So she was the originator of that project, which I had heard much talk about. A gas-fired heat regulator would save tremendous amounts of energy...

From these accounts we can get an idea of what a North Korean might consider a not unusual way to meet one's mate. Of course, fiction often does not reflect reality even in South Korean literature. Judging from this story, apparently North Korean fiction shares the propensity of South Korean dramas to depict couples as getting very far into their relationship - to the proposal stage or even the altar - before they share their first kiss. The two cultures also seem to share the tendency to associate wintry themes with romance - snow fights, ruddy cheeks, writing messages in the snow, lots of flirtation involving scarves, chivalrous offering of coats, etc.

Depictions of Modern Women

In one section I could particularly relate to, Ahn's son describes his girlfriend thusly in his diary:

I picked up her bag. It was heavy. This book bag went with her everywhere throughout the day. Most girls her age swagger around with little purses clutched in their hands or hanging from a shoulder... But she carried this shapeless, ugly brown bag all throughout the year, filled not with cosmetics but with books. It contains not just her day planner but all her beautiful dreams of the future. No wonder it's heavy, no wonder it makes her shoulder sag and ruins her posture; but she doesn't seem to notice the burden and focuses only on her research and studies, day and night. How could I not love such a bright flame of a girl,  what kind of person would I be if I failed to win her...

The Mission: Interpreting North Korean fiction for a foreign audience

Greetings and welcome! This site was created to increase awareness and understanding of North Korean state-produced fiction, an important element in the country's socialist education and myth-creation system.

The idea is that I will read as much as my ability and time permits, and post my own summaries here for the benefit of English-speaking audiences who would otherwise be unable to access this linguistically challenging but fascinating literature. I will provide translations of short excerpts of particularly interesting passages as well as summaries and analyses of broader themes, focusing on short stories due to unavoidable time limitations.

It is not my intention to turn this into a humor blog or a compendium of North Korean absurdity - there is plenty of that to be found elsewhere on the web. I  will endeavor to maintain a respectful objective distance in my analyses. Comments may be addressed to my twitter account @changmishaw.

As a political scientist, I am not formally trained in literary analysis and cannot evaluate this work on its literary merits. The analysis here will instead focus on the political motivations and ideals reflected in the works I read. North Korean literature is unique in the world today as a body of work that is controlled and produced exclusively according to the prerogatives of the state and the ruling Party, which funds, oversees and controls all aspects of cultural production. As such, a careful analysis can offer significant insight into the beliefs, hopes, dreams and anxieties of an otherwise very closed-off regime. It also allows us to observe the ways that the literature and language of the two Koreas have diverged over time. As one who has read a fair amount of South Korean literature in the process of learning Korean, I will endeavor where possible to highlight differences in terms of language and style.

For more details on how I got started with this project and some of my key findings to date, please see the following video:

This work was supported in part by a research grant from the Fulbright Foundation. I began this project in 2016 under the guidance of Dr. Lim Soon-hee, an emeritus research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) who has spent decades studying North Korean literature. Dr. Lim has advised me somewhat in selecting stories to read and interpreting difficult passages. The opinions and analysis contained in this blog are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of Dr. Lim, KINU or the Fulbright Foundation.