Springtime for Kim Il-Sung in Pyongyang City on Stage, City As Stage Suk-Young Kim

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Springtime for Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang City On Stage, City As Stage Suk-Young Kim

Without Pyongyang, Korea would not exist, and without Korea there would be no earth. —Rodong Shinmun (1999:1)

There should be a study on terror but not to denounce its frightfulness, for that has been done enough with both good and bad conscience. Rather, its usefulness in certain social situations should be explained. —Max Horkheimer (1978:209)

One foreign eyewitness recounted his impression of the histrionic North Korean capital: “Pyongyang is like a huge stage set. It is the closest thing to Germania, Hitler’s grandiose and happily unrealized vision of the future Berlin” (Buruma 1994:68). The pompous and domineering cityscape of Pyongyang (as seen in fig. 1 above) appears to outsiders as the ultimate dream come true for tyrants who, from the Roman emperor Nero to the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, have used their cities as arenas for self-glorification, rather

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 than as functional environs serving the needs of their inhabitants.1 In this light, city dwellers become anonymous supporting actors whose roles are reduced to serving as backdrop and background chorus in a silent mise-en-scène, to showcase their self-aggrandizing rulers.2 The North Korean stage theatricalizes Pyongyang as a metonymy of socialist paradise, particularly in a representative propaganda performance genre called Hyeokmyeung gageuk3 (revolutionary operas), while the city itself becomes a stage for a narcissistic self-portrait of the North Korean regime and its leader. This dialogic tension emerges from the simultane- ous processes of theatricality and spectacle staging the city and the cityscape embracing theatre productions as a part of its landscape—put more succinctly: the dynamics between Pyongyang on stage and Pyongyang as stage. The focal point that seamlessly links theatre to the city is the physical and spiritual presence of Kim Il-sung, who is persistently hailed as the sire of Pyongyang and the many theatre productions that are staged there. Kim’s image throughout the city—materialized in various artifacts, such as badges,4 portraits, and statues—continues to reinforce his portrayal as the architect of the capital and choreographer of the fatherland’s landscape. This characterization of Kim as the father of the nation’s capital carried over in theatre productions that created a visual continuity between theatre and city. In effect, the leader’s icononographic presence throughout North Korea has been so pervasive that the continuum between stage and everyday life became functionally homogeneous, tightly interwoven by immediately recognizable renderings of Kim Il-sung. Like mirrors reflecting one and the same object, Pyongyang and theatre productions about Pyongyang became twin images, conjoined at birth by their pro- fessed love for their creator. Nevertheless, Kim Il-sung is never reduced to a mere visual spectacle; rather, he has remained an all-seeing subject himself, constantly monitoring the patriotic performances of the people in his city. Kim’s portraits are still omnipresent throughout North Korea, from gigantic photos and mural paintings adorning public squares to smaller images in

1. Peter Atkins eloquently puts it this way: “The consumers of the North Korean landscape are obedient and willing participants, yet they live in a ‘framed’ space in which everyone is an outsider” (1996:205). 2. In Atkins’s view, “gigantic and oppressive monumentality is hardly new in the socialist world but it has been refined and personalized to an extraordinary extent in the DPRK” (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) (1996:203). 3. All translations from Korean are mine unless otherwise noted. For transliteration of Korean words, I will con- sistently use the official Korean language romanization system released by South Korea’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2000. However, for the words well known in the English-speaking world, I will use the con- ventional transliteration system instead of strictly applying the 2000 romanization system: hence “Pyongyang” instead of “Pyeoyang,” “Kim Jong-il” instead of “Kim Jeong-il.” 4. According to Jan Wong, a Chinese Canadian journalist who spent several years in China during the Cultural Revolution, “the Chinese had mostly stopped wearing Mao badges by 1972” (1996:67). In contrast, North Koreans still wear a discreet badge of Kim just above their hearts.

Figure 1. (facing page) A painting entitled Sudobokgu-ui achim (Reconstruction of Pyongyang)—with Kim Il-sung prominent in the foreground—appeared in Chosun Yesul (North Korean Art; July 1968:7). (From Korean Serials, Asian Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC) Il-sung Kim for Springtime

Suk-Young Kim is Assistant Professor of theatre and dance at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her research has been acknowledged by the International Federation for Theatre Research New Scholar’s Prize (2004), the American Society for Theater Research Fellowship (2006), and the Library of Congress Kluge Fellowship (2006/07). She is currently working on a book titled Illusive Utopia: Theater and Film in North Korea, which explores how state-produced propaganda performances intersect with everyday life practices in North Korea.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 private households—his omniscient gaze perpetually policing the activities of Pyongyang’s inhabitants.5 In this respect, Kim Il-sung becomes both the object of dramatization and the privileged spectator of performances about the city onstage and as stage: Pyongyang and its revolutionary operas are symbiotic self-portraits glorifying their creator. The five revolutionary operas are Pibada (Sea of Blood; 1971), Dangui chamdoen ttal (True Daughter of the Party; 1971), Kkotpaneun cheonyeo (Flower Girl; 1972), Milima iyagihara (Oh Tell, Forest; 1972), and Keumgangsanui norae (Song of Mountain Keumgang; 1973). Two of these productions, True Daughter of the Party and Song of Mountain Keumkang, stage a utopian vision of the capital city. The former, in particular, has been performed on the streets of Pyongyang during patriotic mass games and parades as well as in theatres. These examples provide an occasion to analyze the semiotic transformation of the theatre space when a performance about the city crosses the physical boundary of the theatre building to enter the cityscape, reflexively returning to the locus of the play’s inception. Perhaps the symbiotic relationship between the city of Pyongyang and these revolutionary operas could be summed up most effectively through the words of Henri Lefèbvre: Space is at once result and cause, product and producer; it is also a stake, the locus of projects and actions deployed as part of specific strategies [...] Activity in space is restricted by that space; space “decides” what activity may occur, but even this “decision” has limits placed upon it. Space lays down the law because it implies a certain order—and hence a certain disorder. (1991:142–43) Lefèbvre’s observation on the bifurcating nature of space becomes much more complex when the particular space under consideration is theatre. As Marvin Carlson lucidly dem- onstrates in his book The Haunted Stage (2001), theatre is a space constantly invaded by memories of the past; if theatre is an empty space where visual illusions can fluidly be staged and all but erased, leaving possibilities for other productions to create alternative temporal spaces onstage, then a theatre production staging a cityscape may spontaneously take the form of parody or satire, creating various versions of the city each time a new show is produced. That is, unless that empty space is a North Korean stage. In North Korea, a politically predetermined vision astringently controls the staging of Pyongyang in the theatre to guarantee that no individual imagination distorts the Great Leader’s projection of the city as the spiritual and physical center of the nation. Needless to say, the ideological mechanism that regulates the staging of Pyongyang produces an isomorphic rendering of the actual city. However, the city does not regard a theatrical presentation of Pyongyang as a mere epiphenomenal reflection of itself. While it is true that Pyongyang as an actual site is the source of Pyongyang as theatrical illusion, the real city is reciprocally reenvisioned and consequently reshaped by the image created onstage; in fact, the imagined onstage city served as the blueprint for the real city as it was conceived. North Korean stage productions are dedicated to providing an accurate depiction of Pyongyang, while at the same time preoccupied with presenting the prescribed utopian vision of the North Korean capital—never risking a photographic depiction of the city. Indeed, the overriding mission of every North Korean stage production is to simulate this ideal world as if it were already a part of reality, a phenomenon epitomized most conspicuously in revolutionary operas.

5. These portraits are treated as sacrosanct objects of worship, and a minor insult inflicted on them would be sufficient grounds for imprisonment. The testimonial of a North Korean defector, Ahn Hyuk, who was arrest- ed and imprisoned in a North Korean labor camp for having crossed the border between North Korea and China (out of curiosity), confirms this practice. While Ahn was at a detention center, there were “prisoners detained for spilling ink on or failing to adequately dust photographs of Kim Il-sung, charges even the prison guards regarded as lacking seriousness” (Hawk 2003:31). Suk-Young KimSuk-Young

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 The North Korean state propaganda bureau produced the cycle of five revolutionary operas from 1971 to 1973 under the guidance of Kim Jong-il, the son of Kim Il-sung and current leader of the nation.6 The works of this theatrical genre are comprised of speech, Western orchestral music, solo and choral singing, dancing, acting, and spectacular set designs. The genre borrows abundantly from the Western opera tradition, simultaneously imbricating these elements with traditional Korean musical motifs and dance sequences. These five operas were produced with the intention of being filmed for wider circula- tion among the North Korean population. All of the stage performances were filmed by Pyongyang Moranbong Video Productions and can be screened at various archives in Seoul, South Korea.7 However, I was not able to attend any live performances of these operas. Thus, the following discussions are based on my analyses of the dramatic texts and the filmed versions of stage performances.8 As the self-proclaimed representative national theatre, revolutionary operas enjoyed great prestige as the vehicles for relaying the accomplishments of the nation’s sacrosanct leaders. The operas have become a dominant cultural form in North Korea: every citizen has to watch them as part of their mandatory education in revolutionary ideology and must discuss how to emulate ideal stage characters during daily study sessions at their schools and work units.9 Even though there are other revolutionary works in the format of spoken drama, revolutionary opera became the leading national performance genre, sanctioned by the state to accurately depict the historical struggle of the founding of the country and the achievements of contemporary national life. In an ambivalent dimension created by the dual axes of the fictional utopian world of theatre and the real world constructed to mirror the ideal, the revolutionary operas were both the product of utopian imagination and the producers of the real city. Pyongyang is one of the most glorified subjects of the revolutionary opera stage, elevated from a mere spatial background to a protagonist with a full-blown personality. The operas’ impact is not limited to theatrical space, but permeates the realm of everyday North Korean life. As reflected in the title of an article in the 29 January 1999 issue of Rodong Shinmun, “Pyongyangeul suhohaneun sungsaero” (Be a Human Fortress to Defend Pyongyang), the North Korean regime constantly endeavored to establish the sacrosanct status of its capital, treat- ing city dwellers as soldiers. A Korean junior high literature textbook also cites Kim Il-sung’s instructions to regard Pyongyang as the life force of the North Korean people: “Pyongyang

6. The timing of these productions marked the launching of the North Korean Revolution in Arts, which emerged as a reaction to the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). During the early years of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, North Korea wanted to distance itself from China to avoid any impact on its own political situation, while Chinese Red Guards criticized Kim Il-sung’s bourgeois tendencies as traits countering the socialist revolution. In this respect, the revolutionary operas in part emerged as an attempt to incite the spirit of patriotism and independence among North Korean people. 7. The North Korean Information Center and Korean Institute for National Unification are two archives in Seoul, South Korea, where researchers are able to screen revolutionary operas. 8. The two filmed operas I analyze in this article are True Daughter of the Party (Pyongyang: Mokran Video, 1971), and Song of Mountain Keumgang (Pyongyang: Mokran Video, 1973). Both videos can be found in the

North Korean Information Center and the Korean Institute for National Unification located in Seoul, South Il-sung Kim for Springtime Korea. For the analysis of the dramatic texts, I referred to Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Operas, edited by Yeong-hee Kang (1975). 9. For example, North Korean textbooks for various school levels published the scripts of revolutionary operas, including Sea of Blood and True Daughter of the Party, along with discussion questions about the true meanings of revolutionary deeds and the sacrifice of dramatic characters. See Gyoyukdoseo chulpan wiwonheo (Pedagogical Publishing Committee), Guk-eo godeungjunghakgyo 6 (Korean Literature Junior High School Level Six; 1989:32–40), and Guk-eo godeungjunghakgyo 3 (Korean Literature Junior High School Level Three; 1990:23).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 is the heart of the North Korean people, the capital of the socialist motherland, and the site where revolution originated” (Gyoyukdoseo chulpan wiwonheo 1995:55). The revolutionary operas about the capital city were at the forefront of forging this Pyongyang-centric vision of North Korea. The filmed version of Song of Mountain Keumkang faithfully stages the dramatic text, centering on a father and a daughter who were separated during Japanese colonial rule and miraculously reunited in utopian Pyongyang. The auspi- cious nature of the city, with its capacity to bring separated family members together, is attributed to the benevolent leadership of Kim Il-sung. As the family members identify and finally embrace each other in Pyongyang, the male and female chorus in unison exudes the joy of the reunion: “For 20 years they have been separated, but finally they are reunited in the bosom of the Supreme Leader. No mountain could be loftier than his benevolence. No sea could be deeper than his affection” (Kang 1975:180). The lyrics proclaim, without any ambiguity, that the presence of the Supreme Leader endows Pyongyang with its miraculous potency, a theme reiterated in another lavish ode to the city in the same production. The ode stipulates not only the unchallenged dominance of the capital in the spatial hierarchy of North Korea, but takes it one step further and extols the city as the fountain of a life- giving force: Ah, our Pyongyang How beautiful our red socialist capital is! Capital of revolution where our Supreme Leader resides. We fully experience happiness in the city. The entire world sings about the Sun of Juche ideology.10 Here we see how its brightness shines through. Ah, our Pyongyang, prosper forever, our red socialist capital! (Kang 1975:177) The profile of the glorified city is outlined by Kim Il-sung, whose presence is manifested through solar imagery. As the ultimate source of energy determining and presiding over the course of nature, Kim illuminates the glorious city and empowers it as the “red socialist capital.” Pyongyang draws its authority as the dominant space of the nation precisely from the fact that it is the city erected and inhabited by the Supreme Leader himself, whose presence is compared to the ultimate life-giving force. The filmed production of the Song of Mountain Keumkang faithfully reflects such a notion of Pyongyang as vital by centering the film’s visual composition on the image of a rising sun illuminating the efflorescent city. Equally significantly, in revolutionary operas the capital becomes a sanctuary for images of the Supreme Leader. True Daughter of the Party is unique in the genre for its staging of the as-yet-to-be-built Pyongyang as its dramatic climax. The main characters of this opera—a military nurse and foot soldiers—are fighting their American and South Korean enemies in a small South Korean village during the Korean War, before the construction

10. The term juche is generally translated as “self-reliance” or “independence.” This ideology, known to be Kim Il-sung’s theoretical work, made its first appearance in the 1955 report to the Korean Workers Party Central Committee plenum and was adopted in international politics for advocating the ideological independence of third world nations. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea used the term in the broadest sense in order to indicate everything genuinely Korean. For more detailed meanings and usages of the term, see Bruce Cumings (1997:403–05). Chin O. Chung argues that the major factors that contributed to the DPRK communists’ increased emphasis on juche in formulating domestic and foreign politics were: (1) the bitter memories of the Korean War; (2) postwar political consolidation; (3) economic progress; (4) the possibility that Soviet and Chinese influence on North Korean decisions had reached a state of equilibrium; and (5) the growing conflict within the international communist camp. Chung argues that the DPRK regime, however, could not afford to alienate either of its two neighbors, China or the Soviet Union, by excessive advocacy of juche (1978:23–24). Suk-Young KimSuk-Young

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 of contemporary Pyongyang had begun. While the soldiers are asleep on the battlefield at night, the nurse has a proleptic vision of the future city. As the nurse immerses herself deeper into the reverie, the battlefield gradually fades from the screen, and soon the camera introduces a close-up shot of Kim Il-sung’s statue, which is painted as a backdrop; then the camera slowly zooms out to capture the entire panorama of Pyongyang, also painted as a backdrop, at the center of which stands the sacred statue of the national father. This scenographic rendering of Pyongyang is a near- photographic depiction of the real city’s skyline; the female protagonist envisioned Pyongyang many long years before it was built. Arguably, this improbable accuracy— the verisimilitude between the theatre character’s utopian vision of the city during the Korean War and Pyongyang as it was reconstructed in the postwar era—stems not from any miraculous elision of time, but from meticulous calcula- Figure 2. Ryukyeong Hotel in Pyongyang. The construction of this tion. The opera presents the gigantic hotel had been ordered by Kim Jong-il with the intention rendered plans as a prophetic of opening in 1989 to accommodate visitors for the World Festival vision of Pyongyang, and the of Youth and Students. Due to structural problems and lack of vision is evidence that the city funding, only the exterior of the building was ﬁnished. (Photo by as we know it today was des- Eckart Dege) tined to develop as such.11 The teleological determinism embedded in this scene of the future Pyongyang gains persuasive power when Kim Il-sung is projected as the mediator between the dark dystopian

present of the Korean War and North Korea’s utopian future. Kim’s statue, which marks Il-sung Kim for Springtime the center of the city, is not a monument erected to the glories of the past, but a point of ref- erence in the future. In this light, theatres staging Pyongyang served as an ideal ground for

11. Reconstruction efforts were initiated after the end of the Korean War in 1953. Some major buildings, such as the Ryukyeong Hotel, remain uncompleted due to lack of funding.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 inventing rather than memorializing the city’s past. In the filmed version of True Daughter of the Party,12 this sequence directs viewers to Kim Il-sung’s statue as the entry point to the city, establishing him figurally as the sacred center. As the camera manipulates the viewer’s gaze, Kim’s domineering image becomes the point of origin from which a centrifugal force radiates to the entire city. It also becomes a centripetal destination where the energy of the city converges. This visual presentation of Kim’s statue, framed by a circle that gradually enlarges as the camera pulls back from Kim’s image, unmistakably resembles the shape of the sun and its spreading rays. When the camera zooms out to capture the entire city of Pyongyang, dancing girls stage the image of flowers blossoming under the merciful Sun’s rays. Life effloresces in Kim’s presence, and Pyongyang trumpets the advent of spring as the Red Sun illuminates the entire world, as proclaimed in the text quoted above. Just like the promised land of biblical Canaan where milk and honey flow, Pyongyang beckons the exhausted North Korean soldiers fighting in enemy territory. Significantly, due to the accurate architectural references onstage, this paradisaical staged city is not a mere mirage, but the real city where many of the audience members lived.

Figure 3. Pyongyang after the Korean War in 1953. (Photo courtesy of Eckart Dege)

The near-total eradication of Pyongyang’s concrete historical sites during the Korean War set the stage for the city’s residents to worship the founder of their new urban landscape almost in a biblical sense. How, then, did the city onstage serve as the blueprint for the construction of the real city? How did theatre productions about the city transform the rebuilt Pyongyang? With a history that dates back to the first millennium bce, Pyongyang was the capital of the ancient Korean kingdom of Koguryeo in the seventh century (Schinz and Dege 1990:21). The city was chosen as the North Korean government’s capital in 1948 to function as the political, economic, and cultural center of the northern part of the Korean peninsula. But

12. I did not see a live stage version of this production, which did not tour abroad. Therefore I cannot comment on how the live theatre version stages this reverie sequence, that is, without involving a camera to direct the

Suk-Young KimSuk-Young viewer’s gaze.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 during the Korean War, the capital suffered a devastating bomb attack that left a once- bustling city in a pile of debris (fig. 3). The destruction of Pyongyang during the war has been documented by scholars and journalists; Peter Atkins notes: During the Korean War, about three million Koreans died, mainly in the North. Pyongyang was effectively obliterated by blanket bombing by the UN force. The DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) claims that 400,000 bombs were dropped, destroying all public buildings and 65,000 houses and shops. (1996:1980) Similarly, Bruce Cumings, in his latest book on North Korea, quotes a Hungarian correspon- dent who was in Pyongyang during the war: We traveled in moonlight, so my impression was that I am traveling on the moon, because there was only devastation […E]very city was a collection of chimneys. I don’t know why houses collapse and chimneys did not, but I went through a city of 200,000 inhabitants and I saw thousands of chimneys and that—that was all. (in Cumings 2004:30) The destruction of the city necessitated excruciating reconstruction efforts, but at the same time, the near-total evacuation of the city allowed the rebuilding to begin from scratch. Since most of the traditional architectural monuments had disappeared almost without a trace,13 Pyongyang was an empty stage where any kind of space could be created at will. As Atkins aptly remarks: “The elimination of all historic structure and function in Pyongyang created a timeless space onto which could be projected an ideological simulation of the authorities’ choosing” (1996:198). The city was a blank canvas where anything could be drawn, but little effort was made to coordinate or harmonize with existing artifacts.14 In this respect, Pyongyang was not genuinely a “haunted stage” in Carlson’s mnemonic sense; he argues that “the empty spaces that have been utilized for centuries for theatrical events are particularly susceptible to semiotization, since they are almost invariably public, social spaces already layered with associations before they are used for theatrical performances” (2001:133). After the Korean War, Pyongyang was left as an empty space, but instead of being haunted by the ghosts of the past, it emerged as a place where visions of the future loomed large. While rebuilding Pyongyang cost North Koreans tremendous labor power and resources, it provided an opportunity for Kim Il-sung to put into practice what he regarded as one of the communist dictums: “to master and remake nature” (in Han 1981:43). A brainchild of the Great Leader, Pyongyang was reinvented as a showcase socialist paradise and the new face of the Korean nation. The government inscribed on to the new Pyongyang landscape a new set of signifiers as the spatial center of the hierarchal power structure that organized and operated North Korea. James Duncan’s observation is particularly conversant with what took place in Pyongyang during the reconstruction efforts: “The issue of the rhetoric of landscape is interesting because it raises questions about the processes whereby the landscape as a text is read and thus acts as a communicative device reproducing the social order” (1990:19). The invented landscape reflected the ethos of the new order—bluntly stated in the title of an Springtime for Kim Il-sung Kim for Springtime 13. There are only a handful of traditional architectural sites remaining in Pyongyang after the heavy bombing of the city during the Korean War. Among them are the Botong Gate, Eulmil Pavilion, Yeongwang Pavilion, and Chilseong Gate. For a brief background history of these sites, see Springer (2003). 14. According to Gongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il personally supervised the building of Pyongyang: The city’s reconstruction was supervised by the two Kims, with the younger Kim taking a particular interest in city planning and architecture. The Kims put into the city what they wanted and kept out what they did not want. It is said that Kim Jong-il would look out over the city and order that some building be put up at a certain location because the view was incomplete. (2002:128)

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 Figure 4. Mural painting on display in Pyongyang. (Photo by Young-sun Jeon) Figure 5. A close-up of the mural’s upper right corner shows two prominent female characters: Kkotbun in Flower Girl (left) and Mother in Sea of Blood (right). The two iconographic ﬁgures have become recognizable heroes of the Revolution in North Korea. (Photo by Young-sun Jeon)

article by Kim Il-sung: “Pyongyang City Must Be an Example for the Whole Country in All Spheres of Politics, the Economy and Culture” (1987:172). It was no coincidence that the plans for the modern city of Pyongyang were first displayed for public viewing in a theatre building. On 27 July 1953—the day the armistice between North and South Koreas was signed—the Pyongyang Review wrote: “While [the] streets were in flames, an exhibition showing the general plan of restoration of Pyongyang was held at the Moranbong Underground Theater,” the air raid shelter of the government under Moran hill. “On the way of victory […] fireworks which streamed high into the night sky of the capital in a gun salute briefly illuminated the construction plan of the city which would rise soon with a new look” (in Schinz and Dege 1990:26). The modern city of Pyongyang in its current form rose from the rubble through the sacrificial labor of its inhabitants, but the North Korean regime gave all the credit to Kim Il- sung as the architect of the city. In the painting titled Reconstruction of Pyongyang (ﬁg. 1), Kim Suk-Young KimSuk-Young

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 Figure 6. The cover of Choson Yesul (North Korean Art), from the August-September 1972 issue, features a photo of actress Hong Young-hee, who played the lead role of Kkotbun in the film version of Flower Girl. This image of Kkotbun corresponds to the image in the mural (see fig. 5, at left). (From Korean Serials, Asian Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC) Figure 7. A scene from the North Korean revolutionary opera Sea of Blood, as it appeared on the cover of Chosun Yesul (North Korean Art) in July 1979. The image of the Mother character in this scene is replicated in the mural’s upper-right corner (see fig. 5). (From Korean Serials, Asian Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC)

Il-sung is depicted directing the rebuilding efforts. His role here is quite comparable to that of a stage director supervising the construction of the stage set designed to bear his exalted self-portrait. This painting testifies that Kim was represented as the sire of the city not only onstage, but also in other forms of visual culture reaching far beyond the physical boundaries of theatre space. As intensively as North Korean propaganda attempted to create a continuum between the stage and the city by means of visual culture, so the iconic scenes from the revolutionary operas became empowered intermediaries for the state. Images of recognizable stage and film characters from propaganda performances saturated Pyongyang, becoming an integral part of the cityscape. Through this process, Pyongyang was established as a fluid space, functioning both as a theatrical stage and the milieu of everyday life, mediated by the opera characters whose omnipresence blurred the boundaries between the idealized world onstage and the quotidian. The images of the fictional characters from the revolutionary operas were painted and displayed on public buildings in Pyongyang. One such mural displays the history of the North

Korean people as they heroically struggled to achieve their socialist revolution.15 The history Il-sung Kim for Springtime of the North Korean revolution as told by the state is purportedly based on facts, yet fictional stage characters are deployed to testify to this national past in museum exhibitions and building murals. Two celebrated female characters from the revolutionary opera productions can

15. According to one source, the building that displays this particular mural painting is the Revolution Memorial Museum; according to another source it is painted on the Mansudae Theatre Building. Due to my South Korean citizenship I cannot visit Pyongyang, which forces me to rely on other people’s descriptions of the city. Sources give conflicting reports on where murals are located.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 be found in the upper right corner of the mural (figs. 4 and 5). The girl holding a bunch of flowers is Kkotbun, the eponymous character in Flower Girl. The elderly woman at the upper far-right corner represents Mother, the leading figure in Sea of Blood. These are famous tableaux from stage productions and film adaptations of the operas, and the characters are immediately recognized throughout North Korean society—the evidence of which is the figures’ appearance on the covers of widely read magazines. Apart from contributing to the popularity of these stage personas, the various images on murals and magazine covers reinforce a photographic accuracy in transposing the fictional characters onto Pyongang’s public space. This invasion of stage characters into everyday life eradicates the boundary between the stage and the city, creating a seamless continuum between the illusory world of theatre and the real world, especially as these fictional characters are presented as exemplary models of “nonfictional” North Korean revolutionary figures. In addition to photos and murals, parades contribute to the blurring of boundaries between stage and city. Whereas the production and display of images of opera protagonists do not necessarily involve mass participation, the parades, by contrast, necessitate collective efforts, beginning with extensive physical training. These performances of synchronized movements involve thousands of people and define the city as a theatre space.16 Not sur- prisingly, the main square of Pyongyang, which serves as the main stage for the militaristic demonstrations, was named after Kim Il-sung and also serves as a stage for the glorious icons of the Great Leader and his achievements. Just as medieval European cities would, according to Carlson, gradually shift the central focus of their procession from “the city’s wealth, power, and prosperity” to “monuments and allegorical paintings and tableaux reflecting his [the visitor’s] own significance” (1989:20),17 the glories of Pyongyang were ultimately sub- sumed by the magnificent presence of Kim Il-sung. There are numerous images of the parades that testify to the extent to which the current North Korean regime is invested in pageantry intended to flaunt the nation’s self-image. Chris Springer effectively describes the breathtaking scale of these parades held on the central square of Pyongyang: North Korea excels at putting on a show—and this [Kim Il-sung Square] is its center stage. On national holidays this square witnesses awe-inspiring displays of power. Thousands of soldiers goose-step in dress parades, backed by an array of fearsome weaponry. Flamboyant floats tout the regime’s successes. Civilians bring up the rear, carrying placards, chanting slogans, and waving to the leader on the tribune. Through such political theatre, the regime creates its own reality. (2003:37) The North Korean regime has invested a great deal of energy in staging parades as reality-producing machinery since its foundation.18 The parades grew in scale exponentially

16. Recently, European filmmakers have produced several documentaries about North Korean mass games and parades. Peter Tetteroo’s Welcome to North Korea (2001) shows clips of how North Korean children are even mobilized in the rain to practice for mass parades. This clip is surreptitiously captured by the filmmaker without the North Korean guides’ knowledge, whereas most of other scenes in the documentary are carefully scripted and supervised by the North Korean hosts. Daniel Gordon’s documentary on North Korea, The Game of Their Lives (2003), shows a short clip of the intensive mobilization of labor power that is needed to stage a single mass game. A more recent documentary by Gordon, The State of Mind (2004), focuses exclusively on two teenage North Korean girls who undergo demanding daily training sessions to prepare for a single day’s mass game. 17. The only difference in the parallel between the case of Pyongyang and Carlson’s medieval European example is that in the former, the city is focused on celebrating its founder rather than other visiting dignitaries. 18. Examples of parade photos evidencing the regime’s investment and endorsement of that performance form from the early years of the North Korean government appear in Charles Armstrong’s The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 (2003:175, 212). Suk-Young KimSuk-Young

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 over time.19 In 2003, a mass parade staged in Pyongyang to celebrate North Korea’s 55th anniversary included an image of a scene from True Daughter of the Party, bringing the stage production to the city itself.20 The gigantic platform on wheels moving past the “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il staged a painted backdrop of the characters from the opera. Most notable among them was the image of the female protagonist, an immediately recognizable icon of a model North Korean revolutionary. She is depicted as calling out for the “Dear General,” one of the sacrosanct appellations reserved for Kim Il-sung. The painted slogan in the background—“Where are you, Dear General?”—is a well-known line from the opera production, intended to remind citizens of the difficult days of the Korean War. At the same time, the enormous scale of the parade displays a contrast: the distance between the stories of the harsh experiences of the War and the frenzied celebration at the moment of the parade is intended to remind North Koreans of the enormous progress that can be attributed to the present regime. However, the ritual of the parade is not limited to commemorating the glories of the regime and the city. It also sets out to display an image of an invigorated North Korean economy to the outside world. Street parades and mass games function to mask the daunt- ing and ongoing economic crisis the regime has presided over, at the cost of its own people’s lives. At the time of the 2003 parade, the North Korean people had already been suffering from a decade-long food crisis. The food shortage began to surface in the mid-1990s when the centralized rationing system was suspended and people were left on their own to make ends meet.21 As the crisis dragged on into the late 1990s, gruesome reports came out of the country via escapees who relayed stories of how the people were coping with hunger: their testimonials covered a wide spectrum of horrifying stories, ranging from robbery to cannibalism.22 When considering the scale of human sacrifice endured throughout North Korea in the past decade, the extravagance of the mass parades reaches the point of absurdity. The party staged on the squares and streets of Pyongyang creates the illusion that the North Korean people enjoy full, satisfying lives in a bustling city. Watching and participating in the parades, North Koreans must be acutely aware that this is a vision of their country meant to impress others; it forces them to confront the discrepancy between the robust, corpulent characters they are performing and the realities of their meager daily existence. Clearly the regime is more interested in staging a show than caring for its people, conspicuously calling attention to the unfortunate historical parallel between present-day North Korea and the Stalinist Soviet Union: the deception of the North Korean regime’s showcase parades mirrors the Stalinist regime’s efforts to hide the gulags from the West (see Applebaum 2003:8–9). Neither regime did much, if anything, to improve living conditions, with the North Korean regime turning a blind eye to mass poverty and starvation, and the Stalinist regime persistent in perpetuating the atrocities of the Soviet gulags. For both regimes, the national image designed for spectators located outside their community is primary, and in

19. In 1971, the North Korean government established a special committee on developing mass games and Springtime for Kim Il-sung Kim for Springtime parades. Ever since then, the committee has produced two large-scale performances annually, which were staged on occasions of national celebration, such as the birthdays of state leaders and gonghwaguk changgeonil, the national holiday commemorating the founding of North Korea. 20. The parade was recorded and released in 2003 by Mokran Video. 21. According to Andrei Lankov (2005), the North Korean food distribution system came to a halt in 1994/95 in the countryside, and in 1996 in urban areas. 22. For detailed testimonials on cannibalism during the 1990s food crisis, see Joeun butdeul (Good Friends; 1999:65–67, 132).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 both cases the ethos of the spectacle endows their respective countries with peculiarly theatrical qualities.23 The following comment by Korea specialists Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig testifies to the North Korean regime’s obsession with displaying a carefully crafted image: When an important group of dignitaries hits town, a Potemkin “street show” is staged for their benefit. A former North Korean official recounts how almost the entire staff of his ministry—as many as a thousand people—would be mobilized to play the roles of shoppers, drivers, and pedestrians to parade around the city. The only people who looked forward to these performances were the military personnel, who enjoyed the opportunity to wear civilian clothes. (2002:128) A story similar to this one was told by a U.S. State Department official who recounted his visit to Pyongyang. From his hotel room, he observed people walking in and out of the subway and realized that they were always the same people, and that they appeared to be going over to a hidden alcove where there was a stash of various coats, umbrellas, tote bags, etc. These civilian actors would switch coats and accessories and then make another trip in and out of the subway.24 This kind of extreme stage management does not delude anyone; South Korean scholar Sehun Chang unambiguously states the obvious: “Pyongyang as a showcase of North Korean prosperity hid more than it showed” (2004:23). Faced with such contrived images of Pyongyang’s citizenry, I cannot help but wonder how the North Korean people really feel about being a part of these performances. To what degree are North Koreans complicit with the regime in making the city a showcase? What do people in Pyongyang really think when they not only have to watch the revolutionary operas endlessly, but also are required to serve as actors in these mandatory rituals? Given the current historical situation, it is impossible to conduct comprehensive fieldwork in North Korea. Any foreign visitors—be they diplomats or tourists—are subject to close surveillance of the official guides and are discouraged from having direct contact with the North Korean people. Thus, questions regarding the responses and reactions of North Korean residents will remain in the realm of speculation for the time being. While I understand that the testimonials of North Korean defectors could be biased, these voices are the best available resource at the present moment for establishing a counterdiscourse to the North Korean regime’s official narratives. Through interviews I conducted in South Korea with defectors (who prefer to remain anonymous), it is possible to gain a glimpse into the process by which the North Korean regime drafts participants for these rituals. A former army officer in his fifties explained that the smallest North Korean social unit is called the inminban (people’s unit), which consists of 23 households. Local party officials in charge of managing the recruitment system make sure that the inminban under their super- vision supply enough participants for the parades, the number of which varies depending on the scale of each occasion.25 Another interviewee, a former musician and North Korean propaganda squad member in her 20s, confirmed that participating in state-organized parades is not by choice. While, it is

23. My use of the term “theatrical” follows one of the meanings of “theatricality” articulated by Tracy C. Davis and Thomas Postlewait. They write: “Just as theatricality has been used to describe the gap between reality and representation—a concept for which there is a perfectly good and very specific term, mimesis—it has also been used to describe the heightened states when everyday reality is exceeded by its representation” (2004:6). 24. This is based on a 2004 conversation with Carol Medlicott, a former FBI research analyst and a specialist in North Korean geography. 25. The interview with this anonymous former North Korean army officer was conducted on 9 August 2005 in

Suk-Young KimSuk-Young Seoul, South Korea.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 not an activity mandated by law, missing too many duties will serve as an occasion for self- criticism in weekly communal meetings, if not for severe punishment.26 Kang Cheol-hwan, a North Korean defector who spent 10 years in a prison camp, tells a more severe version of the story: “to miss an official march was good enough a reason to be sent to a labor camp” (Kang and Rigoulot 2001:52). Rebelling against the North Korean regime’s presumed disregard for the spectator’s preferences or desires, Kang further noted that “the propaganda [was] so grotesque, the teaching method so crude, we were bound to reject it” (134). Leaving aside the citizenry’s willingness to participate in the performances as well as the severity of the punishment for refusing to do so, the bodily practices of Pyongyanites as part of the city’s mise-en-scène glorifying the Great Leader were lessons learned all too well. The regime repeatedly fed its population the models of ideal thought and behavior that were fundamentally based on the cult of the leader and conveyed through theatrical illusion, both onstage and in the city. In this respect, the institutions of theatre and identity-making state rituals merge in these two performance genres, the revolutionary operas and the mass parades. The process and intention of staging the operas and the parades are similar to what Victor Turner calls “making, not faking” (1982:93). Given the fact that these mass parades are annual events that routinely and systematically mobilize thousands of people, the rehearsal process for these performances can be viewed not only as a means to an end, but an end in itself. The didactic nature of the production process becomes one of the most significant purposes for producing these performances. The state rituals, in a short time period, discipline people in embodying the collective life, or, to be more realistic, teach them how to create an image of ideal collective life in their utopian capital city. In analyzing the cases of disappearance and torture in Argentina’s Dirty War (1976–1983), Steven Gregory and Daniel Timerman make illuminating observations that are pertinent to understanding the significance of state-sponsored performances in North Korea: Such state rituals may very well be a central plank of the regime, but they still depend less for their effectiveness on their satisfaction as ritual than on the depth and compre- hensiveness of the surveillance systems that monitor participation. These rituals do not resolve the fundamental contradictions posed by the existence of the individual as a discrete, and hence, identifiable member of the society. (1986:69) The North Korean state rituals lack what Gregory and Timerman call “the resolution that primitive rituals achieve through re-incorporation,” and therefore require “an endless repetition in order to achieve their vicarious effect” (69). The coercive tactics used by the North Korean regime to turn the members of its society into mandatory participants in its identity-making state rituals indicates that, from the participants’ point of view, the rever- sal of Turner’s “making, not faking” may be taking place: fake it until you make it. In this respect, the North Korean propaganda performances are part of a process in which the state- controlled rituals and highly regulated behavior of everyday life as well as the theatre stage, become two pillars sustaining Pyongyang as Kim Il-sung’s theatrical sanctuary in which he is the self-proclaimed hero.

Many new governments of formerly communist countries have desecrated gigantic stat- Il-sung Kim for Springtime ues of their past leaders, removing them from their central streets and squares. In the early 1990s, the destruction of the artifacts of the bygone communist era was a spectacle in itself, occupying center stage. A recent German film by Wolfgang Becker, Good Bye Lenin! (2003),

26. The interview with this anonymous former North Korean musician and propaganda squad member was conducted on 30 August 2005 in Seoul, South Korea.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.24 by guest on 24 September 2021 memorably restaged such a moment when the mountainous statue of Lenin was removed from a public park and carried away by a helicopter—an allusion to the flying statue of Jesus in Federico Fellini’s apocalyptic 1960 film La Dolce Vita. If North Koreans ever get to see this movie scene, they may choose to view it with a sense of hope. Will the monuments dedicated to the Supreme Leader suffer the same fate in Pyongyang if the political leadership changes? Will the statues survive beyond the regime and end up as reminders of the past in a place like Szoborpark in Budapest, where the torn- down statues of Lenin are on display?27 To borrow David Harvey’s insight, “the public may take collective action to ‘speak back’ to the state and redefine a nation’s history and identity by honoring, profaning, and occasionally destroying these monuments” (in Forest and Johnson 2002:526). Will the people of North Korea ever be able to speak back? Only time can answer these questions, but one thing is evident at present: Pyongyang, as the city of Kim Il-sung, reflexively performs a wide range of state-controlled images of itself—onstage, in the squares, and in the streets—making it one of the most theatrical places in the world.

27. For more information on this park, see http://www.szoborpark.hu/en/en_museum_faq.php.

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