Have you ever read a novel from North Korea? From it uh... not about.
Not one of the people able to run away. I mean a real novel that NKoreans buys in their bookstores. Maybe the serie of Inspector O by James Church, but he is not a North Korean and the books are not from NK... so? So it does not count. You cannot think of any, right?
Books from within North Korea, about North Korea life, being them thrillers or romantic ones, are basically known only to academicians and intelligence communities.
They are rather boring, structurally similar to each other, and strictly go according to the social aims they have been commissioned for; therefore it is only logic they do not reach the 'decadent' foreign markets. There is also a propaganda reason for the regime to stop books from going out. A comparison with others worldly creations may be bad and smugglers could bring these bad opinions back to the country. But it's mostly an issue of copyrights and indeed of no market for things that are mostly boring and not understandable by 99.99% of the world.
So what are we talking about here and why?
Today I am suggesting Friend by Paek Nam-nyong. A novel, a real novel, from within NK, by a NK author who still lives there and who had a discreet success.
The author shows a talent that had me and my wife wondering what he would have become and what he would have been able to write if he was not living in that country.
Follow me for the next lines and you will grasp what I mean.
Both of us, my wife and I, are fascinated by the weirdness of the social, political and human 1984 style 'experiment' set up by the Kim that North Korea is; so, when we saw this book while walking through the bookshelves of Kinokuniya, well we could not miss it. That's why we bought it.
We did not really know what to expect, the plot was about a 'rural story', but we know we could expect something absolutely out of any standard. That's why we bought it.
It is not a book for everyone and you realize after a while. The political-social propaganda does not step in immediately. Initially the background is set and for strange it is, well, you can accept it as a story from a different world without any problem. It is the author greatness too.
Yet, even if it is a novel, it is a North Korean one. Don't ever forget it. It has to have a social enlightenment aim, a political purpose. So you will find a crescendo of political sermons inside, not even hidden, rather quite well positioned in the story too, if you consider their point of view. Read it always with open mind, see it from NK point of view.
The book is filled with a 'realistic' northkoreanish kind of society, the ideals towards which everybody will (happily) struggle for. Therefore it is natural to read these sermons, and for the overall book to be like a whole sermon itself.
With that in mind you can appreciate it for what it is, a rural story, admirably well told intertwining plot and a lot of social realism (whatever it is) towards the ideals of NK human, social, judicial society.
The sermons are many but well told, those on family values comparing few ones with different dynamics flows naturally, as it does the comparison of different jobs of different nature and importance for the society, as much as the sacrifices each has and implies, and how they are all the same at the eyes of the society good. It all makes sense, in their view.
If you are open minded to read something absolutely different, read it.
It will be weird, it seems ridiculous in many parts to western eyes, but as I said, think of it as planned and read by NKoreans.
Then sit and think of two things:
- how good the author is to have been able to write something like that, filled with sermons and propaganda in almost any page, without being boring and having you interested to turn the pages one after the other.
- how brainwashed at all level the NKoreans unfortunately are
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