‘I repeatedly failed to win any awards’: my doomed career as a North Korean novelist
Since its founding, North Korea has always had an elaborate bureaucracy for artistic production, organised within the Korean Workers party’sagitation andpropagandadepartment. This framework was set up in emulation of the Soviet systemunder Stalin. Over time, this artistic bureaucracy has been increasingly adapted to promote the cult of personality surrounding the first leaderKim Il-sungand his descendants.
Among the many cultural products designed to promote the regime, one of the most important is literature. Aspiring writers in North Korea must register with theKorean Writers’ Unionand participate in annual writing workshops. The KWU has offices in every province in the country. KWU editors evaluate each work on its ideological merits before allowing its publication in one of theparty’s own literary journals. There are particularly strict rules regarding how the leaders and theparty may be depicted in literature.
A writer’s life is highly competitive. Literary success means becoming a “professional revolutionary” with lots of perks: a three-month “creativity leave” every year, permission to travel freely around the countryand special housing privileges.
Kim Ju-sŏng was one such aspiring writer. A“zainichi”(Japan-born ethnic Korean), he “returned” to North Korea in 1976 at age 16 as part of a wave of emigration encouraged by pro-North Korean groups in Japan and lived in the country for 28 years before defecting to South Korea. The zainichi returnees were an important propaganda tool as well as a source of income and foreign technology for the North Korean regime. Due to their foreign connections they enjoyed a relatively higher standard of living, but they also faced suspicion from the regime and prejudice from ordinary North Koreans.
Below are three excerpts from Kim’s memoir, Tobenai kaeru: Kitachōsen sennō bungaku no jittai (The Frog that Couldn’t Jump: The Reality of North Korea’s Brainwashing Literature), translated by Meredith Shaw. In it, he describes working at his localKWUbranch as an office assistant. The first excerpt begins as he is meeting with his superior shortly after starting the job.
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“By the way, how are you managing with the 100-copy collection?”
“Huh? What do you mean, the 100copy collection?”
“The books in the safe. Don’t neglect your library duties. It’d be a disaster if anything leaked to the outside.”
I set off for the library at a run. There were books in that safe? I had no idea. I figured, at best, it would be a stash of treatises by the leaders on literary theory, or else records of secret directives for KWU eyes only. It turned out that the 100-copy collection was where the union stored translated copies of foreign novels and reference books that writers could access.
With the speed of a bank robber, I yanked out my key, turned the lock and opened the safe. Inside, tightly