The Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK) is a nation that has largely become recognized as the most dramatic example of centralized State-oppression known in the world today. The DPRK is consistently represented as something akin to being the world’s largest prison, a completely militarized society wherein all individualism is consumed by the collective identity of the State, where any perceived slight or disobedience to the Leader-cult of the North Korean government will be punished with imprisonment, brutal forced labor or execution. The North Korean State is often depicted as mysterious because of its defensively closed-off policies — North Korean citizens are almost never permitted out of the country, and foreign visitors and press are always permitted entry on very specific conditions, being shown only what the State permits, and always under the supervision of Government officials. There is a kind of contradiction in how the DPRK is represented by foreign media in this regard however. North Korea is represented as a supposed enigma whose reality is simultaneously understood by the entire world. As the narrative goes, the guilt of the DPRK’s totalitarian crimes are implicitly revealed by both their intense militarism and their ruthlessly-enforced isolation. By this depiction, North Korea’s militarization and fantastical propaganda narratives blot out their national conditions of famine, concentration camps, speech and media control, as well as horrific examples of state repression. All of this is is understood to be perpetuated by a privileged political elite centered around the Kim family, three of whom have ruled the DPRK in dynastic succession since 1948.
A flock of endangered Red Crowned Cranes flying across the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on the 38th Parallel, the border between the two Korean states. Roughly 4 kilometers wide and 250 kilometers in length, the DMZ is the most militarized border in the world. The space between the two Koreas has been a no-man’s land since 1953, and as a result has taken on the unintended role of wildlife refuge for fauna such as the Cranes pictured here. (photo by Jongwoo Park)
As much as this narrative is rooted in the assumptions of outsiders, it is also informed by the testimony of North Korean defectors, tens of thousands of whom have fled the DPRK and presently live outside its borders. The North Korean people who have fled come from different walks of life, and range from the rural working-class to the urban political elite (in mentioning this I would like to point out that “working-class” in this context describes lived reality that is specific to the experience of North Korean people, to avoid comparisons with working-class life in other parts of the world). North Korean escapees have provided insight to what life is like behind the jealously-guarded borders of the DPRK, and have repeated their experiences of living in a kind of ruthless caste system where generations of families may experience collective punishment for some accused crime against the “revolution” their grandparents may have committed decades ago. But to date, the only accounts of North Korean life that has not been specifically sanctioned and repeated by the DPRK government have been shared with the world by those who have escaped the country.
The State-approved North Korean artistic media output bears some resemblance to Soviet and Maoist propaganda art. The underlying concept expressed by the DPRK however does not reference Marxist political theory alone — included in the message is a concept of an inherent “Korean-ness” that is tied both to ancestral culture and to the land, and from which the natural inclination for collectivism originates. In this respect, the doctrine of the DPRK resembles the mythic narratives of early 20th Century European nationalist political movements. (Painting by Kim Yong Il, “The Technological Revolution”, 2006.)
Much literature, poetry and biographical material has come from these North Koreans who have escaped the country, but The Accusation occupies a historic place for being the first published piece of critical North Korean literature written by someone still living inside of the DPRK. The Accusation‘s author is known only by their pseudonym of Bandi, which translates to “Firefly” in Korean. The Accusation‘s backstory states that the original handwritten manuscript was smuggled out of the DPRK in 2014 and was delivered to the South Korean activist Do Yee-Hun, who was informed of its existence by a relative of Bandi’s who escaped to South Korea. Do Yee-Hun was able to obtain the manuscript by purchasing the services of a Chinese contact who had access to the DPRK. Originally published in South Korea in 2014, it has since been translated into many different languages, and an English-language translation was published by Grove Atlantic in March of 2017.
“Myeong-chol longed to let himself sob out loud, to stamp the ground or shake his fist at the sky. But, depending on the circumstances, he knew that even crying could be construed as an act of rebellion, for which, in this country, there was only one outcome — a swift and ruthless death. And so it was the law of the land to smile even when you were racked with pain, to swallow whatever burned your throat.”
– excerpt from “So Near, Yet So Far” in The Accusation
The Accusation is a compilation of seven short stories, each featuring a distinct cast of characters. Each story is dated at its conclusion, ranging a six-year period between December of 1989 to December of 1995 — an era that saw the death of the semi-divine founder of the DPRK, Kim il-Sung, and the devastating famine that struck the nation during the early years of Kim il-Sung’s son and dynastic successor, Kim Jong-il.
There are many existing accounts of life in North Korea written by escapees that unflinchingly spell out some of the brutal and violent realities of life under the DPRK regime, most of which have come to particular prominence following the period that is covered in The Accusation‘s stories. However the stories shared between the covers of The Accusation are not concerned with providing vivid descriptions of violence and torture, but rather delve into heart-wrenching poetic descriptions of North Korean life from the perspective of the common worker, farmer, artisan and party member.
The mesmerizing choreography of both the Arirang Mass Games and the DPRK’s military parades are intentionally designed to communicate a sense of mass identity — a nation moving as one entity, an erasure of all distinctions between the individual, the nation, and the state.
Each story told in The Accusation is oriented around a similar set of circumstances and conditions. The daughter of a lauded Korean War martyr strives to comfort her young son who bursts into fits of terror whenever he sees the portraits of Karl Marx and the Great Leader, and she struggles to conceal her son’s emotional outbreaks as the preparations for the Mass Games approach in Pyongyang. A man is denied a travel permit to visit his dying mother, and risks his life to sneak past the multitude of security checkpoints on the railroad to reach the mountain village where he was born. A high-ranking party official discovers that his son, a conscripted soldier serving on the tense North-South border on the 38th Parallel, may have disrespected the memory of the recently-deceased Great Leader, and is accused by the Bowibu (secret service) of walking in the mountains with a woman hailing from a disgraced family during the weeks of national mourning for Kim il-Sung. An elderly woman, desperately trying to walk to a hospital to get aid for her injured granddaughter during a period of famine, has a chance encounter with a convoy of luxury vehicles that is transporting none other than the Great Leader Kim il-Sung himself…
“A sincere, genuine life is possible only for those who have freedom. Where emotions are suppressed and actions monitored, acting only becomes ubiquitous, and so convincing that we even trick ourselves. Look at all these people, sobbing over a death that happened three months ago, starving because they haven’t been able to draw their rations all the while. What about the mother of the child bitten by a snake while he was out gathering flowers for Kim Il-Sung’s altar? Perhaps she finds her private grief useful for shedding public tears. Isn’t it frightening, this society which teaches us all to be great actors, able to turn on the waterworks at the drop of a hat?”
– excerpt from “On Stage” in The Accusation
The protagonists of each story navigate their lives while concealing the depth of their struggle, and the pain, resentment, and questioning of their situation. The commitment to secrecy is something accepted as an inherent condition of living in the DPRK, and each story is recounted through the eyes of people who act with the knowledge that they are being watched nearly at all times. Statements, gestures, countenance, the direction of one’s gaze, the posture of the body — all of these are carefully tailored to maintain an immaculate appearance that reflects the national mythology of the DPRK. As this rigid system belief is interpreted, any acknowledged condition of personal misfortune is the result of personal failure to fully adhere to Party dogma and the guidance of the Kim family heads-of-state, and any such personal failure may be at its worst, treasonous. This precedent creates an all-pervasive environment of fear that the characters of The Accusation live in. People brought to life in these stories face accusations of treason from their peers and the agents of the State, all for succumbing in one way or another to tragedies and burdens imposed by the conditions of life in North Korea.
Through the voice of one character, Bandi describes this situation as a nation of people constantly living out a kind of “stage truth”, where every citizen of the DPRK is a actor in a great performance, and where the act of breaking character and speaking the truth is the most heinous of crimes. This is Bandi’s own accusation against the North Korean state and society as a whole, and is one that undoubtedly would also be Bandi’s death sentence if they were exposed as the author of this work. With this being said, Bandi also references the North Korean experience as though it were a broken dream, and depicts characters who still optimistically cling to a hope of an egalitarian, prosperous socialist society, before they descend into a life-shattering state of disillusionment when they begin to comprehend the scale that these ideals have been betrayed.
In this 1997 image published by WorldVision, a North Korean laborer gathers brush, presumably to burn in lieu of coal of wood. During the famine of the 1990s, nearly every possible necessary resource was subject to scarcity.
All of this contributes to the significance of Bandi’s work as a subversive work of fiction published by a North Korean author still living in the country, and it is also the reason why the background of this work and the identity of the author is so obscure. According to the account given by Do Yee-Hun, Bandi’s occupation is that of a propaganda writer for the DPRK government, a privileged profession that they pursued faithfully until the famine of the 1990s, during which Bandi witnessed the suffering, struggles and deaths of a number of close friends and family members. Bandi was compelled to risk their life to write stories inspired by what they had seen during the “arduous march” (the DPRK euphemism term for the famine of this period). During the span of time The Accusation was written in, Kim Jong-Il had taken succeeded his father as the figurehead of the North Korean State, and initially placed an enormous premium on the arts, both literary and visual, with poetry taking an exalted position beneath this patronage. Bandi, as a state-sanctioned writer and recipient of a writer’s privileges, is undoubtedly on a short list of potential authors of this work that the DPRK would be aware of, increasing the already enormous danger that accompanies the production of any art that stands outside the mythos of the North Korean state.
Joseph Lee (L), president of Korean Literary Management, and Do Hee-Yun, activist with The Citizens Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees, during a press briefing on Feb. 14, 2017, about “The Accusation.” (Yonhap)
The stories were all handwritten on sheets of brown paper and carefully hidden for over two decades by Bandi before they were spirited out of the country by Do Yee-Hun’s Chinese contacts, who placed the manuscript between the covers of The Selected Works of Kim Il-Sung. All of the details about The Accusation’s author and history have been very cautiously guarded by Do Yee-Hun, in an effort to protect Bandi’s identity and reduce the chances of their exposure. No photographs of the original manuscript have ever been permitted, and journalists, experts and others wanting to verify its authenticity have only been permitted to view it privately. Although these circumstances might make it seem impossible to prove for certain that The Accusation is not a forgery, North Korean escapees who have read the original manuscript have reported that they believe that it is genuine, and that the text is filled with expressions and ways of describing situations that are particular to the North Korean experience.
May 30th, 2017 photo released by the DPRK state-run news agency, purportedly showing a ballistic missile test.
At the time this article was published, tensions around the Korean peninsula had been heightened over ballistic missile tests carried out by the DPRK in conjunction with their nuclear arms program — both of which have been carried out in defiance of international sanctions and embargoes. Three US Navy Aircraft Carriers are currently in the vicinity of the Korean peninsula, and if they link up together as a fleet at any point it will mark the first time such an armada has been assembled since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The Korean War, and the subsequent partition of the Korean Peninsula into two heavily militarized and mutually antagonistic nation-states, were early products of the Cold War. Although the Cold-War dynamic does not exist in the same way that it did for so many decades, the events of 1950 – 1953 have permanently shaped the national conditions of the two Koreas, and families that were split up by the war still have living members on either side of the DMZ.
The people of South Korea, and presumably the North as well, have become accustomed to constant saber-rattling and military brinkmanship on the borders of their home. All of the people locked into this condition know that if these lines were ever truly crossed, the result would be devastating. In the interim however, art and testimony that exhibits the awareness and humanity of the North Korean people may help blunt the assumption that the people inhabiting the DPRK are all maniacal and brainwashed, and by extension, implacable enemies. Even if it is a comparatively small contribution, by writing, concealing, and risking their life to share The Accusation with the world outside of the Demilitarized Zone, Bandi has contributed to the humanizing dialogue that is essential for the quest for international peace.
