Pyongyng: A Journey in North Korea

By: Guy Delisle
Published By: Drawn and Quarterly

I have a strange fascination with North Korea. I am amazed that a country that is run as such an absurdist dictatorship can have lasted for so long. How are they able to keep such tight control over the information people receive?

Earlier this year I saw A State of Mind, which documented the lives of two young girls preparing for a "mass games" performance. This book takes a more outsider perspective, telling the story of an animator who travels to North Korea to supervise work for a French animation company. He more directly addresses the biases of westerners, telling the stories about what we hear about Kim Jong Il, all of which the movie ignored.

The detail that always sticks with me is the all-pervasive radios, which cannot be turned completely off and only are able to pick up the single government-run station. You can make whatever arguments you like about what forces control the media in your country, but this is taking it to such an extreme that it is difficult to understand how people that live with this don't question it. Even China offers a much more independent media and some access to the outside world.

Mr. Delisle does a fantastic job of conveying his experiences as he tries to come to terms with the limits on his existence there and occasionally feels compelled to express what little freedom he can to test the boundaries. I can't imagine being limited to exactly three restaurants (or even fewer when one is being renovated) that serve unappealing food, but Mr. Delisle seemed to find a way to handle it and is able to communicate the different levels of emotions he went through. I only wish he more directly addressed the issue of whether participating in these limited foreign-investments into the country helped or harmed the population. These programs definitely provide money to the government to allow it to sustain its totalitarian regime, but they also provide a way for some peasants to escape a harsh life because of their talent. The government goes to extreme lengths to make sure any foreigners are limited in their contact with North Koreans so they can't have too much of a bad cultural influence on people.

D&Q did a fantastic job making an attractive book, and Guy's cartooning style helps keep the tone humorous throughout much of the book until you begin to think more deeply about a lot of the people's lives. This book is definitely entertaining on its own terms along with being an important exploration into a society that most of us don't know enough about. It can also offer a lot of interesting questions about what freedoms are important to people.