NORTH KOREAN GRAPHIC NOVELS: Seduction of the Innocent? | By Martin Petersen | Pacific Affairs

NORTH KOREAN GRAPHIC NOVELS: Seduction of the Innocent? | By Martin Petersen | Pacific Affairs
BOOK REVIEWS, NORTHEAST ASIA


VOLUME 92 – NO. 3




NORTH KOREAN GRAPHIC NOVELS: Seduction of the Innocent? | By Martin Petersen
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Graphic novels (kurimchaek) are a major art form in North Korea, produced by agents of the regime to set out its vision in a range of important areas. This book provides an analysis of North Korean graphic novels, discussing the ideals they promote and the tensions within those ideals, and examining the reception of graphic novels in North Korea and by North Korean refugees in South Korea. 

Particular themes considered include the ideal family and how the regime promotes this; patriotism, and its conflict with class identities; and the portrayal of the Korean War – "The Fatherland Liberation War", as it is known in North Korea – and the subsequent, continuing stand-off. 

Overall, the book demonstrates the importance of graphic novels in North Korea as a tool for bringing up children and for promoting North Korean ideals. In addition, however, the book also shows that although the regime sees the imaginative power of graphic novels as a necessity for effective communication, graphic novels are also viewed with caution in that they exist in everyday social life in ways that the regime may be aware of, and seeks to control, but cannot dominate completely.

--- Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia Series. London; New York: Routledge [an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business], 2019. xv, 306 pp. (Tables, illustrations) US$149.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-04693-1.

As the world tunes into US-DPRK summits, and talks of denuclearization dominate the media, there is still the mundane everyday life that exists in North Korea. 
Martin Petersen’s book North Korean Graphic Novels: Seduction of the Innocent? presents to the English-speaking audience an aspect of everyday culture that has not been dealt with in studies on North Korea. 

Petersen’s research is vast, exhibiting his knowledge and expertise in hundreds of graphic novels. Primarily focusing on graphic novels from the 1990s and 2000s, Petersen contextualizes the historical and political trajectory and the impact it has had on the production of this cultural medium. Although Petersen acknowledges the evident state ideology in graphic novels, he also suggests that artistic expression allows for “ironic readings” to emerge, affirming the diversity of cultural production in North Korea.

North Korean Graphic Novels consists of nine chapters, divided into three parts. 

The first three chapters in part 1 outline the history of the development of graphic novels from the 1960s to the present day and how they reflect the political changes occurring under the leadership of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Based on the data in Korean Literature and Art Yearbook, chapters 1 and 2 itemize the publication of graphic novels, revealing their increasing popularity. In chapter 3, Petersen describes how graphic novels are inextricably connected to the deification of the leaders. By analyzing images and discourses in the novels’ frames, he shows the replication of political ideology glorifying the Kim family.

Part 2 is the most theoretical aspect of the book, framed around descriptive analyses of graphic novels of the 1990s and 2000s. 

In chapter 4, Petersen provides three approaches—what he calls meta-authorial reading, ironic reading, and reader-recognizant meta-authorial reading—to understanding graphic novels during the Arduous March in the 1990s, a period that crippled North Korea’s economy due to mismanagement of food, lack of production, and a nation-wide famine. According to Petersen, meta-authorial reading is an “expression of regime intentionality with an inherently partisan mode of meaning,” which is to say that the graphic novels of this period projected Party guidelines and adhered to state ideology (132). Ironic reading, then, is an approach that questions the intentionality of the state and provides open-ended interpretations of graphic novels. Although Petersen tries to demonstrate that graphic novels are not simply iterations of the state ideology and that there are cognitive dissonances, his application of reader-recognizant meta-authorial reading shows how the regime used graphic novels to reinstate power and stability during times of crisis. Petersen’s use of these three approaches is a modality through which we can better understand graphic novels of the 1990s. However, his descriptions of the plot were longer than his critical analysis, leaving the readers to make the connections that Petersen had promised.

Chapter 5 explores a recurring problem of bad family background in North Korean society. The state judges one’s intentions by scrutinizing one’s family background. Petersen argues that the function of graphic novels is to educate the readers to transcend problematic family backgrounds to become more loyal subjects of the state. Of all the chapters in North Korean Graphic Novels, this chapter is by far the most simplistic and uncritical in terms of analyzing the cultural medium. Petersen engages yet again in a descriptive explanation of the plot and falls short of providing critical nuances of a subject matter that is common in North Korean literature. He promises to extrapolate ironic readings that reveal structural problems in the society, but such readings get subsumed in the heavy-handed description of plots.

Conversely, chapters 6 and 7 are the most successful literary interpretations of graphic novels. By examining frames, sequences, artwork, rhetoric, dialogues, and symbolisms, Petersen explicates literary nuances that support the regime and moments that push the limits of artistic expression. Chapter 7, in particular, is the most developed chapter, wherein Petersen restrains from exhaustive descriptions of the plot while presenting a critical understanding of the multimodal production of graphic novels in North Korea. Petersen argues that there is much ambiguity in the interplay between state ideology and entertainment in graphic novels about loyal patriots who cross over to enemy territory to convert South Koreans.

Part 3 consists of chapters 8 and 9, which attempt to examine the consumption of graphic novels by North Koreans. While the cultural medium is primarily intended to educate young readers, Petersen observes that children may steal and read them in secret, potentially misunderstanding the intended message. The impact of such misunderstanding, Petersen argues, is important enough to spur the state to intervene, and educate the parents to emulate the Kim family in raising revolutionary children, which is an extension of the state’s attempt to educate the youth. Chapter 9 valiantly attempts to understand the reception of graphic novels by North Koreans. Interviewing a handful of North Korean refugees, migrants, and defectors living in South Korea, Petersen contextualizes these graphic novels, and situates them in a framework of reader-response theory. It is understandable that the outside world desires to know what North Koreans think about their own cultural medium, regime, and society, particularly because of the enigmatic discourse that shrouds that country. However, as difficult as it is to grasp authorial intent, it is virtually impossible to know how all the citizens of a country read, think, and interpret graphic novels, and insights from a handful of refugees will not provide any critical analyses of graphic novels.

Petersen begins and ends his book with the question of whether graphic novels have the power to seduce youth in North Korea, and demonstrates that they do indeed persuade readers to internalize state ideology. At the same time, he recognizes the seductive inclination of entertainment in graphic novels, creating a space of imagination that goes beyond the intended political message. Petersen displays his expertise in graphic novels and provides a comprehensive understanding of the cultural medium. Petersen’s book, therefore, is an important addition to much-needed scholarship in North Korean studies.

Immanuel Kim

The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

Last Revised: November 28, 2019
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학술저널

북한의 그림책 장르인식과 아동 그림책에 나타난 탈이념성

North Korea’s Recognition of the Picture Book Genre and the Anti-Ideology in Children’s Picture Books


최윤정(건국대학교)
한국아동청소년문학학회
아동청소년문학연구
아동청소년문학연구 제23호
2018.12
117 - 149 (33 pages)
KCI등재

DOI : 10.24993/JKLCY.2018.12.23.117

초록


이 논문은 북한의 그림책을 연구대상으로 하여 그림책에 대한 북한의 장르인식을 살피고 아동용 그림책의 특징을 분석하였다. 특히 남북 이질감을 극복하기 위한 방안에서 북한 그림책에 나타난 탈이념성에 주목하였다.
북한 그림책이 가지고 있는 장르의 혼종성은 많은 연구자들에게 혼란을 주고 있지만, 남한식의 개념을 무리하게 대입시키기보다는 그러한 혼종성 자체를 북한 그림책의 특징으로 이해하여야 할 것이다. 특히 1980년~90년 중반에 걸쳐 집중 발간된 북한의 아동용 그림책들은 글과 그림의 관계, 그림의 완성도 측면에서 예술적 관점으로 접근 가능한 텍스트들이다. 이들 텍스트들을 중심으로 그림책 장르에 대한 북한식의 이해를 살펴볼 수 있다. 많은 아동용 그림책들이 북한 사회에서 요구하는 교양덕목을 담아내는 데 일차적인 목적을 두고 있는 것은 분명해 보인다. 그럼에도 불구하고 발견된 탈이념적 성격의 그림책들은 향후 남북관계에 있어 가교역할을 할 수 있다는 측면에서 주목을 요한다.

This study set out to examine North Korea’s perceptions of the picture book genre and analyze the characteristics of picture books for children by examining picture books in North Korea with a special focus on the anti-ideology of North Korean picture books to overcome a sense of difference between North and South Korea.
In North Korean picture books, pictures include cartoons. Since there is no clear distinction between picture books and cartoons in North Korea with regard to the perception of the picture book genre, the researchers are in confusion in the field. The hybridity of the genre itself should, however, be understood as a characteristic of North Korean picture books instead of forcing the South Korean-style concept on North Korea. The North Korean picture books for children whose publication was concentrated from the 1980s to the middle 1990s, in particular, offer texts that can be approached from an artistic perspective in terms of relations between texts and pictures and the completion level of pictures. The present study examined the North Korean-style understanding of a medium of art called picture books with a focus on these texts. It is clear that many picture books for children have a primary goal of conveying the virtues of refinement required by the North Korean society, but the picture books of antiideological nature around “old storybooks with pictures” are worth receiving attention as they will be able to promote the recovery of homogeneity between North and South Korea and serve as a bridge in future relations between two Koreas.
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목차


국문초록
1. 서론
2. 북한 그림책의 성격과 그림책에 대한 장르 인식
3. 아동용 그림책의 특징과 탈이념적 성격의 발견
4 결론
참고문헌
Abstract