KJ
Encounters
Illustration
by Rimi yang
I Spy: Learning from Pyongyang TV
Philip J. Cunningham
Brent
Choi, a researcher at the Institute for Unification Studies at JoongAng
Ilbo in Seoul, invites me to watch a few hours of North Korean
television which he views daily as part of his job. We arrange to meet
in one of the few places in Seoul where the North Korean television
signal can be picked up live, since it is technically illegal to watch
“propaganda” from the North.
We pull ourselves away from the diverse offerings of South Korean TV,
which at the moment is showing exciting footage of the Sydney Olympic
games, and tune into a special set that allows us to peer behind the
great wall dividing Korea north and south.
At five o’clock, a red flag appears on the screen, followed by
a likeness of the father of the country, Kim Il-sung. A soldiers’
chorus belts out patriotic hymns against a backdrop of a red sun over
rugged mountains. It’s not unlike nationalistic programming in
China, especially the second number which sounds like a variation of
the Internationale. The camera zooms in for a close-up on flowers,
apparently a typical transition shot.
“The thing I like best about Pyongyang TV is no commercials,”
explains Mr. Choi. “Unless, of course, you understand the programming
for what it really is, one long political commercial!”
All of a sudden, a stunningly attractive newsreader, dressed in conservative
pastel blouse buttoned up to the top, is looking me right in the eye.
“How do you like her?” asks Choi with a wide grin. “See?
She’s looking straight into the camera as she talks. She’s
not reading the news, she’s telling the news. They don’t
have teleprompters. She’s not looking at the script on the desk,
she’s memorized it.”
And mesmerized me. Her warm, intelligent eyes, capped by lovely unplucked
brows, shift downwards only at the beginning of each new story.
The scene switches to a taped report showing a phalanx of men, party
members apparently, walking around in suits and rubber boots on an inspection
tour of a flooded area.
“Political news comes first, then economics,” says Choi.
“It used to be mostly political, but recently we’ve seen
less of that and more economic news.”
What’s it like watching North Korean TV day in
and day out?
“We are learning a lot, because the pictures inadvertently reveal
things, even though the coverage is quite controlled. For example, we
have found that one-quarter of the people we see on TV wear no watches,
about half are not wearing socks. Workers in factories often have no
gloves or safety equipment.”
We turn our eyes back to the announcer as she segues into a story that
might be summed up as “Dear Leader says raise more poultry!”
The camera work is steady and the production values are surprisingly
good. “They use Japanese cameras, of course,” says Choi.
“Now here the shop lady is saying that following the advice of
her Dear Leader is the secret of her success.”
The next news item shows a group of elderly European men. Foreign news?
Tourists? “No, that’s a delegation of British communists
arriving in Pyongyang. I have to make note of that, it’s rare
to see foreign visitors on TV!”
The news is so conventional and polite up until this point that the
next story takes me by surprise. Pyongyong Rose gives Japan some lip,
saying “They, who know no repentance — they have the nerve
to bid for a seat on the UN Security Council?”
The gentle blast against Japan is followed by a side-swipe at Israel
in a solidly pro-Palestinian report. Finally a wrap-up of domestic developments
in North Korea. “Every corner of our country is filled with flame
of revolution to construct a strong and prosperous fatherland.”
Some North Koreans of course, are more equal than others,
and the most equal comrade, Kim Jong Il, has long enjoyed the privilege
of foreign goods, foreign movies and not-so-foreign TV. Kim recently
told Southern visitors he’s been watching South Korean TV for
20 years.
“I like KBS the best,” Kim allegedly quipped, “because
it’s state-run TV!”
Mr. Choi takes a lively, curious interest in his estranged compatriots
and the more I hear him talk, the more I realize that despite fifty
years of hatred and misunderstanding, ultimately no one has warmer,
deeper feelings towards the people on the other side of the DMZ than
Koreans themselves.
When I compare President Kim Dae-jung’s historic visit to Pyongyang
for a handshake with Kim Jong-il to Nixon’s visit to China, I
am quickly reminded that Nixon was visiting a foreign country. In the
Pyongyang summit photos and videos we view, there is an essential element
missing, something so obvious that I don’t notice it at first.
There are no interpreters. The leaders just talk to one another in their
native tongue.
A former Arabic specialist, Choi acknowledges the irony of becoming
an expert on the other half of his own country. He relates an encounter
with some North Korean “journalists” at a border meeting
where he was surprised to learn they knew who he was. This he modestly
attributed to his distinctive bald head and round face, noting he had
often been photographed by North Korean guards at the border.
So it came as something of a surprise that northerners had not only
read his articles but could offer lengthy quotes from them. It was then
he realized that he had counterparts in the North, southern specialists,
if you like, who read the Seoul press. A casual chat revealed they were
up-to-date in their information, even dropping words like “NASDAQ.”
“I asked them why they didn’t make the TV programs more
interesting. ‘We can’t change what we get,’ they explained.
‘All the news comes from the Worker’s Party.’”
While I mention this is a complaint not unfamiliar to Chinese journalists
working with Xinhua, we are interrupted by gleeful shouts of South Korean
baseball fans nearby watching their team slug its way to victory.
We turn our attention back to Pyongyang, watching a series of artful,
but out-of-season video shots of snow-laden trees on craggy peaks. Then
the camera pulls back to reveal a three-word inscription carved on the
rockface. It’s “Jong Il Pong” or Jong-Il Peak. The
stirring classical music then shifts to a mellow karaoke-style anthem,
setting the mood for a zoom-in on a log cabin, lit blue on the outside,
orange on the inside. The only obvious anachronism in the “humble”
birthplace of Kim Jong-Il, snuggled deep in the snowy mountains, (aside
from the lounge music and disco lighting) is the photograph of the little
revolutionary boy as the grownup Dear Leader.
As is sometimes the practice in Japan and China, close-up shots of newspapers
offer cash-starved Pyongyang a cheap way of doing the news, tomorrow’s
headlines today. Choi translates as an unseen narrator ticks off items
that will appear in the next day’s Rodong Shimmun, mostly
the standard good news about progress and development under the Dear
Leader’s guidance.
This is followed by a children’s show, a tasteful adventure involving
little bunnies, squirrels and other friendly creatures with cute high-pitched
voices, rendered in clay animation. The kiddy fare, according to Choi,
is wholesome programming, almost completely free of politics. “It’s
not all propaganda as we used to think.”
Philip
J. Cunningham has recently been researching pre-WW II depictions of
China in Japanese media, and of Japan in Chinese media, on a Fullbright
grant in Kyoto and Beijing.
Copyright held by the author
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