Anna Broinowski - Aim High in Creation! - A One-of-a-Kind Journey Inside North Korea's Propaganda Machine

Marx has nothing to fear from Kim Jong Il: On the Art of the Cinema is turgid, whimsical, and clunky. Das Kapital , in comparison, reads like an airport novel. I have no idea if Kim actually wrote his book, or if it was ghosted by one of his minions. But I’m glad I’ve read it. The Cinema and Directing , when fleshed out by the bigger manifesto, contains nuggets of propaganda gold. Kim’s first rule is that The Director is the Commander of the Creative Group . Before he can shoot a single frame, the director must ideologically train his actors and crew—making them “socialist warriors” in mind and body. People can disagree with the director, but when they are ideologically out of line, he will stage gruelling “self-criticism sessions”—in which the dissenter is shamed by the group until he relents. As creative commander of everything, Kim was a pretty tough critic:

In one film about life during the Fatherland Liberation War, the barracks of the US Imperialist troops of aggression and the South Korean puppet army were shown as being too luxurious. These may seem to be trifles, but they are distortions of the truth, which undermine the realism of the production, and, furthermore, have an adverse effect on people’s education.

I wonder where the director of this film is now. Is there a gulag for directors who’ve failed? Kim warns that sycophancy towards “capitalist ideas” will be “combated and eliminated once and for all,” and I picture the filmmakers who dared to ignore him, scraping rocks in a coal pit with bare hands, their gangrenous feet knotted with rags. I am suddenly grateful for every bad review I’ve received.

Kim’s second rule, One Must Aim High in Creation !, involves the songza , or “seed,” of the movie, which springs “like a tree from a pine cone.” The seed unites the creatives behind a single vision—enabling them to make “revolutionary films of high artistic value, to arm people fully with the Party’s monolithic ideology.” That ideology is Juche, or North Korea’s take on socialism.

Developed by Kim Il Sung, Juche is more a religion than a philosophy—seen by North Koreans as a superior version of Marxism, in the same way Muslims see Islam as an advancement of Christianity. Juche Man is master of his own destiny: an “independent and self-reliant warrior.” This is puzzling, given the North Koreans are spectacularly good at marching in unison. I guess the idea, from the Juche point of view, is that they have all decided, at exactly the same time, to behave like anonymous cogs inside Kim Jong Il’s vast machine.

Filmmakers must “Aim High” when choosing their seed. The goal is not box office, but education. Choosing the right seed is the “most important thing in the process of creation,” and no doubt in the process of survival too, if you’re making films for Kim Jong Il. From what I can work out, the seeds that will keep you out of the gulags are limited to four:

Seed 1: The People United will Never be Defeated (especially when fighting the Yankee Bastards or Imperialist Japs).

Seed 2: The Person who sacrifices herself for her village, country, or the Dear Leader will be rewarded with glory—but only after extreme suffering.

Seed 3: People who want status and other nasty capitalist stuff will suffer horribly, until a beautiful working-class heroine converts them to the revolution.

Seed 4: Beware of hassling your absent Father or Husband: he might be secretly making nuclear rockets for the advancement of the nation.

Kim’s films have limited seeds, but their stylistic range is huge. According to North Korean movie websites, there are noir thrillers ( Unsung Heroes ), melodramas ( Broad Bell Flower ), rom-coms ( Urban Girl Gets Married ), urban satires ( Two Families of Hang Dong ), historical epics ( My Happiness ), buddy movies ( Myself in the Distant Future ), kung-fu action pics ( Pyongyang Nalpharam ), and big-budget war movies ( Wolmi Island ). These titles promise a world of generic wonderment. I wish I could click on them and buy the DVD. But there’s no hyperlink. North Korea does not sell its films to the free world. Interviewing Kim’s defected filmmakers may be the closest I’m going to get.

In promoting his third rule, Emotions should be Well Defined in Directing , Kim Jong Il, like any other dictator with a healthy narcissistic streak, gives Hitler’s Aryan ideal a run for its money: “The characteristically photogenic face is a typical Korean face, in which a noble spirit and balanced features form a perfect harmony.”

Kim would have taken a dim view of the girls getting eyelid tucks in Seoul. He may have ordered a few Pyongyang waitresses to have plastic surgery to impress the tourists, but his actresses are 100 per-cent natural. Unlike their decadent Western sisters, their beauty comes from being ideologically pure: “Capitalist cinema, which promotes a few ‘popular stars’ to curry favour with the audience, reduces the stars to puppets and film to a commodity. There cannot be genuine creative spirit, and the beautiful flower of art cannot bloom, where actors sell their faces, and even their souls.”

Kim’s actresses are not on screen to sip Red Bull in their hummers, before loading up Glocks for the act three shoot-out. They are there to sell the message that North Korea is the greatest place on earth, the Kims are the greatest leaders on earth, and Juche socialism is the envy of the world. Just like the advertisers he slams, Kim knows that sex (along with humour and desire) is a powerful tool. To sex up his stars so they can inspire total devotion to the nation (and to himself), he sets out a training regime that makes the Juilliard School look like a five-star romp in Fiji:

Work 24/7!The actor must work like a revolutionary. His creative endeavours should fill twenty-four hours of his day. He should live through struggling and struggle even as he lives.

Love the Working Class!An actor who does not love the working class cannot understand its revolutionary spirit. He should always gather experience, so that he can assimilate the ardour of the people of our age, and can feel the very warmth of their breath.

Be ideologically fit!If an actor considers his good looks to be a gift of destiny he will be weeded out before long. As the saying goes, “Even jade has to be polished to make it shine,” and the better an actor looks, the harder he should work on his ideological development to improve his screen face.

NEVER show off!When the actor knows ten elements of truth, he should express three or four. If he tries to express ten, he is like someone drawing a puppy when he intended to draw a tiger.

Kim’s fourth rule, Acting Depends on the Director , is a direct ripoff of method acting. The best way to “draw a tiger,” Kim says, is not to research your role, but to live it. The director must make the actor “go and live in a busy iron works or a cooperative farm. At the same time, the actor’s home life should be exemplary. He should participate conscientiously in the business of his neighborhood unit, attend parents’ meetings at school, and stand duty at his workplace.”

This works for actors playing the working-class hero. But for actors playing villains, Kim has a problem. Every socialist propaganda film must have an enemy, as you can’t portray the class struggle without one. But in North Korea, there are no bad guys left to research. This is because Kim Il Sung killed them all. The country has apparently been free from oppression since 1953, when the Yankees slunk out of town. Actors playing “Bastard Americans,” “Japanese Landlords,” or “South Korean Puppets” don’t have passports, so they can’t research their roles overseas. Instead, Kim helpfully suggests that they “read many excellent literary works, especially revolutionary novels, and conduct their lives like revolutionaries. Visiting historical museums and revolutionary sites can provide actors with invaluable insights into life.”