Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea

Introduction

THEATER, THEORYITEXT/PERFORMANCE Series Editors, David Krasner and Rebecca Schneider Founding Editor. Enoch Brater Recent Tides: A Beckett CtmOn by Ruby Cobn DtlVidM_et in Ctmversatitm edited byLeslie Kane The Haunted Stage: The Theatre asMemory MilChine byMarvin Carlson Staging Comaoumess: Theater andthe MilCerialization ufMind byWilliamW. Demastes Agitated States: Peifurmance in the American Theater ofCruelty byAnthonyKubiak LandlScapelTheateredited byElinor Fuchs and Una Cbaudburi The Stage Life ofProps byAndrew Sofer Playing Underground: A CriticalHistory ufthe 1960sOff-Off-Broadway Movement by StephenJ. Bottoms ArthurMiller'sAmerica: Theaterand Culture in aTime ufChange edited by Enoch Brater LookingInto theAby.s:r: Essayson Scenography byArnold Aronson Avant-GardePeifurmanceand the LimitsofCriticism:Approaching the Living Theatre, Happening.rIFluxus, andthe BlackArtsMovement byMike Sell Not the OtherAvant-Garde: The TransnatWnaIFoundatiuns ofAvant-Garde Peifurmance edited byJamesM. Harding andJobn Rouse The Purpose ofPlaying: Modern ActingTheories in Perspective by Robert Gordon Staging Philosophy: Intersections of Theater, Peifurmance, andPhilosophy edited by David Krasner and David Z. Saltz Critical Theory andPeifurmance: RevisedandEnlargedEdititm edited byJanelle G. Reinelt andJoseph R. Roach Reflections on Beckett:A Centenary Cekhration edited byAnnaMcMullan and S. E. Wibner Performing Conquest: Five CenturiesofTheater, History, andIdentity in Tlaxcala, Mexico byPatricia A. Ybarra The PresidentEkttric: RonaldReagan andthe PoliticsofPerformance byTimothy Raphael CuctingPeifurmances: Collage Events, FeministArtists, andtheAmericanAvant-Garde byJamesM. Harding l/Jusive Utopia: Theater, Film, andEveryday Performance in North Korea bySnk-YoungKim I L L U S I V E U T O P I A theater, film, and everyday performance in north korea Suk-Young Kim THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS • ANN ARBOR Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2010 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2013 2012 2011 2010 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kim, Suk-Young, 1970– Illusive utopia : theater, film, and everyday performance in North Korea / Suk-Young Kim. p. cm. — (Theater—theory/text/performance) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-472-11708-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Theater and society—Korea (North) 2. Theater—Political aspects—Korea (North) 3. Motion pictures—Social aspects—Korea (North) 4. Motion pictures—Political aspects—Korea (North) 5. Performing arts—Social aspects—Korea (North) 6. Performing arts— Political aspects—Korea (North) I. Title. PN2939.1.K56 2010 792.095193—dc22 2009038399 ISBN 13 978-0-472-02689-0 (electronic) • for michael Preface I have come a long way since the Saturday afternoon I sat curled up in a dark corner of our school movie theater, waiting in horror for the animation ‹lm to be over. On screen was a grinning red monster with horns sticking out of his head and sharp menacing teeth like knife blades. The raging creature was destroying buildings and cars at will as he marched down the streets of Seoul. Thousands of people were running for their lives; friends and family members were separated in the pandemonium. I cannot remember the exact title of this ‹lm, but the evil and merciless red monster was the ‹rst image of North Korea that had ever been presented to me. I was only one of many South Korean elementary school students required to watch anti-Communist propaganda ‹lms in the late 1970s. Films like this left a lingering effect on an impressionable preteen like me. The dreadful memories of these ‹lms were magni‹ed when as students we were required to write essays about our gratitude for living in the South and the need to work hard to unify the country and bring down the evil regime of Kim Il-sung. The impressions conveyed by this ‹lm were only a part of a much larger psychological paranoia that South Korea felt toward the North, feelings very much in keeping with how the Western world felt about the Communist bloc for most of the second half of the twentieth century. My personal Cold War occurred in the theater watching those ‹lms. While growing up, it never occurred to me that North Korean children my age could be enduring similar cinematic rituals and the same indoctrination process—the only difference being that we were their monsters. More than a decade later, in...