Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea

I'm fascinated by North Korea. Any time I see photos or hear stories from refugees I can hardly wrap my head around the fact that it's real. This book is an excellent tour on the inside.

With the domestic animation industry fading away in his adopted country France, Guy Delisle was given the rare opportunity to work in North Korea to oversee the production of a cartoon that had been botched by the North Korean staff. Although already a bit seasoned in Asia because of his work in China and Vietnam, Delisle's experience had not prepared him for his two month long sojourn into the most hermetically sealed nation in the world. Travelogues by individuals traveling into areas that are normally sealed off to the general population are quite prevalent in travel literature, but Delisle's comic rendition of his journey, while not quite as hard hitting as Joe Sacco's graphic diaries into Palestine and Bosnia, offers a fresh look in to the northern part of the Hermit Kingdom which most, especially Americans, will never see. Delisle is shocked at first upon his arrival into Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, not so much by the blackouts and emptiness of the city, but because of its sterile nature and tenseness that continuously fills the air. Being a foreigner, Delisle is not allowed to travel unaccompanied, so he is always in the company of a guide, translator, or a driver. This keeps him from being able to escape his work environs, selected hotels for foreigners, where even most of the staff is foreign, Chinese, or designated tourist sites. Therefore, most of his speculations about life in North Korea are based on observances made from afar. However, the author is able to chip through slightly the shiny veneer of the North Koreans who work close to him to reveal a people who have been completely brainwashed by their government into thinking that their sealed off nation is the pinnacle of the world and that the megalomaniacal dictator Kim Jong il is the flower of perfection. Delisle has been criticized because he supposedly does not have any new knowledge to convey in this book and that he really makes no attempt to get to know the North Koreans around him. I find this to be a bit harsh, and believe Pyongyang: a Journey to North Korea is a fine work that gives the reader a view into a country, without premeditated political overbearing, that he or she would not normally be privy to. Delisle's artwork is quite simple, but his simple characters convey emotion well and his eye for detail is quite outstanding. Having read this work, I do indeed intend to read the other graphic travel diaries of this author.

First: A comment on the professional reviews. The Publishers Weekly review up above does not accurately catch the flavor of this book. The Booklist review is on the money. The Publishers Weekly review gives you the impression that the book is a good-humored look at a different culture from the perspective of a Westerner. The reviewer misses the point entirely. On the 2nd page, Delisle shows how he snuck in a copy of George Orwell's "1984" (a banned book in North Korea) - any moderately well-read person can identify the constant presence of the photos of "The Great Leader" and "The Dear Leader" with Orwell's omnipresent "Big Brother". It is intended to be a bit of foreshadowing to tell the reader where he is going with the book - and he hits a home run with it! This is an anti-communist triumph from beginning to end - not with the soaring rhetoric of a Kennedy or a Reagan, but rather with its gentle story-telling style and its simple emphasis on communism's absurdities - from the lack of information, to the lack of food, electriciity and choices of what to watch on TV and listen to on the radio. The constant barrage of revolutionary songs and the presence of "volunteers" who sweep an empty 4 lane highway to nowhere with straw brooms are perfect illustrations of the bizarre nature of both communism and North Korea. I first heard about this book from an interview on NPR. Unfortunately, the NPR reviewer had only done about as much reading as the Publishers Weekly and hadn't really figured out what the book was all about. So, I was not expecting much more than a lightweight travelogue in graphic novel form about a cotnroversial country. Instead, I was pleased to see that it was that and so much more. This is one not to miss. I give this one a score of A+!

Since the end of the Korean War, North Korea has become the most isolated, mysterious and fortified country on Earth. Unlike many other remote locations around the world North Korea is not a place many people would want to spend any time. However, thanks to globalization, North Korea's vast supply of super cheap labor and a real need for foreign investment the country has opened its doors just a crack and in peeked cartoonist Guy Delisle for a view at probably the most tightly regulated society on the planet. Mr. Delisle documents his experience in North Korea accompanied by his ever present "guide" and his translator. Pyongyang isn't really a story per se as much as a slice of life glimpse at the daily goings on in North Korea or at least as much of a glimpse as foreigners are allowed to see. The drawing style in Pyongyang is a minimalist black and white that captures nicely the mirthless life in North Korea. You get a sense that the leadership is desperately trying to maintain a good face for the rest of the world but like the bridge in the book that only gets half painted the rust is bleeding through and the cracks are growing. There could hardly be a better advertisement for Capitalism and Democracy than the sterile, dystopia that is North Korea where airports and restaurants operate without lights and massive construction projects sit unfinished and crumbling. Freeways are built without exits and all the people listen to the same state run radio broadcast featuring music that sounds like "a cross between a national anthem and the theme song of a children's show". North Korea has the same kind of creepiness as a cult except on a massive scale where Kim Jung Il acts as patron deity and his smiling visage is ever present in society. Each room has his portrait and his face appears on a pin that all Korean's are required to wear. This is a land where worker can advance by ratting on their fellow citizens and slight infractions can cause people to suddenly vanish. Guy Delisle does a superb job of capturing the bleakness and bizarreness of North Korea contrasting it with his own light hearted rebellious attitude. In the end he tries to retain a shred of normalcy throwing paper airplanes from his apartment window while the people below try and hold it together in a society permeated by fear and mistrust. One of the items that the author brings with him is a copy of George Orwell's `1984' but what he found was the physical manifestations of Orwell's deepest fears brought to life.

This is the sixth travelogue memoir I have read in the past year including Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis books (the best of the lot), Craig Thompson's Carnet de Voyage and Rick Smith's Baraka and Black Magic in Morocco (the worst of the lot). This book is somewhere between Thompson's book (actually more of a traveling sketchbook than story) and Satrapi's tome of her youth in Iran. As with Thompson's book, this is an outsider's view of things we may perceive as absurd (and though I believe most of what Delisle writes about is totally absurd and unbelievable, I also believe his depiction of North Korean existence under a dictator is probably very accurate). This is an excellent beginning for Delisle and may be hard to follow. I highly recommend the book.