한국국제교류재단

However, it is wrong to think that North Korean literature is singularlyabout saccharine flattery of the regime. The poet Choi Jinyi,who defected to South Korea in 1998, wants to disabuse peopleof this common misconception; there certainly is more than meetsthe eye. She used to engage in literary activities as a member ofthe Poetry Subcommittee in the Central Committee of the [North]Korean Writers’ Union. She said, “Many people in the South tendto believe that North Korean authors only write works praising theregime. On the surface, there seem to be many literary works glorifyingthe regime; that’s because the North is an authoritariansociety. But in fact, those who write such works are regarded asextreme sycophants, ignorant of the most basic concepts of literature.”

When they are with trusted writer friends, at times even membersof the union complain about the regime in a roundabout way,Choi said. One day, a writer who had written many poems eulogizingthe regime’s founder, Kim Il-sung, and his son, Kim Jong-il,was criticized disapprovingly by his writer friends. They said, “Whyare you writing so many poems in praise of the Kims, while oftenspeaking ill of them in private?” He replied evasively, “I thought ofmy God, not the Kims, when I wrote the poems. So what?” It is saidthat the late leader Kim Jong-il once turned down a poem presentedby the writers’ union after reading it, saying, “This gives megoosebumps.”

North Korean writers pay attention to various issues such aslove in everyday life, choice of careers, divorce, the gap betweenurban and rural areas, or generational diversity. They are cautiouslyallowed to make critical comments on society, provided they maintainthe intrinsic autonomy of literature and the socialist system.

Nam Dae-hyon’s “An Ode to Youth” (1987) and Paek Namryong’s“Friend” (1988) had no ideological undertones, so they werepublished in South Korea in the late 1990s. “An Ode to Youth” dealswith the prevailing ethos of love, focusing on the worthy lives ofyoung intellectuals, scientists, and engineers. “Friend,” a novel ondivorce that had become a bestseller in the North, drew overseasreaders’ attention after it was translated and published in French in2011. The book was the first North Korean literary work ever to bepublished in Europe. “Hwang Jin-yi” by Hong Sok-jung, a historicalNorth Korean novel published in the South in 2004, made a sensationin Pyongyang in 2002. Hong is a grandson of Hong Myong-hui(1888–1968; pen name Byokcho), the author of “Im Kkokjong,” ahistorical saga highly acclaimed and widely read in both Koreas.

Dissident literature is taboo in the North. Anyone who writes aliterary work explicitly criticizing the regime faces the certainty ofincarceration in a political prison camp.

Under these circumstances, a work by a pseudonymous authorwho is known to be living in the North has recently attracted wideattention in many countries, including South Korea. “The Accusation:Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea” is a collection ofshort stories by a North Korean author who uses the name Bandi(Firefly) as his pseudonym. His fame grew after he was dubbed “theNorth Korean Solzhenitsyn” by a French author. Bandi is a pseudonymthe author gave himself, vowing to shed light on the reality inhis destitute country, “just as a firefly shines only in a world of darkness.”

Bandi is in a situation very similar to the fate faced by AleksandrSolzhenitsyn (1918–2008), the 1970 Nobel laureate in literature, inthe former Soviet Union. Just as Solzhenitsyn did, Bandi opposesthe political system of his own country and smuggled out hismanuscripts to the outside world because it is impossible for himto publish his works in his home country. It was only after two ofSolzhenitsyn’snovels “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and“The Gulag Archipelago” exposed atrocities of the Stalinist dictatorshipthat the literature of the Soviet Union began attracting widespreadinternational attention. In the same vein, it was only afterBandi’s “The Accusation” was published that dissident literature inNorth Korea began entering the spotlight in the outside world.

The seven short stories in this collection truthfully depict theharsh lives of people from various walks of life, groaning under theNorth Korean political system. Each story has a different theme andplot, but all are written under a single umbrella theme: the indictmentof the rule of Kim Il-sung.

The first story, “Record of a Defection,” is an epistolary-stylestory about a man who grows suspicious of his wife who secretlytakes birth control pills. He writes letters to his friend telling him ofhis frustration about the hereditary “caste system” and his decisionto flee the country. “City of Specters” is a story about a family thatwas expelled from Pyongyang to a distant province “on blasphemycharges.” They had drawn the curtains shut at the window of theirapartment because their three-year-old child had a seizure wheneverhe saw the portraits of Karl Marx and Kim Il-sung outside thewindow across the street. “So Close, Yet So Far” is a heartrendingstory about a son who fails to see his old mother at her deathbed.Although he manages to sneak into a train without a ticket, he issoon caught in a security check. In North Korea, nobody can travelanywhere without a travel pass.

The last story is “The Red Mushroom.” Calling the Workers’Party headquarters a “poisonous red mushroom,” a journalist callsfor the overthrow of the Kim regime, crying out, “Pluck up that poisonousmushroom from this land — no, from the Earth forever!” Ina thematic sequence from the first story to the last, all seven storiesin the collection reflect the tortuous progression of the author’srebellion against the brutal regime — from passive resistance bydefection to calling for the overthrow of the Workers’ Party, the cradleof the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The manuscripts of these stories were smuggled into SouthKorea in 2013, in painstaking secrecy worthy of an espionage operation.A female relative of Bandi’s fled the North and arrived inSeoul. Several months later, she told Do Hee-yoon, secretary generalof the Citizens’ Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees andNorth Korean Refugees, about the manuscripts. By sending a letterto Bandi through a Chinese friend visiting the North, Do askedhim to deliver his manuscripts. After reading the letter, Banditook out the manuscripts from a secret hiding place where he hadstored them. To dodge luggage inspections, he hid them amongthe regime’s propaganda materials such as “The Selected Works ofKim Il-sung” and other such literature.

The coarse manuscript paper was in such a poor state thatit looked as if it was from the 1960s or 70s. The yellowed papershowed the author must have pressed hard with a pencil whenwriting the stories a long time ago. The author himself had namedthe collection “The Accusation.” He had also created the pseudonymBandi for himself. According to Do Hee-yoon, Bandi is a manborn in 1950, who still lives in the North and is a member of theKorean Writers’ Union. There is speculation, though, that Do is hidingBandi’s real identity to protect him. After many twists and turns,the stories were published in Seoul in May 2014.

In South Korea, few people paid attention to Bandi’s work. Theymerely took interest in the fact that the author was not a defectorbut still lived in the North and in how the manuscripts were smuggledout. Some people even suspected that the author was a fictitiousperson. Hence, the genuine worth and literary value of thework remained unappreciated.

In contrast to such a cold response in South Korea, foreign readersand critics began showing keen interest in the work when itsFrench edition was published in 2016. Pierre Rigoulot, a Frenchhistorian and North Korea human rights activist and the directorof the Institute of Social History in Paris, called Bandi the “NorthKorean Solzhenitsyn.” In his foreword for the French edition of “TheAccusation,” Rigoulot wrote, “It’s a small firefly, but its hope is big.”The book received substantial mass media coverage in France, bydailies like Le Figaro and Libération, radio stations France Inter,France Info and RFI, and magazines like Marianne. “I’ve translatedmany Korean novels into French. But I’ve never felt more intellectuallyecstatic than while translating the stories by Bandi. The plotsare splendid,” said Lim Yeong-hee, translator of the French version.

Publishers and humanrights activistsfrom various countriesparticipate ina reading event of“The Accusation” atthe Bridge of Freedomnear ImjingakPavilion south of thedemilitarized zonein Paju, GyeonggiProvince on March30, 2017.

“The Accusation” has been translated into 19 languages and waspublished almost simultaneously in 21 countries, including Britain,Canada, Italy, Japan, Germany, Sweden, and the United States, inMarch of this year, as well as, most recently, in Portugal. Its Englishtranslation was done by Deborah Smith, a British translator whoshared the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction in 2016 withKorean author Han Kang for her translation of Han’s novel “TheVegetarian.” Smith’s translation of “The Accusation” was amongthe 10 PEN Translates Autumn 2016 winners chosen by the EnglishPEN. In New York, Korean-Americans organized a campaign tonominate Bandi for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

“A collection of short stories written under a pseudonym andsmuggled out of North Korea is on its way to becoming an internationalliterary sensation,” Britain’s The Guardian has reported witheffusive praise. “Dissident tales from pseudonymous author Bandi,still living in the country, are very rare fiction to emerge from thesecretive dictatorship.”

The Millions, an online literary magazine, picked “The Accusation”as one of the most anticipated books of 2017. PublishersWeekly, an American book review magazine, commented, “Bandigives a rare glimpse of life in the ‘truly fathomless darkness’ ofNorth Korea.” American online bookstore Amazon said, “‘The Accusation’ is a vivid depiction of life in a closed-off one-party state, andalso a hopeful testament to the humanity and rich internal life thatpersists even in such inhumane conditions.”

“[This] isn’t just a book with a good story behind it: it’s a collectionof perfectly crafted novellas that, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’swork [from the former Soviet Union], speak with authority and truthto-power directness,” Hannah Westland, of Serpent’s Tail, the Britishpublisher of “The Accusation,” said to The Guardian. “Bandi’sabsurdist approach to satire is reminiscent of Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros,’and his biting wit . . . reminds you of that other great Russian literarydissident, Mikhail Bulgakov.”

“Bandi is much different from contemporary South Korean writersfrom a technical point of view. We can’t simply determine hisskill level, given that the official goal of North Korean literature is toshow the greatness of the Kim family. But we should focus on hisspirit of barehanded resistance to the regime,” said Kim Jong-hoi, aprofessor of Korean literature at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.

Amid the high acclaim abroad, the Korean version of “The Accusation”has been republished by another publishing house threeyears after its debut in South Korea. With its new cover, the newedition focuses on the literary value of the book by remaining asfaithful to the original manuscripts as possible. Dasan Books, thepublisher of the new edition, said, “Readers will find the new editionvery different from its previous edition of three years ago. Webelieve this one has good marketability.”

It is worth noting that many literary works by North Koreandefectors have also received more attention overseas than in SouthKorea. In 2012, poet Jang Jin-sung won the Rex Warner LiteraryPrize from Oxford University for his poetry collection “I Am SellingMy Daughter for 100 Won,” which truthfully reveals the miserablelives of the North Korean people. “Dear Leader,” his collection ofessays published in 2014, ranked 10th among the top selling booksin Britain that year. Kim Yu-gyong signed a publishing contract withFrench publisher Editions Philippe Picquier for her novel, “InganModokso” (Camp for Defiling Human Beings), whose original editioncame out in 2016. She used to write stories in Pyongyang as amember of the Korean Writers’ Union. She escaped from the countryin 2000.

By comparison, South Korean readers are less responsive toNorth Korean literature than foreign readers, probably becausethey are less curious about society and life in the North. Many SouthKoreans hardly feel freshly informed and touched by North Koreanliterature that depicts the tragic reality of everyday life in the North,because they live in a standoff within spitting distance of NorthKorea across the demilitarized zone. On the radio, on TV, and innewspapers, they listen to, watch, and read about the lives of theirerstwhile compatriots every day.

While Americans and Europeans take nuclear threats from theNorth or the possibility of war on the Korean peninsula very seriously,South Koreans have become somewhat jaded and benumbedby continual threats and crises. Consequently, many South Koreanstend to look at North Korean literature primarily from an ideologicalpoint of view, rather than appreciate the authors’ literary depictionof their real-life experiences.