You should be reading: Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea

Humans have a habit of thinking of history as a series of profound isolated events in disparate places. In reality, history is the embodiment of causality; a fluid wave of downs and ups all throughout the world, each one with an effect on the ones after it, both locally and globally. Let’s take the current state of North Korea as an example. A college class could be built on how it came to be in its current state; the Juche ideology, a result of chilling relations with China and the USSR during the Cold War, which initially were warm due to its acceptance of Socialist politics, seeded by Soviet ideology and Chinese money and materiel during the Korean War, itself a result of political stability after the expulsion of the Japanese after the end of the Pacific front of World War II, which was the result of Japanese imperialism in eastern Asia, itself a result of Japanese politicians realizing their nation had missed out on the riches granted to European nations as a result of their imperialism in Africa, the Americas, and other parts of Asia… how much further back would you like to go?

I personally find North Korea’s story rather fascinating, in a somewhat startling and depressing kind of way. I’ve read several stories about foreigners who have traveled in North Korea, and they all tend to have similar memes and emotions: surprise at the volume of idolization of the political system and its leaders; frustration at the seeming single-mindedness of the people, completely unable to show any doubt or make any self-judgements about the things they’re told; shock at the ostentatiousness of the monuments and performances praising the glory of the Worker’s Paradise while people go hungry and the lights don’t stay on all night; and most of all, a pervasive melancholy and a desire to get back home as soon as possible. The best stories I’ve read even give me dreams (nightmares?) about visiting or living in North Korea; no joke. Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea must be a good one, because it gave me such a dream.

Pyongyang is an autobiographical comic based on the journey of Québécois artist and animator Guy Delisle, who lived in the titular city for two months as a checker for outsourced tweening animation for a French cartoon series. It’s fairly standard as a North Korean travel story, covering all the familiar places and emotions; if you’re not new to such stories, as I’m not, you probably won’t vicariously “see” anything new in this book. However, the length of Delisle’s stay is a bit unique, and gives him the chance to do a few things we don’t read about in other stories, such as meet several other foreigners, visit several bad restaurants instead of just one, and maybe even make an acquaintance or two among the locals.

Of course, the other unique thing here is the comic format. Delisle’s art is competent, done in a clearly hand-drawn and -shaded style; the cartoony style is occasionally offset by strikingly detailed renditions of propaganda artwork and monuments. (Delisle’s depiction of almost all his Korean characters as short and slit-eyed may upset the politically correct, but such is the nature of caricature.) The comic tends to be text-heavy, with plenty of monologuing, but Delisle knows how to sometimes shut up and let his art alone do the talking. With expert pacing, Delisle is wonderful at capturing all the absurdity and awkwardness possible on a North Korean stay in comic form. It is the encapsulation of a relatively peaceful and calm moment in North Korea’s dynamic history; one which won’t be written about in textbooks, but one that was a result of all the history before it, and one that defined the result of all the history after.

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea contains a fresh presentation and perspective which long-time North Korea watchers will find interesting, yet is still accessible to those who don’t know kimchee from Kim Il-Sung. Hunt it down and give it a read.