All Monsters Must Die (13 page)

But Stureplan, Stockholm's famous nightclub area, is definitely out of the bounds of Mr. Song's knowledge.

A light rain, like the mist from a spray bottle, has started to fall. A dark, shifting shadow crosses the light above the bar. An owl has landed on a ledge on the hotel's façade and is quietly observing the goings-on. Then it disappears into the darkness of Pyongyang.

WE HAVE DECIDED
to carry on and go to the karaoke bar in the basement, but make a stop at the men's room first. As we are standing in front of the urinals, the door is kicked open.

“Police!” Mr. Song shouts.

The vodka has gone to his head. His face is puffy; he laughs heartily at his own joke. He's glad to have shepherded his flock back to the hotel, where we can't sneak off. Maybe Mr. Song is a policeman. They say one of the two guides is always a policeman. But, who knows, maybe Ms. Kim is the cop?

In the lobby we bump into Antonio Inoki, a Japanese professional wrestler and mega-celebrity whom we recognize from Japanese beer commercials. He kindly obliges to having his picture taken by the hotel guests. He sports a camel-hair coat, a red silk scarf, and a strong jawline. His enormous chin is his calling card and has earned him the nickname “the Pelican.”

We don't approach Inoki or ask him to punch us in the face, which in Japan is considered to be the highest honour, almost like a blessing. The whole thing started when Inoki was visiting a school and a student punched him twice in front of the cameras. Inoki smacked the student so hard it knocked him to the ground. The student dizzily clambered up to his feet, bowed, and thanked him. He was a huge, long-time Inoki fan. The incident was replayed on television again and again, and since then celebrities and members of the public alike have requested the blessing of the “Antonio Inoki bitch-slap,” as it's called in Japan.

Inoki's master was the Korean Kim Sin-rak. During the occupation, Kim Sin-rak was adopted and raised by a Japanese family. At the end of the 1930s, he transformed into Rikidōzan, the first and greatest of all wrestling stars. His way of smacking down “American crooks” in show matches made him incredibly popular in Japan and also in Korea. Rikidōzan, who died young in 1963 after a fight with a yakuza at a nightclub in Tokyo, is still celebrated as one of the greatest anti-imperialist heroes in North Korea. Moreover, he still has blood ties in the country: his son-in-law is in the North Korean Ministry of Defence. In 1995, a comic book was published that explained that the wrestling star was a hero and eternally famous because Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il had embraced him. But the blessing was mutual. During his life, Rikidōzan gifted a limousine to Kim Il-sung.

The man with the giant chin in the lobby was once Rikidōzan's apprentice. Apprentice Inoki has long since reached mastery. He's successfully merged the theatrical pretend-fights in wrestling rings with exhibition matches against judo stars and boxers. In Iraq, Inoki was given two golden swords by Saddam Hussein after aiding the negotiation of an exchange of Japanese and Iraqi hostages shortly before the Gulf War. In 1976, he fought Muhammad Ali. To prepare, Inoki had a karate expert temper his chin with repeated blows, and it was the sight of that chin that made Ali tease him with the nickname “the Pelican.” The fight degenerated. Inoki fended off Ali's blows by lying on his back and kicking his opponent's shin. When the long match was deemed a draw, the crowd raged.

After paying a visit to Rikidōzan's grave in Japan in 1995, Inoki came to Pyongyang for a highly anticipated wrestling match. The 1st of May Stadium was filled to the brim with an ecstatic crowd who were there to watch Inoki fight the American Ric “the Nature Boy” Flair. A tender assault played out between the two parties; at one point Inoki carried the ageing, platinum-blond Flair in his arms like an infant.

Since then, busts of Antonio Inoki have been sold at the Mansudae Art Studio, the state-propaganda art factory in Pyongyang. Maybe the choreographed violence of wrestling fits within the framework of North Korean propaganda — both are built on the idea of the power of performance, the selective gaze that refuses to be distracted by unwelcome realities.

WE WALK THROUGH
the lobby, illuminated by crystal chandeliers, to a darker area where we find a discreet flight of stairs that leads to the underworld. The stairs take us to the Yanggakdo Hotel's basement, which is panelled in grey marble. The ceiling is less than six feet high, and we have to crouch as we move along the corridor.

This is the hotel's hinterland, the cellar of the temple. In the dark passageways we come across strange locales lit up by strip lighting; between them is only twilight. The tenants at each spot seem to be contracted for eternity. As we pass, they look up with expressionless faces. A souvenir store, a snack bar, a sauna, a two-lane bowling hall, a hairdresser's, suddenly an unlit pool, a grocery store, and finally a bookstore selling tomes by the leaders. Time in these catacombs is killed by daydreaming and staring vacantly into space.

We have arrived at our destination, but we've lost Trond, who dematerialized somewhere along the way. Next to the bookstore, red swinging doors lead into a large, dark karaoke bar.

Songs are chosen from padded binders. One of them contains revolutionary songs. Mr. Song and Ms. Kim stick to this binder. Ari and the Bromma boys make selections from the other.

Fresh vodka bottles appear on the table. The Bromma boys stand up and start bellowing out Aqua's “Barbie Girl.” After that, Mr. Song and Ms. Kim take the mike and sing a duet about the triumph of global socialism. Mr. Song, red in the face and flailing his arms, encourages us to sing along. Then it's time for more bellowing. Having downed large glasses of vodka, Ari is bleating like a sheep to Duran Duran's “A View to Kill.” He throws his head back, the microphone at his mouth, but the flat cap doesn't budge. We've never seen him without it.

Ms. Kim looks happy when she gets to sing her Korean love ballads and songs of praise to the leader. When she's done, she sits quietly on the edge of the sofa and waits her turn. The Bromma boys jump up and down on the dance floor. They tear off their polo shirts and lambswool sweaters and swing them above their heads, bare-chested.

DAY 6

The Perfect Film

IN A 2006
article, the Swedish journalist and author Richard Swartz asked why dictators are so hard to prosecute. Dictators never seem to leave any tracks: no signatures on documents, no records of commands, no protocol. A dictator's political duty seems to be doing nothing. Mostly, he eats, sleeps, “dances with young girls” (Mao), and sinks into his dreams. Kim Jong-il rarely appears in public and has actually never addressed a large crowd in person.

Sequestered within the high walls of their palaces and hidden from peering eyes are personal infotainment centres and orgiastic amusement parks. Here, dictators live out their comfortable lives and let their underlings handle the executive duties. In these protected worlds, attendants try to interpret every clearing of the throat and every sigh. Given the capricious nature of the dictator, it's no easy job. When anything goes wrong, subordinates are blamed immediately for their misreading, and in this way the leader satisfies his need for traitors.

Swartz thinks that the idle behaviour of dictators is a conscious choice: “The dictator avoids the finality of paper and ink which would make him responsible for his actions.” But another reason for this untethered existence could be that the dictator realizes that the true display of power happens on an incorporeal level — that one first and foremost rules through a collection of ideas held by the people themselves, ideas that are maintained with iconography. And so it is best to keep as low a profile as possible. As the playwright Jean Racine wrote: “One might say that the respect we have for heroes increases in proportion to their distance from us.” The dictator lets the symbols do their job, symbols that follow people like shadows, that descend on their consciousnesses and keep vigil over their thoughts.

The widely disseminated official portraits, the gigantic banners, Mao's face on Tiananmen Square — these symbolic representations transform the leader into an icon at an incorporeal level. The same goes for monuments. In
What Am I Doing Here?
British author Bruce Chatwin says that all nations fixate on a ceremonial centre, which almost invariably carries celestial overtones. These places invoke the divine in order to sanction a ruler's authority on earth: the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, Red Square, St. Peter's Basilica, the Versailles of the Sun King, and the Great Pyramid, “to say nothing of the installations at Cape Kennedy.” The symbolic centre replaces the leader's name.

The leader's face is transformed into a symbol that belongs to a superhuman sphere. In Mao's case, this is a soft, rolling landscape with a pleasing elevation, a perfectly circular birthmark between his lower lip and his chin, accenting the smooth, powdered hills of his cheeks and his thin, sensitive lips. It is the face of an innocent child and a wise old man. It is both masculine and feminine. The day that the portrait is removed from the entrance of the Forbidden City is the day that China's total transformation into a capitalist superpower will have been openly acknowledged.

THE DESIRES OF
a dictator's physical body must be kept secret. Most importantly, his ailments and physical atrophy can never be acknowledged. Ideally, he will travel with a large number of doppelgangers so as to be everywhere and nowhere at once, and always beyond the reach of assassins. In a 2006 article titled “Military-First Teletransporting,” the North Korean newspaper
Rodong Sinmun
claimed that Kim Jong-il has the ability to be in several places at once. It stated that Kim Jong-il, “the extraordinary master commander who has been chosen by the heavens,” appears in one place only to then suddenly appear at another, “like a flash of lightning.”

The locus of power must be untouchable, information has to be censored, and any leaks must be prevented. Of course it's not a given that the dictator engages in orgies of food and drink. He may simply — like Hitler — make endless offers of tea and cake and small talk, as Albert Speer recalled in an interview with Gitta Sereny.

Whatever the degree of debauchery, the dictator's palace is still just home to a withered old man's body. Think of the ageing astronaut in Stanley Kubrick's
2001: A Space Odyssey
, who is revealed after the viewer travels through the many passages and barriers of time and space. On a white rococo bed in a room bathed in greenish light lies a shrunken figure, as dry and lifeless as a mummy.

* * *

WE'VE BEEN WAITING
for the bus in the parking lot at the Yanggakdo Hotel for half an hour. We received advance instructions about today's dress code: a collared shirt and long pants. We're going to visit Kim Il-sung's mausoleum and have therefore been asked to dress with dignity. Some of the group are wearing suits and ties. The only one who stands out is Trond, who didn't bring any long pants with him. One of us is wearing a collarless, velvet Hollington jacket, and the other a vintage 1970s blue safari jacket made from synthetic material. It's the closest we have to Maoist suits in the West.

It's nine in the morning on our sixth day and the irritation is rising. The Bromma boys are missing and we're not allowed to leave without them. After another ten minutes, one of them shows up, tired and pale yet freshly washed. With a neutral expression he informs us that his two friends are missing, as if it's the most natural thing in the world. Mr. Song has been on the brink of a meltdown for a long while and rushes off the bus. After another ten minutes, he returns, his face flushed, with the two other Bromma boys skulking behind him.

One says to anyone who will listen: “I'm in the shower and then that fucking Asian just shows up screaming at me.” That he and his friends have delayed us for more than an hour doesn't seem to faze him. We hear him in the back of the bus, boasting: “At least I got my shower in.”

WE MIGHT MISS
the most important stop on this trip: a visit to the Korean Film Studio on the outskirts of Pyongyang. Mr. Song instates “democracy” at this point. We're supposed to vote on whether we'll go to the film studio or the children's palace. We don't have time for both. Luckily, the film studio wins by a few votes. But, before that, we're going to Kim Il-sung's mausoleum.

The mausoleum is housed in Kim Il-sung's enormous palace, the Kumsusan Sun Memorial Palace. This was where he lived and worked — surrounded by architecture fit for a prince. The palace is northeast of the city centre. Two of its sides are protected by a moat.

We enter the imposing building and are sent through a number of stations to prepare for the encounter in the inner chamber. The first is a corridor with rotating brushes that clean the soles of our shoes. Then we arrive at a cloakroom. Someone rips off Ari's flat cap and he blinks as if he has just woken up. It's the first time we have seen his bare head. Next comes the X-ray machine and a metal detector. And then we enter a seemingly endless corridor with a moving walkway.

Kim Il-sung's mausoleum is the primary pilgrimage site for North Korean citizens. We pass hundreds of serious people being whisked along in the opposite direction on the moving walkway. They are all deeply touched by their experience. They're wearing their best clothes and their faces are damp with tears. Our group's presence jars — our posture, the laughing Bromma boys — and many of them seem to regard us with distaste.

We go up an escalator to the next floor. We hear atmospheric music and then a gigantic room opens up before us. At the far end we see an enormous white illuminated statue of Kim Il-sung. The background is lit like a sunrise, the colours transitioning from orange to deep blue. The polished stone floor is like a liquid mirror. It reminds us of the palace in the Emerald City in the
Wizard of Oz
,
where Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow stumble forth and stand trembling in anticipation of their audience with the Wizard.

Mr. Song encourages us to fix our eyes on the statue but not to bow this time, which one would otherwise always do before statues of Kim Il-sung. We are instructed to hold our gazes for sixty seconds and then turn right and go into the next room.

Guides move around the room dressed in
joseonots
made of thick black velvet. They speak incessantly with declamatory voices that every so often crack with despair. On the walls are bronze reliefs that depict groups of grieving people. The marble floor is darker in this room. The specks in the black porphyritic rock glisten, and the female guides say that the floor has been flooded with so many tears that they have turned to crystal.

We are led out of this room into another corridor and walk through a curtain of air that blasts the dust from our clothes. We then ride an elevator to the antechamber of the most important room: the mausoleum itself. Kim Il-sung's body lays on a catafalque covered by a glass box. Mr. Song gives us careful instructions before we are allowed to approach. We are supposed to walk around the body, bow toward the feet, then to the body's one side and the other, but absolutely not to the head. He doesn't say it outright, but we understand that no living person is considered worthy of bowing to the Great Leader's head.

What we see resembles a wax figure with make-up on: shiny, pale-yellow skin; rouged lips. The North Korean visitors are profoundly affected and many are crying. We can't help but be moved by their solemnity. As a finale, we are allowed to view his belongings: gifts and distinctions that Kim Il-sung was honoured with during his lifetime. Here is the leader's black Mercedes and the train carriage he used when travelling through the country. In one room certificates, medals, and diplomas are on display. There are honorary doctorates in engineering and law from around the world. On the walls are pictures of Kim Il-sung shaking hands with Tito, Arafat, Gaddafi, Assad, Castro, Mubarak . . .

According to
Daily
NK
, it cost 900 million dollars to build the mausoleum. The figure is of course impossible to verify, but undoubtedly they burned through an enormous fortune — and this was during a time when the country was being ravaged by famine. The embalming, which was carried out in a Russian laboratory, is said to have cost one million dollars. Mr. Song says that the North Korean people are willing to offer themselves up for their leader. He says that the palace and everything related to it is a gift from the people.

SOCIOLOGIST MAX WEBER
coined the term “charismatic authority.” At the time, Weber didn't differentiate between dictators like Hitler and Mussolini and the world's religious leaders, shamans, and certain lunatics. Weber saw unifying characteristics in the magnetism of prophets, heroes, saviours, and political leaders. Charisma isn't so much a trait a leader possesses as it is a product of a relationship between a leader and his followers, Weber said. There's a duty among his subjects to continually hold up the idea of his magnetism. And so the production of charisma starts up, and the leader can take a step back and let the symbols do their job. Even the final exit — death — won't slow this production down.

* * *

THE JAPANESE OCCUPYING
powers understood the political importance of film and, in 1920, they established their own studio for pro-Japanese film productions. Japan had occupied Korea since 1905; by 1945 they had made 230 propaganda films, in which Korean identity was covered up or neglected and Japan was imagined as their knight in shining armour. The freedom of Korean filmmakers was limited. In each region of the occupied country, the local police were responsible for monitoring both the films and the audience's reactions. Even film adaptations of traditional folk tales couldn't evade the censors because there was a chance they might be critical allegories of the oppressive regime.

In the 1940s, censorship became even more restrictive. In 1942 all Korean-language films were banned, and from that year until liberation in 1945 only Japanese was spoken in films in Korea. All actors, directors, and anyone else involved were given Japanese names, and any Korean film company could at any point be ordered to make propaganda films for the powers that be.

Back in 1925, a group of writers and artists in southern Korea had established the
KAPF
(Korea Artista Proletaria Federatio, an Esperanto name). Within the
KAPF
were socialist guerilla filmmakers who worked under the motto “Art as arms for the class struggle.” After completing their fifth feature film,
The Underground Village
, which was about the lives of the poor in Seoul's outskirts,
KAPF
members were imprisoned and the group was quashed. At the end of the Second World War, when the country was split, some of the surviving
KAPF
members chose to move to the North to be united with those they felt were their ideological comrades; others decided to stay in the South, and some were abducted by Kim Il-sung's agents. Kim Il-sung had made use of kidnapping as a weapon of war since his days as guerilla soldier in Manchuria.

The
KAPF
filmmakers soon fell out of favour with the North Korean government. Im Hwa, one of those who had been kidnapped, was executed after being accused of pro-Japanese activities. The others were branded as revisionists and anti-revolutionaries and were written out of the official historical record.

The tendency toward melodrama in North Korea has given their propaganda its own voice: a declamatory, high-pitched voice. This special inflection in speech has long been parodied in South Korea. This distinctive voice isn't just used for propaganda; it has been adopted in everyday speech. Or, if you will, it has infected communication at every level. Films, songs, speeches, official messages — all forms of address are delivered in this tone.

* * *

IN THE 1980S,
most people in South Korea believed that Choi Eun-hee and Shin Sang-ok had gone to North Korea of their own volition. In 1984 Choi Eun-hee won the Special Jury Prize as Best Director at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for
An Emissary of No Return,
even though it was Shin who was the director. He had given credit to her because he wasn't fully pleased with the film. That same year, the couple appeared on Yugoslavian and Czechoslovakian television and said that they had moved to North Korea out of their own free will. Of course they were actually being forced to participate in the charade.