Pen/Insular_Notes

Check out Jane Portal’s article on North Korean art at OpenDemocracy. There is also a nice slide show to accompany it.

One aspect of North Korean art I’m interested in is book cover design, probably because I’ve had plenty of chances to look at them in the library at SOAS. Unlike a lot of North Korean ‘Juche Art’ which tends to give kitsch a bad name I actually think some of the book covers from the 50s and 60s are rather nice and accomplished pieces of work. It also interests me that they often depict nature or reflect nostalgically on the themes of ‘hometown’ and rural life. My impression is that this sort of nostalgic view of nature and the rustic life only became common in South Korea somewhat later. Perhaps this reflects the 10-20 year difference in large-scale industrialisation between the two Koreas (ie North Korea began in the late 50s, South Korea in the late 60s - 70s). Here is what Jane Portal says about the representation of nature in North Korean art:

The subjects originally required by Juche art were limited to such themes as: portraying the General, the relationship of the military and the people, the construction of socialism, National Pride and such like. However, in the 1970s landscape was also approved, when Kim Jong-il instructed: “The idea of describing Nature in a socialist country is to promote patriotism, heighten the national pride and confidence of the public in living in a socialist country.” The result has been a huge increase in the production of oil paintings of natural scenes.

Chavez plans to meet Kim Jong-il? Please tell me it ain’t so.

A progressive president with an impeccable democratic mandate who is sincerely attempting to improve the lot of the poor majority of his country plans to visit the leader of a country which is practically the opposite of everything he stands for (ie it has no concept of democracy and is prepared to stamp the poor into the ground in order to maintain its ruling system). What is that about?

I’m all for Chavez attempting to piss off the US administration in whatever way he can. He has every right considering they appear to have been implicated in attempting to overthrow him and they slander him as often as they can. But falling back to the old ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ position is the dumbest trick in the book.

Yes, North Korea is offering negotiations about the ‘new’ missile crisis. It seems as though the conservatives in P’yongyang and Washington are back to doing their little dance again. I have to say though that it always seems to be North Korea that takes the initiative and has the upper hand, at least as far as irritating the US goes. Can’t really see this situation changing in the near future taking into account the more general predicament that the US finds itself in. The North (somewhat like Iran) seems to be determined to take advantage of US weakness and make some sort of deal while the sun shines. On the other hand, I don’t think they should hold out too much hope as the US seems to be perfectly content just to sit on the problem and hope it will eventually go away. This Hankyoreh editorial makes the sensible point that the missile card is not a bad card for the North, as long as it doesn’t actually play it.

But even if it did play it would the US really be able to do much about it? One thing that occurs to me is that if (as many people have pointed out) Israel is the main threat to Iran in terms of an actual military strike, is it not possible that Japan might play the same role in Northeast Asia in the not-to-distant future? How long before the cold war that has been raging over history, disputed islands and everything else among the East Asian nations breaks out into a real skirmish of some kind?

For more reading here is a very serious looking report from the Center for Non-proliferation Studies - sort of ‘Everything you ever wanted to know about North Korea’s missiles but were too afraid to ask.’ Having glanced over it one thing that stands out in North Korea’s program to develop long-range missiles is it’s close relationship with two of the US’s closest Middle East/South Asia allies: Pakistan and Egypt. I’m no expert on the murky world of international arms dealing and proliferation but one might draw the conclusion that the US tacitly accepted the transfer of missile technology to these states as a way of allowing them to maintain strong defence apparatuses without actually having to sell them the arms themselves.

Congratulations are due to Ta Hamkke, the internationalist left group in the Korean Democratic Labour Party, who yesterday launched their new weekly newspaper, called Counterfire in English (맞불 - a name reminscent of the excellent US webzine Counterpunch). It is not online yet, but apparently will be tomorrow (June 15).

The organisation has been fighting off attacks from various sources recently, including an investigation by the Map’o police station into alleged infringements of electoral law, so I wish them the very best and hope their new publication is a success.

Via Kerim comes this post from Pinyin News on the shapes of Japanese colonial administration buildings in Taiwan which uses Google Earth to show the very clear 日 shape (as in 日本 meaning Japan) of the presidential building and the cabinet building in Tapei. Seems the nationalists got their own back by building Taipei City Hall in the shape of 十十 (two tens).

This is interesting as a commenter on the previous post mentioned that he found it odd that Koreans would traditionally gather to support their national football team outside the colonial era City Hall in Seoul. Now, I’m not sure about the shape of the city hall but no Korean will hesitate to inform you of the fact that the now-demolished former General Government building was also built using the 日 sun character shape (and apparently designed by a German architect). Since it was built on part of the Chosŏn king’s main palace it was quite literally a case of stamping Japanese authority onto the political space of the capital. I wonder whether other Japanese colonial-era buildings in Seoul were built in the shape of particular Chinese characters. Another thing that fascinates me is the orgins of this practice of writing with buildings (archigraphy?). Is there a precedent for making buildings appear like characters from above in premodern Chinese history? Or did the Japanese come up with this strange habit in the Meiji period?

Clearly this shows there is some benefit to having a name for your country that uses nice simple characters. Try designing a building using the character 韓.

Addendum:
I’ve just discovered that Andrei Lankov wrote one of his regular pieces for the Korea Times on the subject of the Japanese General Government building in Seoul. While reading it I managed to get side-tracked into another linguistic issue. He mentions that the Japanese intellectual Yanagi Mineyoshi who saved parts of the Kyŏngbokkung palace from being destroyed to make way for the building was thought by the Japanese authorities to be an ethnic Korean because “the Chinese characters for his name, unlike most Japanese names, do appear in Korean”. This is a confusing statement, but what he obviously means is that because of the characters used in Yanagi’s name it could be a Korean name, and this is indeed the case. Looking at the Naver encyclopedia entry on Yanagi we can see that his name would be pronounced Yu Chong-yŏl (柳宗悅) in Korean and the surname Yanagi/Yu, meaning willow, is also a surname in Korea (in fact, according to the surname reference page in Bruce K Grant’s dictionary, it’s the seventh most common surname in Korea).

I mean it’s about time there was a backlash against football nationalism in Korea, not it’s about time that I wrote something here (although that’s true too). Earlier this week the Korea Times reported that an alliance of citizen’s groups (NGOS basically) have got together in Korea to express concern about the way in which World Cup fever in Korea distracts attention away from important social, and political issues. We’re not talking here about a serious analysis of sports nationalism and capitalism, but still I’ve got to admire them for trying. I’d be more than happy to see some prominent organisations and people here in the UK who had the balls to mount such a campaign.

As if that wasn’t enough, there’s also been something of an internet backlash over the behaviour of Korean fans at the team’s friendly with Ghana in Scotland last Sunday, where they played the kwaenggwari (small noisy cymbal) during the Ghanaian national anthem. The article also picks up on the uneasiness that football fans feel about the commercialisation of football and the way no opportunity is wasted to try to sell something to the captive audience of flag-waving fans whether they’re sitting at home or forming red waves in front of Seoul’s city hall.

This has interesting tie-ins with what is happening here in England/UK (confusing distinction for many people at times like this). On the one hand the fact that the South Korean team was up against Ghana is interesting to me as there are quite a lot of Ghanaians around where I live and the flags have been very much in evidence (particularly since they squashed Korea 3-1 on Sunday!). Of course there are lots of England flags being flown from cars everywhere you go but also others like Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire and Portugal. In fact I’ve seen two cars in the last few days that were flying both England and Ghana flags, one on each side. So our multicultural community actually gives you twice the chance of being on the winning side.

Having said that, I do get a sense that there might be the slightest hint of a backlash here too, even before the World Cup has begun. The problem, as in Korea, is the massive and overwhelming commercialism of the event. I mean people have long complained about the commercialisation of sport but this has reached epic proportions - finding a brand name or a piece of advertising that is not using the England flag or at least a reference to football is almost impossible. This kind of overkill can only drive sane people slowly round the bend and must make people question what the hell it’s all about. The BBC reported that there has been some controversy about flying England flags, although it mainly centres around health and safety issues or the possible negative environmental effects of using more petrol when you have a flag on the side of your car (really).

Anyway, I expect that Korea and England are not peculiar and capitalism is having its wicked way with football nationalism in every one of the 32 competing countries (ok, perhaps not the US as they don’t care about ’soccer’ and prefer colonial wars to whip up nationalist sentiment). It’s one of those classic paradoxes of capitalism eating itself - I think the logic goes something like:

“Football nationalism is good because it unites everyone, makes the workers forget about their rubbish daily lives and distracts people from all the dodgy things going on in the world that they might be worrying about otherwise. In other words football nationalism is noble and lofty and it suits us down to the ground…. But we’re going to shit all over it anyway by trying at the same time to use it as a way of selling people all sorts of things they don’t want and can’t afford (new tellys) or stuff that’s just plain bad for them (Maccy Ds, Mars bars and Coke).”

[For readers of Korean, who want something a bit more coherent, in-depth and politically clued-up on the subject of football nationalism, the latest edition of Ta Hamkke has a two-page special on the subject.]