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‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Is My Kind of Globalism

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/16/opinion/kpop-demon-hunters-globalism.html

I initially didn’t intend to watch the Netflix blockbuster “KPop Demon Hunters,” an animated film about a K-pop girl band that must save its fans from a group of demons who have taken the corporeal form of a K-pop boy band, as any clever demon would. I had no reason to believe it would be to my liking, let alone culturally relevant to anyone anywhere near my age.

Just because I sometimes write about K-pop doesn’t mean I want to hear it. The film contains so many things I normally hate, including juxtapositions seemingly for juxtaposition’s sake, e.g., hey, wouldn’t it be hilarious if cute, leggy cartoon Asian girl idols slaughtered monsters? I did not particularly care to find out what manner of cultural self-extinction, whitewashing and watering-down the largely North American production had to tolerate in order to appeal to the masses.

And yet, when I did watch it, I found that this worldwide blockbuster isn’t the sloppy, West-kowtowing sellout I had assumed it would be. Rather, it might be proof that we are living in a post-multicultural world — or at least that pop culture has normalized imagining such a world as within reach.

It started streaming back on June 20 and has since become Netflix’s second-most-successful original film of all time. Its tinnitus-inducing single “Golden” (lyrics: “We’re goin’ up, up, up, it’s our moment / You know together we’re glowing”) is No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100. Its Rotten Tomatoes score — 97 percent — is similar to that of “The Godfather” and “Schindler’s List.” Plus, unlike those latter two slouches, this cartoon has singalong screenings in the United States, Britain and Australia. And yet here we are.

This is a film about a three-member K-pop girl band called Huntrix that represents the current iteration of an endless line of female singers/demon hunters. Their life’s purpose is to protect the so-called Honmoon — the thin membrane between our world and the demon-filled netherworld, which resembles the bleak Upside Down from the Netflix series “Stranger Things.” Each generation of demon hunters taps its successors. Got it?

Why do these demon hunters have to be a girl group and not a law firm or something? Because their supernatural powers come entirely from their fan base. The bigger the screams, the higher the album sales, and the more social media engagement, the more equipped Huntrix is to defend the universe. So when Gwi-ma, the head demon (voiced by the “Squid Game” actor Lee Byung-hun), wants to sneak past the Honmoon barrier, his strategy is obvious: create an even hotter, competing boy band called Saja Boys, who are so hot that they make girls’ eyes temporarily turn into popcorn (really). Steal the fans, steal the world.

This conceit is a somewhat clever metaphor for the K-pop “fandustry” — a portmanteau for “fan” and “industry” — which is the real secret sauce behind K-pop’s enduring success. Fandustry takes the expression “We are nothing without our fans” to a literal level. Case in point: U.S.-based K-pop fans in 2023 spent 2.4 times as much money on band merch as did pop fans generally, according to a 2024 study by entertainment analytics firm Luminate.

And therein lies a big key to the success of “KPop Demon Hunters”: The film suggests that the future of the world isn’t A.I. or the demonic oligarchy or any one group. It’s the fans. It’s you and me. How is that not intoxicating?

In other words, the film mirrors where the cultural identities of young people around the world are evolving and converging into a mash-up of styles that doesn’t privilege one over the other, or assume there is a center anywhere. Which is in no way to say that all humans of every race or ethnicity are getting along great. What it does mean, though, is that the whites have finally been decentered? And not by the invasion of Koreans or indeed of any other group, but by fandom.

Everything about “KPop Demon Hunters” is neither fish nor fowl: The movie’s leads, just like K-pop singers in real life, look neither Korean nor white nor indeed any other race; they look extraterrestrial. Some of the characters are neither human nor demon but a mix of both. The songs are in a strange hybrid of English and Korean that doesn’t even alternate languages cleanly by verse or sentence. Instead, there’s a staccato inclusion of certain Korean words at arbitrary junctures.

For example, one line from the song “Soda Pop,” performed by Saja Boys, goes like this: “Han-mok-um-eh, you hit the spot.” That first bit is Korean for “in just one gulp.” How odd that the songwriters felt the need to say that one phrase in Korean; han-mok-um-eh has the same number of syllables (four) and the same meaning as in just one gulp, so nothing is lost in scansion or translation. The mixture is so confusing that even if you speak both Korean and English, it’s hard to follow. And yet K-pop fans, and Gen Z-ers in general, have accepted all of the above as a perfectly natural state of being. It’s not A.D.H.D.; it’s viewing the modern world dead-on as the chaos it actually is. Without irony.

As an Asian who sings disturbingly white songs like Neil Diamond’s “Cherry, Cherry” at Asian karaoke; who speaks French with a German accent, German with a French accent, and Korean with an American accent, I feel seen.

Sure, multiculturalism and globalization have been around for a long time. But it was typically depicted in relationship to a “normal” that it deviated from. One way the culture responded to a world whose references were not only American or European was by being ironic, by pointing out the incongruities and laughing at them. That enjoyment was wholly dependent on othering: Some people, the right people, were the arbiters of culture, and others — the outsiders — were funny because they were not. It played on the audience’s firm prejudices that certain things were simply ridiculous. It meant that some people were in on the joke, and others are not. That gave us Apu on “The Simpsons.” To give one recent example, one of the running gags in the aughts-2010s hit “Community” was that an Asian American guy (played by Ken Jeong) was teaching Spanish. Get it? An Asian teaching Spanish! And he’s called Señor Chang! Sorry, where is the joke?

It was a fun time for meta-ness and meanness, but even though we didn’t know it at the time, its appeal had an expiry date.

“KPop Demon Hunters” made me sigh with relief: Hybrids, mash-ups, whatever you want to call it, are no longer a freak show that can only be enjoyed ironically. “KPop Demon Hunters” is a sign of the times: We’re at a post-multicultural, post-irony and post-meta end of history. Bless this mess.

Kim Jong-un’s Image Shift: From Nuclear Madman to Skillful Leader

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/06/world/asia/kim-korea-image.html

SEOUL, South Korea — He ordered his uncle executed and half brother assassinated. He spent millions developing and testing a hydrogen bomb and intercontinental ballistic missiles as his people suffered severe food shortages. He exchanged threats of nuclear annihilation with President Trump, calling the American leader a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”

That was last year’s image.

In more recent months, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has achieved one of the most striking transformations in modern diplomacy.

The man described by critics as a murderous dictator and nuclear lunatic has held hands and had heart-to-heart talks with South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, who has encouraged and abetted Mr. Kim’s makeover.

Mr. Kim has enticed South Korea and the United States into negotiations by dangling the possibility of denuclearizing his country. His popularity has surged in polls in South Korea as he prepares to become the first North Korean leader to meet a sitting American president.

With a dazzle of diplomatic initiatives in the run-up to his historic June 12 summit meeting with Mr. Trump in Singapore, Mr. Kim has effectively redefined himself. Some South Koreans now see him as more reliable than Mr. Trump despite the decades-long alliance between their country and the United States.

Mr. Kim’s enhanced standing among South Koreans was crystallized by recent images of him walking in the woods with Mr. Moon, and on a beach with President Xi Jinping of China discussing North Korea’s nuclear program.

The optics contrasted with what many South Koreans view as Mr. Trump’s scattershot diplomacy, in which he abruptly canceled the Singapore summit meeting, then reversed himself after Mr. Kim authorized a calm statement offering Mr. Trump “time and opportunity” to change his mind. (On Wednesday, one of the president’s lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said that Mr. Kim “got back on his hands and knees and begged” for the meeting to be rescheduled.)

Mr. Kim and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea walking at the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone in April

Mr. Kim and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea walking at the border village of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone in April. Mr. Moon has eagerly promoted Mr. Kim’s new image.

Despite the image change, Mr. Kim is unlikely to surrender his nuclear weapons anytime soon, or ease the grip of his repressive regime. But he has proved to be a skilled — some might say beguiling — strategist, driving events on the Korean Peninsula and showing a willingness to recalibrate.

“Once Kim Jong-un decided to improve ties with South Korea and the United States, he knew he could not do so with his image as a repressive tyrant,” said Kang Dong-wan, an expert on North Korea’s “image politics” at Dong-A University in Busan, South Korea. “He is creating a new portrait of him abroad as the leader of a normal country.”

In the West, Mr. Kim, 34, has often been caricatured as a chubby child toying with nuclear missiles. Mr. Trump, more than twice his age, has called Mr. Kim “short and fat,” a “sick puppy” and a “little rocket man.”

But when Mr. Trump meets Mr. Kim, the American leader will be dealing with the ruler of a totalitarian regime adept at political theatrics to bolster Mr. Kim’s charisma at home and advance his agenda abroad.

“The reason the world pays attention to him is not just because he has a few nuclear weapons, but more because of his image as a leader with mystical power, his absolute control over a highly consolidated, regimented and disciplined country,” said Chung Byung-ho, an anthropologist at Hanyang University in South Korea, who examined the role of theatrics in North Korean politics in a book he wrote with another scholar.

Whatever his true personality, Mr. Kim has found an avid partner in advancing his new image: Mr. Moon.

Since taking office a year ago, Mr. Moon has exhorted Mr. Trump to test the idea that Mr. Kim was a reasonable leader ready to bargain away his nuclear weapons for the right incentives, such as normalized ties and security assurances from the United States. It seems to have worked: Mr. Trump has recently changed his public appraisals of the North Korean leader, calling him “smart and gracious” and “very honorable.”

Mr. Kim and President Xi Jinping

Mr. Kim and President Xi Jinping of China in Dalian, China, last month. It was Mr. Kim’s second meeting with Mr. Xi in two months. Credit: Korean Central News Agency/EPA, via Shutterstock

Mr. Kim started his image makeover this year by reaching out to South Korea, which was eager to play intermediary between North Korea and the United States after a year in which the countries appeared to verge on war. In a New Year’s Day speech, Mr. Kim offered to send athletes, cheerleaders and political emissaries to South Korea during its Winter Olympics.

Then, he whetted Washington’s appetite for negotiations by announcing a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests, closing North Korea’s only known nuclear test site and releasing three American prisoners. He also appeared to have hedged his bets by meeting twice with Mr. Xi, mending frayed ties with an old ally whose protection he needed as he entered delicate negotiations with Washington.

The diplomatic outreach was a sharp departure from North Korea’s history of rhetorical bombast, chest-thumping theatrics, military parades and mass rallies, which have fed the country’s image as an international pariah.

Mr. Kim’s image reinvention was skillfully staged with the help of Mr. Moon’s government, which made sure every detail of the leaders’ April 27 summit meeting was steeped in potent symbols dear to both Koreas: respect, ethnic unity and eventual Korean reunification.

For the meeting held at the “truce village” of Panmunjom on the inter-Korean border, Mr. Moon’s government redecorated a conference building, installing paintings of famous mountains and waterfalls that reminded people in both Koreas of their shared heritage before their peninsula was divided by foreign powers at the end of World War II.

“We packed each piece of furniture and each painting with a story,” said Koh Min-jeong, a spokeswoman for Mr. Moon.

During a break from their talks, Mr. Kim and Mr. Moon ambled off for a walk through the woods of Panmunjom, with cameras broadcasting their outing live around the world.

A caricature of Mr. Kim in Seoul

A caricature of Mr. Kim in Seoul, South Korea, last month. Recent surveys show increasing numbers of South Koreans see Mr. Kim as trustworthy. Credit: Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press

But nothing softened Mr. Kim’s image like the moment when he arrived at the border to meet with Mr. Moon. At Mr. Kim’s suggestion, Mr. Moon stepped across the border into the North for 10 seconds. Then Mr. Kim and Mr. Moon walked back across to the South for their meeting, holding hands, an encounter that transfixed television viewers in South Korea.

“That single gesture went beyond political language,” said Mr. Chung, the anthropologist. “The theatrics conveyed messages of trust that language alone could not.”

The summit meeting mainly rehashed old inter-Korean agreements that had never been kept, producing only a vaguely worded commitment to denuclearization and peace. But the images made the event a success, providing momentum for warmed ties between the two countries and redefining Mr. Kim in the eyes of many South Koreans.

The next morning, a South Korean newspaper filled its front and back pages with a photograph showing Mr. Moon and Mr. Kim crossing the border hand in hand. Mr. Kim, formerly vilified as the region’s most dangerous leader, was considered “trustworthy” by 77 percent of South Koreans following the meeting, according to a survey by the Korea Research Center.

“Chairman Kim’s popularity has risen rapidly among South Koreans, and so have the expectations,” Mr. Moon told Mr. Kim last month when they met for the second time at Panmunjom. He said the summit meeting especially strengthened Mr. Kim’s image among younger South Koreans, who have shaped their views of North Korea through the past decade of inter-Korean tensions and have become increasingly skeptical of reconciliation, much less reunification, with the North.

“That’s great to hear,” Mr. Kim responded, according to South Korean officials.

Critics warn of dashed expectations, reiterating their view that Mr. Kim will never completely abandon the nuclear weapons considered so dear to his regime’s survival and his legitimacy as leader of North Korea.

“It’s right to be skeptical,” said Ra Jong-yil, a political scientist and former deputy director of the South’s National Intelligence Service. “How can the leader of a nation change so quickly? We tend to see what we want to see in North Korea.”

Some expect that in his meeting with Mr. Trump, Mr. Kim will most likely commit to denuclearizing his country completely in order to weaken the rationale for sanctions, but insist on a “phased” denuclearization. They say Mr. Kim probably fears that whatever agreement he strikes with Mr. Trump may not survive, given Washington’s unpredictable politics.

“The whole world is being duped” by Mr. Kim, said Shim Jin-sup, a retired psychological warfare officer of the South Korean military and expert on North Korean propaganda.

I Grew Up Around Korean Beauty Products. Americans, You’ve Been Had.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/opinion/sunday/korean-beauty-products-america.html

By Euny Hong

I admit it: I use Korean snail slime face serum. It’s purported to contain anti-aging properties. I have no opinion as to whether snails are particularly young-looking, but my experience is that their excretions do work on humans. That aside, as someone who grew up among Korean beauty products, I find the world’s sudden fascination with Korean skin care, and its now-famous 12-step regimen, to be comical.

Dozens of articles in the Western press claim that Korean beauty innovation is 10 years ahead of the rest of the world. So … in beauty terms, South Korea is in the year 2027?

It gets better: “K-beauty,” as it is often called, is not just futuristic; it’s ancient as well. According to at least three English-language beauty websites, Korean skin care rituals date back to some purported document from 700 B.C. If Koreans have had a 12-step skin care program for 2,700 years, I’m not sure why they decided to sit on it until the 1990s. But no matter.

In the last six years, Korean cosmetics in the United States have gone from nonexistent to almost mainstream. According to data from Kotra, Korea’s trade promotion agency, K-beauty exports to the United States more than doubled from 2014 to 2016. The global cosmetics chain Sephora started carrying K-beauty products in 2011. Other retail chains followed suit, including Urban Outfitters, Ulta and the drugstore chain CVS, all of them touting products with ingredients like chrysanthemum and ginseng. How did Americans come to view South Korea as this beautiful-skinned Eden, when, until a few decades ago, it was impoverished and chokingly polluted.

I lived in Seoul from ages 12 to 18. South Korea was still a developing country when I arrived in 1985, when its inflation-adjusted per capita G.D.P. was about one-fourth of what it is today. Its growing pains showed in the country’s dodgy goods.

These days, K-beauty products come in sculptured packaging and smell like an upscale spa. But when I was growing up, Korean skin creams were all the same shade of toilet-paper pink, and they smelled like Glade PlugIns. Any Korean with means used French and American cosmetics (and the Japanese brand Shiseido). No one had ever heard of such a thing as a 12-step regime.

That all changed in the early 1990s. South Korea became wealthy; the quality of everything from cars to CD players improved. Then, in 1998, spurred by the Asian financial crisis, the Korean government altered its economic strategy, branching out from heavy industry and electronics-focused conglomerates into pop culture businesses. Korea was rebranded a “cool” country.

Most of this new “coolness” took the form of mass-produced and exported cinema, television and pop music. But all Korean industries benefited. The popular Korean beauty chains Innisfree and the Face Shop both opened in the early 2000s — around the same time that we first started hearing about the Korean triple cleanse.

Until very recently, K-beauty’s presence in the West was largely a matter of prestige, not money. It was the Asian market that really mattered, especially China. It still does: In 2016, China bought about 38 percent of K-beauty exports and Hong Kong 30 percent, according to Kotra.

But geopolitics may be forcing the K-beauty industry to pivot westward. South Korea has been rethinking the precariousness of an export strategy that is too dependent on China, a country that is not only allied with North Korea, but is also becoming a direct competitor in manufacturing and of late, pop culture and television dramas.

Korean industry got a glimpse of the perils of mixing politics and trade in July 2016, when South Korea announced that it would deploy the American-made Thaad missile defense system. China perceived the move as hostileand threatened sanctions; in March, Chinese tourism in South Korea was down 40 percent from the same month in 2016, resulting in an estimated loss of $6.5 billion in revenue.

South Korea put the Thaad project on hold this June, and the two nations appear to be on better terms now. Still, the backlash gave Korean business a fright and an impetus to seek out new markets. It’s no coincidence that South Korea’s top boy band, BTS, chose this year to make a splashy American debut, while the Korean bakery chain Paris Baguette announced recently that it was planning to open at least 300 more stores in the United States by 2020.

And K-beauty, too, has moved aggressively. Innisfree, which offers products from the volcanic Korean island of Jeju, opened a Manhattan branch in September. AmorePacific, one of South Korea’s oldest beauty companies, plans to open 100 American branches of its retail chain Aritaum, a sort of Korean Sephora, within the next three years.

It’s clear what the K-beauty industry wants from the West: a market that isn’t fraught with messy geopolitics. But what explains why K-beauty has been embraced in the West with such gusto? Has the old Orientalist belief in ancient Asian beauty secrets struck again? There are certainly echoes of this in the marketing. Sulwhasoo, part of the AmorePacific family, advertises its products as containing “Korean herbal medicine drawn from Asian wisdom.”

Or is it because Korean women themselves, with their glowing complexions, are serving as walking advertisements for the power of K-beauty? If so, America, you’ve been had: ginseng and Jeju volcano water are not the whole story behind that flawless skin.

For the past several years, beauty-obsessed South Korea has been among the world’s capitals of cosmetic surgery. Some 20 percent of Korean women have had some form of work done.

Then, there’s Botox. Several Korean news outlets this year reported a studyfinding that 42 percent of Korean women ages 21 to 55 have had either Botox or filler injections.

Many wrinkle creams worldwide contain retinol, a vitamin A derivative that is harmless in small doses but not large ones. Some Korean cosmetics contain concentrations of retinol as high as 3.8 percent — about twice that of their highest-concentrated American counterparts.

Ancient beauty secrets, or Accutane? Korean doctors prescribe isotretinoin-based acne medicine “indiscriminately,” to quote the Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo, despite the risk of serious side effects.

If there are such things as “Korean beauty secrets” they seem to amount to this: Put a lot of time, money and energy into your skin, and you’ll probably see results (just don’t export too much to China).

But what do I know? I’m the one putting snail slime on my face.

——————

Euny Hong is the author of “The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture.”

Choigate: A Conservative-Christian Witch Hunt?

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With so many rumours flying around about this extraordinary situation, let me throw one into the mix: Is the current situation driven by old-guard conservatives, right-wing Christians, the ChoJoongDong, and the anti-Park branch of Saenuri?

Some background which prompted this thinking.

Last year, Korean friends put me in touch with a professor who was close to a leading figure in the anti-Park faction of Saenuri. This gentleman was interested in having a group of foreign correspondents meet this figure and asked if I, as a foreign reporter, could set this up a lunch meeting with some of my colleagues. I said, “Possibly” – but let’s meet first.

We did not get along. The professor had a conspiracy theory on everything – notably the Sewol and the Cheonan sinkings (he alleged the latter was sunk by an Israeli submarine). End result: Nothing came of the meeting. As far as I know, he did not approach any of my colleagues.

But I have wondered about it since. What is striking about Choigate is that the main reporting, and the strongest allegations, come, not from the left (as you might expect) but from the right. The Dong-ah first reported the story. JTBC and the Joongnang picked up the ball and ran with it. The Chosun has followed and has come out with the strongest editorializing calling for the disempowerment of Her Parkness. (As anyone who reads my posts knows, I am no supporter of Park.)

Look at the key elements of this situation:

  • Cronyism and influence peddling is common (inevitable?) in Korean political and economic organizations, including the Blue House. (As we know from the record of all ex-presidencies since Park I, who was pretty clean.)
  • Widespread distrust and even hatred of late-term presidents is par for the course. (Who on earth would want to be president of Korea? You end up in exile (Rhee), assassinated (Park), sentenced to death (Chun and Roh I), dead (Roh II) or with family members jailed or in trouble (Chun, Kim I, Kim II, Roh II, Lee.) )
  • Rumor-mongering and excitability among a “passionate” public, often driven by dubious media reports, is yet another commonality. (Let us not forget some of the downright false reporting that helped spark the “mad cow” protests in 2008).
  • The “Court of Public Opinion” is very, very strong in Korea – one might argue stronger than actual institutions. (As witness the public furies which periodically rise, and which the bureaucracy then reacts to – we have seen this with everything from USFK to foreign PEFs.)
  • Choigate is different in one sense: A charismatic/cultish, semi-Shaman is the central figure. She is not just a mentor to the president – but, it is alleged, influences and controls her with semi-hypnotic or even supernatural power.

Those familiar with Korean Christianity will be aware of how many offbeat strands of them have Shamanistic influences. But equally, many “orthodox” Christians despise such cultish outgrowths – and particularly despise mudangs/shamans.

Those familiar with Korea will also be aware of the power of the conservative newspapers (“ChoJoongDong”), who were outrageously partisan against Roh II – and arguably were a factor in driving the right-wing party to ill-advisedly impeach him.

So I posit: Could the current situation be driven by the anti-Park faction and by conservative Christians – backed by the ChoJoongDong – all of whom are irked by Choi’s apparent power and influence in the Blue House?

Before the clamour grows too loud: Please note that this is mere theory.

I need you. I want you. I seoul you

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I.SEOUL.U:
KONGLISH GOES GLOBAL AND THE CASE FOR THIS SLOGAN

Andy SalmonI need you. I want you. I seoul you….

Yep, this here is the new branded slogan to be used locally and also globally in Seoul’s promotional efforts – tourism promotion, investment promotion, export promotion.

Does it deliver a key message? Does it spark emotion? Does it compress data? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

I was offered the opportunity to play a (very small) part in this process and declined – having been disillusioned and frankly hugely pissed off when I was on the sidelines of the shambolic “Hi Seoul” campaign (if you can call it that) back in the MB mayoral days.

But seeing as everyone, his cousin and his dog is seizing the low hanging fruit; lambasting the new slogan for our fair cityl and suggesting their own (supposedly) brilliant alternatives, let me present a different perspective. Three points:

(1) With a touch of irony and with a nod to humour in usage, this could work: it is offbeat and funky enough. (Though yes, I know: The campaigns which actually use this slogan will be crass, trite, cutesy and crap, and no Seoul bureaucrat worth his salt would dare include those characteristics. But even so…there is potential).

(2) English is a world language, flexible enough to accommodate non-native usage. And the audience for this is not necessarily native speakers; For example, in tourism promotion, the main audience is Chinese and Japanese. Something this simple (subject-verb-object) might just speak to them when something cleverer and more sophisticated might not.

(3) Frankly: Who gives a flying fuck? Seoul has enough assets in place – a huge variety of assets, from taekwondo to high technology – to not need a silly, unprofessional and bureaucratic slogan. Organically, the city has already becoming one of the world’s great metropolises: IOW, the substance beats the branding.

For more on the latter thought, a previous column:
(Incidentally, my original title was “Damn These Korean Branders!” but the sub-ed toned it down. Also, the self-described “PR expert” Seo Kyung-duk, referenced below for his nationalist Times Squares “ads,” was on the latest Seoul branding committee….)

http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/phone/news/view.jsp?req_newsidx=123415

So, what was that inter-Korean crisis about? And who won?

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http://www.nknws.org/2015/08/so-what-was-that-inter-korean-crisis-about-and-who-won/

Laydeez and gennlemen! I hereby claim the prize for the Article Most Instantly Overtaken By Events. Any other bidders? There may well be. On Planet Pundit, this goes with the territory.

On Monday August 24, with North and South Korea still huddled in seemingly interminable talks at Panmunjom, the Guardian asked me to pen a piece for their “Comment is Free” pages. I wrote at Chollima speed, submitting it at 1415 BST. Lightly edited, it went live at 1636.

Hopefully this still has uses, for background analysis and little-known details. But within an hour the inter-Korean deadlock, which I took as my starting-point, was finally broken.

Obviously I’m glad. As a firm believer in Antonio Gramsci’s watchword “Pessimism of the intelligence, optimism of the will,” it’s nice when gloom and doom turns out to be misplaced.

But misplaced, or postponed? Already, within a few days of tensions easing – that at least is certain, and a great relief – there is little agreement on what really happened on the peninsula last weekend. In particular there are widely differing views as to which side came out on top.

Was this a win for President Park Geun-hye, who halfway through her five-year term has so far achieved precious little with the North or on any front?

If so, it was hard-won personally. Such was the strain of two successive rounds of all-night talks – an insane way to do business, albeit routine for international bankers and lawyers in today’s damaging long-hours culture – that President Park burst a capillary in her eye. She wasn’t negotiating personally, of course, but obviously she and other senior officials had to keep the same crazy hours in order to keep track, as well as brief and be briefed. A good many senior figures in both Seoul and Pyongyang must still be catching up on their shut-eye.

Was it worth it? One camp sees this as a win for Park: she held firm and hung tough. Yonhap,

South Korea’s quasi-official news agency, opined: “The deal gave a big boost to Park at a time when she deseparately (sic) needed public support to push through her reform agenda.”

UCSD’s Stephan Haggard, in a valuable series of real-time series posts from Seoul where he was attending a conference, agrees that it’s “hard to see this as anything but a North Korean stand-down.” Pacific Forum-CSIS’s Ralph Cossa concurs: “South Korea just said we are not taking this anymore. They are playing hardball with them, and I think essentially the North Koreans blinked.”

Victor Cha (CSIS, Georgetown University and formerly the George W Bush administration) is of the same mind. Also, he reckons he knows exactly why the North blinked. In an article for Foreign Policyheadlined “Kim Jong Un Versus The Loudspeaker,” he claims: “The recent Korean crisis ended because Pyongyang is terrified of Seoul’s propaganda broadcasts.”

So far, so unanimous: One-up for Seoul. No way, says Joshua Stanton of One Free Korea. In his altogether more pessimistic take, it was North Korea that came out on top of a situation it had deliberately “created with malice aforethought” by planting those mines in the DMZ:

“(The two Koreas) came, they talked, and they signed, but they solved nothing … Pyongyang didn’t apologize, and Seoul will continue to pay. The loudspeakers will be switched off. There will not be an all-out war, and probably never would have been. The limited, incremental war will resume, only at a time and place more to Pyongyang’s advantage.”

… the North reportedly hardly raised the issue of (Ulchi Freedom Guardian) at all in those 44 hours of grueling negotiations

So, experts are divided. Nothing unusual there, especially when the dust has yet to settle and the ink is barely dry. Indeed, military moves continue. Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), the big regular annual U.S.-ROK war games that began on August 17 (they were briefly suspended when real life threatened to get hot), still have some days to run. Pyongyang always blasts this as a dress rehearsal for invasion. But one incidental puzzle of the recent crisis is that the North reportedly hardly raised the issue of UFG at all in those 44 hours of grueling negotiations.

Experts being divided is one thing. Pyongyang divided: that’s something else. North Korea’s two chief negotiators swiftly commented – but with totally different interpretations, handily posted together onXinhua. Chinese readers, and the rest of us, may well scratch our heads.

SWEET AND SOUR

Hwang Pyong So, widely seen as second only to Kim Jong Un, sounded a sour note in a TV broadcast. Seoul had been taught a “harsh lesson … it will only entail military conflicts that escalate tensions if South Korea fabricates a groundless case, makes unilateral judgment and moves to provoke the other side.” That caused dismay in Seoul, leavened by recognition that the North for domestic reasons always has to spin everything as a victory for its totally correct political line, matchless armed forces and peerless leadership. Still, it wasn’t making nice.

But contrast Kim Yang Gon, North Korea’s longtime point man on the South and the North’s number two at the recent talks. Kim was all smiles. No talk from him of harsh lessons or groundless provocations. As quoted by Xinhua, Kim told the North’s KCNA news agency:

“It was very fortunate that the recent contact helped to defuse the danger of the touch-and-go situation … and offered an opportunity of a dramatic change in achieving peace, stability, reconciliation and cooperation … We are pleased … that the North and the South sat face to face (and) had an exhaustive discussion to reach an agreement on issues of common concern, thus opening up an epochal phase for turning misfortune into blessings in the North-South relations.”

That’s more like it. I did wonder if this sweetness and light was for outside consumption only, but no. KCNA’s own full account is all in similar vein, positive and forward-looking.

So whom do we believe: Sour Hwang, or sweet Kim? Maybe the boss can shed some light. Kim Jong Un has now weighed in personally. On August 28, exactly a week after the party Central Military Commission (CMC) last met in emergency session, Kim convened it again.

I say “it,” but in both cases this was a much enlarged meeting; including the full Cabinet, the party Central Committee, provincial party bosses as well as shedloads of military personnel. As KCNA’sphotos show, there were hundreds of people in the room – uniforms to the front, suits firmly in the rear – all being lectured by the Young Marshal. A round-table this was not.

An enlarged meeting, but also somewhat reduced. Some CMC members were sacked, but we don’t yet know who or why. Kim’s comments were interesting, if not exactly encouraging. The main lesson to be drawn from the recent crisis, in his view, is the need “to bolster up the national defense capability as firm as iron wall.” That’s because “peace restored under the situation that reached the brink of a war was by no means something achieved on the negotiating table but thanks to the tremendous military muscle with the nuclear deterrent for self-defense built by the great party.” So all those 43 hours of talks didn’t count for anything?

Or again: “the DPRK proposed the north-south high-level urgent contact on its own initiative and put under control the situation which inched close to an armed conflict, thereby clearing the dark clouds of war that hung over the Korean nation and defended peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in the region.”

Well, that’s one way of putting it. Another way, if one accepts the South’s version of events regarding the mines, is that the North merely dug itself out of a big hole of its own making.

Kim also struck a rare note of self-pity: “We protected the dignity and sovereignty of the country, the gains of the revolution and the happiness of the people by our own efforts amid the tempest of the history without anybody’s support and sympathy.” (Did anyone, perish the thought, say ronery?)

All this will doubtless be pored over and parsed endlessly. Sniffing for subtexts, it’s highly plausible that Kim’s advisers were divided over the wisdom of the mine provocation. So you can just imagine the postmortems raging now in Pyongyang – where, crucially, mortem (it’s Latin for death, remember) is not a metaphor if you end up on the wrong side of the argument.

We can parse away, but actually for once this will be decided empirically. The inter-Korean talks produced a brief but quite concrete agreement, committing to do specific things fairly soon. Family reunions, further high-level talks, and NGO contacts are all envisaged.

Encouragingly, Kim Jong Un directly endorsed this accord: “The joint press release published at the contact provided a crucial landmark occasion of defusing the acute military tension and putting the catastrophic inter-Korean relations on the track of reconciliation and trust.”

The same day the CMC met, South Korea’s Red Cross started the ball rolling by proposing an initial contact on September 7 to discuss family reunions. So let’s see. Will all go smoothly? Or will it be like after last year’s dramatic but short-lived troika visit to the Incheon Asiad, when the promised follow-up talks never happened and the Koreas reverted to bickering?

Only time will tell. So it’s back to Gransci. I’m cautiously hopeful, yet also depressed. Even if we get family reunions and the rest, it only takes us a small step back towards the much better ties the two Koreas had achieved in the sunshine decade before 2007. It’s snakes and ladders.

And why on earth does the North feel it has to arrange a crisis and go to the brink of war, in order to get a dialogue which could have been its for the asking anyway? Seoul had long been offering unconditional talks. There was no need to mobilize troops, launch submarines and declare a state of semi-war. Kim Jong Un could have just picked up the goddam phone.

North Korea, darkness risible: The ironies of Sonygate

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‘Interview’ hacking scandal has all the makings of a Hollywood flick, except the villain may be innocent
http://www.nknews.org/2015/01/north-korea-darkness-risible-the-ironies-of-sonygate/

As a movie plot it would be gripping, if far-fetched. A rising young comic, who happens to be Canadian, makes a film for a major Hollywood studio, which happens to be Japanese-owned. The film satirizes a named real-life dictator, who – spoiler alert! – meets an explosive end.

The regime in question threatens blue murder at such lèse-majesté. But it is forever blustering, so nobody pays much heed. Weeks before the film’s release, the studio responsible is hacked – to devastating effect. Several forthcoming films (but not the offending one) are uploaded on the internet along with embarrassing internal emails, salary details and other confidential data.

The FBI swiftly fingers the mocked regime. The latter denies culpability, but praises the hack as a “righteous deed.” Then the president of the United States, no less, despite having for six years shown scant interest in the many ongoing concerns posed by this particular rogue state, suddenly springs into action on behalf of the mocking Canadian and the damaged Japanese.

Vowing an appropriate response to the hack, the president chides the studio for capitulation when it at first withdraws the film entirely, after anonymous threats prompt major U.S. cinema chains to cancel screenings. Game, set and match to the lampooned dictator? No! A fresh plot twist in the final reel. Stung into vertebracy, the studio releases the film after all: online and to independent cinemas, less lily-livered. Then the tyranny’s own internet mysteriously crashes, several times. It angrily blames America, crudely insults the U.S. president and vows revenge.

LIFE IMITATES ART

Life imitating art; truth stranger than fiction. The saga of The Interview, Seth Rogen’s comedy film about North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un for Sony Pictures, is more gripping by far than most holiday TV fare. Mixing high politics and hi-tech with low farce, this is above all a whodunit. The U.S. gospel version makes it a predictable B-movie, with North Korea a cartoon villain and superhero America (after initial wobbles) freedom’s stout defender. Well, maybe.

Who really hacked Sony? Kim Jong Un had the motive, and the means. South Korea, which blames the North for several major cyber-attacks in recent years, claims Pyongyang deploys thousands of highly trained hackers. However, in Sony’s case many experts query the FBI’s attribution on technical and other grounds, regarding disgruntled insiders as more plausible culprits.

Regardless of who did what, the drama rolls on. Sony has no plans to release The Interview in Asia, but netizens find ways. By December 26 at least 300,000 Chinese had watched pirated versions online, mostly with glee: though their government wearily sustains him, “fatty Kim” is much mocked in China. China is also a crucial communications node for North Korea – its hackers, some based there, use Chinese networks – and a media battleground. South Korean soaps and Hollywood movies cross the Yalu into the North, on DVDs and memory sticks.

It is thus a racing certainty that some North Koreans will get to see The Interview. They will watch it at great peril. Given its theme, anyone caught can expect summary execution – or at best a lengthy spell in a gulag whose ghastliness was highlighted by a UN report in February.

Pursuant to that, but elbowed out of the headlines by the hacking furor, on December 22 the UN Security Council discussed North Korean human rights for the first time ever – despite objections from China and Russia, whose veto guarantees that an earlier General Assembly resolution to refer the Kim regime to the International Criminal Court (ICC) will not happen.

NUCLEAR HACKING, TOO

Meanwhile South Korea faces a separate (or is it?) hacking incident. Stolen data about nuclear power stations has been posted online five times since December 15; luckily none so far is of use to terrorists. Local anti-nuclear activists were suspected, but on December 26 a leading Seoul paper, the JoongAng Daily, cited official sources as pointing the finger at Pyongyang.

Despite this, on December 29 South Korea suddenly offered the North ministerial-level talks. Whereas The Interview posits a CIA plot to take out Kim Jong Un, South Korea would rather take him in hand: a much better idea. The line between comedy and tragedy can be a thin one.

A decade ago, an earlier American comedy caper famously lampooned Kim’s father as lonely (with an R). Kim Jong Il, a Hollywood fan and film buff, wisely made little fuss about Team America World Police. Hacker or no, his hot-headed son by contrast has given The Interview huge publicity by rising to its bait. North Koreans who dare watch it, raised in a culture where films are moralizing and didactic, will gasp. They may get a few laughs – and a few ideas too.

2015 is the fourth year in power for North Korea’s third leader. It also marks 70 years since the world’s then superpowers casually (and “temporarily”!) split an innocent peninsula in two: an action that unleashed untold, unending misery in the ensuing decades. No laughing matter.

All of the DPRK’s longstanding threats and concerns – weapons of mass destruction (WMD), human rights abuses and more – remain as troubling as ever. Has The Interview and the furor around it helped, by making more people think about North Korea? Maybe. But mainly it has been a huge distraction. How ironic if the issue which has at last prompted Obama to get to grips with the Kim regime is one where, just for once, the cartoon villain might be innocent.

Korea Execution Is Tied to Clash Over Businesses

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By CHOE SANG-HUN and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: December 23, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/world/asia/north-korea-purge.html

SEOUL, South Korea — The execution of the uncle of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, had its roots in a firefight between forces loyal to Mr. Kim and those supporting the man who was supposed to be his regent, according to accounts that are being pieced together by South Korean and American officials. The clash was over who would profit from North Korea’s most lucrative exports: coal, clams and crabs.

North Korean military forces were deployed to retake control of one of the sources of those exports, the rich crab and clam fishing grounds that Jang Song-thaek, the uncle of the country’s untested, 30-year-old leader, had seized from the military. In the battle for control of the fishing grounds, the emaciated, poorly trained North Korean forces “were beaten — very badly — by Uncle Jang’s loyalists,” according to one official.

The rout of his forces appears to have been the final straw for Mr. Kim, who saw his 67-year-old uncle as a threat to his authority over the military and, just as important, to his own family’s dwindling sources of revenue. Eventually, at Mr. Kim’s order, the North Korean military came back with a larger force and prevailed. Soon, Mr. Jang’s two top lieutenants were executed.

The two men died in front of a firing squad. But instead of rifles, the squad used antiaircraft machine guns, a form of execution that according to South Korean intelligence officials and news media was similar to the one used against some North Korean artists in August. Days later, Mr. Jang himself was publicly denounced, tried and executed, by more traditional means.

Given the opaqueness of North Korea’s inner circle, many details of the struggle between Mr. Kim and his uncle remain murky. But what is known suggests that while Mr. Kim has consolidated control and eliminated a potential rival, it has been at a huge cost: The open warfare between the two factions has revealed a huge fracture inside the country’s elite over who pockets the foreign currency — mostly Chinese renminbi — the country earns from the few nonnuclear exports its trading partners desire.

Only a few months ago Mr. Jang was believed to be the second most powerful man in North Korea. In fact, American intelligence agencies had reported to the White House and the State Department in late 2011 that he could well be running the country behind the scenes — and might edge out his inexperienced nephew for control. In part that was based on his deep relationship with top officials in China, as well as his extensive business connections there.

His highly unusual public humiliation and execution on Dec. 12 set off speculation about the possibility of a power struggle within the secretive government. But in recent days a more complex, nuanced story has emerged.

During a closed-door meeting on Monday of the South Korean National Assembly’s intelligence committee, Nam Jae-joon, the director of the National Intelligence Service, disputed the North’s assertion that Mr. Jang had tried to usurp his nephew’s power. Rather, he said, Mr. Jang and his associates had provoked the enmity of rivals within the North’s elite by dominating lucrative business deals, starting with the coal badly needed by China, the North’s main trading partner.

“There had been friction building up among the agencies of power in North Korea over privileges and over the abuse of power by Jang Song-thaek and his associates,” Mr. Nam was quoted as saying. Mr. Nam’s comments were relayed to the news media by Jeong Cheong-rae and Cho Won-jin, two lawmakers designated as spokesmen for the parliamentary committee.

In interviews, officials have said that the friction described in general terms to the South Korean Parliament played out in a violent confrontation in late September or early October, just north of the western sea border between the Koreas.

There, the North harvests one of its major exports: crabs and clams, delicacies that are also highly valued by the Chinese. For years the profits from those fishing grounds, along with the output from munitions factories and trading companies, went directly to the North Korean military, helping it feed its troops, and enabling its top officers to send cash gifts to the Kim family.

South Korea was a major market for the North’s mushrooms, clams, crabs, abalones and sea cucumbers until the South cut off trade with the North after the sinking of a South Korean Navy ship in 2010, forcing the North Korean military to rely on the Chinese market.

But when Mr. Kim succeeded his father two years ago, he took away some of the military’s fishing and trading rights and handed them to his cabinet, which he designated as the main agency to revive the economy. Mr. Jang was believed to have been a leading proponent of curtailing the military’s economic power.

Mr. Jang appears to have consolidated many of those trading rights under his own control — meaning that profits from the coal, crabs and clams went into his accounts, or those of state institutions under his control, including the administrative department of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, which he headed.

But this fall, the long-brewing tensions that arrangement created broke into the open. Radio Free Asia, in a report last week that cited anonymous North Korean sources, reported that Mr. Kim saw North Korean soldiers malnourished during his recent visits to islands near the disputed western sea border. They say he ordered Mr. Jang to hand over the operation of nearby fishing grounds back to the military.

According to accounts put together by South Korean and American officials, Mr. Jang and his associates resisted. When a company of about 150 North Korean soldiers showed up at the farm, Mr. Jang’s loyalists refused to hand over the operation, insisting that Mr. Jang himself would have to approve. The confrontation escalated into a gun battle, and Radio Free Asia reports that two soldiers were killed and that the army backed off. Officials say the number of casualties is unknown, but they have received similar accounts.

It is hard to know exactly how large a role the episode played in Mr. Jang’s downfall — there is more money in coal than in seafood — but Mr. Kim was reportedly enraged when he heard of the clash. Mr. Nam said that by mid-November his agents were already reporting that Mr. Jang had been detained. The Dec. 12 verdict noted that Mr. Jang “instructed his stooges to sell coal and other precious underground resources at random.”

Mr. Nam said the fact that such behind-the-scenes tensions had spun so far out of control that Mr. Kim had to order his own uncle’s execution raised questions about the government’s internal unity.

“The fissure within the regime could accelerate if it further loses popular support,” the lawmakers quoted Mr. Nam as saying.

Mr. Jang was the husband of Kim Kyong-hui, the only sister of Mr. Kim’s father, the longtime leader Kim Jong-il. Mr. Nam told the committee Monday that Mr. Kim’s aunt had retained her position in the hierarchy, even while the purge of Mr. Jang’s other associates continued. But he denied news reports in South Korea and Japan that some of Mr. Jang’s associates were seeking political asylum in Seoul and Beijing.

Mr. Nam pointed to Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, the top political officer in the North Korean People’s Army, and Kim Won-hong, the head of the North’s secret police and its intelligence chief, as the government’s new rising figures since Mr. Jang’s execution, the two lawmakers said.

Kim’s uncle Jang Song Thaek purged and killed

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bfd390f6-63dd-11e3-b70d-00144feabdc0.html

Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s first leader, reportedly took such exception to the boyfriend of his daughter Kyung Hui that he had him expelled from university and despatched to the distant city of Wonsan.

Undaunted, Jang Song Thaek eventually returned to Pyongyang to claim Ms Kim’s hand in marriage, and began his rise to the highest level of the state apparatus. Reportedly purged from the central party in the late 1970s and again in 2003, Jang seemed to bounce back stronger from each setback, developing a reputation as the great survivor of North Korean politics.

Jang’s summary execution – reported by state media on Friday – marked a spectacular demise for a man seen until recently as the most powerful adviser to Kim Jong Un. It also raised questions about the potential for further instability in the court of the world’s youngest national leader.

Describing him as “despicable human scum”, state media said Jang had been put to death immediately after his conviction for treason by a military tribunal, where he confessed to having plotted a coup against Mr Kim.

“I was going to stage the coup by using army officers who had close ties with me,” Jang was reported as saying. “It was my intention to . . . become premier when the economy goes totally bankrupt and the state is on the verge of collapse.”

As vice-chairman of the powerful national defence commission and head of the ruling party’s administration department, Jang was seen by some analysts as a regent to the inexperienced ruler, and was shown frequently by his side at official events.

Yet that same media footage contained hints of an overly confident attitude that may have prompted his demise. During a big speech by Mr Kim in January, as other top officials sat ramrod straight in rapt attention, Jang slouched casually to one side. On a day of site visits two months earlier, he was shown strolling behind his nephew with one hand in his pocket, and later flanking him with both hands behind his back – a gesture of superiority in Korean culture.

“Jang tried hard to create [an] illusion about him by projecting himself internally and externally as a special being on a par with [Mr Kim],” state media said.

Some analysts have portrayed Jang’s demise as a natural step in Mr Kim’s assertion of power as he replaces an older generation of officials with new ones who will owe their positions to him. South Korean intelligence suggests he has overseen the replacement of about 100 of the top 218 party and military officials.

By ousting and shaming Jang so publicly – including vivid coverage on domestic television and the front page of the national Rodong Sinmun newspaper – Mr Kim appears to be seeking to demonstrate his absolute authority to the broader population, as well. “This is about flexing muscle,” says John Delury, a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei university. In recent days, state media has begun referring to him as uidaehan ryongdoja, or “great leader” – a title also used by his father and grandfather.

But the lurid detailing of Jang’s alleged crimes comes with risks. “Nobody can now say there isn’t factionalism in North Korea – there is clearly a form of intra-regime factionalism, and the window on that has now been opened to the ordinary North Korean people,” says Sokeel Park, research director at Liberty in North Korea, a non-governmental group.

Rather than present Jang’s as an isolated case of counter-revolutionary thought, state media described an extended network of senior dissenters. It also drew attention to rampant high-level corruption, as it condemned Jang for illicitly profiting from the country’s abundant natural resources.

Moreover, by describing Jang as expecting North Korean economic collapse, state media has indicated doubts at the highest level about Mr Kim’s promise to drive national development and raise living standards. In a speech in 2012, the leader said he would ensure the people “will never have to tighten their belts again”.

“There is now an explicit linking of the regime’s legitimacy with being able to deliver for the average person,” Mr Delury says.

Visitors to Pyongyang report conspicuous signs of greater prosperity, such as better stocked shops and more cars on the streets, as well as a spurt in construction activity. But this increase in consumption and state expenditure could prove dangerous, says Rüdiger Frank at the University of Vienna.

“The sudden increase in unproductive state spending without [major] reforms suggests that the North Korean state is living on its reserves,” Mr Frank wrote this week. “Once they are depleted, trouble is inevitable.”

Under Mr Kim, North Korea has experimented with allowing more autonomy in agricultural and manufacturing production, and announced new special economic zones to attract foreign investment. It has also maintained the policy of turning a blind eye to the thriving informal markets that have filled the gap left by the defunct state distribution system.

But the condemnation of the “reformist” Jang, “influenced by the capitalist way of thinking”, bodes ill for any hopes of sweeping structural change in North Korea.

“He was willing to listen . . . he was interested in the South Korean economy,” says Moon Chung-in, a former South Korean presidential adviser who met Jang three times. Even during a heavy late-night drinking session in 2002, Jang “never lost his composure”, Mr Moon recalls.

“I was surprised to see him accused of these counter-revolutionary acts . . . he was very prudent, unassuming. He was always trying to stay in the shadows.”

Fun on the dark side

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http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/reviews/other_categories/article1279157.ece

AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER

Victor Cha
THE IMPOSSIBLE STATE
North Korea, past and future
530pp. Bodley Head. £25.
978 1 84792 235 9

John Everard
ONLY BEAUTIFUL, PLEASE
A British diplomat in North Korea
260pp. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Paperback, £12.99 (US $18.95).
978 1 931368 25 4

Blaine Harden
ESCAPE FROM CAMP 14
One man’s remarkable odyssey From North Korea to freedom in the West
242pp. Pan Macmillan. Paperback, £8.99.
978 0 330 51954 0 US: Penguin. $15.978 0 14 312291 3

Johannes Schonherr
NORTH KOREAN CINEMA
A history
215pp. McFarland. Paperback, £63.50 (US $75).
978 0 7864 6526 2

Andrei Lankov
THE REAL NORTH KOREA
Life and politics in the failed Stalinist utopia
283pp. Oxford University Press. £16.99 (US $27.95).
978 019 996429 1

A now familiar satellite image shows the Korean peninsula at night. The South is ablaze with light, as are nearby Japan and China. The North, by contrast, is plunged in darkness but for a single blob: the capital Pyongyang, its monuments more brightly lit than residents’ homes, (North Korea has other large cities, but they show up only as the faintest of pinpricks.) You can feel the metaphor coming. The government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, its official name) keeps its citizens in the dark, not just literally – electricity is in chronically short supply – but by blocking all influences from outside, including the internet. In the other direction it is a different picture. We know far more about North Korea than formerly, yet pools of dark ness remain. Politics is one such, not least the thirty something young man who now rules the DPRK, and who earlier this year was cheerfully threatening all and sundry with pre-emptive nuclear strikes.

Until a decade ago, Kim Jong Un was not even known to exist, despite years of schooling in Switzerland; were our spies asleep? Kim Jong 11, son and successor to the DPRK’s founding leader Kim II Sung, was thought to have two sons of his own. In 2003 a Japanese who calls himself Kenji Fujimoto published a memoir, claiming to have been Kim Jong Il’s sushi chef and con¬fidant for over a decade. His tales of court life in Pyongyang – nude dancing girls (no touching), dog soup on Sundays and more – included the first mention of a hitherto unknown third son, said to be hot-headed and his father’s favourite. Right on both counts, it appears.

Fujimoto feared for his life after these revelations. Yet last July he was invited back by Kim Jong Un, who seems to share his father’s view that there is no such thing as bad publicity. In 2001 Kim Jong II had told Konstantin Pulikovsky, sent by Vladimir Putin to escort him on a leisurely and luxurious journey to Moscow aboard Kim’s personal train: “I am the object of crit¬icism around the world. But I think that since I am being discussed, then I am on the right track”. Like Fujimoto, Pulikovsky spilled the beans. Live lobster was flown in daily as the caravan crossed Siberia. There were silver chopsticks, fine French wines, lusty choruses of old Soviet songs, and maidens “of the utmost beauty and intelligence” (clothed, indeed uniformed).

Pulikovsky’s account, Orient Express, remains untranslated. The same goes for Fujimoto, now with three books out, and the important memoirs of Song Hye Rang, aunt of Kim Jong IPs disinherited and off-message eldest son Kim Jong Nam: formerly of Macau, now in hiding. Even the gripping tale by South Korea’s Burton and Taylor, the film director Shin Sang Ok and his on- off spouse the actress Choi Eun Hee, of their 1978 kidnapping – or was it? – on Kim Jong Il’s orders, life in the North (from jail to pal¬ace) and escape in 1986, has never appeared in English.

This is surprising. Nowadays books on North Korea pour from the presses: written mostly by outsiders who have never lived there, and occasionally never even been there. In this inspect the light map of the peninsula is reversed. Oddly, there are far fewer non-specialist works on the South: a fascinating and dynamic land, much easier to visit and study. Daniel Tudor, the Economist’s Seoul correspondent, recently published the first general introduction to South Korea to appear for some time; calling it, somewhat unexpectedly, The Impossible Country.

In a coincidence both authors may regret, Victor Cha chose the same adjective for the other Korea, where it fits much better. An academic who served in George W. Bush’s White House, Cha has written what his publisher brashly bills as “the definitive account of North Korea”. There can be no such thing; but this is a serviceable intro¬duction, from a conventional US viewpoint, to the tangles of what an earlier age would have called “the Korean question”. It will disappoint those hoping for an inside view of the battles between hawks and doves that rent the Bush administration, undermining any coherent policy. Cha’s defensive account is less informative than works with no axe to grind, such as Mike Chinoy’s Meltdown (2008).

His virtues include a crisp chapter, “Five Bad Decisions”, on how the North’s economy lost its initial lead over the South (impossible to imagine now) and became today’s malnourished basket case. On policy, Cha rightly urges the need for the US and South Korea to coordinate their contingency planning with China. Beijing has not been keen, but this may change as it loses patience with Kim Jong Un’s antics. The final chapter, “The End Is Near”, predicts that the DPRK will collapse under the weight of its contradictions, and soon. Such forecasts have been heard for two decades, but North Korea has defied them thus far. If it survives till 2020, it will surpass the USSR as the longest-lived Communist (if that is the word) state. Its second hereditary succession looks smooth, yet in May a defence minister was replaced for the third time in a year. The armed forces thrived under Kim Jong II; his son and the Party are now reining them in. Ructions are possible, but Cha’s hopes for something akin to the Arab Spring in the DPRK seem optimistic.

Thousands of Westerners visit North Korea each year; a dozen firms compete to take them. (None pulled out during the recent tensions, though they had some cancellations.) Far fewer Westerners live there. Those who have written about the experi¬ence include two Englishmen, Andrew Hol¬loway and Michael Harrold, whose job was to correct the English in translations of works by the Leaders. Recently the Swiss Felix Abt self-published a book, available online, A Capitalist in North Korea, about his years in the country between 2002 and 2009. It would be good too to have the obser¬vations of aid workers, whom since 1995 North Korea has grudgingly let in, as it needs their help; but none so far seems to have gone into print.

John Everard wishes they would, so as “to correct the assertions of some who have writ¬ten at length and stridently … on the basis of very limited knowledge”. He himself spent two years (2006-08) in North Korea as Her Majesty’s Ambassador; previous postings had included inaugurating the Brit¬ish embassy in Belarus. UK-DPRK diplo¬matic relations date only from 2000, but already Britain has had six chefs de mission in Pyongyang. James Hoare opened the embassy, writing about this and more in North Korea in the 21st Century (2005, with Susan Pares). Now at SOAS, last year the tireless Dr Hoare produced both a historical dictionary of the DPRK and an edited three volume article collection on both Koreas.

As his evocative title suggests, Everard brings a keen ear and a fresh perspective to an often stale field. An eager cyclist, he could venture off the beaten track. Pedalling a scenic byway to the port of Nampo, “on my way back men appeared on bridges along my route telling me to take the main road”. (The plural suggests he ignored them.) He recounts some surprisingly frank conversations with North Koreans whose identity he rightly disguises, calling them all “she”, which adds a frisson; most were surely he. These were not the woman or man in the street but what he precisely pinpoints as “the outer elite”: those with “stable but not top-level jobs”.

In writers such as Abt, a laudable urge lo correct one-dimensional caricatures teeters into the trap of apologetics. This Everard avoids. With rare balance, he combines full awareness of the nuances and depth of the society with robust censure of the regime. Of course North Koreans are human beings, not robots; whoever denied it? But the DPRK is still a ghastly place nonpareil. He dedicates Only Beautiful, Please “to the people of North Korea, who deserve better”.

The heart of darkness is a vast gulag, where up to 200,000 innocents suffer unspeakably and often indefinitely. This used to be dark in another sense almost no details leaked out. Now the camps can be seen on Google Earth, and many reports have detailed their awful abuses. Some victims have written memoirs, the best-known being Kang Choi Hwan’s Aquariums of Pyongyang (2000). Kang was nine when his whole family was sent to Yodok camp after his grandfather, a Kyoto businessman who answered the fatherland’s call to build socialism – he even brought his Volvo – complained once too often. About 90,000 Koreans left Japan for North Korea, never to return; many were never heard of again. This thread in the DPRK tapestry of misery was the subject of Tessa Morris- Suzuki’s poignant Exodus to North Korea (2007).

Shin Dong Hyuk can trump Kang: he was born in the gulag. Near in age to Kim Jong Un, he recounts a Hobbesian life of constant, vicious, numbing cruelty. Shin even betrayed his own mother and brother for plotting to escape, and watched their executions. Almost as appalling is that few cared in South Korea, to which he miraculously escaped; his first book flopped. It look an American journalist, Blaine Harden, lo make Shin’s shocking story a global hit m twenty-four languages. All credit to him, though it seems strange not to credit Shin as co-author of Escape from Camp II: not even a “with”. The UN Human Rights Council recently set up a commission of inquiry into DPRK human rights abuses; it will report next March. No doubt the regime will continue brazenly to deny everything. For its interlocutors, the dilemma is what to prioritize. If the main task is to curb North Korea’s nuclear and missile activities, human rights tend to be passed over.

Most North Koreans avoid the gulag, but all go to the movies: a softer form of social control. Kim Jong 11 was a film fanatic; his works include On the Art of the Cinema (1973). Aware that quality was poor, Kim drafted in the Southern director Shin Sang Ok to improve things. Johannes Schönherr, whose North Korean Cinema is the first book in English on its subject, doubts if Shin was kidnapped. Schönherr’s own journey has been picaresque. He is a former East German grave-digger, expelled from the GDR in 1983. His Trashfilm Roadshows (2002) was a romp through the transgressive or bizarre; its index has “Woman Warrior of Koryo” between “Whoregasm” and “Zombie Hunger”. Blagging his way to a film festival in Pyongyang, he found his true metier. Still freelance, he now lives in Japan. Full of stills (all in black and while). North Korean Cinema is eye opening and a word rarely used of the DPRK — fun. Unencumbered by theory, this is a rich narrative history from the 1940s in the present. North Korea’s latest films revert to pre-Shin leadenness: no match for the slickness of South Korean soaps and other foreign fare, which circulate widely on DVD or memory stick the latter easier to hide if the police call.

Such key social changes are well documented in The Real North Korea. Andrei Lankov is a phenomenon. Born in Leningrad, he studied in Pyongyang and is now a professor in Seoul. A historian who has used Soviet archives to write two books (so far) on the DPRK’s early political history, he is also a prolific commentator. Besides writing many an op-ed, he has two long-running columns in the Korea Times, on the dawn of modern Korea and on the North, each already anthologized in book form. Some of the thirteen boxes studding the text of this new book are from such columns, though that is not mentioned. This is the best all-round account of North Korea yet. Its many virtues include apt detail, dry wit, a sure analytical touch, and refusal to preach. Lankov is insightful too on the South, such as the contortions of its leftists. Still fixated on their own long gone dictators (pussycats compared to the Kims), some find virtue in the North: at least it hosts no foreign troops. Dividing a nation also twists minds.

What can be done? Hawks and doves both err. As Lankov puts it, the sticks are not big enough and the carrots not sweet enough. Engagement is better than sanctions for weakening the regime, but North Korea can last a while yet before the inevitable crisis. That could arise in several ways, but whatever happens a soft landing is “not very probable”. Not quite Hilaire Belloc’s “They answered as they look their fees, There is no cure for this disease”; but small comfort for ideologues, certain that being either tougher or kinder to Kim Jong Un will do the trick.