Pyongyang (comic)

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Pyongyang is a black and white graphic novel by the Canadian Quebecois author Guy Delisle published in 2004. It documents Delisle's voyage to Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, where he is acting as the liaison between a French animation producing company and the SEK Studio (Scientific Educational Korea) company, where Korean animators draw the intercalations, or "tweens", for child-oriented films. (Essentially what this means is that the French animators do every fourth frame, for example, and the other three are done in North Korea, using the French frames as a guide.) He struggles with the difficulties of outsourcing and the bureaucracy of the totalitarian closed state. The book has 176 pages, two of them drawn by a French colleague.

[edit] Plot

In addition to the items that he was authorized to bring in the country, he also brought a copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four, that he judged appropriate for a totalitarian state, CDs of Aphex Twin and reggae, and presents like Gitanes cigarettes and Hennessy brandy.

He met with earlier workmates working at SEK on an adaptation of Corto Maltese comics. He also met with foreign diplomats, NGO workers in the World Food Programme, and business men, like French engineers installing a HDTV transmitter. He visited the Kim Il-sung statue, the Pyongyang Metro, the legation quarter, the Diplomatic Club (former Romanian embassy), the Arch of Triumph, the Juche Tower, the Friendship Museums, the USS Pueblo, the enormous Ryugyong Hotel, the Taekwondo Hall, the Children's Palace, and the Museum of Imperialist Occupation. He was surprised by things like reverse walking, the absence of disabled people, North Korean music propaganda, the cult of personality for both leaders, the required presence of his translator and guide, nearly-expired water from the South, Coca-Cola and kimjongilias. He also noted the extreme level of brainwashing apparent in the citizens of Pyongyang. When questioned regarding the lack of disabled people in Pyongyang, his guide asserts-and seems to genuinely believe-that North Korea has no disabled, and that the children of the "Korean race" are all born healthy, strong and intelligent.

During his two months, he stayed at the Yanggakdo Hotel, but he visited other foreigners in the Koryo Hotel.

[edit] See also

• Persepolis, another autobiographical black and white graphic novel, this time about a girl growing in Iran.