As the train rolled into the station, I looked out the window and saw the sign above the entrance: 평양 (Pyongyang). Finally – the capital of the hermit kingdom. KPA soldiers herded us out of the train onto the platform, and down through a dark tunnel underneath the tracks. There were no lights, and it was too dark to make out the red script on the walls, but I had some idea of what revolutionary things they said. Only a few hours earlier that day, I had been in a similar tunnel at Dandong station, except on the walls there were advertisements. I was disappointed, because I really wanted to see what advertising was like in the DPRK.

(Pyongyang station, across) Pyonghwa motors ad with four cars… spoilt for choice!

Right outside the train station was the first advertisement I saw in North Korea: a billboard for Pyonghwa motors, the DPRK joint venture with the unification church. It was also the only advertisement I saw; there were other Pyonghwa billboards scattered around the city, but no other company enjoyed this privilege. I suppose Pyonghwa would have cornered the DPRK auto market if not for all the imported Toyotas I saw, which may reflect the relative cost/value of its product lines.

(Pyongyang highway) Another Pyonghwa ad. This one is for the hwiparam (whistle) aka Fiat Siena. I never actually saw one on the road, though.

I didn’t have time to ask the local guides about it then, as they rushed us from the train station doors into the tour bus, as if to limit our exposure to the people outside (or perhaps their exposure to us). I snapped a brief shot of the ad for later perusal, when we were warned again not to take pictures unless expressly permitted to. Yeah, right. I put away my DSLR, which was perhaps too conspicuous, and switched to my teeny point-and-shoot, which is why many of the street pictures you will see here are somewhat blurry and poorly composed.

(Pyongyang street) Another propaganda mural about songun and juche. There were so many I was almost glad that my vocabulary was too limited to understand them.

As we drove through the city, it occurred to me that it was like I had stepped into a time warp to the fifties and sixties. Some of the vehicles on the street looked like they had been manufactured then. The buildings looked dull, their monochrome paint faded in patches. The only bright colors were the red banners and propaganda murals. I wanted to get off the bus right there to get a closer look at the shops and pedestrians, and perhaps also the jangmadang black markets, and hatched a plan to escape from the hotel as soon as the coast was clear.

(Pyongyang street) I was under the impression that all their school uniforms included red scarves. One kid is wearing his orange cap backwards, no doubt a dangerous nonconformist.

Unfortunately, our tour group was to be accommodated at hotel Yanggakdo. Not Ryugyong hotel. Not Koryo hotel. But Yanggakdo hotel, on Yanggak island. It had not occurred to me that I would be stuck on an island in the middle of the Taedong river, and I despaired, seeing the many checkpoints and lack of cover. Unfortunately, my only stealth training was from playing Metal Gear Solid and watching Bond movies. Which is to say, none.

(Yanggakdo hotel) I guess one way to isolate the foreigners is to put them on an island.

We arrived at the hotel and were given our room assignments when I noticed a large delegation of tourists from the ROK in the lobby – I could tell because they wore special passes on lanyards. A few of them were priests and nuns, which I thought was interesting. The mainland tourists went off to enjoy the entertainments offered in the hotel. I dropped off my stuff in the room, and against my better judgment, told my roommate that I was going out to walk around. He insisted on coming along. I guess I felt better that at least I wouldn’t be alone if I were arrested for ‘hostile acts’ like seditious foreign journalizing.

(Yanggak Island, Pyongyang) The view from the 46th floor of Hotel Yanggakdo. Note the checkpoint on the bottom right.

It was a bad idea to bring him along. We got past the empty parking lot and golf course and took a short detour towards the spiral-shaped building, which was the ‘international cinema house’. And then we saw a group of locals playing volleyball. This kid just didn’t have any discretion – instead of avoiding them by going around, he went right up to announce our presence and tried to chat up the ladies with his phrasebook Korean. (more about his antics later) They looked half confused, half afraid. The entire group stopped playing and stared at us. Soon after, our tour guide came running up from the hotel and told us that we were not allowed to wander unsupervised. Someone must have sounded the alarm that foreigners were on the loose.

(Pyongyang international cinema house) Doesn’t look like its operating… maybe it only opens during the Pyongyang film festival.

In retrospect I probably wouldn’t have gotten much farther on my own either. First mistake: daylight (I thought I wouldn’t get good photographs otherwise) Second mistake: appearance. While my ‘southern province’ complexion wouldn’t necessarily give me away from a distance, I hadn’t been dressed and groomed conservatively to blend into the populace – I didn’t see a single local rocking a t-shirt, jeans, sneakers and a messy college hairstyle. Also, my DSLR was a dead giveaway. If I had looked the part, brought the point-and-shoot, and snuck out after dark, it might have worked, as it did for Jerry Guo – but the game was up for me.

(Pyongyang TV) I haven’t seen this kind of test signal since the early 90s.

We were taken back to the hotel, and since I have no interest in casinos, bars and the other ‘entertainments’, I ended up watching k-dramas like I always do (DPRK-dramas, that is). The one I saw that night was set in the colonial era. While I couldn’t understand most of the dialogue, it was pretty easy to tell what was going on: Japanese girl is in love with Korean guy, Japanese dude who is into the girl gets jealous, Korean guy prevails. Gee, I didn’t see that one coming. I think I’ll stick with F4, thanks.

(Pyongyang apartment building) All the buildings were grey and dull… the only bright colors are on the banners and murals.

I wondered that evening why I came on this tour if I wasn’t going to see economic reform and real, grassroots market development. Without seeing the jangmadang, everything else would be reading between the lines, seeing between the road stops of regime propaganda at the pain and suffering beneath. And I wasn’t here to see pain and suffering. I don’t want to have anything to do with poverty porn. And unlike the MDV tourism, the profits of the Communism zoo only go to the development of a privileged few.

I remember the older mainland tourists exclaiming to me how the countryside and the cityscape reminded them of the China of their youth, like we had stepped into a time machine back to the Cultural Revolution. The tone they had was a kind of sad sympathy mixed with a sense of schadenfreud relief. They could’ve gone anywhere else for a holiday but chose to come here. Why?

(Mangyondae, Pyongyang) The kids on their school trip seem as disinterested as we are to visit the great leader’s birthplace.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that the tour operators to the developing world, or to here, don’t contribute something positive – they do, and I hope they prosper and flourish to the point where they become obsolete, and tourists will come to the DPRK for different reasons altogether (like maybe historical/cultural/eco-tourism or whatever). But to reach that point, we should be aware of the unspoken premise of the tour as it is now: to see an impoverished people living in fear and isolation. To be fair, awareness-raising on both sides, learning more about what’s going on, being part of the solution, are also part of it. I wonder how much we can really learn though.

Previously on Pyongyang Diaries: The Tourists
Next time: The Guides

NEW HAVEN, CT – “Love Story in Yale” (2009, SBS) is the long-awaited sequel to “Wharton Sonata” and “Tsinghua Spring (semester) Waltz“, starring Geoffrey See as the dashing and brilliant business strategy consultant, and Kim Tae-Hee as representative sample Yale girl.

Happy Birthday and Congratulations on getting into Yale! Through our five years of friendship and mostly-healthy competition I’ve been inspired by your ceaseless diligence, prudent foresight, deep compassion, elegant style, love of life and adventure, sheer determination, your exponential rate of accomplishments, and the humility you’ve held onto throughout it all. You’re one of my favorite people in the whole world. Here’s wishing you every happiness and success in the years to come! (incl. w/ hot Yale girls )

My grandmother took care of me for most of my childhood. She wasn’t aware of any Mozart Effect and let me watch hours and hours of daytime television with her, which back in the early 90s was mostly trashy soap operas on the state-operated Chinese-language channel. (Oddly, my Mandarin never improved very much) Due to the heavy regulations and high economies of scale in the industry, the state channels never faced any competition (outside of TVB imports), and as such they made some truly horrific pablum (they still do). In retrospect, this may have been why trashy soap operas are permanently seared into my psyche now.

I stopped watching television from the O-level examination preparation period onward (14/15ish) and only started again during military service, that is, after the exam that defined my teen life had been done with (A-levels). The first k-drama I came across was ‘Love Story in Harvard’ (러브스토리 인 하버드). Back in those college application days I was obsessed with all things Harvard, and I think it came up during a search for ideas for the application essays. I watched a few episodes before realizing how horrible it was.

It turned me off k-dramas, until the second year of military service, when Geoffrey and I went to the APEC youth exchange in Seoul, and when I got invited back for the main conference in Busan. The friends I made there encouraged me to watch something called ‘My name is Kim Sam-soon’ (내 이름은 김삼순), and they kept sending me more afterwards. I got a stack of CD-Rs with ‘What happened in Bali’ (발리에서 생긴 일) on them when they came to visit Singapore.

In those lazy army days, I had all the time in the world to watch whatever dramas I wanted, and I did. It also helped that my immediate superior was a middle-aged lady officer. She, like many middle-aged ladies in Singapore, was obsessed with all things k-drama, especially that Winter Sonata dude. Having common interests made my army life so much easier, and I think that was part of the reason why she let me take so much time off to go to Korea. Twice.

J-dramas were simply the natural next step up from anime. Mandarin ones were for language reinforcement.

As you can probably guess, dramas are the biggest time-sink in my life. (Apart from school-related things like attending seminars and writing essays, that is) It seems like I must be the only guy who watches these to the degree I do – I guess there’s just not enough real drama in my daily life. A friend recently asked me to send her a list of dramas to watch, so this is my accumulated wisdom of five years of watching dramas. In no particular order, the ones I really liked are:

J-dramas:
Maou 魔王
Meteor Bond 流星の絆
Change
Ally of Justice 正義の味方
Honey and clover ハチミツとクローバー
Daddy and daughter’s seven days パパとムスメの７日間
Operation proposal プロポーズ大作戦
Team Medical Dragon 医龍
Liar Game ライアーゲーム
Black swindler クロサギ
Nobuta wo produce 野ブタ。をプロデュース
Queen’s classroom 女王の教室
Densha otoko 電車男
Stand up

K-dramas:
Cain and Abel 카인과 아벨
Lobbyist 로비스트
War of money 쩐의전쟁
Coffee prince 1st shop 커피프린스 1호점
Soulmate 소울메이트
My name is Kim Sam-soon 내 이름은 김삼순
Sorry I love you 미안하다, 사랑한다
What happened in Bali 발리에서 생긴 일

PRC/TW-dramas:
New Shanghai Bund 新上海滩
Fated to love you 命中注定我愛你

A friend recently told me about a k-drama script writing competition, and I’m putting serious thought into writing one. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could make a living using my talent for something I love?

At the Business Today conference, the first keynote speaker, a c-level exec from Universal Studios, said the best movie of the year would be Slumdog Millionaire, and he wasn’t just talking his book – it wasn’t even their movie. I had heard about the film a while back when there was a free screening in New York, but the tickets disappeared quickly and I hadn’t found the time or the company to go to AMC with. Until today. And yes, it is the best movie, in a long, long while.

But he was wrong when he called it a Bollywood film; it is not. Nor is it Hollywood. When I bought my tickets at the AMC machine, I was scratching my head trying to figure out what could possibly be the reason that the film was rated R, which is really the kiss of death for an independent film since that means no mass market. A Hollywood executive would have made every cut in production to ensure a PG-13. But the film doesn’t pull any punches, there is torture, slavery, religious violence, and prostitution depicted… brutal, but that’s just the reality. There was a different kind of censorship though:

On one occasion, Mr. Colson recalled, the Indian authorities took umbrage at a scene in the script in which a suspect is tortured by a police commissioner during interrogation. The Indian authorities told Mr. Colson to take out the police commissioner. No police officer above the rank of inspector should be shown administering torture, they said. The makers of “Slumdog Millionaire” obeyed.

This kind of censorship would never fly in Hollywood. I hope. I wonder how the film will pass India’s censorship, especially now. One of the central themes of the film is religious violence. Never mind the other bits about prostitution and child abuse and things that UNICEF and the like will frown upon; In the film, the inspector oversees the torture, but pulls him out when there will be evidence, and “some international” will make a fuss.

But is it a Bollywood film? The director and screenwriter aren’t. Most of post-production is UK based. The author of the novel the script is adapted from, Vikas Swarup, writes that “Mumbai is not my city… I have never lived there for any length of time.”

He auditioned one young Indian actor after another. Many of them were capable, but they all looked buffed out, Mr. Boyle recalled, because they were all grooming for roles in Indian cinema. In the end Mr. Boyle went with an actor his teenager daughter recommended: Dev Patel, from the British television series “Skins.”

It is an Indian film, to be sure. The child actors – the real stars of the show – are amateurs, and all the talent is local. But I don’t think it is something Bollywood would have produced, something their market wouldn’t support and their talent isn’t called upon to provide. Just like how Kung Fu Panda is culturally Chinese but impossible for their industry to have produced. Hollywood couldn’t have made it either. Which is sad since it is otherwise quite possibly the most mainstream kind of movie, a happy-ending rags-to-riches wish-fulfillment fantasy romance. It isn’t some artsy festival film that makes no sense and ends tragically.

If you see it, wait for the credits to watch the classic musical dance number. Some tidbits from sticking around to the end of the credits: The opera performed in front of the Taj is Orphée et Eurydice, which I thought was rather appropriate for the film (unlike Tosca in Bond which could have been, well, any other opera and still fine) at least Jamal’s quest to find his lost love Latika is analogous to Orpheus’ journey into the underworld.

Ryusei no Kizuna 流星の絆 Meteor’s bond
I’m liking this short drama a lot. It’s about 60% comedy, 20% drama, 20% mystery, which makes for wonderful pacing, and doesn’t get as heavy as some j-dramas can be. It stars Ms. Death Note, Toda Erika, who is omg just so beautiful. But she’s not why I watch this, I couldn’t keep up with her previous one ‘Code Blue‘ even though it had the pocky idol Aragaki Yui in it as well. Yes, it’s that bad. Anyway. It also has *bleah* boyband star Ninomiya Kazunari, so Arashi playing the OP is par for the course as per all Johnny-associated dramas, and *double bleah* Nishikido Ryo. But they don’t matter. It’s about three siblings that team up to take revenge for their parents’ murder, while also swindling bad people. I guess you could think of it as a winning combination of Kurosagi and Nobuta wo Produce.

Maou 魔王 Devil
Despite being another ‘ikemen paradise’ type drama, I actually liked this one a lot. Stars Ikuta Toma, who performed amazingly in HachiKuro and HanaKimi, and yet another Johnny’s boybander *bleah* Ohno Satoshi. His Arashi compatriot Ninomiya Kazunari had one teeny cameo in the first episode, then disappeared. Though I must admit Arashi did a good job with the OP.

So the drama is supposedly a remake of a k-drama which I never heard of, but it was surprisingly engaging. It is basically a count of monte cristo story (my favorite novel), where the protagonist (?) exacts his revenge on everyone who wronged him in very complicated ways, which is really suspenseful to see play out. I don’t think a Johnny’s boyband kid can really be an Edmond Dantes, but he did well enough. The drama is 50% psychological thriller and 50% Shakespearean tragedy, so it isn’t the most lighthearted thing to watch – it does not have gags interspersed here and there like Kurosagi and Liar Game did, so it has more in common with Byakuyako.

Seigi no Mikata 正義の味方 Ally of Justice
I really liked this one too. It’s about a high schooler and her evil older sister, who forces her to do all kinds of odd things like spy on potential boyfriends. The plot is about how the high schooler tries to get rid of her evil older sister by marrying her off, so she has to fool her sister’s dream guy into thinking she’s wonderful. It’s 100% comedy gold.

Change
Political drama about an unlikely second-generation, popular young politician who somehow becomes prime minister and makes reforms that challenge his party bosses. Basically, its a dramatization of Koizumi’s rise to power. Taking Curtis’s Japanese Politics class this semester made me appreciate this drama a lot more than if I had seen it without learning more about the political institutions and practices it satirizes (like the LDP faction system, bubble-era corruption, hereditary politics…). 75% comedy, 25% West Wing drama, its kind of like Mr Smith Goes to Washington set in Nagatacho.

This drama was amazingly popular this summer, far more than any other drama named above, which suggests that something in it resonates with the Japanese public. I keep wanting to write about this in one of my class papers, but the opportunity just never comes up.

—

So it appears there is something of a k-drama dry spell. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen anything good since Coffee Prince, and even that got old fast. For whatever reason, Korean television dramas aren’t keeping up, which is sad since I am running out of good ones to watch. This isn’t just my opinion. Daily NK reports:

In North Korea, the fervor of the South Korean Waves is on the wane; Korean dramas, which have spearheaded the spread of South Korean culture and progress since 2000, are no longer generating huge interest among North Korean citizens. The prevailing response of the citizens has been “I have seen enough” and “I have had my fill.”

H/T Curtis from NKeconwatch.

Soft power is a strategic priority, so I hope the k-drama dry spell ends soon.

Interesting social science research question: If I am right that J-dramas are more popular, and more successful as cultural exports, Why are tv dramas from Japan better than Korea, Taiwan or Hong Kong? (Singapore isn’t even in the picture… sad) Something to do with market conditions? Structure of the industries? Creative talent? Speech regulations? Culture? I would be interested in pursuing this as a project if it wasn’t so interdisciplinary.

At least I can still get into Colbert and Stewart tapings for free. Pity the waitlist is so long, though.

Zettai Kareshi (絶対彼氏) / Absolute Boyfriend
Fuji TV Spring 2008 season

I find it strange that I like Zettai Kareshi so much. Although I love the romantic comedy genre of j-dramas (as opposed to the melodramas) in general, I can’t help but be reminded of the horrible conclusion that the title is everything that I am not. I’ve only seen the first few episodes since the summer started while stuck in airports and planes without in-flight entertainment, but here are some initial thoughts on the series:

It strikes me that the premise of ZK and how the conflict develops in the plot only makes sense in the context of Japanese social expectations and norms about how a woman should properly behave. In real life, all my female friends in school would simply say itadakimasu when faced with a Mocomichi. And they do. It may not necessarily be culturally-specific – ZK is thematically very similar to an old science fantasy romance novel called the Silver Metal Lover I read back in middle school. Yup, back when I had the luxury of time to read fantasy novels, so much that I could read the shoujo genre ones as well. But Silver Metal Lover was written in 1981. It’s hard to imagine ZK’s already meager psychological realism translating well beyond its shores where those expectations don’t exist.

As a corollary to the above, although it is ostensibly about the perfect boyfriend, a closer look at the series reveals an implicit definition of the ideal girl, because of the equally unrealistically chaste and virtuous protagonist, an office lady at a confectionery company who works hard and makes great cream puffs. I believe the series would be more accurately titled zettai kanojo (絶対彼女) instead, if it is reflective of prevailing social expectations of Japanese women in the labor market, and Japanese corporate culture in general. The protagonist is a diligent worker, yet she is not full-time staff but a temp contracted from an agency, and often appears serving coffee during meetings. Even when she is most productive, she is no corporate professional either – her contribution as a talented pâtissier is a domestic-oriented skill. (See my essay on the Japanese economy for more on corporate gender discrimination)

On a more positive note, ZK also presents a role model for a greater role of fathers in the domestic world. Mocomichi’s character is programmed to do household chores, cook delicious meals, and help with living expenses. Yet the appeal of ZK suggests that this masculine ideal is far from real male aspirations. As much as popular culture may reflect social realities, television serials are more often an escapist fantasy. One can only hope that the men watching ZK catch the message – Japanese women’s expectations of men are changing too.

My last observation is on the implicit debate on the definition of masculinity. On one hand we have greek-god “ore sexy?” Mocomichi flexing his muscles topless for the audience. On the other hand we have metrosexual host-club himo-type Mizushima Hiro, who was a supporting character in the blatantly-titled “hanakimi ikemen paradise“. These rival definitions of ikemen-hood (ike-manhood?) interest me in terms of which is relatively less unachievable in my own quest to become, well, the title of the drama. I know, I know. Yappari zettai muri desu ne? All I can do is try to change the things I can and accept the things I can’t.

I really enjoyed Cat. It stayed faithful to Tennessee Williams, and was skillfully executed. Even though it’s a period piece it doesn’t feel dated because the themes are somewhat universal, if a little blah now. The only bad thing about the evening was that I was seated next to a freshman from the subcontinent, and in our conversation we discussed some of the problems of poverty there but I gathered that he had very little interest in doing much about it other than get what he could for himself first. He’s young, so young.

I loved Lion King, even though I had stayed up the whole night before to write an essay, crashed afterwards and somehow woke up in time to go. Best musical so far I’ve seen, beats Wicked hands down in sheer spectacle. My favorite character was Scar, who was evil in a charming way.

These excursions are the best thing about being part of the scholars program, since there’s very little that’s actually scholarly about it.

The long-awaited animated special of my all-time favorite k-drama MiSa (미안하다, 사랑한다 / Mianhada, Saranghanda) has finally been released on DVD. I want it so bad.

Farewell my Concubine is kind of the opposite of the First Emperor, since it’s a Western-style opera sung in mandarin by chinese people while First Emperor is a Beijing-style opera sung in English by domingo et al. I liked it a lot better. It was not as elaborate, there was no set to speak of, just the four characters in costume. It was in the same concert hall as the philharmonic (avery fisher) and not where city or met opera are, so the stage was filled with the orchestra. But I still liked it better. They projected subtitles (english and chinese) on a screen at the top, which were really useful since it was hard to tell what they were singing at times. The crowd was mostly old chinese people and mainland graduate students. One old couple near us talked throughout the opera. I guess I can’t really complain since I got free tickets. I hope they scale up the production, I think it would do pretty well.

Hansel and Gretel was very much a family affair, like the Magic Flute or Nutcracker. Lots of kids in the audience. The set was very elaborate and detailed. I especially liked the gingerbread house, with its sinister-looking oven and gingerbread children frozen in motion. It was sung in english but it would have been quite impossible to tell what the lyrics were without the subtitles. It just sounded strange, because there is this dissonance between what you hear and what you expect to hear, since you know what the words are supposed to sound like. Still, I enjoyed it much.