[KS] Fwd: Film screening: "The Schoolgirl's Diary" (Han Nyeohaksaengeui Ilgi)

Sat Apr 5 16:41:49 EDT 2008

Dear colleagues,

Leonid, as you may remember, I attended--with much gratitude for your 
efforts--the screening you arranged at the Seoul Foreign 
Correspondents Club last year. I don't think we had a chance to 
discuss the film in detail afterwards, but I found it disappointing 
for two reasons. First, I'd been hoping for more evidence of an 
improvement in production values from the DPRK given the publicity 
the film had received (too much to hope for, perhaps?). More 
importantly, however, I actually didn't see much that was terribly 
new about the film or its themes. The narrative pattern follows 
closely that of the pieces of fiction I analyze in my article "North 
Korean Short Stories on the Cusp of the New Millennium" (in Acta 
Koreana 5), where I treat a selection of stories from Chosôn Munhak 
that appeared in 1998 and 1999.

Basically, what the film does (as many DPRK stories do) is encourage 
us to empathise with the schoolgirl and her 
disappointments/disillusionment but then at the end allow us to see 
why she/we are misguided. It is a strategy that seems designed 
precisely to address the conflict between "selfishness and 
self-sacrifice" that you refer to and to re-educate the viewer/reader 
towards self-sacrifice (but inevitably and implicitly acknowledges 
that the viewer/listener's natural tendency is towards selfishness).

It will probably be easiest if I quote some passages from my article for more:

"I proceed now to a pair of recent stories that, in sharing narrative 
strategies and themes....imply that the single most important problem 
confronting North Korea is precisely how to keep up popular morale in 
an era of great hardship. Pot'ongnal ûi haru (An Ordinary Day) and 
P'urûn such'ôp (Blue Notebook)  are representative of a set of tales 
whose protagonists show less than ideal enthusiasm for the work 
required of them, yet in each case are reformed by another's moral 
example....

"These two stories illustrate a regular pattern in North Korean 
fiction that deserves comment: virtually every text presents a 
character who acts as a model of virtuous behavior to be emulated; in 
keeping with the professed didactic intent of the DPRK's literature, 
this is hardly surprising.  Far more noteworthy is the frequent use 
by stories of a first person narrator or third person protagonist as, 
if not a negative exemplum per se, a character who experiences some 
form of socialist enlightenment.  A related pattern that occurs with 
equal frequency draws our attention to exemplary figures whose ardor 
for labor is misunderstood or incurs resentment, until the story's 
protagonist realizes that such determination represents not a 
valuation of work over human emotions, but rather deep love for the 
nation and its people in the aggregate. The wife at the center of Kim 
Hûng-ik's Sup'e tûllyôtta kashira ("Please Visit the Forest and Be on 
Your Way"),   for example, comes to recognize that her husband's 
devotion to his work is in no way a rejection of her, but rather 
stems from this more all-encompassing form of love for the nation. 
Even more striking is Ri Chun-ho's Ryulli ("Ethics"),  which 
delineates such conflicts in a particularly compelling way.  In this 
story, a surgeon sends his wife off with their seriously ill daughter 
to the county hospital while he continues to work with an even more 
critically ill patient who can not be moved from the clinic in their 
own small mining town.  The wife initially finds her husband lacking 
in basic human feeling, but grows to understand that the motives for 
his actions are based on an admirable social commitment....

"What the various stories I have been describing share is an 
expectation, and indeed a desire, that the reader identify not with 
the story's idealized figures but the characters from whose narrative 
point of view the tale is related.  In no case among recent short 
stories (with the possible exception of the story I will treat in a 
moment) do we find a first person narrator who is the most obviously 
admirable character.  The protagonists engage the reader's empathy 
but fall short of others so that events can bring about a subjective 
realization in which the reader may participate.   North Korean 
fiction thus presents an ongoing concern with process; readers are 
reminded not merely of their inadequacies, but inevitably, if subtly, 
of their dissatisfactions, precisely so they can then re-enact and 
reaffirm their commitment to revolutionary zeal and selfless devotion 
to the nation.....

"What, in conclusion, is the overall literary and emotional effect 
created by recent short stories for their implied readers?  Perhaps 
the most salient feature of North Korean literature in contrast to 
its southern counterpart is its eternal optimism.  In reawakening 
consciousness of difficulties in daily life, but by ultimately 
effacing them through the manipulations permitted in a fictive world, 
contemporary North Korean literature promises psychological comfort: 
its conventions allow readers the opportunity to yield temporarily to 
darker fears with the reassurance that a utopian redemption awaits at 
story's end.  Regardless of moral failure on the part of the 
protagonist, as in Pot'ongnal ûi haru, or details that point 
overwhelmingly towards hardship as in Tubôntche sangbong, all stories 
promise a better tomorrow, even at the expense of raising 
contradictions between a text's details and its final message.  One 
might be tempted to apply the term "willing suspension of disbelief" 
to the fiction of the DPRK, but that phrase, which requires the 
acceptance of things we know not to be so (an essential element of 
such genres as science fiction), is perhaps not appropriate to the 
DPRK's literature: rather, the texts rely on the reader's "willing 
acquiescence in belief" and eagerness to suppress cognitive 
dissonance in favor of the interpretation the texts themselves wish 
to dictate.  The reader's role in the implicit contract established 
with the state and author, then, is to allow his or her faith in the 
system to be reaffirmed.  Nonetheless, North Korean fiction on the 
cusp of the new millennium also provides ample scope for its audience 
to become "resisting readers" and to rebel against the perspective 
imposed by the texts' conclusions; I have attempted to show how 
points of indeterminacy within these texts allow one to approach them 
not as a closed conversation but as an open dialogue (cf. Fetterley 
1978: xxiii).  Of course, my analysis invites one crucial query: how 
do real North Korean readers choose to understand their fiction 
within the privacy of their own thoughts?  That, I fear, is a 
question whose answer may be several years in coming.

Cheers, Stephen

>Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 03:25:48 +1100
>From: "Leonid Petrov" <petrov at coombs.anu.edu.au>
>To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
>
>
>"The Schoolgirl's Diary" (2006) is, indeed, the most interesting 
>piece of work recently produced by Pyongyang filmmakers. It looks 
>like an attempt to depict the growing conflict between selfishness 
>and self-sacrifice in North Korea. Echoing the Russian film Courier 
>[Kurier] (1986), which hit the records of popularity in the 
>Perestroika-stricken Soviet Union, this film employs the convenient 
>method of viewing the grim reality of life through the eyes of a 
>teenager. If something in the film is politically unpalatable, it is 
>the immaturity of the main character that has to be blamed - not the 
>film director (Jang In-hak or Kim Jong-il himself?).
>
>
>The main character, Suryeon, gets increasingly frustrated with her 
>poor and naïve parents who "foolishly" devoted themselves to the 
>country and the people. Her protest may look unsophisticated but 
>small details reveal political overtones. In one scene, where 
>Suryeon is arguing with her younger sister over the quality of food 
>in their lunchboxes, her blouse and skirt also show aggressive 
>colours - namely stars and stripes (just like on the US flag). Is 
>this a new vogue in modern Pyongyang? Or maybe the director's 
>tongue-in-cheek? Some people still argue that it were blue jeans and 
>rock music that destroyed socialism in the USSR.
>
>
>
>It looks like this film is trying to address the issues vital to 
>North Korea's survival. In the DPRK it was viewed by some 8 million 
>people just in the first six months. Pretty Pictures bought the 
>screening rights to show it in Europe last year. Who knows, maybe 
>this film will open a new dimension of the "Hallyu" phenomenon? It 
>would be interesting to hear the opinion of those who have seen it 
>already.
>
>
>
>Leonid Petrov
>--
>Division of Pacific and Asian History
>Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
>Australian National University
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://koreanstudies.com/pipermail/koreanstudies_koreanstudies.com/attachments/20080406/2f968f43/attachment.html>