North Korean literature

Literature of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
literature of the northern half of the [[Korea

Reading is a popular pastime in North Korea, where literacy and books enjoy a high cultural standing, elevated by the regime's efforts to disseminate propaganda as texts. Because of this, writers are held in high prestige. The division of Korea following the Second World War led to a considerable cross border movement, which included writers moving from North to South or from South to North. North Korea's subsequent literary tradition was shaped and controlled by the State. Only members of the Writers' Alliance are authorised to have their works published.

Russian, and later Soviet, literature were popular in pre liberation North Korea. Koreans viewed Russian literature very differently from Western audiences, searching for Confucian undertones of social engineering. While Westerners appreciated works like Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and War and Peace, Koreans mostly ignored these works but enjoyed his works on religion and moral treatises. Of Soviet writers, Maxim Gorky in particular was popular.

The foundations of socialist North Korean literature were laid in the period between 1945 and 1960s, when North Korea adopted many Soviet style forms of organization. Along with them, restrictions and political imperatives found their way to literature. Immediately after the liberation, North Korea followed in the footsteps of Soviet literature. But by the de Stalinization of the mid 1950s in the Soviet Union, the relationship changed. Kim Il Sung saw the moment as an opportunity to lessen the control of the Soviets and increase his own. He accomplished this by denouncing all things "foreign" in literature in a speech entitled "On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work". From there on, North Korean literature would have a nationalistic outlook, but Soviet elements introduced during the 1940s would remain steadfast. According to B. R. Myers, the work of Cho Ki chon in the late 1940s exemplifies particular traits of the early cult of personality of Kim Il sung built upon Soviet Marxism–Leninism and bloc conformity. They were soon replaced by the Korean ethnic nationalism of writers like Han Sorya. While Cho's Kim Il Sung is a brilliant strategist who has masculine qualities like strength and intellect, in Han's works he embodies traditional Korean virtues of innocence and naivety having "mastered Marxism–Leninism with his heart, not his brain". The ethnically inspired style of Han would establish itself as the standard of propaganda over Cho's. Attitude toward foreign literature changed after the 1967 Kapsan Faction Incident. People were forced to burn many of their books or donate them to library collections. Among authors whose books were destroyed were Tolstoy, Gorky, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Books on Chinese, Greek, and German philosophy were eradicated as well. Researchers could access the works of Karl Marx only at designated libraries and by supplying a reason for studying his work. According to "court poet" and now defector Jang Jin sung, prior to 1994, when Supreme Leader Kim Il Sung was alive, the art of the novel was preeminent. Nearly all the top state honors such as the Kim Il Sung Medal, the Order of Heroic Effort, and the title of Kim Il Sung Associate were awarded to the state's novelists. Hong Myong hui, 1888–1968) writer of lt=''Im Kkokjong (임꺽정) based on the life of the Korean nationalist hero Im Kkokjong (died 1562). Han Sorya author of the novella Jackals (1951). Works published in 조선문학, the Korean Writers' Alliance's monthly literary journal, are accessible by subscription abroad. Many authors of highly significant political texts fell out of favor with the populace. As a result, North Korean publishing authorities would employ a policy of favoring collective creations of creative teams and withholding the names of individual contributors. This practice was observed most closely in the 1970s and started to wane in the 1980s. Regardless, its legacy is that even today North Koreans are very ignorant about the biographical details of their most read authors. North Korean fiction provides insights into how foreigners, in particular Russians are viewed. During the 1940s and 1950s Soviet Russians were portrayed as ideological guides of Koreans. In literature from the 2000s, the tables have turned and now Russians look up to Koreans as the interpreters of socialist values and initiative. For instance, Rim Hwawon's representative short story, "The Fifth Photo" follows the ordeal of a Russian girl in a post Soviet world. The protagonist with a revolutionary family history enters university, where she is exposed to "dangerous ideas". She is seduced by an American student, who, it turns out, is in fact a Russian whose ancestors were anti communist landlords. The Russian man had lured the protagonist in a ploy to regain the formerly nationalized lands back to his capitalist family. The protagonist is lost in the West and ends up being a prostitute. According to Andrei Lankov, the girl protagonist symbolizes modern Russia after the end of the Cold War: "Fooled into selling her heritage, she ends up a pitiful prostitute at the bottom of the merciless capitalist heap", a path that the author warns North Korea should not follow. Transition is a particularly important literary technique in symbolising adoption of a didactic message. The characters that the reader is supposed to identify with are seen as inadequate and in process, so that a moment of reaffirming one's revolutionary commitment become possible for the reader. Thus transitory events, like the New Year, take on symbolic meaning. Stories often evoke the pathetic fallacy: characters' emotions tend to be reflected in natural phenomena such as the weather. One reason for such a technique is that description of nature might be one of the few areas of artistic expression where authors enjoy relative freedom from political constraints. Nature as a theme, however, has undergone a transformation. Until the 1990s, man's "revolutionary struggle" is the master of nature, but, since then, nature is viewed as an external threat. The intended message is that the floods and consequent economic hardship of the 1990s are caused by factors that are not in the control of the government. The 1990s, in general, saw a turn to less romanticised portrayal in North Korean literature. However, despite portrayal of difficulties, stories tend to be optimistic and have happy endings. North Korean science fiction (SF) focuses on the ability of North Korean scientists and engineers to produce new, fantastic technology. The protagonists are often challenged by a crisis and respond with humanitarian goals, while the adversary is often American and militaristic. Another theme is advanced technology bringing about an ideal society within an engineered environment under North Korean leadership. Unlike most other genres, North Korean SF includes nuanced portrayals of foreigners and features violence. North Korean SF faces an innate challenge in portraying the future as meaningfully different from the present while official North Korean propaganda holds that the country's present state is perfect thanks to an infallible leader. North Korean SF is relatively unknown in the West.

All published works must go through several levels of censorship, and must express a given amount of praise for the Workers' Party of Korea's policies. In addition, many writers have internalized a mentality of self censorship. However, writers are given access to otherwise prohibited "subversive" materials they can familiarize themselves with. They can then cite problematic historical issues with realistic details. It is normal for North Korean works to cite foreign Internet materials that ordinary North Koreans do not have access to. Some autobiographies written by North Korean exiles published since 2000 contain grim accounts of life in North Korea, such as Kang Chol hwan's The Aquariums of Pyongyang (2000) and Hyok Kang's This is Paradise! (2005). These "escape from North Korea" narratives have sold well in democratic countries as a foil for the "worst kind of government imaginable", emphasizing Orwellian 1984 bizarre aspects. Bandi is a pseudonymous North Korean short story writer still living in the country, whose dissenting stories have been smuggled out and published in the West. They include The Accusation. Paek Nam nyong is a member of the elite group of writers called April 15 Literary Production Unit. His novel Friend, a story of a young couple on the brink of divorce, based on his observations of proceedings at the divorce court, was translated into English and published by Columbia University Press in May 2020. The French version of the novel was published by Actes Sud in 2011.