Author provides a glimpse into a North Korean bookstore

Writer Jose Luis Peixoto's latest installment about his travels in North Korea include a description of a North Korean bookstore and its wares.

|
David Guttenfelder/AP
The city of Pyongyang is seen from above.

Writer Jose Luis Peixoto has been sharing his experiences from traveling in North Korea in 2012, including traveling by train and going to a grocery store, via the literary and arts journal Ninth Letter.

Now Peixoto’s latest installment recounts what a bookstore in the famously secretive country is like.

The store that the writer visited, which was located in Pyongyang, was called the Foreign Language Bookshop and the majority of what was for sale were works by Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, available in a number of languages, or books of which they were the subject.

According to Peixoto, the fiction section was small enough that he purchased a copy of every title they had, which included an epic poem in English titled “Mount Paektu” and a novella titled “The People of the Fighting Village,” which was penned by the director of the prose sub-committee of the Central Committee of the Korean Writers' Union. Also available and purchased by Peixeto were a folk tales collection titled “The Legends of Pyongyang” that had been converted to French, a short story collection titled “A Usual Morning,” which included a tale about the Great Leader solving the difficulties of an agricultural cooperative, and “Sea of Blood,” a novel version of the well-known opera. (The opera “Blood” is cited as having been written by Kim Il-sung, while the book was listed as written by ChoSeon Novelist Association of the 4.15 Culture Creation Group, according to the Los Angeles Times.)

Peixoto noted that he picked up another title, which “despite not being in the literary fiction section, seemed to me could be read in the same light. It was called The Democratic People's Republic of Korea: an Earthly Paradise for the People.”

As reported by Monitor writer Husna Haq, Australian doctoral candidate Christopher Richardson recently shared stories he’d found while researching North Korean children’s literature. Titles such as “A Winged Horse” and “The Butterfly and the Cock” were listed as written by Il-sung, while the story “Boys Wipe Out Bandits” apparently came from Jong-il. It is believed to be likely that the leaders used ghost writers.

However, Richardson said the quality was better than some might think. 

“I was astounded that children's books (purportedly) written by Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung were vastly more readable than one would expect from any political leader in the democratic west, still less a severe authoritarian,” Richardson said. “North Korean children's books and cartoons proved to be often entertaining, colorful, action-packed, and not so different to children's books and cartoons anywhere.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Author provides a glimpse into a North Korean bookstore
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/0508/Author-provides-a-glimpse-into-a-North-Korean-bookstore
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe