Franzia Made From Corn and Bark

We've visited Dystopias before. We've been through county lock-ups, prisons, training camps, work camps, death camps, brainwashing centers, POW camps, Club Feds, prisons of the mind, and even saw mention of a prison planet. In each case, we were removed by the span of history, or the gulf of reality. This time, though, it was all real, and all happening even as you read this.

The world of North Korea, under the rule of the Kims, was perhaps too alien for us to properly grasp, forcing us to fall back on literary experience to express our thoughts. It is "1984 meets some Mad Max shit", and the Kims are "legitimate supervillains"--and neither are unfair characterizations. All grew up knowing the Cold War schism (Communist World Bad) but none understood how truly bad things could be in a 2nd World nation. It's hard to contemplate that within a few hundred miles, two societies made from the same ethnic group exist--one with people so technologically connected their national sport is a video game, the other with people subsisting on bark. The 22nd Century next to No Century.

North Korea itself is built on such temporal contrasts, which we also discussed. As Communism overlaid with Confucianism, we discussed the implications of the latter, and what this three millennia tradition of bureaucracy and crushing patriarchy must mean. Kim Jong-il's notorious love of cinema brought up mention of Communism's long tradition of using film, so inextricably linked Soviet propaganda director Sergei Eisenstein is credited with inventing modern film's most fundamental technique, the montage. But the biggest contrast, remained the most mysterious, the answers most illusive--how can a people who have been so failed by their system continue to prop it up? Starvation, sickness, and weakness can only explain so much.

Ultimately, we focused most on the ordinary lives, and the little details within. Mrs. Song's creepy yet hilarious confrontation with the young informant. Hyuck's quick-witted perception that the missionaries were selling the same stories as the Ministry of Culture. Oak-hee's bad-assness. And, the book's center, the lovely, shockingly chaste relationship between Mi-ran and Jun-sang, and the bitter irony that once freed, they didn't like each other all that much. Why was that? What has the speed and instant gratification of our modern world done to us? We may have had some fun at the expense of their sexual ignorance, and felt horror at the hell of their lives, but maybe a decade spent holding hands in the black of night had some truths to share with us.