Friend, of course, did not appear in a vacuum. As a rule, literary works in North Korea show the process of individuals acquiring “correct” political consciousness. Literature translates Party directives into entertaining narratives and models how one should adapt to new sociopolitical situations. The Party, Writers’ Union, and literary critics prescribe guidelines and ensure that artists adhere to them in both the form and the content of their work. Writers like Paek are able to operate within this framework of prescriptions and produce literature that fulfills the Party’s directives while challenging the reader.
Historically, the Party has seen literature as a significant part of national campaigns to materialize Party directives. The Cheollima campaign, for example, in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s focused on the collective effort of the people to reconstruct the country in the aftermath of the Korean War. A typical book from this period has an optimistic plotline, as the utopian socialist state was projected to be within reach. No problem was too big and no task was too tiresome for the gung-ho heroes and heroines whose nearly supernatural power and devotion to the nation were intended to increase morale among readers. This is the type of literature, with its glorification of work and workers, that will come to mind for many readers when they think of Socialist Realist or even Communist literature more broadly.
Narratives that praise Kim Il Sung became standard in North Korean literature only after the Fifteenth Plenary Meeting of the Fourth Central Party Committee in 1967. Until then, most works of fiction did not depict Kim Il Sung or even mention him. By this point, Kim Il Sung’s supporters had decisively suppressed all other factions within the Party. The 1967 meeting codified the cult of personality that had grown up around Kim as well as officially adopted Kim’s Juche, or Self-Reliance, ideology. Kim’s words and image became commonplace in art and indeed in all public discourse, and writing the phrase “According to the Great Leader Kim Il Sung,” thanking Kim Il Sung, expressing a desire to please him, or using numerous fawning monikers to describe his being became the normative writing practice in North Korea after 1967.
The 1970s was a period of heightened literary production, and to this day it remains the decade that saw the largest number of new works published in North Korean history. Two major national campaigns, the Three Revolutions Movement and the Speed Campaign, called on the people to reeducate themselves with the correct ideology, technology, and culture, along with increasing production at a rapid pace. During this period, writers scribbled madly to meet deadlines and fulfill quotas. At the same time, amateurs were encouraged to write in order to display the level of ideological education among the populace. This overproduction of literary works did not impress North Korean literary critics, who criticized the resulting narratives as trite and repetitive with flat characters. It was in this literary climate that Paek Nam-nyong made his debut.
Friend is one of the novels I analyze in my book Rewriting Revolution: Women, Sexuality, and Memory in North Korean Fiction, and through the auspices of an independent organization in the United States, I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to North Korea in 2015 to interview Paek. I had sent more than fifty questions for our meeting before my arrival in Pyongyang. I met Paek in the lobby of my hotel, the Haebangsan. We were taken to a conference room where we could discuss my questions and converse about other matters pertaining to his life as a writer. We were scheduled to meet for a day but ended up spending three days together. Most of what follows is drawn from my conversations with him, particularly regarding his personal life. One of North Korea’s most successful writers, Paek was humble, generous, and kind. I purposely refrained from asking sensitive political questions.
Most of Paek’s works reflect his tragic upbringing and difficult journey to becoming one of North Korea’s most celebrated novelists. Born on October 19, 1949, in Hamheung City in South Hamgyeong Province, Paek had not yet turned one year old when his father was killed in an American bombardment during the Korean War. Like most survivors of the war, Paek, his two older sisters, and his single mother lived in poverty. When Paek was eleven, his mother died of a terminal disease, leaving Paek to be raised by his older sisters. As soon as he graduated from high school, he entered the steel industry, learning to turn the lathe and work other heavy machinery. Although Paek claims that he had found his life’s worth at the steel factory, his true passion was reading literature and writing short stories in his free time. These early stories were about his workplace and fellow workers.
After publishing his first short story, “High-Quality Coal” (Goyeoltan) in a magazine, Paek decided to major in literature at Kim Il Sung University. He passed the entrance exam and was accepted in 1971. However, instead of moving down to Pyongyang, Paek continued to work at his factory in Hamheung to support himself and took long-distance learning courses. Every spring and fall, he would spend two months in Pyongyang attending classes on campus. During the rest of the year, he would work and study before going down to Pyongyang again. Paek graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Korean literature in 1976 and joined the Jagang Province Writers’ Union near his hometown.
While he was content with his job at the factory, he followed the Party’s Three Revolutions campaign, which called on the people to study political ideology, acquire the latest technical skills, and raise their cultural consciousness through literature, cinema, songs, theater, and collective activities. Paek chose a career in writing to educate his readers on the importance of self-cultivation, which entails lifelong learning, serving the country and the people, abiding by Party doctrine, and participating in collective community initiatives.
After working at the Jagang Province Writers’ Union for many years, Paek received an invitation to join the Writers’ Union in Pyongyang. Paek, his wife, and three children moved to the capital city and adjusted to their new living conditions. However, tragedy revisited Paek when his wife died of brain disease, leaving him to raise his three children on his own.
Paek was later promoted to the April 15 Literary Production Unit, an elite group whose primary task is to write historical novels based on the lives and accomplishments of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. These books are then published in a series titled Immortal History and Immortal Leadership. The April 15 Literary Production Unit was conceived by Kim Jong Il during the mid-1960s and was tasked with producing the first novel in the series by 1972, in honor of Kim Il Sung’s sixtieth birthday. That novel is The Year 1932, and it recounts the formation of Kim Il Sung’s anti-Japanese guerrilla army, which had been instrumental in fortifying Kim’s political position during the colonial period. Thereafter, the writers of the April 15 Literary Production Unit produced numerous novels for the series, which continues to be published to this day. Paek’s contributions to the series are in the Immortal Leadership track and include A Thousand Miles to the East Sea (Donghae cheonni), Prelude to Spring (Bomui seogok), and Inheritors (Gyeseungja).