All Monsters Must Die (19 page)

Nakajima's successor was Kenpachiro Satsuma. The former steelworker, whose actual name was Kengo Nakayama, began his monster career playing Hedorah (the Smog Monster) in
Godzilla vs. Hedorah
. Satsuma was never given any speaking parts because of his rustic Kyushu accent. In 1984, when Toho was planning on making a lavish new remake of the original
Godzilla
, Satsuma was given the honour of wearing the 265-pound costume. Through horseback riding, karate, and judo, he kept trim and was able to keep it on for ten minutes at a time. Previous stuntmen had fainted after two. Satsuma would be faithful to the rubber suit until 1995. He arrived at the
Pulgasari
shoot in North Korea straight from the set of Toho's
Godzilla
remake.

* * *

THE BUS DROPS
us off at the Koryo Hotel, which is supposed to be the most luxurious tourist hotel in Pyongyang. Our group is worn out after the long trip back from Kaesong. The Värmlanders, Ari, Bruno, Trond, Andrei, the fighter pilot, and the others take a seat in the lobby. The tattooed baker has a stomach ache. He hasn't been able to go to the bathroom for a whole week. We and the Bromma boys take the elevator up to the panoramic bar on the forty-fourth floor. Elias and Oksana tag along, too.

Oksana is indefatigable, but Elias is no longer enthusiastic. He is shrouded in disillusionment and fatigue. At the start of the trip, he spoke of finding work in Pyongyang as an interpreter or at the Swedish embassy. Now he says he's given up on those plans. This country is far too crazy, he says. It was worse than he could ever have imagined. And it has been impossible to make contact with a single regular North Korean.

We are the only guests in the bar. Photography is strictly forbidden. The view is of the Forbidden City, the walled part of Pyongyang where only the highest echelon of the elite live. Within these walls are four luxurious multi-family complexes, and stores with goods that no one else can afford to buy.

In the mid-1980s, the Russian author and North Korea expert Andrei Lankov studied in Pyongyang and wrote one of the few existing pieces of reportage about daily life in North Korea. He became interested in this particular neighbourhood and observed the youths that sometimes walked out from behind its walls: “They wore impressive clothing or Kim Jong-il suits. Their faces radiated contempt for those who were inferior to them, the poor and malnourished. Even the obligatory Kim Il-sung badge was worn as a fashion statement. The children of nobility wore the badge highest up on their lapels.”

This is where the families in the party's upper echelon live. The Bromma boys come up with ruses to distract the wait staff so we can take a picture of the area. But what does this part of town say about Pyongyang? Which world capitals don't have exclusive, walled-in neighbourhoods, and most far more extensive than this one? There is much that is upsetting and grotesque in North Korea, but faced with the Forbidden City, it's hard to work up any ire. During our trip we've seen the same contempt in our own group that Lankov saw in the faces of the youth as they walked out of their sheltered world.

* * *

GODZILLA'S SUCCESS IN
Japan created a new genre, the
kaiju
movie, or monster movie, which quickly spread to neighbouring countries. In 1962, the South Korean film director Kim Myeong-je contributed the first version of
Pulgasari
to the genre. The film itself was lost, but two movie posters surfaced in later years, proof that it did in fact exist. The story was based on the same Korean folk tale as Shin Sang-ok's
Pulgasari
, but in this earlier version a martial arts master is murdered and reborn as iron-eating monster.

Shin Sang-ok's version opens on a blue-hued studio environment that's supposed to depict a settlement in the 1300s, during the Koryo dynasty. The villagers live simple and virtuous lives. The men don't need to adhere to the five hairstyles that are on offer today; instead, they sport black manes with headbands, and they fill in their eyebrows and wear mascara. They are reminiscent of how Native Americans are represented in John Ford films. The women move demurely, wearing traditional, pastel-coloured
hanbok
s.

The village smith has been thrown in jail after the discovery of a stockpile of iron tools that he was hiding from the feudal lord's army, which was collecting all metal to be forged into weapons. Before he dies in prison, he makes a small figure out of rice. His daughter finds it among his garments and takes it home as a memento. Consumed with sorrow, the heroine absentmindedly pricks her finger with a needle while she's sewing. A drop of blood lands on the rice figure, which she keeps in her sewing box. But she doesn't notice the burst of red light that emanates from the model at this life-giving moment.

The figurine springs to life, stands, grabs a needle, and gobbles it up. When it finishes all the needles, it takes a giant leap and lands in the girl's arms so it can devour the needle she's holding.

Pulgasari grows rapidly, and soon joins the villagers in a revolt against the feudal king and finally storms the imperial palace. But the monster becomes far too demanding. Its insatiable appetite for iron makes it increasingly difficult to keep Pulgasari satisfied. The heroine martyrs herself in order to annihilate the beast.

It is understood that Shin Sang-ok had great difficulty working with the special effects department to try and make Pulgasari look like a giant. One solution was to take close-ups of the monster's feet, of which he had large-scale models built. When Pulgasari's full size is revealed, Shin inset a flickering, blue-toned projection of the monster that the actors moved in front of.

Shin spared no expense for the final battle scene, employing thousands of extras and creating real explosions that made earth rain over the actors on the battlefield. The revolutionary message is underscored by the rebels' red banners. Enormous cannons with muzzles cast in the shape of dragons' mouths are fired from the palisades of the imperial palace. Pulgasari catches the cannonballs in his mouth as if they were breath mints and spits them back out so the palisades crumble.

Pulgasari's ability to deflect any attacker's assaults is a reference to Godzilla's radioactive heat ray, which incinerates houses and cars. When Pulgasari is let loose on the imperial palace in slow motion, it's clear that the two monsters are cut from the same cloth, not just because Kenpachiro Satsuma is the actor inside both costumes, but also in the choreography and lust for destruction.

YOU COULD SAY
that Shin's
Pulgasari
is a criticism of Kim Jong-il's power over the people, that the emperor symbolizes the despot who lives a life of luxury while the people are crippled by hardship. In one important scene, women collect bark from the trees in order to add filler to their diet, foreshadowing the poor harvest and famine. But this critical perspective is unthinkable in North Korea. The heroine is the Mother of Joseon, the united Korea. The oppressors are the capitalists in the South, or alternatively Japan, or the United States. The fight is against them. And the nuclear warheads should be pointed at them. The weapon is created internally, with earth, rice, and blood. Its nourishment — iron that has been enriched in the forge — represents uranium. The weapon is transformed and refined so that it possesses even greater devilish power. In the end, only the spirit of the people can disarm the weapon. But it's not a total disarmament. One spawn is born, and carries with it the potential to grow and come to the aid of the North Korean people when it is needed.

A WELL-KNOWN METHOD
of unifying people is the demonization of others. In South Korea, schoolchildren were taught that Kim Il-sung had horns growing out of his forehead. On children's television programs, North Korean leaders were depicted as wolves that drained their countrymen of blood. On North Korean propaganda posters, Americans are depicted with claws and paws. An oft-repeated epithet is that Americans are “monsters.”

Monsters are used to create fear and a physical boundary that you have to be careful not to cross. The feral part of the creature represents the impossibility of integration. But it takes a monster to fight a monster. Like your enemy, you too enter into a pact with a beast that will come to your aid if needed, and so the monstrous machinery of war is created.

North Korea's nuclear weapons program was created at the exact same time as
Pulgasari
. In 1985, the country completed construction on its first nuclear weapons facility and, though the program wasn't officially acknowledged, the film was Kim Jong-il's acknowledgement in parable form. Twenty-one years later, in 2006, the nuclear weapons test was a fresh, unequivocal acknowledgement. The monster had long been fed in Kilju's underworld, and now he took the opportunity to display his power.

* * *

SOME OF US
in the group are going to see a second performance at the 1st of May Stadium, a mass gymnastics recital. This time we smuggle our video camera in.

The same wall of schoolchildren take their places in the stands, holding their colourful sheets of paper. The children have learned to focus all of their attention on one single person, a director who uses numbers and command flags. Everything is about synchronization. The goal is to become one with the masses, to work as one single organism; only then can you create the world's largest show.

The rehearsals are as important as the recital itself. By drilling in the movement pattern and coordinating their bodies with the other players over the years, each individual is disciplined to be part of the collective movement. B. R. Myers asserts that conformity is a tribute to racial purity: “These games are not the grim Stalinist exercises in anti-individualism that foreigners . . . often misperceive them as, but joyous celebrations of the pure-bloodedness and homogeneity from which the race's superiority derives.”

With lightning speed, a gigantic landscape materializes that makes us gasp: a mountain wrapped in the night's mist, with the sea in the background. The red glow of the sinking sun casts orange and violet reflections on the sharp peaks. In the foreground, raw emeralds and chrysanthemums appear without shattering the illusion. In a flash, the scene is gone. A new picture unfolds and the field is flooded with thousands of schoolgirls in red dresses with hula hoops.

When we watch the footage afterwards, we discover small deviations in what had seemed like perfectly synchronized movements. The camera has caught details that the naked eye couldn't possibly detect in the enormous stadium. One girl loses her rhythm; another misses a step while jumping rope. The rope gets caught around her waist and she looks hopelessly alone in the masses.

* * *

AFTER A MEAL
of duck and
soju
at a local restaurant — a standard farewell meal for all tourist groups in Pyongyang — we are driven back to the hotel. The Bromma boys aren't with us. They've long been talking about their dinner with the Swedish ambassador, and tonight's the night. But the Värmlanders don't seem to miss them; neither does anyone else in the group, for that matter.

On the ride back to the hotel, we all begin to get into a Friday-night kind of mood. Trond and Ari are on fire. They are moving up and down the aisle like Laurel and Hardy. A mist of
soju
rises up toward the ceiling. The Värmlanders are downing beers with the fighter pilot; Oksana's cheeks are rosy.

At the front of the bus, Mr. Song holds the microphone and tenderly sings one of his favourite songs, Elton John's “Candle in the Wind.” His job is almost done and no one has caused too much trouble. Ms. Kim looks happy. In honour of our last night in North Korea, she wears a white
joseonot
.

For the whole trip, we have been fawning over Mr. Song and Ms. Kim. We aren't risking anything by challenging the rules and sneaking off on our own. Tourists who are suspected of being
CIA
agents might be taken into custody and interrogated for a few hours, but a guide who hasn't kept his tourists in line can end up in a camp.

THE PARTY WILL
continue at the panoramic restaurant at the Yanggakdo Hotel. But first, we're invited into a room off the lobby to watch
The Movie of Our Trip
. The cameraman has hastily cut the material together and added an intolerable synthesizer soundtrack. The film begins with pre-recorded sequences of happy children running in the grass. Then scene after scene unfolds of our visits to various monuments. We quickly grow bored and the group disperses.

In the elevator we bump into one of Nils's acquaintances: a tall, blond Estonian man with horn-rimmed glasses wearing a turquoise polo shirt. Nils had hardly expected to run into friends or acquaintances in an elevator at the Yanggakdo Hotel in Pyongyang, but the Estonian doesn't seem to think it's at all strange. The man has a Russian passport and has lived most of his life in Siberia. Now he lives in Tallinn, where he is making a killing as an importer of exclusive Italian coffee and exotic types of tea. He spends his money on trips to places like Malawi, Kiribati, and North Korea. The Estonian possesses a strange calm, a near-enlightened glow. The world is his oyster. Through his horn-rimmed glasses he can calmly observe what's going on in the shadowy corners of the world.

UP IN THE
bar, we find the Bromma boys seated at a table with the Swedish ambassador, who is pale and dressed in a dark grey suit that is slightly too big for him. The dinner at the embassy didn't happen. They'll have to satisfy themselves with a Taedong beer. Sitting up as straight as Sunday school students, they listen while the ambassador holds court.

Sweden was one of the first countries to set up an embassy in Pyongyang. In 1975, Erik Cornell opened the embassy, which for twenty years was the only consulate for all Westerners in North Korea. Others haven't been as successful. The diplomats at the Australian embassy, which opened the same year as the Swedish one, were given forty-eight hours to pack up and leave after a toga party. That was the straw that broke the camel's back for the North Koreans, who were unhappy with their approach to diplomacy and behaviour from the start. The Australians were in Pyongyang for only six months. They had thought that they, in typical diplomatic fashion, could negotiate and come to a compromise, and they had also asked to visit prisons and courts. This kind of behaviour was unacceptable to the North Korean government. The Swedish embassy has avoided becoming the annoyance that Australia's was by taking a soft and accommodating line. They believe that submissive contact is better than no contact at all.