Book: The Accusation
Author: Bandi
Country: North Korea✨
Format: e-book
Pages: 254
Publication: 2014
I first heard about this book in Lázaro Pérez’s IG. Since I decided to focus my readings this year on Asia, I’ve been looking for a book from North Korea to read. As you know, this is not an easy feat. North Korea is one of the most closed countries in the world, and very few people truly have insights into what’s going on inside the borders. Reading literature written inside North Korea? There are minimal chances that something made out. But this book did.
The Accusation is the first fiction book written inside North Korea to ever be published outside the country. There were other books before, mostly memoirs of people who escaped the Communist regime, but they were all written from outside the nation.
Love this book? You can pick up a copy at Bookshop.org.
Every purchase supports indie bookstores and helps me keep “Read the World” running.
This book is divided into seven short stories that tell the difficult lives of ordinary North Koreans during the period of Kim Jong-Il’s rule, in the 80’s and the 90’s. In the first one, a young mother tries at all costs to avoid repression when her infant son gets an irrational fear of the Karl Marx portrait during a celebration. In another story, a man risks his life to go see his dying mother in another province after his permission to travel was denied.
“His blood seethed again. What crime have I committed? Am I a thief or a murderer, to have to degrade myself like this? In this country of mine, is it a crime just to go and visit your sick mother? ”
So Near, Yet So Far – The Accusation
In another one, an elderly couple tries to keep their granddaughter safe during pandemonium in a crowded train station, while all the trains are stopped for a “Class One” event in which Kim Jong-Il was set to appear. The starvation and the ordeals that many go through in the book are aligned with the great famine that hit the country in 1994.
“Of course, these words of discontent could never pass their lips. The Class One event taking place just then involved Kim Il-sung travelling along that same railroad – Kim Il-sung, whose sacred inviolability meant that even if he announced that a convicted murderer was to be allowed to live, anyone who dared so much as hint at disapproval would be sealing his or her own fate, with no more recourse to reverse it than a mouse faced with a cat.”
Pandemonium – The Accusation
In common, all these stories have the same underlying theme: a population that, despite living honourably and trying to do everything right, gets constantly crushed by those at the top. Ironically this was the very thing that the communist revolution was trying to abolish. But as we’ve seen before, it takes little for the oppressed to become the oppressors.
The writing has a distinct tone, different from anything I’ve read before. The sacrifice of the North Korean people is greatly highlighted, almost theatrically. Interestingly, this aligns with what journalist Johnny Harris said about the art of propaganda in North Korea. It’s clear how Kim Jong-Il would go to great lengths to make movies portraying the people of the country as hard-working individuals who would risk everything for the community. He even went to the extent of kidnapping a South Korean movie star, all in the name of showing North Korea as a communist paradise.
“Once upon a time there was a garden, surrounded on all sides by a great, high fence. In that garden, an old demon ruled over thousands upon thousands of slaves. But the surprising thing was that the only sound ever to be heard within those high walls was the sound of merry laughter.
Pandemonium – The Accusation
Why did he use such magic on them? To conceal his evil mistreatment of them, of course, and also to create a deception, saying, ‘This is how happy the people in our garden are.’ And that’s also why he put the fences up, so that the people in other gardens couldn’t see over or come in.”
With a country so surrounded by secrecy, I can’t stop myself from questioning everything that comes from North Korea. Could this book be counter-propaganda, planted by the West to diminish the Communist regime? It could be. But with so many stories circulating about the lives inside the border, I don’t see why someone would go through this length.
There’s little said in the book about the author. Bandi, of course, is a pseudonym. It appears that he’s a man in his 70s who is also a member of the Korean Writers’ Alliance. He was able to smuggle the manuscript of the book with the help of a family member who defected to South Korea.
Overall this is an astonishing piece of fiction, not only for its historical importance but also by the way it was written, demonstrating with great depth the culture surrounding the everyday citizens of this so secluded country. I recommend it to everyone who wants to understand what’s going on behind the closed gates of North Korea and anyone interested in Asian history in general.
Leave a Reply