Customer Reviews

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea

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Since the end of the Korean War, North Korea has become the most isolated, mysterious and fortified country on Earth. Unlike many other remote locations around the world North Korea is not a place many people would want to spend any time. However, thanks to globalization, North Korea's vast supply of super cheap labor and a real need for foreign investment the country has opened its doors just a crack and in peeked cartoonist Guy Delisle for a view at probably the most tightly regulated society on the planet. Mr. Delisle documents his experience in North Korea accompanied by his ever present "guide" and his translator. Pyongyang isn't really a story per se as much as a slice of life glimpse at the daily goings on in North Korea or at least as much of a glimpse as foreigners are allowed to see.

The drawing style in Pyongyang is a minimalist black and white that captures nicely the mirthless life in North Korea. You get a sense that the leadership is desperately trying to maintain a good face for the rest of the world but like the bridge in the book that only gets half painted the rust is bleeding through and the cracks are growing. There could hardly be a better advertisement for Capitalism and Democracy than the sterile, dystopia that is North Korea where airports and restaurants operate without lights and massive construction projects sit unfinished and crumbling. Freeways are built without exits and all the people listen to the same state run radio broadcast featuring music that sounds like "a cross between a national anthem and the theme song of a children's show".

North Korea has the same kind of creepiness as a cult except on a massive scale where Kim Jung Il acts as patron deity and his smiling visage is ever present in society. Each room has his portrait and his face appears on a pin that all Korean's are required to wear. This is a land where worker can advance by ratting on their fellow citizens and slight infractions can cause people to suddenly vanish.

Guy Delisle does a superb job of capturing the bleakness and bizarreness of North Korea contrasting it with his own light hearted rebellious attitude. In the end he tries to retain a shred of normalcy throwing paper airplanes from his apartment window while the people below try and hold it together in a society permeated by fear and mistrust. One of the items that the author brings with him is a copy of George Orwell's `1984' but what he found was the physical manifestations of Orwell's deepest fears brought to life.

This short graphic novel by French Canadian Guy Delisle managed to be humorous and frightening at once. It's a story of his two-month stay in Pyongyang while overseeing the production of a popular French children's cartoon. Delisle is not lost on the sad irony of his position, and tells his story simply and without pretense.

The book deals mainly with how frustrating life is in the capital, even for a privileged foreigner like him: bad food, constant surveillance, blaring propanda songs, etc.

It's probably most affecting when you get a real sense of the inner lives of his guide and translator. Both are very buttoned-up, proper and repressed. At one point Delisle lends one of them his copy of "1984"; when the guy returns it a week later he seems very nervous and mutters something about how he "doesn't like science fiction." On the other hand, he rejoices when he gets a bottle of Hennessy as a going-away present.

In the most terrifying episode Delisle asks his guide where all the handicapped people are in Pyongyang, and the guide responds that there aren't any handicapped people in North Korea. Yikes!

Highly recommended to any fan of first-person graphic journalism.

In recent years, North Korea has held a prominent place in our collective imaginations as a tiny, isolated Asian country that shares membership in the "axis of evil" and yet is a country of which little is known. French Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle travels to this enigmatic country for a two month business trip and attempts to unravel some of the mystery and inconsistencies of life in Communist Korea. His experiences are depicted with simplicity and grace in the graphic novel memoir/travelogue, Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea.

Delisle is sent to North Korea as an animator whose expertise as an animator is valued by the North Koreans. In the process, he learns how things work or don't work in this stark country. He sees and subtly critiques a country where massive buildings go unfinished, highways are without exit ramps, and airports and restaurants are without lights. Delisle's wry humor emerges throughout the story, including telling jokes that are above the heads of his humorless "Comrade Guide" and "Comrade Translator" and his habit of throwing paper airplanes out of his 15th floor hotel window. He shows the grim reality of decades of extreme Communism by depicting the monotony of having only one radio station to listen to, being surrounded by ubiquitous statues and images of dictators Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, and choosing from a rather bland selection of restaurants and food.

In an ironic motif throughout the story, he carries around a copy of Orwell's 1984 that he brought with him and eventually gives to his unsuspecting guide. The reader is constantly reminded of connections between the society Orwell describes in his dystopian classic and the realities of life in present day North Korea. It makes the reader wonder if Delisle's reflections are a foreshadowing of the future (as predicted in 1984) or a window into a dying outpost of Communist totalitarian rule.

Even when Delisle questions the inconsistencies of his host country, he maintains not only a sense of humor but he also shows compassion to the local citizens with whom he comes in contact: his guides, the other animators, the restaurant workers, his translator. One gets the feeling that his purpose in telling this story about such a misunderstood country is to expand our understanding of it. He does this with quirky details that give it credibility and he does it by placing himself in the center of the narrative so that he can capture the range of emotions of a confused Westerner living in Pyongyang.
Delisle's balance of critique and empathy make Pyonyang a compelling and memorable read. It complements nicely his other two graphic novels: Burma Chronicles and Shenzen: A Travelogue from China.

With the domestic animation industry fading away in his adopted country France, Guy Delisle was given the rare opportunity to work in North Korea to oversee the production of a cartoon that had been botched by the North Korean staff. Although already a bit seasoned in Asia because of his work in China and Vietnam, Delisle's experience had not prepared him for his two month long sojourn into the most hermetically sealed nation in the world.

Travelogues by individuals traveling into areas that are normally sealed off to the general population are quite prevalent in travel literature, but Delisle's comic rendition of his journey, while not quite as hard hitting as Joe Sacco's graphic diaries into Palestine and Bosnia, offers a fresh look in to the northern part of the Hermit Kingdom which most, especially Americans, will never see.

Delisle is shocked at first upon his arrival into Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, not so much by the blackouts and emptiness of the city, but because of its sterile nature and tenseness that continuously fills the air. Being a foreigner, Delisle is not allowed to travel unaccompanied, so he is always in the company of a guide, translator, or a driver. This keeps him from being able to escape his work environs, selected hotels for foreigners, where even most of the staff is foreign, Chinese, or designated tourist sites. Therefore, most of his speculations about life in North Korea are based on observances made from afar. However, the author is able to chip through slightly the shiny veneer of the North Koreans who work close to him to reveal a people who have been completely brainwashed by their government into thinking that their sealed off nation is the pinnacle of the world and that the megalomaniacal dictator Kim Jong il is the flower of perfection.

Delisle has been criticized because he supposedly does not have any new knowledge to convey in this book and that he really makes no attempt to get to know the North Koreans around him. I find this to be a bit harsh, and believe Pyongyang: a Journey to North Korea is a fine work that gives the reader a view into a country, without premeditated political overbearing, that he or she would not normally be privy to.

Delisle's artwork is quite simple, but his simple characters convey emotion well and his eye for detail is quite outstanding. Having read this work, I do indeed intend to read the other graphic travel diaries of this author.

First: A comment on the professional reviews.

The Publishers Weekly review up above does not accurately catch the flavor of this book. The Booklist review is on the money. The Publishers Weekly review gives you the impression that the book is a good-humored look at a different culture from the perspective of a Westerner. The reviewer misses the point entirely. On the 2nd page, Delisle shows how he snuck in a copy of George Orwell's "1984" (a banned book in North Korea) - any moderately well-read person can identify the constant presence of the photos of "The Great Leader" and "The Dear Leader" with Orwell's omnipresent "Big Brother". It is intended to be a bit of foreshadowing to tell the reader where he is going with the book - and he hits a home run with it! This is an anti-communist triumph from beginning to end - not with the soaring rhetoric of a Kennedy or a Reagan, but rather with its gentle story-telling style and its simple emphasis on communism's absurdities - from the lack of information, to the lack of food, electriciity and choices of what to watch on TV and listen to on the radio. The constant barrage of revolutionary songs and the presence of "volunteers" who sweep an empty 4 lane highway to nowhere with straw brooms are perfect illustrations of the bizarre nature of both communism and North Korea.

I first heard about this book from an interview on NPR. Unfortunately, the NPR reviewer had only done about as much reading as the Publishers Weekly and hadn't really figured out what the book was all about. So, I was not expecting much more than a lightweight travelogue in graphic novel form about a cotnroversial country. Instead, I was pleased to see that it was that and so much more. This is one not to miss.

I give this one a score of A+!

Usually I am not a fan of graphic novels. But as I do have an interest in North Korea and its lunatic regime, I could not help but be intrigued by a cartoonist writing of his experience there. One cannot feel anything but sorrow for the poor people trapped in such a God-forsaken place. Yet humor has always been used to illuminate serious situations and few places are more ripe for or deserving of ridicule than North Korea.

Delisle puts a humorous twist on the most absurd and dehumanizing aspects of life in Pyongyang. Most notably, Delisle captures the atmosphere in which government propaganda is literally everywhere. The most acclaimed museums in the nation are filled with knick knacks given to current head of state Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Il Sung, as well as obscure newspaper accounts of the two. The radios are preset to state stations again filled with nothing but propaganda. The movie studio regularly churns out movies about the bravery of North Koreans against the imperialist Japanese and Americans. Delisle cannot escape the constant barrage even while sightseeing in the mountains, as an homage to the nation's dear leaders is chiseled into the side of a mountain itself.

Perhaps even more illuminating is the interactions Delisle has with his guide and interpreter. Reading past the humor are some serious tidbits, as when Delisle lends his guide a copy of George Orwell's 1984 which Delisle has snuck into the country. A couple weeks later, the guide almost soils himself when Delisle asks him what he thought of the book. It does not take Sherlock Holmes to put some pieces together as to how the guide's superiors took his latest reading interest. Other interactions are a bit spookier, as when Delisle asks what happened to a North Korean animator his guide mentions in passing. No response is forthcoming. In North Korea, such silence most definitely does not mean that the guy packed up and moved to South Beach.

The one question everyone has, including Delisle himself, is how much the citizens actually believe the propaganda not only that they hear, but that they repeat robotically. In such a hermetically sealed society, there is no way to tell. PYONGYANG may be a light and humorous book but it is about one seriously scary place.

This is the sixth travelogue memoir I have read in the past year including Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis books (the best of the lot), Craig Thompson's Carnet de Voyage and Rick Smith's Baraka and Black Magic in Morocco (the worst of the lot). This book is somewhere between Thompson's book (actually more of a traveling sketchbook than story) and Satrapi's tome of her youth in Iran. As with Thompson's book, this is an outsider's view of things we may perceive as absurd (and though I believe most of what Delisle writes about is totally absurd and unbelievable, I also believe his depiction of North Korean existence under a dictator is probably very accurate). This is an excellent beginning for Delisle and may be hard to follow. I highly recommend the book.

Although the scope of this book is obviously limited due to the author's own sphere of experience in North Korea, the minimalist drawings and humorous anecdotes bring to life the experience of visiting this communist nation. The humor is a welcome respite in the midst of a story of a nation shrouded in great fear, lack and paranoia.

I think that the author's minimalist drawing style is great and really allow the images to take front and center. I enjoy the intermittent full-page drawings of the people, places and things Mr. Delisle sees... He doesn't wax introspective to a degree that is distracting. He seems to care about the North Korean people that he meets/works with (and the "volunteers" he sees throughout his trip) although he must struggle with the language, cultural and political barriers that separate them. Overall, I really see an honest account coming through the drawings and dialogue and found myself completely wrapped up in the story.

He has a very special account of how he and his official guide and driver spent an afternoon near a stream/river just doing whatever...smoking, enjoying the stream or taking a nap. An ode to the freedom to do and be in the moment...a feeling that most in the "Western-world" do not understand the absence of, yet is a near every-moment reality for those living in totalitarian regimes all around the world.

I would recommend this book for High-School students, history students and current-events watchers as it gives a fresh and personal perspective on a nation with an volatile history, intense current issues and a future no doubt to be in the international spotlight for better or worse...for the sake of the people of North Korea here is hoping it is for the better...

I love all of Guy Delisle's books, but this is my favorite. Maybe because I am a scholar of Korean History I can appreciate it more, I don't know. Either way, his depictions of the people and activities in Pyongyang are classic and often telling. He is critical and relevant in his portrayal, while at the same time presenting a laugh-out-loud experience in a place that few will ever have the chance to visit. I cannot recommend this book enough to those who want a fun and often educating book to enjoy, whether or not they have any interested in North Korea. Delisle's ability to observe is classic and can be appreciated by all.

Having recently visited North Korea for 4 of the wackiest, most surreal and intensely thought-provoking days of my life, I can recommend this book as the next best thing to visiting that crazy country.
The country is such a closed clam that the visual memories are those that sustain you as you ask yourself, "Did I really go there? Was it some insane episode from 'The Prisoner'? (sorry Guy, borrowed that one from you!)
The book captures in the most perceptive manner the horrendous mind-control that lies at the centre of this society. However, it also manages to make it laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.
I literally laughed till tears came at some of the moments illustrated in Guy's deceptively simple drawings. I even sought out and found the turtle in the lobby of the hotel he stayed in!
The book made me rush out and buy his (very disappointing) Shenzhen follow up and I'm currently reading his 'Burma Chronicles'. Sadly neither seems to come close to the 'Pyongyang' masterpiece.
By all means read Bradley Martin's ''Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader' for a comprehensive understanding of how the DPRK got into the mess it's in at the moment. But for sheer armchair travel, and even perhaps as a spur for you to go there, read this wonderful self-deprecating shrewdly observant laugh-fest. You'll thank me for it!