skygiants

schiarire recommended me Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, a weird and fascinating graphic novel recording animator Guy Delisle's two-month stay in North Korea to supervise an outsourced animation project.

The thing about this book is that Delisle really isn't going into this with any kind of ideological or informed perspective other than a vague sense of "controlling dictatorship bad". He's basically there as a grumpy tourist, and spends almost as much time bitching about the hotel service waking him up too early in the morning as he does writing about the creepiness of life under the regime. The most subversive thing he does is smuggle 1984 into the country with him as his bedtime reading, and he is clearly very proud of his incisive and cutting commentary. (He tries to give it to his guide to read; the guide gives it back a week or so later, saying that he doesn't like science fiction.)

I'm still trying to figure out what I think of this, but in a way I think all the petty concerns may be the reason that the book works? Because you can't see him as any kind of expert on the country or noble humanitarian or Brave Representative of Free Speech (even though he maybe sometimes sees himself that way.) And whatever he sees, he knows and you know that he's only getting a fraction of the truth, whatever the truth may be. It's just that that fraction is still a lot more than most people ever get to know about what's currently going on in North Korea, and that's why it's worth sharing.