Using the North Korean Writing Technique to compose Good Literature By Timo Schmitz, Philosopher

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1 Using the North Korean Writing Technique to compose Good Literature By Timo Schmitz, Philosopher North Korean literature and movies classics are known for their emotional, heart-taking scenes that chains the reader or viewer as he feels to be a direct participant. Indeed, the magic ingredient is not something which only Koreans understand, but one probably can make any successful story out of it, if doing it the right way. At first, one has to encounter a Jongja a seed. A jongja is a basic core, probably a thought. However, it is not any thought, it is a special thought, something that mechanically brings the author s heart into affection, something that motivates him or her to write the whole work. It is even more abstract then the basic idea of the story or basic symbol which always appears when the story moves on. When designing the story, the first thought must be the Jongja. As second, one has to invent the character depicting the hero. The Jongja now must turn around the life of the hero. The life of the hero must be depicted as well as his or her problems, life situations, worries and other circumstances as real as possible 1 but also should have a positive aspect, such as hope, which gives the hero the motivation to go on and to continue, thus giving the hero s life a sense. The autonomy of the character or the wish of personal autonomy stands in the foreground. 2 What are the wishes of the hero? What are his or her desires? What are the boundaries to achieve this? In which social position does the person stand? What are the societal standpoints of the person? However, the author also have to find a way to guide the hero to strive for a goal. Someone just strives for something that makes a person happy or gives the person a sense, therefore the goal, as I personally think, should be eudaimonia, rather than a political struggle or a formal behavior. The secret of good North Korean literature is that the people are extremly authentic. They could be our friends or neighbours and feel compassion with them. Neither the North Korean works which are based on party formal policies and thus written dogmatically touch us, nor the idealized American characters that act that unauthentic that we might laugh about them, but could never identify with them, since we are aware that they are just made up. The author has to dismiss the border between the reader and the story. Identification is very important. This works only if the Jongja is

2 Timo Schmitz: Using the North Korean Writing Technique to compose Good Literature -2- chosen correctly. It is the spirit of the story! The character must never ever leave the Jongja, as everything around is making the story artificial. Therefore, the hero should be depicted throughout the whole story, side effects should be left apart. Only in this way, the reader feels to be one with the hero. If the story leaves the hero or shows him or her too distantly, the reader will keep his awareness that he reads a story and he is not chained to the story, since he can put the book apart without any worry. But if the reader and the character are one, the reader will be worried about the well-being of the character, therefore he must know how the story goes on! Even further, the people must act that naturally that they act as merciless as expected in real life. The importance of this point can even be seen in the Bible: who would read the Bible today if Jesus did not die for his faith on the cross? Whether he really died or survived it is a question in modern science, but Christianity never came to raise if anyone in the Bible questioned that Jesus does everyone for God. And so, the characters must act after their creator, in fictional literature it is the author. He creates the people and he has to guide them through the story, setting boundaries to them, without refraining from the faith the characters stand for. However, this powerful technique can also be misused. If the hero is a priest and his role is to swap away all non-believers, then how will the reader be educated? Will he strengthen his faith and show ignorance towards people who do not share his faith? We have to be aware of this danger and therefore I thought very long about it whether I shall share this technique, especially as the danger of misuse is very high. However, I think that modern literature is often extremly boring. The characters act against their nature, their lives is depicted badly, their attitudes are rather robotic, the set-up is often childish. A good example for a good story is The Flower Girl. It turns around a 17-year old girl named Kkotpun who lives in the era of Japanese colonialism and whose family is enslaved to a landowner. The whole story depicts Kkotpun and the person who gets acquainted with her story always follows her. There are only little side shows. The whole story is so catching, because it is set up authentically and free from any ideology: It is a traditional family raised with Confucian values. There are many factors which indicate that, e.g. the dignity: Kkotpun denies to accept begging money on the streets and blames Sun Hui for trying. Kkoptpun s mother continues working although being deadly sick and too weak for working, just to keep her dignity. The belief in ghosts and spirits, as can be found in Confucian societies, is also outstanding. Sun Hui is regarded a bad spirit, when the landlord s wife is sick and thus was tried to be abandoned. In addition, a fortune teller appears in the beginning who is predicting the story. Fortune telling has a very long tradition in East Asia[ ] 3.

3 Timo Schmitz: Using the North Korean Writing Technique to compose Good Literature -3- Because of this authentic description, people feel compassionate towards the hero. However, the hero has to shape her own way to find a solution. In The Flower Girl it is the Liberation of Korea and the establishment of Communism. The environment shall act according to the main theme. In The Flower Girl, The most significant symbol [...] is water, which is a very important symbol in Korean shamanism, where it does not only embody life, but also purity. It is often shown in desperate situations, such as the funeral of her mother and the alleged death of her brother. The motion of a river is shown, which is not at peace, but uncalm, thirsty, angry and desperate. The water is thus reflecting emotions. It can be also seen as a traditional Taoist element, as water always moves forward and has to adopt to any situation and thus is sometimes quiet and sometimes hesitating [ ] 4. The symbol has to emphasize the mood of the hero. If the hero is angry, then nature gets angry and if the hero is sad then nature gets sad (Kkotpun s desperate grief over her mother s death is depicted through thunderlights and tragic choir music). Everything has to fit in. The environment follows the character and the character follows the Jongja. The Juche Idea teaches that man is master of himself and he can shape the destiny on its own 5. This is important as to find the substance of everything. People are not limited to anything, they are responsible for their future themselves, however they strive for independence 6, they are creative and they are conscious social-beings 7. The human autarchy and selfdetermination is the highest goal. However, as a social-being, all characters must be connected to the hero, and the hero cannot act on its own. All social relations and societal positions have to be incorporated, and the standpoint has to be clear. As a result, all problems must have a social character! 8 To be able to do so, it is important to understand the dialectic relationship or form and content 9, the main art however is to reduce things to the core, concentrating the most important elements to put them together. The Chinese writer Shang Yue, who is said to have been a teacher to Kim Il-Sung in middle school, explained that literature should be like a lighthouse that guides humanity to perfection 10. Even further, Shang Yue provided a didactic and moral theory of art as instruction, which apparently had some effect on the youthful Kim [ ] 11. The idea of using art as instruction is very important, even outside the model which the Kim finally teaches in North Korea. The writer has to think of who is my audience?. Shall his literature have a simple entertaining aspect or an educative? If it has an educative aspect, should it be written as scientific work or use belletristik to spread it to as many people as possible? The thought of

4 Timo Schmitz: Using the North Korean Writing Technique to compose Good Literature -4- addressing the reader is often forgotten in nowadays literature. Literature is produced for the masses of average people with average content, but is it the sense to to write a bestseller for the try to entertain as many people with boring fantasy stories, putting their mind away from all the misery in the world by beaming them in a dream world, where they can forget their daily lifes, or is it better to address a smaller audience but showing them an affirmative aspect of their life? Of course, the latter one is better! People shall be educated to overthink their standpoints when they read literature, but they shall not be forced to believe in anything. Literature shall show the reader in a fictional context which consequences a certain action or standpoint might have. Which consequence does it have when someone breaks someone else s heart, how are people and the environment affected? How are people directly affected by the consequences of climate change? How were people treated in feudalist or fascist systems? Only if people understand the gruelties of fascism in an authentic story, in which they will ideentify with the hero, they will develop a strong interest that such a thing never happens again. If people only see statistics and raw facts, they will never grasp the humanbeings standing behind these raw material and facts. One has to get the feeling imagine what would happen if you were like him? and thus ethical thinking starts. As Kim Il-sung points out one read[s] literary works not for killing time, instead of taking a nap, but for acquiring a deeper understanding of life 12. Despite that, the context and symbolism matters a lot, however, the creative writing phase just begins after the Jongja is clarified, while during the writing process, the hero must always follow the Jongja, and all characters must be shown in relation to the hero. Every humanbeing is independent, creative and conscious, and this has to be pointed out in affirmative way. Literature is not killing time, but education. The author has to be aware of this educative function and avoid all misuse of this powerful technique as ethical standpoint of his profession. If literature is written this way, I personally think, that it can have a use for humanity and broaden the people s mind, learning about life and getting aware of things. The distance of reality to the reader must melt away, so that the reader is able to understand an ethical situation and act according to it.

5 Timo Schmitz: Using the North Korean Writing Technique to compose Good Literature -5- Notes: 1. Kim Dschong Il [Kim Jong-il]: Das Leben und die Literatur, Pjongjang [Pyongyang]:Verlag für fremdsprachige Literatur, 1986, p Kim Jong-il (1986), p Schmitz, Timo: The Flower Girl in a socio-critical context of 1920s Korea (2016), in: Collected Online Articles in English Language , Berlin: epubli, ibid. 5. 주체사상강좌 : 주체사상 철학적원리 : 1. 주체사상은사람중심의철학사상이다, 주체사상강좌 : 주체사상 철학적원리 : 5. 사람은자주성을가진존재이다, 주체사상강좌 : 주체사상 철학적원리 : 8. 자주성, 창조성, 의식성은 사회력사적으로형성발전되는사회적속성이다, Kim Jong-il (1986), p Kim Jong-il (1986), p Kim Il Sung: With the Century, translated by Lee Wha Rang, cited after David-West, Alzo: The Literary Ideas of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il An Introduction to North Korean Meta-Authorial Perspectives, in: Cultural Logic An Electronic Journal of Marxist Theory and Practice, 2009, (retrieved on 23 December 2016), p David-West, Alzo: The Literary Ideas of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il An Introduction to North Korean Meta-Authorial Perspectives, in: Cultural Logic An Electronic Journal of Marxist Theory and Practice, 2009, (retrieved on 23 December 2016), p Kim Il Sung: Duties of Literature and Arts in Our Revolution. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1972, cited after David-West, Alzo: The Literary Ideas of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il An Introduction to North Korean Meta-Authorial Perspectives, in: Cultural Logic An Electronic Journal of Marxist Theory and Practice, 2009, (retrieved on 23 December 2016), p. 7 Timo Schmitz. Published on 14 July Suggestion for citation: Schmitz, Timo: Using the North Korean Writing Technique to compose Good Literature, self-published online article, 14 July 2017,

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