In 1957, I had the opportunity to join a group of French journalists āinvitedā to visit North Korea. I would only realize later what a unique opportunity that was. The four years following the war (a conflict soberly described by General Bradley as the āwrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemyā) had been dedicated mostly to rebuilding a bomb-stricken country, and the formidable propaganda machine that would soon be identified with the sheer mention of North Korea wasnāt yet running at full throttle. We were subjected to a sizable dose of propaganda, but between two obligatory sessions of Socialist kowtowing, our hosts allowed us an amount of free walking unequalled since. Many years later, I could contemplate on television the predicament of a Belgian delegation whose members supplicated their guide to see, at least once, a marketplace -and after having visited the museum in honor of comrade Kim Jong-il, the library with the complete works of comrade Kim Jong-il, the factory that followed the directives of comrade Kim Jong-il, they were finally taken to an empty space outside the city, where a marketplace would be established according to the plans of comrade Kim Jong-il. Watching the image of hopelessness on the faces of the poor wretches made me appreciate even more the liberty I had enjoyed to hang around Pyongyang with my camera and to look everywhere, including marketplaces. Amusingly, the result of those strolls was equally rejected on both sides of the 38th parallel. To the North, a book which never mentioned once the name of Kim Il-sung simply didnāt exist. To the South, the raw fact that it had been allowed to be done in North Korea made it a tool of communist propaganda. Thatās how, I was told, it was exhibited in Seoulās counter-revolutionary museum, and its author introduced as a āMarxist dogā. I didnāt mind. Since Snoopy, the word ādogā has ceased to be an insult in my cats-ruled world. Then Time froze on that country whose culture had fascinated me, as well as the mesmerizing beauty of its women, while the megalomaniac leadership of both Kims had proven a disaster. Many examples of that freeze would appear in the news, the most recent so incredible that it escaped many commentators. When the DPRK (thatās its official name) launched the famous rocket that worried the whole world, the KOREAN NEWS agency published the following communiquĆ©Ā : āThe Secretariat of the C.C., the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fully supports the steadfast stand of the Workersā Party of Korea led by General Secretary Kim Jong Ilā. Yes, you read correctlyĀ : āSoviet Unionā. In 2009. Perhaps nobody ever dared to update comrade Kim Jong-il.
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