Kim’s uncle Jang Song Thaek purged and killed

Posted on 14 December 2014 by admin

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bfd390f6-63dd-11e3-b70d-00144feabdc0.html

Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s first leader, reportedly took such exception to the boyfriend of his daughter Kyung Hui that he had him expelled from university and despatched to the distant city of Wonsan.

Undaunted, Jang Song Thaek eventually returned to Pyongyang to claim Ms Kim’s hand in marriage, and began his rise to the highest level of the state apparatus. Reportedly purged from the central party in the late 1970s and again in 2003, Jang seemed to bounce back stronger from each setback, developing a reputation as the great survivor of North Korean politics.

Jang’s summary execution – reported by state media on Friday – marked a spectacular demise for a man seen until recently as the most powerful adviser to Kim Jong Un. It also raised questions about the potential for further instability in the court of the world’s youngest national leader.

Describing him as “despicable human scum”, state media said Jang had been put to death immediately after his conviction for treason by a military tribunal, where he confessed to having plotted a coup against Mr Kim.

“I was going to stage the coup by using army officers who had close ties with me,” Jang was reported as saying. “It was my intention to . . . become premier when the economy goes totally bankrupt and the state is on the verge of collapse.”

As vice-chairman of the powerful national defence commission and head of the ruling party’s administration department, Jang was seen by some analysts as a regent to the inexperienced ruler, and was shown frequently by his side at official events.

Yet that same media footage contained hints of an overly confident attitude that may have prompted his demise. During a big speech by Mr Kim in January, as other top officials sat ramrod straight in rapt attention, Jang slouched casually to one side. On a day of site visits two months earlier, he was shown strolling behind his nephew with one hand in his pocket, and later flanking him with both hands behind his back – a gesture of superiority in Korean culture.

“Jang tried hard to create [an] illusion about him by projecting himself internally and externally as a special being on a par with [Mr Kim],” state media said.
Some analysts have portrayed Jang’s demise as a natural step in Mr Kim’s assertion of power as he replaces an older generation of officials with new ones who will owe their positions to him. South Korean intelligence suggests he has overseen the replacement of about 100 of the top 218 party and military officials.

By ousting and shaming Jang so publicly – including vivid coverage on domestic television and the front page of the national Rodong Sinmun newspaper – Mr Kim appears to be seeking to demonstrate his absolute authority to the broader population, as well. “This is about flexing muscle,” says John Delury, a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei university. In recent days, state media has begun referring to him as uidaehan ryongdoja, or “great leader” – a title also used by his father and grandfather.

But the lurid detailing of Jang’s alleged crimes comes with risks. “Nobody can now say there isn’t factionalism in North Korea – there is clearly a form of intra-regime factionalism, and the window on that has now been opened to the ordinary North Korean people,” says Sokeel Park, research director at Liberty in North Korea, a non-governmental group.

Rather than present Jang’s as an isolated case of counter-revolutionary thought, state media described an extended network of senior dissenters. It also drew attention to rampant high-level corruption, as it condemned Jang for illicitly profiting from the country’s abundant natural resources.

Moreover, by describing Jang as expecting North Korean economic collapse, state media has indicated doubts at the highest level about Mr Kim’s promise to drive national development and raise living standards. In a speech in 2012, the leader said he would ensure the people “will never have to tighten their belts again”.

“There is now an explicit linking of the regime’s legitimacy with being able to deliver for the average person,” Mr Delury says.

Visitors to Pyongyang report conspicuous signs of greater prosperity, such as better stocked shops and more cars on the streets, as well as a spurt in construction activity. But this increase in consumption and state expenditure could prove dangerous, says Rüdiger Frank at the University of Vienna.

“The sudden increase in unproductive state spending without [major] reforms suggests that the North Korean state is living on its reserves,” Mr Frank wrote this week. “Once they are depleted, trouble is inevitable.”

Under Mr Kim, North Korea has experimented with allowing more autonomy in agricultural and manufacturing production, and announced new special economic zones to attract foreign investment. It has also maintained the policy of turning a blind eye to the thriving informal markets that have filled the gap left by the defunct state distribution system.

But the condemnation of the “reformist” Jang, “influenced by the capitalist way of thinking”, bodes ill for any hopes of sweeping structural change in North Korea.

“He was willing to listen . . . he was interested in the South Korean economy,” says Moon Chung-in, a former South Korean presidential adviser who met Jang three times. Even during a heavy late-night drinking session in 2002, Jang “never lost his composure”, Mr Moon recalls.

“I was surprised to see him accused of these counter-revolutionary acts . . . he was very prudent, unassuming. He was always trying to stay in the shadows.”

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South Korea to exert “soft power” internationally through books

Posted on 27 June 2014 by admin

By Maya Jaggi
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4cc3df70-f632-11e3-a038-00144feabdc0.html

Paju Bookcity, a 21st-century hub for the South Korean book trade less than an hour’s drive from Seoul, appears oddly deserted under limpid blue skies. But amid its understated eco-architecture are keys to understanding not just this harmonious, riverside industrial estate but also moves by South Korea to turn hardbacks into soft power.

At the library of Youlhwadang Publishers, designed by London-based architect Florian Beigel, an alcove holds authors’ portraits alongside sepia cameos of the publisher’s ancestors. Yi Ki-ung, Youlhwadang’s president and Paju Bookcity’s chief visionary, wants neglected values reinstated as guiding principles in industry.

“Korea has such a painful history,” Yi, a youthful man in his seventies, tells me in his office, where visitors leave their shoes at the door. “So much of our cultural heritage has been damaged. We have to rebuild it.”

A print workshop nearby is a museum for hot metal presses. Visitors are gifted a metal character – a reminder of the moveable type Koreans invented in 1377, more than half a century before the printing revolution of the Gutenberg Bible in Europe.

Korea’s long history of the printed word is a source of immense national pride. Hangeul, the phonetic alphabet invented by King Sejong the Great in the 1440s, is now sported on designer ties. Paju Bookcity flags a pillar of Korean identity to a world more familiar with K-pop and kimchi (pickled cabbage). Located beside the river Han (of the tiger economy’s “miracle on the Han”), the city is designed to recover not only a heritage suppressed during Japanese colonial rule between 1910 and 1945 but also values eclipsed in the rush to growth after the Korean war of the early 1950s. This national self-questioning was brought to a head by the Sewol ferry disaster this April, which president Park Geun-hye blamed on “long-running evils”.

When Paju Bookcity was dreamt up around the time of the 1988 Seoul Olympics by seven publishers who went hiking in the capital’s peaks, the government had little interest in investing in books. As construction began in 1999, aid for the private initiative was limited to tax breaks, infrastructure and “demilitarising” the dirt-cheap swampland 30km north of Seoul – close to the North Korean border – that was all the publishers could afford.

“This was the promised land,” Yi says with a gleam in his eye. “Nobody wanted to come. I had the foresight.” The city has grown to some 300 publishers, printers and related businesses, employing about 10,000 people. Paju Booksori, its literary festival, declares itself Asia’s biggest, with 450,000 visitors a year. A children’s book festival is thriving. Both receive government funds. “When we first wanted to build Paju, the government wanted to make money off us,” Yi says. “Now it approves.”

Sejong

A statue in Seoul of King Sejong, who invented the Korean alphabet in the 15th century

This change of heart accords with today’s policy of “cultural prosperity”, as manufacturing and export-led growth have faltered. “In the 21st century, culture is power,” president Park declared in her inaugural speech in February last year, vowing to “ignite the engine of a creative economy”. In 2013, South Korea recorded a trade surplus in cultural products and services for the second year running – and around double that of 2012, according to Bank of Korea. This is largely down to the hallyu , the South Korean cultural wave that engulfed east Asia at the turn of the century (not least as an alternative to Hollywood dominance) and rippled across continents. At the crest were TV serials such as Dae Jang-geum (Jewel in the Palace) of 2003. Just as the government poured funds into film then, it has now woken up to literature’s soft-power potential – for a fraction of the outlay. The South Korean book industry – the world’s 10th-largest by number of titles, and supreme in children’s books – is experiencing an export push.

“Korea is renowned for the Korean wave. But there is less interest in traditional culture,” Yoo Jin-ryong, South Korea’s minister of culture, said ruefully on an official visit to the UK in early April. He spoke to me after a recital by South Korean soprano Sumi Jo for guests from the London Book Fair. South Korea was this year’s market focus, following government drives at book fairs in Frankfurt in 2005, Beijing in 2012 and Tokyo in 2013.

“Building an economy without culture is like building a house on the sand,” Yoo tells me. “Korean society developed economically far too quickly. In our spiritual foundations, we have experienced a huge sense of loss.”

A thoughtful man and a former civil servant, Yoo points out that in past centuries, Korean officials were chosen for their skills as poets. “There is a fallacy in the west that Korea is only about economic development,” he says. “We decided that our long history and cultural traditions are important for the world to get to know.”
. . .
One motive may be to reclaim human values after the putative “Asian” ones touted by authoritarian regimes. But it is also a pragmatic strategy for extending the Korean wave, with its “spillover” effect. For every $100 of cultural exports, the government calculates there is a further $412 of knock-on consumer spending. Incoming tourists reached a record 12.2m in 2013, through a hallyu effect among fans of K-pop and K-drama. Amid fears that the wave is flagging, literature is gaining credit as a fount of “creative content”: the TV dramas that began the wave were based on historical novels. “For hallyu to be sustainable,” Yoo says, “we need to create new stories that are entertaining. That is why we promote literature.”

Soft power stems from the attractiveness of a country’s culture and values, according to Joseph Nye, the Harvard professor who coined the term in 1990. In getting what you want, he wrote, “seduction is always more effective than coercion”. Such use of literature is not new. Frances Stonor Saunders’ book Who Paid the Piper? detailed a covert US Central Intelligence Agency books programme during the cultural cold war. The agency distributed 10m books behind the Iron Curtain from the 1950s to the 1990s. Among its secret weapons was Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, published by the CIA in Russian and smuggled into the Soviet Union – as revealed in The Zhivago Affair by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée.

Soft power can allow tiny but talented players with beefy neighbours to punch above their weight. “For a country as small as Korea, boosting economic power and military forces will be of limited success,” the culture minister says. “So pursuing cultural power is a very important goal for us.” Other small Asian powers, including Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, are watching Seoul’s book strategy keenly.
. . .
Gangnam, Seoul’s flashily affluent southside district, is best known for “Gangnam Style” by K-pop star Psy, the first pop video to score 1bn YouTube hits. But I went south of the river in search of the quieter arts of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI), created by the Ministry of Culture in 2001 from an existing translation fund. A training institute for translators, the LTI has seen its annual budget rise from $5m to $8m in two years. The institute’s president, Kim Seong-Kon, says hallyu paved the way for “K-lit”. The LTI gives $2m a year in grants to translators and foreign publishers, so far supporting 930 titles in 30 languages. More than 100 Korean titles a year are published around the world as a result. Kim, whose father was an interpreter on a US military base, says the main target is English – a global lingua franca.

The national prestige accruing from recent international successes has caught the attention of Seoul in the same way that the “Pamuk effect” galvanised Turkish translations after novelist Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel prize in 2006. Kyung-sook Shin’s Please Look After Mother (“Mom” in the US edition), the tale of a country woman who goes missing in Seoul train station, has been published in 34 countries. It was bought by publisher Knopf for six figures, became a New York Times bestseller and won the Man Asian Literary Prize for 2011. Sun-mi Hwang’s The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly, a philosophical tale for all ages about breaking free of the battery farm, has also taken off, and its Korean anime spin-off was released in the UK in March. These two women join a posse of Korean authors who have found acclaim in English, including Kim Young-sam, Yi Mun-Yol, Gong Ji-young, Han Kang and Jung-myung Lee.

“I feel I have been drilling for oil for 10 years, and my gusher just came in,” says Barbara Zitwer, the New York-based literary agent who, together with her Korean co-agent Joseph Lee, spotted many of these writers. “Please Look After Mom was the breakthrough book.” Although she credits the LTI with providing sample translations, Zitwer sold the novels on her own synopses with short extracts and uses her own stable of translators.

It is a reminder that government agencies, which tend to measure quantity rather than quality, are seldom the best judges of literary potential. Commercial literature might even clash with the image a government wants to project. Popular genres such as crime fiction, surprisingly, are still scorned in Korean literary circles, despite the global respect for Scandinavian works.

“The best thing the government can do for the literary world is to keep supporting it and leave it alone,” Hwang Sok-yong, the revered Korean novelist, tells me in a café in Insadong, the old Seoul district of calligraphers’ suppliers. Hwang, whose novel The Shadow of Arms dissects the black market in arms during the Vietnam war, in which he fought, says: “Every time we have a new administration, they interfere in culture. They change the personnel and try to impose their political colour.”

Hwang Sok-yong

Purist: novelist Hwang Sok-yong opposes government interference in culture

As building work continues at Paju Bookcity, to incorporate the film industry, the hope is eerie calm will give way to a cultural buzz. There is government help with infrastructure. But Lee Sang, director of the Paju book festival, wants regulations stifling the industrial complex to be lifted. Burgeoning bookshop cafés, made legal only last year, can still “serve drinks but not food”.

Culture minister Yoo knows “the Korean wave wasn’t created by government” but “flowed organically”. Music and drama gained an edge precisely when censorship was lifted. As the government wakes up to the power of the book, it also needs to keep its distance. “Too much government help spoils you,” Paju Bookcity’s Yi nods sagely. “I’d like them to give us a fishing rod, not fish.”
——————————————-

When soft power backfires

One literary thriller making waves illustrates both the potential and limitations of literary soft power.

The Investigation by Jung-myung Lee is set in a Japanese prison in 1944. It focuses on a fictitious friendship between a Korean prisoner and a Japanese guard, but it alludes to real atrocities, including Japanese medical experiments on prisoners of war. The novel was acquired by a Japanese publisher more than a year ago, but cool relations between Seoul and Tokyo, and caution over the mood of Japan’s reading public, have, says Lee’s agent in Seoul, suspended publication indefinitely.

Lee had hoped his novel could be “a bridge to bring Japanese and Korean people closer”. “Japanese children don’t study their history, and politicians try to remove historical guilt from textbooks,” he says. “But they can’t apologise before they know what happened. Knowledge is the first step.”

The case may highlight the danger of a backlash abroad following too strenuous a push. Yoo Jin-ryong, the South Korean culture minister, puts his faith in reciprocity: “We want to go to countries where the Korean wave is prominent and introduce their cultures into Korea too.”

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Bongsu Park. Cord – Cell – Cube

Posted on 21 March 2014 by admin

http://wsimag.com/art/8100-bongsu-park-cord-cell-cube
An interview with Korean Performance Artist Bongsu Park

bongsu_park_caa57c_c

Bongsu, your characters move in space, hunting each other, touching each other, moving away. You were looking for a solution to visualize which belonged to the immaterial sphere of human relationships and you found it. When did your quest begin? Why video and dance as preferred medium? And why is it important to speak about human relationships?

My work questions the core of relationships; for me the oval is a shape, which represents this concept. At the beginning, my work gravitated around the idea and physical presence of the egg but this evolved into integrating the actual human body.

I’ve always been interested in contemporary dance; the combination of both new media and dance was a natural progression, which turned out to be a successful approach to express what I was and still am trying to say.

Your narratives are reflections on life, human cycles, and above all human relationships, which just like a pendulum go from one side to the other, with the two poles symbolizing the need for union and solitude. Why and when did you decide to focus on human relationships?

My work is always linked to the idea of the cycle, more precisely the human cycle. Before producing the dance pieces, I was particularly interested in the concept of birth and decay. Now, I am drawn to explore why people think differently by creating moments of dialogue with my public.

You use contemporary tools to visualize your plots and yet the game of metaphors which characterizes some of your works seems to have a far origin (or maybe it’s just by chanche). Let’s make an example. To describe the tension of human relationships in CORD performance you used a rope. The idea is that of an object suggesting people hunting, touching, moving away. A similar solution was adopted in 1611, or 1612 maybe, by the English poet John Donne who in A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning compared his relationship with his wife to the legs of a drawing compass. Although the legs are separate components of the compass, Donne says in his poem, they are both part of the same object. The legs operate in unison. If the outer leg traces a circle, the inner leg – though its point is fixed at the center – must pivot in the direction of the outer leg. Thus, Donne adds, though he and his wife are separated, like the legs of the compass, they remain united because they are part of the same soul. So, which were your models, if you had any, to visualize abstract concepts just like human relationship with people coming, going, moving?

The whole concept revolves around: the point; the line; the surface; and the three-dimensional.

The point for me is a departure and a birth; a woman’s pregnant belly; or a simple round shape. The line connects; it is what ties a mother to her baby; it is the family tree. The line explains relationships.

When assembled, these horizontal and vertical lines and multitude of points make up the surface. This surface in my work is a space where we all live together.

Dance, which a timeless medium practiced since the conception of human kind, allows me to visualize these abstract concepts. Video on the other end is a medium of our time. Mixing both dance and video allows me create contemporary yet timeless pieces. 


In your past works such as CORD and CUBE you used ropes and cubes whereas you worked with the choreographer Yoomi Ahn. Did you sketch the idea together?

I’ve collaborated with Yoomi Ahn for all my videos involving dance. Our process is always the same: we live and work together in the same space. For CELL, my house was transformed into a large dance studio! Spending every moment with Yoomi is important, as this allows the ideas to be shared and developed naturally without force.

When and were did you meet her?

Yoomi and I met in France, in Grenoble, a few years ago. We used to live in the same apartment building. At the time, I was preparing my application for l’École des Beaux-Arts and Yoomi had just been offered a contract with the Limoges Opéra. We were both learning French, which is how we became friends. I often showed her my work and she invited me to her practices. This was 9 years ago; time flies!

What did you like about her choreographies?

I love how delicate Yoomi is. She has a great understanding of my work as she’s been following my career for a long time now. She expresses exactly what I want to say with her body. We have a great communication. Trained as a classic dancer but very much involved in the contemporary scene, Yoomi has a flexible approach and mind frame, which I find very inspiring.

For Cord-Cell-Cube you invited Yoomi Ahn. When did you discuss the project? How long did it take you to organize it?

We started discussing 5 months ago, but the core of the work was done here in London. We had an intensive 2 weeks of creation.

Geometry and geometrical concepts are the leit-motiv of your works. In your new project, the third of the trilogy, you applied basic facts about dots, lines, planes and three-dimensions, with the dancer conceived as the dot, the cord as the line, the cell as the plane, the cube, of course, as the tridimensional object. Was this trilogy clear in your mind since the beginning?

The trilogy did not cross my mind at first as the initial idea evolved a lot.

My process is always the same; it is about working with the instinct. Once everything is laid down and done, I then go back to revisit the meaning as well as relations with previous pieces. This is what happened with CELL. Everything came into focus afterwards: linking the point and line (CORD) with the three-dimensional (CUBE). I also wanted to pursue a photographic project of the same name, which I had started in 2008.

Three dancers, three instruments, two men, one woman, a violin, a cello, a viola. Here’s once again the male and female universes which, this time, meet according to a triangular scheme. Did I see well what I saw?

This idea of the triangle did cross my mind, but I did not really develop the idea during the creative process. It might be something I’ll comment on in the future, when I have more distance with the work.

Apart from geometrical concepts, in Cord-Cell-Cube you introduced the concept of similarity, with the string instruments imagined in conjunction with thread images. Nothing in your work is left to chance. Which will be the next step?

I am currently preparing a summer exhibition (2014), which will be presented by my London gallery, Rosenfeld Porcini. I am also editing and finalizing my new video work CELL, which is based on the performance.

I will have a short pop up exhibition at Hanmi Gallery in May (London).

I have so many new and exciting projects in mind particularly around sculpture. Performance and video are an integral part of my practice though; I really enjoy working with dancers and musicians, therefore you’ll definitely see more in a very near future!

Interview by Stefania Elena Carnemolla.

Bongsu Park. Cord – Cell – Cube will be at Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery, London on the 20th of March 2014.

For more information visit: www.rosenfeldporcini.com

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Kim Jong Il’s former sushi chef sees coup potential

Posted on 13 January 2014 by admin

In exclusive interview, Kenji Fujimoto says womanizing prompted Jang purge
http://www.nknews.org/2014/01/kim-jong-ils-former-sushi-chef-sees-coup-potential/
January 13th, 2014

Kosuke Takahashi1

TOKYO – A chef who served the very top of the Pyongyang elite thinks Kim Jong Un may soon face challengers intent on usurping his power.

Speculation among North Korea watchers has been even more rampant than usual since the very public ouster of Jang Song Thaek in December, with experts trying to figure out what’s going on inside the world’s most reclusive regime and what may come next.

Jang, the uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un who had served as the nation’s No. 2 official, was suddenly executed for treason last month. Kim Kyong Hui, his wife and the blood aunt of Kim Jong Un, has also made no public appearances for months, with some media even speculating that she has already died of a heart attack or suicide.

Do the latest developments suggest Kim Jong Un is succeeding at consolidating his political power right now? Or is this just a manifestation of his struggles in doing so amid a mounting crisis over his power base?

One person who knows very well about North Korea’s inner circle, including the Kim family dynasty and the convoluted machinations in Pyongyang, is Kenji Fujimoto (a pseudonym).

Fujimoto was employed by the late former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il from 1989 to 2001 as his personal sushi chef, and he still refers to Kim Jong Il as “shogun” (“military commander” in Japanese). He visited Pyongyang in the summer of 2012 at the invitation of Kim Jong Un, stunning Pyongyang watchers and intelligence communities worldwide. While working for Kim Jong Il, the 40-to-50-something Fujimoto became Kim Jong Un’s favorite playmate in Pyongyang, even though during the period the junior Kim was only about 7-18 years old.

In his book, The North’s Successor, Kim Jong Un, Fujimoto wrote that he felt as if Kim Jong Un were his own son because they had spent so much time together.

In an exclusive interview with NK News held in Tokyo on January 9, Fujimoto made several noteworthy statements, despite his wife and daughter still being in Pyongyang, and thus vulnerable to reprisals from the Pyongyang government.

For one, Fujimoto said there is a high possibility of coup d’état or insurgency by the military following the Jang purge because the Kim family’s nepotistic power-grabbing is weakening in the absence of key family members.

Fujimoto also said that Jang may have been purged due to problems with women, even though the official reasons were treason and financial crimes. He said Jang had been in charge of Kippumjo, or young girls selected to provide pleasure and entertainment to high-ranking Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) officials. And because Kim Jong Un despises womanizing of this sort, Fujimoto believes he had him executed.

Interview conducted by Kosuke Takahashi and Ryo C. Kato. All pictures copyright NK News

kenji-fujimoto-nknews2

JANG SONG THAEK’S EXECUTION
NK News: Jang Song Thaek, who was seen as Kim Jong Un’s guardian, was purged and executed in December. What do you think about his execution?

Kenji Fujimoto: He was accused of being “despicable human scum, worse than a dog.” He must have angered Gen. Kim Jong Un to that extent.

Now, I know I should not make such negative conjectures, but let’s not forget that during Shogun Kim Jong Il’s era, Mr. Jang Song Thaek had a side job of being in charge of Kippumjo – the Pleasure Brigade.

A net was placed over the entire country to look for girls that would shine, “if only they were polished.” In this way, Mr. Jang received files on many beautiful young girls who had potential to be good singers and dancers, in some cases receiving as many as 100 girls’ files at a time.

These files would be inspected by Mr. Jang and after about 10 girls would be chosen to be presented to Shogun Kim Jong Il. Then they would decide when the subsequent interviews would be conducted. I’ve attended these interviews before as well, which used to be conducted at the Mokrankwan (or Mulan Hall), or a guest palace in Pyongyang.

During the interviews the 10 girls would be up on the stage. Shogun Kim Jong Il would have documents with all their birthplaces and so on, and he would ask questions here and there. If they were singers, they would sing right there. There would be separate auditions for dancers. The panel would ask them to raise their legs and all that.

NK News: How old were the girls?

KF: Usually 15 or 16. They were young because they retire when they’re 28 – dancers can’t go much more than that, since they damage their hips and backs. It’s amazing what they did.

NK News: So Jang Song Thaek had an image as an economic reform expert, but…

KF: Aside from that he was also assigned to this job maintaining Shogun Kim Jong Il’s Pleasure Brigade, you know, for the leaders’ pleasure.

“He loathes having relations with multiple women. And that’s why he conducted such a terrible execution”

Of the 10 girls (that would make it to Pyongyang), most of them were from the countryside. For some of them it would be their first time in Pyongyang. And (Jang Song Thaek) would say to each one, if you want to go to the Mokrankwan…if you want to make it in Pyongyang as a singer and get to the interview stage…Well, it’s like in Japan…You know how they say: “So what’ll it be? Come stay the night with me.”

NK News: So Jang was like a manager or a president at a talent agency?

KF: Right, it’s just like in Japan! Here there are guys that’ll take them all. So it was that kind of custom. But this is something that Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un hates the most. He loathes having relations with multiple women. And that’s why he conducted such a terrible execution.

NK News: So it was because of women?

KF: Exactly. He hates that kind of thing the most. His grandfather Kim Il Sung did similar things. His father also had quite a history with women. So having seen them, he wanted to prove that he’s different and that he would eradicate such practices. Basically, I think this was what the execution was about. So, regarding Mr. Jang Song Thaek, he did what the Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un hates the most: he had relations with multiple women. Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un could not forgive this, so he executed Mr. Jang Song Thaek, his caretaker and guardian.

To forget Mr. Jang as quickly as possible he executed him immediately after his trial. Ninety rounds from a machine gun. There’s no need to fire 90 rounds. I mean…aim for the head and aim for the heart and that’s that. Executions can be as simple as that. He truly was enraged. Ninety rounds from a machine gun. Then a flamethrower.

NK News: Jang Song Thaek’s poor reputation with women was known from a while back, right? If so, then why did this happen now?

KF: The rumor spread among the central committee elites. Back then (Kim Jong Un) was still young. But he’s married now and has children. I mean, North Korea is a country that hates to debase its public moral values, especially through that kind of immoral behavior. So it ignited Kim’s rage.

NK News: There has been press [at the time of interview] about hungry dogs, from media from Hong Kong. I don’t know if that’s true or not but…

KF: Even if that’s true, it proves the point even more.

The important thing is this: That he wanted to rid Mr. Jang Song Thaek from the Republic – I don’t say North Korea, I say “the Republic”… He wanted to ensure that Jang left no footprint in the Republic, to make it seem he never existed in the Republic. I like to stress these three points, because by doing so Jang could be forgotten.

So, of course, now Mr. Kim Jong Un is alone, and when he is alone, he sheds tears…

NK News: In your book you said Jang Song Thaek supported Kim Jong Il as his closest confidant. You also said that you expected this role would continue during the Kim Jong Un era. Given that he was the closest advisor among even the closest advisors, was the decision to cut off Jang Song Thaek therefore not quite a bold decision?

KF: Yes, because Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un was truly enraged.

NK News: You said in one of your books that Jang was a very diligent man and at times there could be friction between him and Kim Jong Il.

KF: That has nothing to do with this. All this and that about a coup d’état (in official media), that has nothing to do with anything. I mean, what are you going to do by staging a coup and grabbing power? If you sit behind Kim Jong Un, you can eat well…especially if you were his caretaker!

(A coup attempt) has nothing to do with it. But that kind of label is necessary for executions. “Treason,” “grand treason;” they wrote all sorts of things, even that he was taking drugs. How stupid, “drugs.” Everyone would know if someone was using drugs. Nonsense! Those labels are just necessary for these kinds of things.

NK News: To solidify Kim Jong Un’s legitimacy or authority…?

KF: (It had) nothing to do with that. The execution was only about Jang’s relations with women.

NK News: But according to analysis by South Korean intelligence, this recent purge and execution was related to disagreements over coal mining business.

KF: It had absolutely nothing to do with politics.

NK News: In the lead up to Jang Song Thaek’s execution, two of his close confidants – Ri Yong Ha and Jang Soo Kil – were also publicly executed.

KF: Jang Soo Kil is… his brother, right? He was the ambassador. He was called back and executed. If they executed the Jang group, they’d run away! They’d reveal it somehow and everyone (close to Jang) will escape.

fujimoto-nknews-kim-jong-il-sushi-chef

A FAMILY POWER STRUGGLE?
NK News: In your latest book you wrote that you wanted Kim Jong Un’s younger sister Kim Yo Jong to read the book, in addition to Kim Jong Un himself. However, I note that Kim Jong Un’s brother Jong Chol does not appear in the book by name. Was there a reason for his exclusion?

KF: He was not at the party (that Fujimoto attended in Pyongyang in summer 2012). I was not in a position to ask Gen. Kim Jong Un if Comrade Gen. Jong Chol Daejang was present there or not. I can’t do that!

He had a reason for not being at the party and because I could not ask why he was not there, I could not include his name in the book.

NK News: I thought that you had written that you wanted Kim Yo Jong to read the book because she was being promoted. It’s not like that, though?

KF: No. It’s not like that.

NK News: So the recent power struggle in Pyongyang is nothing to do with a possible power struggle among two brothers and a sister in the Kim family?

KF: It has nothing to do with it. His big brother Jong Chol is not involved in that kind of thing.

NK News: How was it decided that Kim Jong Un would be leader over Jong Chol?

KF: Shogun Kim Jong Il decided that the siblings would never fight for power.

As I wrote in one of the books, I once had a five-hour conversation with Mr. Kim Jong Un on a special train.

A week or so before that at the Wonsan guesthouse I strongly suspect that Shogun Kim Jong Il and his wife Ms. Ko Yong Hui sat side-by-side with their two sons sit in front.

Shogun Kim Jong Il probably asked Gen. Jong Chol, “Do you have any interest in being heir?” Presumably, Gen. Jong Chol said no. Then they told him, “I see, if not we will have your brother Jong Un as heir. Is that fine?”

“Yes,” he would have answered. They cannot be allowed to fight and (Kim Jong Il) set that straight.

NK News: Did that happen in 2001, before you escaped?

KF: Yes, before I escaped.

After that conversation, when Gen. Comrade Jong Un came into my room on the train, his face looked so serious. I could tell something had happened.

“It was then that Gen. Jong Un was made aware that he would be heir instead of Gen. Comrade Jong Chol”

Usually, he’d come in saying, “Fujimoto. Cigarette.” That time, no mention of a cigarette.

As if deep in thought. I asked, “Gen. Jong Un, is there something you want to talk about?” He probably wanted to talk about it, but couldn’t.

At that point, though the heir had not been announced, it was then that Gen. Jong Un was made aware that he would be heir instead of Gen. Comrade Jong Chol. This was established from a young age to ensure that a power struggle wouldn’t later arise.

Gen. Jong Chol is not the kind of person to recreate a story and position himself to take power by establishing some faction.

NK News: Some people say that Kim Jong Un’s transition to power was difficult due to his short grooming period. But you are suggesting Kim was actually getting ready for leadership from 2001, that he was cognizant of his destiny for all that time?

KF: Yes. But it’s tough from here onwards for him.

This is my final thought: His blood relatives are thinning out, there is only his older brother Prince Jong Chol and his sister Princess Yo Jong. Now there are only the three of them. How are they going to protect the Kim court?

“It’s tough from here onwards for him…I see a very high possibility of a coup d’état”

It’d be easy to tip them over, especially now that Mr. Jang Song Thaek is gone. Mr. Choe Ryong Hae is only there to manage the military. They used to have Mr. Jang and Mr. Choe, glaring at the elites to keep the military in line. Now they have only the one. I’m sure Mr. Choe has many subordinates. But it’ll be difficult for Gen. Jong Un to keep control now.

NK News: Do you see any possibilities of coup d’état?

KF: Yes, I see a very high possibility of that. And insurgencies. There will definitely be cases of power struggles.

NK News: So Kim Jong Un must control the military, correct?

KF: He must control it. The Central Committee only has a pen as a weapon. The military has the actual weapons. The victor in that fight is plain to see.

NK News: Is it okay for you to say such things? I mean you still have a wife and daughter over there in Pyongyang.

KF: Yes, it is scary (laughs).

NK News: Wouldn’t Kim Jong Un get angry? Talking about coups?

KF: “Fujimoto, are you promoting a coup?” he’d say. But seriously, I am worried for him.

kosuke-fujimoto1

CHOE RYONG-HAE
NK News: Another topic. It seems that Choe Ryong Hae – a former subordinate of Jang Song Thaek – has received quite the vote of confidence from Kim Jong Un. He is now a rising star, and rumor has it was he that pushed Jang Song Thaek out. Do you think it is anything like that?

KF: It is unthinkable for Mr. Choe Ryong Hae and Mr. Jang Song Thaek to fight, because Mr. Jang saved Mr. Choe’s life.

From 1988 to 1989, Mr. Choe Ryong Hae was building a bowling lane and received a lot of money from the Zainichi (ethnic Koreans in Japan) community. He also received a bribe. But you know that money really changes people? It is said that Choe was hiding between $100,000 – $150,000. He hid that money at the bottom of a rice bin.

But in 1988 there had been an order in Pyongyang to purge anyone found to be corrupt, even in the highest circles. So eventually Mr. Choe Ryong Hae was found out.

“Mr. Jang saved Mr. Choe’s life”

Even though his father Choe Hyon is a hero of the first degree, there were even rumors that he (urinated) on his father’s grave. It was such a widespread rumor that there was no one who didn’t know. So soon Mr. Choe Ryong Hae was exiled.

Personally, I think exile is a heavy punishment. One does not get any food rations. But a man has to eat, so he one must catch mice, moles and snakes to survive.

NK News: So when one someone is put in exile, they are taken away up to the mountains?

KF: Yes, apparently, it’s something like that. Well, I wrote in one of my books, that Mr. Jang Song Thaek once promised to save Mr. Choe Ryong Hae. And after that, in just four or five years, Choe was acquitted. I am sure it was because Mr. Jang had an “in” with Shogun Kim Jong Il.

NK News: Did you ever meet with Choe Ryong Hae?

KF: Yes, he’d be there at the parties.

NK News: What kind of person was he?

KF: He is about my height, with fierce eyes.

NK News: A very loyal person?

KF: Definitely. Very loyal. As students, Mr. Jang Song Thaek and Mr. Choe Ryong Hae both had eyes for Ms. Kim Kyong Hui. They are about the same age. Well, (Choe) is slightly younger. Maybe a year younger than me.

kosuke-fujimoto

KIM KYONG HUI
NK News: About Kim Jong Il’s sister, Kim Kyong Hui. Recently the Asahi Shimbun reported that she was in Russia with an ailment. However, the Chosun Ilbo reported that she might have committed suicide, after the purge.

KF: That is an impertinent thing to say of a living person. So she’d been in Russia?

NK News: Yes, apparently between September to October she had been receiving treatment in Russia. But this was quite a bit before the execution of Jang Song Thaek. So what’s going on now?

KF: ”She was an alcoholic. Her body was broken”

I got a call from [name obscured] asking about her yesterday. I said that if she is dead that it was probably suicide.

When faced with being in favor or not of Mr. Jang Song Thaek’s execution…How could she choose? I told them that she had probably became a mental and physical wreck…She was an alcoholic. Her body was broken.

NK News: In the book you also say that she would call out “Jang Song Thaek!” – but without traditional honorifics. Was it something like the flip-side of love?

KF: Yeah, well, that was when she was drunk. She’d bring a bottle to Mr. Jang Song Thaek who was standing in the back. This bottle, of course, would have been Shogun Kim Jong Il’s liquor, therefore you had to stand. Mr. Jang Song Thaek would see her coming towards him (with the bottle), but sometimes he would not stand. And then she’d yell out Jang~ Song~ Thaek~! As if she was saying, “You aren’t drinking?” And he’d drink.

There were moments like that. But (the lack of honorifics) had nothing to do with her liking him or not. They’d been married for a long time. And like I said, Mr. Jang Song Thaek’s side-business was to gather beautiful young girls. Mr. Jang Song Thaek had a weakness for cute girls. And he could do whatever he wanted with them…

NK News: And Kim Kyong Hui did not get mad about that?

KF: Why would she get mad for? They’re not young kids, for goodness sake. I mean she probably knew that she probably couldn’t be a good lover to him, considering her age. Especially since she was always drinking.

Posted in NK News, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Korea Execution Is Tied to Clash Over Businesses

Posted on 23 December 2013 by admin

By CHOE SANG-HUN and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: December 23, 2013

SEOUL, South Korea — The execution of the uncle of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, had its roots in a firefight between forces loyal to Mr. Kim and those supporting the man who was supposed to be his regent, according to accounts that are being pieced together by South Korean and American officials. The clash was over who would profit from North Korea’s most lucrative exports: coal, clams and crabs.

North Korean military forces were deployed to retake control of one of the sources of those exports, the rich crab and clam fishing grounds that Jang Song-thaek, the uncle of the country’s untested, 30-year-old leader, had seized from the military. In the battle for control of the fishing grounds, the emaciated, poorly trained North Korean forces “were beaten — very badly — by Uncle Jang’s loyalists,” according to one official.

The rout of his forces appears to have been the final straw for Mr. Kim, who saw his 67-year-old uncle as a threat to his authority over the military and, just as important, to his own family’s dwindling sources of revenue. Eventually, at Mr. Kim’s order, the North Korean military came back with a larger force and prevailed. Soon, Mr. Jang’s two top lieutenants were executed.

The two men died in front of a firing squad. But instead of rifles, the squad used antiaircraft machine guns, a form of execution that according to South Korean intelligence officials and news media was similar to the one used against some North Korean artists in August. Days later, Mr. Jang himself was publicly denounced, tried and executed, by more traditional means.

Given the opaqueness of North Korea’s inner circle, many details of the struggle between Mr. Kim and his uncle remain murky. But what is known suggests that while Mr. Kim has consolidated control and eliminated a potential rival, it has been at a huge cost: The open warfare between the two factions has revealed a huge fracture inside the country’s elite over who pockets the foreign currency — mostly Chinese renminbi — the country earns from the few nonnuclear exports its trading partners desire.

Only a few months ago Mr. Jang was believed to be the second most powerful man in North Korea. In fact, American intelligence agencies had reported to the White House and the State Department in late 2011 that he could well be running the country behind the scenes — and might edge out his inexperienced nephew for control. In part that was based on his deep relationship with top officials in China, as well as his extensive business connections there.

His highly unusual public humiliation and execution on Dec. 12 set off speculation about the possibility of a power struggle within the secretive government. But in recent days a more complex, nuanced story has emerged.

During a closed-door meeting on Monday of the South Korean National Assembly’s intelligence committee, Nam Jae-joon, the director of the National Intelligence Service, disputed the North’s assertion that Mr. Jang had tried to usurp his nephew’s power. Rather, he said, Mr. Jang and his associates had provoked the enmity of rivals within the North’s elite by dominating lucrative business deals, starting with the coal badly needed by China, the North’s main trading partner.

“There had been friction building up among the agencies of power in North Korea over privileges and over the abuse of power by Jang Song-thaek and his associates,” Mr. Nam was quoted as saying. Mr. Nam’s comments were relayed to the news media by Jeong Cheong-rae and Cho Won-jin, two lawmakers designated as spokesmen for the parliamentary committee.

In interviews, officials have said that the friction described in general terms to the South Korean Parliament played out in a violent confrontation in late September or early October, just north of the western sea border between the Koreas.

There, the North harvests one of its major exports: crabs and clams, delicacies that are also highly valued by the Chinese. For years the profits from those fishing grounds, along with the output from munitions factories and trading companies, went directly to the North Korean military, helping it feed its troops, and enabling its top officers to send cash gifts to the Kim family.

South Korea was a major market for the North’s mushrooms, clams, crabs, abalones and sea cucumbers until the South cut off trade with the North after the sinking of a South Korean Navy ship in 2010, forcing the North Korean military to rely on the Chinese market.

But when Mr. Kim succeeded his father two years ago, he took away some of the military’s fishing and trading rights and handed them to his cabinet, which he designated as the main agency to revive the economy. Mr. Jang was believed to have been a leading proponent of curtailing the military’s economic power.

Mr. Jang appears to have consolidated many of those trading rights under his own control — meaning that profits from the coal, crabs and clams went into his accounts, or those of state institutions under his control, including the administrative department of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, which he headed.

But this fall, the long-brewing tensions that arrangement created broke into the open. Radio Free Asia, in a report last week that cited anonymous North Korean sources, reported that Mr. Kim saw North Korean soldiers malnourished during his recent visits to islands near the disputed western sea border. They say he ordered Mr. Jang to hand over the operation of nearby fishing grounds back to the military.

According to accounts put together by South Korean and American officials, Mr. Jang and his associates resisted. When a company of about 150 North Korean soldiers showed up at the farm, Mr. Jang’s loyalists refused to hand over the operation, insisting that Mr. Jang himself would have to approve. The confrontation escalated into a gun battle, and Radio Free Asia reports that two soldiers were killed and that the army backed off. Officials say the number of casualties is unknown, but they have received similar accounts.

It is hard to know exactly how large a role the episode played in Mr. Jang’s downfall — there is more money in coal than in seafood — but Mr. Kim was reportedly enraged when he heard of the clash. Mr. Nam said that by mid-November his agents were already reporting that Mr. Jang had been detained. The Dec. 12 verdict noted that Mr. Jang “instructed his stooges to sell coal and other precious underground resources at random.”

Mr. Nam said the fact that such behind-the-scenes tensions had spun so far out of control that Mr. Kim had to order his own uncle’s execution raised questions about the government’s internal unity.

“The fissure within the regime could accelerate if it further loses popular support,” the lawmakers quoted Mr. Nam as saying.

Mr. Jang was the husband of Kim Kyong-hui, the only sister of Mr. Kim’s father, the longtime leader Kim Jong-il. Mr. Nam told the committee Monday that Mr. Kim’s aunt had retained her position in the hierarchy, even while the purge of Mr. Jang’s other associates continued. But he denied news reports in South Korea and Japan that some of Mr. Jang’s associates were seeking political asylum in Seoul and Beijing.

Mr. Nam pointed to Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, the top political officer in the North Korean People’s Army, and Kim Won-hong, the head of the North’s secret police and its intelligence chief, as the government’s new rising figures since Mr. Jang’s execution, the two lawmakers said.

Posted in Choe Sang-hun, NY Times | Tagged | Leave a comment

Kim’s uncle Jang Song Thaek purged and killed

Posted on 14 December 2013 by admin

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bfd390f6-63dd-11e3-b70d-00144feabdc0.html

Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s first leader, reportedly took such exception to the boyfriend of his daughter Kyung Hui that he had him expelled from university and despatched to the distant city of Wonsan.

Undaunted, Jang Song Thaek eventually returned to Pyongyang to claim Ms Kim’s hand in marriage, and began his rise to the highest level of the state apparatus. Reportedly purged from the central party in the late 1970s and again in 2003, Jang seemed to bounce back stronger from each setback, developing a reputation as the great survivor of North Korean politics.

Jang’s summary execution – reported by state media on Friday – marked a spectacular demise for a man seen until recently as the most powerful adviser to Kim Jong Un. It also raised questions about the potential for further instability in the court of the world’s youngest national leader.

Describing him as “despicable human scum”, state media said Jang had been put to death immediately after his conviction for treason by a military tribunal, where he confessed to having plotted a coup against Mr Kim.

“I was going to stage the coup by using army officers who had close ties with me,” Jang was reported as saying. “It was my intention to . . . become premier when the economy goes totally bankrupt and the state is on the verge of collapse.”

As vice-chairman of the powerful national defence commission and head of the ruling party’s administration department, Jang was seen by some analysts as a regent to the inexperienced ruler, and was shown frequently by his side at official events.

Yet that same media footage contained hints of an overly confident attitude that may have prompted his demise. During a big speech by Mr Kim in January, as other top officials sat ramrod straight in rapt attention, Jang slouched casually to one side. On a day of site visits two months earlier, he was shown strolling behind his nephew with one hand in his pocket, and later flanking him with both hands behind his back – a gesture of superiority in Korean culture.

“Jang tried hard to create [an] illusion about him by projecting himself internally and externally as a special being on a par with [Mr Kim],” state media said.

Some analysts have portrayed Jang’s demise as a natural step in Mr Kim’s assertion of power as he replaces an older generation of officials with new ones who will owe their positions to him. South Korean intelligence suggests he has overseen the replacement of about 100 of the top 218 party and military officials.

By ousting and shaming Jang so publicly – including vivid coverage on domestic television and the front page of the national Rodong Sinmun newspaper – Mr Kim appears to be seeking to demonstrate his absolute authority to the broader population, as well. “This is about flexing muscle,” says John Delury, a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei university. In recent days, state media has begun referring to him as uidaehan ryongdoja, or “great leader” – a title also used by his father and grandfather.

But the lurid detailing of Jang’s alleged crimes comes with risks. “Nobody can now say there isn’t factionalism in North Korea – there is clearly a form of intra-regime factionalism, and the window on that has now been opened to the ordinary North Korean people,” says Sokeel Park, research director at Liberty in North Korea, a non-governmental group.

Rather than present Jang’s as an isolated case of counter-revolutionary thought, state media described an extended network of senior dissenters. It also drew attention to rampant high-level corruption, as it condemned Jang for illicitly profiting from the country’s abundant natural resources.

Moreover, by describing Jang as expecting North Korean economic collapse, state media has indicated doubts at the highest level about Mr Kim’s promise to drive national development and raise living standards. In a speech in 2012, the leader said he would ensure the people “will never have to tighten their belts again”.

“There is now an explicit linking of the regime’s legitimacy with being able to deliver for the average person,” Mr Delury says.

Visitors to Pyongyang report conspicuous signs of greater prosperity, such as better stocked shops and more cars on the streets, as well as a spurt in construction activity. But this increase in consumption and state expenditure could prove dangerous, says Rüdiger Frank at the University of Vienna.

“The sudden increase in unproductive state spending without [major] reforms suggests that the North Korean state is living on its reserves,” Mr Frank wrote this week. “Once they are depleted, trouble is inevitable.”

Under Mr Kim, North Korea has experimented with allowing more autonomy in agricultural and manufacturing production, and announced new special economic zones to attract foreign investment. It has also maintained the policy of turning a blind eye to the thriving informal markets that have filled the gap left by the defunct state distribution system.

But the condemnation of the “reformist” Jang, “influenced by the capitalist way of thinking”, bodes ill for any hopes of sweeping structural change in North Korea.

“He was willing to listen . . . he was interested in the South Korean economy,” says Moon Chung-in, a former South Korean presidential adviser who met Jang three times. Even during a heavy late-night drinking session in 2002, Jang “never lost his composure”, Mr Moon recalls.

“I was surprised to see him accused of these counter-revolutionary acts . . . he was very prudent, unassuming. He was always trying to stay in the shadows.”

Posted in FT, Simon Mundy | Tagged | Leave a comment

Traitor Jang Song Thaek Executed

Posted on 13 December 2013 by admin

http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2013/201312/news09/20131209-05ee.html

Pyongyang, December 13 (KCNA) — Upon hearing the report on the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, the service personnel and people throughout the country broke into angry shouts that a stern judgment of the revolution should be meted out to the anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional elements. Against the backdrop of these shouts rocking the country, a special military tribunal of the DPRK Ministry of State Security was held on December 12 against traitor for all ages Jang Song Thaek.

The accused Jang brought together undesirable forces and formed a faction as the boss of a modern day factional group for a long time and thus committed such hideous crime as attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to grab the supreme power of our party and state.

The tribunal examined Jang’s crimes.

All the crimes committed by the accused were proved in the course of hearing and were admitted by him.

A decision of the special military tribunal of the Ministry of State Security of the DPRK was read out at the trial.

Every sentence of the decision served as sledge-hammer blow brought down by our angry service personnel and people on the head of Jang, an anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional element and despicable political careerist and trickster.

The accused is a traitor to the nation for all ages who perpetrated anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts in a bid to overthrow the leadership of our party and state and the socialist system.

Jang was appointed to responsible posts of the party and state thanks to the deep political trust of President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il and received benevolence from them more than any others from long ago.

He held higher posts than before and received deeper trust from supreme leader Kim Jong Un, in particular.

The political trust and benevolence shown by the peerlessly great men of Mt. Paektu were something he hardly deserved.

It is an elementary obligation of a human being to repay trust with sense of obligation and benevolence with loyalty.

However, despicable human scum Jang, who was worse than a dog, perpetrated thrice-cursed acts of treachery in betrayal of such profound trust and warmest paternal love shown by the party and the leader for him.

From long ago, Jang had a dirty political ambition. He dared not raise his head when Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il were alive. But, reading their faces, Jang had an axe to grind and involved himself in double-dealing. He began revealing his true colors in the period of historic turn when the generation of the revolution was replaced, thinking that it was just the time for him to realize his wild ambition.

Jang committed such an unpardonable thrice-cursed treason as overtly and covertly standing in the way of settling the issue of succession to the leadership with an axe to grind when a very important issue was under discussion to hold respected Kim Jong Un in high esteem as the only successor to Kim Jong Il in reflection of the unanimous desire and will of the entire party and army and all people.

When his cunning move proved futile and the decision that Kim Jong Un was elected vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea in reflection of the unanimous will of all party members, service personnel and people was proclaimed at the historic Third Conference of the WPK, making all participants break into enthusiastic cheers that shook the conference hall, he behaved so arrogantly and insolently as unwillingly standing up from his seat and half-heartedly clapping, touching off towering resentment of our service personnel and people.

Jang confessed that he behaved so at that time as a knee-jerk reaction as he thought that if Kim Jong Un’s base and system for leading the army were consolidated, this would lay a stumbling block in his way of grabbing the power of the party and state.

When Kim Jong Il passed away so suddenly and untimely to our sorrow, Jang began working in real earnest to realize his long-cherished greed for power.

Abusing the honor of often accompanying Kim Jong Un during his field guidance, Jang tried hard to create illusion about him by projecting himself internally and externally as a special being on a par with the headquarters of the revolution.

In a bid to rally a group of reactionaries to be used by him for toppling the leadership of the party and state, he let the undesirable and alien elements including those who had been dismissed and relieved of their posts after being severely punished for disobeying the instructions of Kim Jong Il and kowtowing to Jang work in a department of the Central Committee of the WPK and organs under it in a crafty manner.

Jang did serious harm to the youth movement in our country, being part of the group of renegades and betrayers in the field of youth work bribed by enemies. Even after they were disclosed and purged by the resolute measure of the party, he patronized those cat’s paws and let them hold important posts of the party and state.

He let Ri Ryong Ha, flatterer, work with him since the 1980s whenever he was transferred to other posts and systematically promoted Ri up to the post of first vice department director of the Party Central Committee though he had been purged for his factional act of denying the unitary leadership of the party. Jang thus made Ri his trusted stooge.

Jang let his confidants and flatterers who had been fired for causing an important case of denying the unitary leadership of the party work in his department and organs under it in a crafty manner in a few years. He systematically rallied ex-convicts, those problematic in their past careers and discontented elements around him and ruled over them as sacred and inviolable being.

He worked hard to put all affairs of the country under his control, massively increasing the staff of his department and organs under it, and stretch his tentacles to ministries and national institutions. He converted his department into a “little kingdom” which no one dares touch.

He was so impudent as to prevent the Taedonggang Tile Factory from erecting a mosaic depicting Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and a monument to field guidance given by them. Moreover, Jang turned down the unanimous request of the service personnel of a unit of the Korean People’s Internal Security Forces to have the autograph letter sent by Kim Jong Un to the unit carved on a natural granite and erected with good care in front of the building of its command. He was so reckless as to instruct the unit to erect it in a shaded corner.

He committed such anti-party acts as systematically denying the party’s line and policies, its organizational will, in the past period. These acts were a revelation of deliberate and sinister attempt to create extreme illusion and idolization of him by making him appear as a special being who can overrule either issues decided by the party or its line.

He went so rude as to take in the middle even those things associated with intense loyalty and sincerity of our army and people towards the party and the leader and distribute them among his confidants in an effort to take credit to himself for doing so. This behavior was to create illusion about him.

Due to his persistent moves to create illusion and idolization of him his flatterers and followers in his department and organs under it praised him as “comrade No. 1.” They went the lengths of denying even the party’s instructions to please him at any cost.

Jang established such a heterogeneous work system in his department and the relevant organs as considering what he said as more important than the party’s policies. Consequently, his trusted henchmen and followers made no scruple of perpetrating such counter-revolutionary act as disobeying the order of the Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army.

The revolutionary army will never pardon all those who disobey the order of the Supreme Commander and there will be no place for them to be buried even after their death.

Dreaming a fantastic dream to become premier at an initial stage to grab the supreme power of the party and state, Jang made his department put major economic fields of the country under its control in a bid to disable the Cabinet. In this way he schemed to drive the economy of the country and people’s living into an uncontrollable catastrophe.

He put inspection and supervision organs belonging to the Cabinet under his control in defiance of the new state machinery established by Kim Jong Il at the First Session of the Tenth Supreme People’s Assembly. Jang put all issues related to all structural works handled by the Cabinet under his control and had the final say on them, making it impossible for the Cabinet to properly perform its function and role as the economic command. They included the issues of setting up and disorganizing committees, ministries and national institutions and provincial, city and county-level organs, organizing units for foreign trade and for earning foreign money and structures overseas and fixing living allowances.

When he attempted to make a false report to the party without having agreement with the Cabinet and the relevant ministry on the issue related to the state construction supervision organization, officials concerned expressed just opinion that his behavior was contrary to the construction law worked out by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Hearing this, he made the reckless remark that “the rewriting of the construction law would solve the problem.”

Abusing his authority, he undermined the work system related to the construction of the capital city established by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, reducing the construction and building-materials bases to such bad shape little short of debris in a few years. He weakened the ranks of technicians and skilled workers at the units for the construction of the capital city in a crafty manner and transferred major construction units to his confidants so that they might make money. In this way he deliberately disturbed the construction in Pyongyang.

He instructed his confidants to sell coal and other precious underground resources at random. Consequently, they were saddled with huge debts, deceived by brokers. Jang made no scruple of committing such act of treachery in May last as selling off the land of the Rason economic and trade zone to a foreign country for a period of five decades under the pretext of paying those debts.

It was none other than Jang who wirepulled behind scene Pak Nam Gi, traitor for all ages, to recklessly issue hundreds of billions of won in 2009, sparking off serious economic chaos and disturbing the people’s mind-set.

Jang encouraged money-making under various pretexts to secure funds necessary for gratifying his political greed and was engrossed in irregularities and corruption. He thus took the lead in spreading indolent, careless and undisciplined virus in our society.

After collecting precious metals since the construction of Kwangbok Street in the 1980s, he set up a secret organ under his control and took a fabulous amount of funds from a bank and purchased precious metals in disregard of the state law. He thus committed such anti-state criminal acts as creating a great confusion in financial management system of the state.

He let the decadent capitalist lifestyle find its way to our society by distributing all sorts of pornographic pictures among his confidants since 2009. He led a dissolute and depraved life, squandering money wherever he went.

He took at least 4.6 million Euro from his secret coffers and squandered it in 2009 alone and enjoyed himself in casino in a foreign country. These facts alone clearly show how corrupt and degenerate he was.

Jang was so reckless with his greed for power that he persistently worked to stretch his tentacles even to the People’s Army with a foolish calculation that he would succeed in staging a coup if he mobilized the army.

He fully revealed his despicable true colors as a traitor for all ages in the course of questioning by uttering as follows: “I attempted to trigger off discontent among service personnel and people that the present regime does not take any measure despite the fact that the economy of the country and people’s living are driven into catastrophe. Comrade supreme leader is the target of the coup.”

As regards the means and methods for staging the coup, Jang said: “I was going to stage the coup by using high-ranking army officers who had close ties with me or by mobilizing armed forces under the control of my confidants. I don’t know well about recently appointed high-ranking army officers but have some acquaintances with those appointed in the past period. I thought the army might join in the coup if the living of the people and service personnel further deteriorate in the future. And I calculated that my confidants in my department including Ri Ryong Ha and Jang Su Gil would surely follow me and had a plan to use the one in charge of the people’s security organ as my confidant. It was my calculation that I might use several others beside them.”

Asked about the timing of the coup and his plan to do after staging the coup, Jang answered: “I didn’t fix the definite time for the coup. But it was my intention to concentrate my department and all economic organs on the Cabinet and become premier when the economy goes totally bankrupt and the state is on the verge of collapse in a certain period. I thought that if I solve the problem of people’s living to a certain measure by spending an enormous amount of funds I have accumulated under various names after becoming premier, the people and service personnel will shout “hurrah” for me and I will succeed in the coup in a smooth way.”

Jang dreamed such a foolish dream that once he seizes power by a base method, his despicable true colors as “reformist” known to the outside world would help his “new government” get “recognized” by foreign countries in a short span of time.

All facts go to clearly prove that Jang is a thrice-cursed traitor without an equal in the world as he had desperately worked for years to destabilize and bring down the DPRK and grab the supreme power of the party and state by employing all the most cunning and sinister means and methods, pursuant to the “strategic patience” policy and “waiting strategy” of the U.S. and the south Korean puppet group of traitors.

The hateful and despicable nature of the anti-party, anti-state and unpopular crimes committed by Jang was fully disclosed in the course of the trial conducted at the special military tribunal of the DPRK Ministry of State Security.

The era and history will eternally record and never forget the shuddering crimes committed by Jang Song Thaek, the enemy of the party, revolution and people and heinous traitor to the nation.

No matter how much water flows under the bridge and no matter how frequently a generation is replaced by new one, the lineage of Paektu will remain unchanged and irreplaceable.

Our party, state, army and people do not know anyone except Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un.

Our service personnel and people will never pardon all those who dare disobey the unitary leadership of Kim Jong Un, challenge his absolute authority and oppose the lineage of Mt. Paektu to an individual but bring them to the stern court of history without fail and mercilessly punish them on behalf of the party and revolution, the country and its people, no matter where they are in hiding.

The special military tribunal of the Ministry of State Security of the DPRK confirmed that the state subversion attempted by the accused Jang with an aim to overthrow the people’s power of the DPRK by ideologically aligning himself with enemies is a crime punishable by Article 60 of the DPRK Criminal Code, vehemently condemned him as a wicked political careerist, trickster and traitor for all ages in the name of the revolution and the people and ruled that he would be sentenced to death according to it.

The decision was immediately executed. -0-

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Report on Enlarged Meeting of Political Bureau of Central Committee of WPK (Jang Song-thaek)

Posted on 9 December 2013 by admin

http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2013/201312/news09/20131209-05ee.html

Pyongyang, December 9 (KCNA) — A report on the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) was released on December 8.

The following is the full text of the report:

An enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the WPK was held in Pyongyang, the capital of the revolution, on Dec. 8.

Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un, first secretary of the WPK, guided the meeting.

Present there were members and alternate members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the WPK.

Leading officials of the Central Committee of the WPK, provincial party committees and armed forces organs attended it as observers.

Our party members, service personnel and all other people have made energetic efforts to implement the behests of leader Kim Jong Il, entrusting their destiny entirely to Kim Jong Un and getting united close around the Central Committee of the WPK since the demise of Kim Jong Il, the greatest loss to the nation.

In this historic period for carrying forward the revolutionary cause of Juche the chance elements and alien elements who had made their ways into the party committed such anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts as expanding their forces through factional moves and daring challenge the party, while attempting to undermine the unitary leadership of the party.

In this connection, the Political Bureau of the C.C., the WPK convened its enlarged meeting and discussed the issue related to the anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts committed by Jang Song Thaek.

The meeting, to begin with, fully laid bare the anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts of Jang Song Thaek and their harmfulness and reactionary nature.

It is the immutable truth proved by the nearly 70-year-long history of the WPK that the party can preserve its revolutionary nature as the party of the leader and fulfill its historic mission only when it firmly ensures its unity and cohesion based on the monolithic idea and the unitary center of leadership.

The entire party, whole army and all people are dynamically advancing toward the final victory in the drive for the building of a thriving nation, meeting all challenges of history and resolutely foiling the desperate moves of the enemies of the revolution under the leadership of Kim Jong Un. Such situation urgently calls for consolidating as firm as a rock the single-minded unity of the party and the revolutionary ranks with Kim Jong Un as its unitary centre and more thoroughly establishing the monolithic leadership system of the party throughout the party and society.

The Jang Song Thaek group, however, committed such anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts as gnawing at the unity and cohesion of the party and disturbing the work for establishing the party unitary leadership system and perpetrated such ant-state, unpopular crimes as doing enormous harm to the efforts to build a thriving nation and improve the standard of people’s living.

Jang pretended to uphold the party and leader but was engrossed in such factional acts as dreaming different dreams and involving himself in double-dealing behind the scene.

Though he held responsible posts of the party and state thanks to the deep political trust of the party and leader, he committed such perfidious acts as shunning and obstructing in every way the work for holding President Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in high esteem for all ages, behaving against the elementary sense of moral obligation and conscience as a human being.

Jang desperately worked to form a faction within the party by creating illusion about him and winning those weak in faith and flatterers to his side.

Prompted by his politically-motivated ambition, he tried to increase his force and build his base for realizing it by implanting those who had been punished for their serious wrongs in the past period into ranks of officials of departments of the party central committee and units under them.

Jang and his followers did not sincerely accept the line and policies of the party, the organizational will of the WPK, but deliberately neglected their implementation, distorted them and openly played down the policies of the party. In the end, they made no scruple of perpetrating such counter-revolutionary acts as disobeying the order issued by the supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army.

The Jang group weakened the party’s guidance over judicial, prosecution and people’s security bodies, bringing very harmful consequences to the work for protecting the social system, policies and people.
Such acts are nothing but counter-revolutionary, unpopular criminal acts of giving up the class struggle and paralyzing the function of popular democratic dictatorship, yielding to the offensive of the hostile forces to stifle the DPRK.

Jang seriously obstructed the nation’s economic affairs and the improvement of the standard of people’s living in violation of the pivot-to-the-Cabinet principle and the Cabinet responsibility principle laid down by the WPK.

The Jang group put under its control the fields and units which play an important role in the nation’s economic development and the improvement of people’s living in a crafty manner, making it impossible for the economic guidance organs including the Cabinet to perform their roles.

By throwing the state financial management system into confusion and committing such act of treachery as selling off precious resources of the country at cheap prices, the group made it impossible to carry out the behests of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on developing the industries of Juche iron, Juche fertilizer and Juche vinalon.

Affected by the capitalist way of living, Jang committed irregularities and corruption and led a dissolute and depraved life.

By abusing his power, he was engrossed in irregularities and corruption, had improper relations with several women and was wined and dined at back parlors of deluxe restaurants.

Ideologically sick and extremely idle and easy-going, he used drugs and squandered foreign currency at casinos while he was receiving medical treatment in a foreign country under the care of the party.
Jang and his followers committed criminal acts baffling imagination and they did tremendous harm to our party and revolution.

The ungrateful criminal acts perpetrated by the group of Jang Song Thaek are lashing our party members, service personnel of the People’s Army and people into great fury as it committed such crimes before they observed two-year mourning for Kim Jong Il, eternal general secretary of the WPK.
Speeches were made at the enlarged meeting.

Speakers bitterly criticized in unison the anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts committed by the Jang group and expressed their firm resolution to remain true to the idea and leadership of Kim Jong Un and devotedly defend the Party Central Committee politically and ideologically and with lives.
The meeting adopted a decision of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee on relieving Jang of all posts, depriving him of all titles and expelling him and removing his name from the WPK.

The party served warning to Jang several times and dealt blows at him, watching his group’s anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts as it has been aware of them from long ago. But it did not pay heed to it but went beyond tolerance limit. That was why the party eliminated Jang and purged his group, unable to remain an onlooker to its acts any longer, dealing telling blows at sectarian acts manifested within the party.

Our party will never pardon anyone challenging its leadership and infringing upon the interests of the state and people in violation of the principle of the revolution, regardless of his or her position and merits.

No matter how mischievously a tiny handful of anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional elements may work, they can never shake the revolutionary faith of all party members, service personnel and people holding Kim Jong Un in high esteem as the unitary centre of unity and unitary centre of leadership.
The discovery and purge of the Jang group, a modern day faction and undesirable elements who happened to worm their ways into our party ranks, made our party and revolutionary ranks purer and helped consolidate our single-minded unity remarkably and advance more dynamically the revolutionary cause of Juche along the road of victory.

No force on earth can deter our party, army and people from dynamically advancing toward a final victory, single-mindedly united around Kim Jong Un under the uplifted banner of great Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism.

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Artist Creates Elaborate Non-Photoshopped Scenes in Her Small Studio

Posted on 3 December 2013 by admin

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/lee-jeeyoung-stage-of-mind-room
Alice Yoo

Lee Jee Young 1

Like American artist Sandy Skoglund, Jee Young Lee creates highly elaborate scenes that require an incredible amount of patience and absolutely no photo manipulation. For weeks and sometimes months, the young Korean artist works in the confines of her small 360 x 410 x 240 cm studio bringing to life worlds that defy all logic. In the middle of the sets you can always find the artist herself, as these are self-portraits but of the unconventional kind. Inspired by either her personal life or old Korean fables, they each have their own backstory, which of course, only adds to the intense drama.

From February 7 to March 7, 2014, OPIOM Gallery in Opio, France is proud to present a selection of Lee’s ongoing body of work called Stage of Mind. This will be her first European exhibition.

Above: Resurrection
Inspired by the Story of Shim Cheong, a Korea folktale as well as by Shakespeare’s Ophelia, Lee JeeYoung made this installation by painting paper lotus and flooding the room with fog and carbonic ice in order to create a mystic atmosphere.

Lotus flowers grow from the impure mud to reach for the light and bloom to the rise and fall of the sun; in Asia, it bears various cultural symbolisms such as prospects and rebirth. It is also known for its purifying function. The presence of the artist in the heart of such flower is meant to convey her personal experience. “I was born again by overcoming negative elements that had dragged me down and cleansed myself emotionally. The figure within a lotus blooming implies a stronger self who was just born again and is facing a new world”. It is this is very moment when one reaches maturity and full-potential that Lee illustrates in “Resurrection”, and, more generally speaking, throughout the entirety of her corpus.

Lee Jee Young 2
Treasure Hunt
Treasure Hunt is based on the artist’s childhood memories. Lee devoted three months to crafting the lush multitude of wire leaves – it evokes a child-like wonderland.

Lee Jee Young 3
Panic Room
Contrasting with Lee’s legend- and literature-inspired moral messages, Panic Room is also based on the artist’s childhood memories. Amidst Panic Room’s swirling patterns, objects fly off in all directions in an absurd dizziness.

Lee Jee Young 4
Broken Heart
Broken Heart makes visual the Korean expression “like breaking a stone with an egg” – an ineffectual effort against insurmountable adversity.

Lee Jee Young 5
I’ll Be Back
This piece is based upon a Korean fable in which a tiger chases desperate children into a well. A god lowered a rope from the sky by which the child escaped, but when the tiger cried out for help, a rotten rope was lowered, condemning the tiger to a miserable fate. Painted traditional fans are meticulously arranged as a whirlpool, while a hand emerges from its eye to grab a rope hanging down from above; hope can save oneself from even what can appear as the most desperate situation.

Lee Jee Young 6
My Chemical Romance
Many pipe lines crawl on the building walls of the artist’s neighborhood in Mangwondong (Seoul). Forming checkered and intertwined structures, rather than being merely straight, pipes creep up the exterior of a building and connect each space within it; whether for gas or water, they play a delivering-in-and-out role and function as a sort of passageway. From this angle, they appear to the artist as elements of nervousness and danger which she associates with social interactions and communication. Complicatedly intertwined, much like a maze or obstacles in a hurdle race, they remind her of the potential misunderstanding, anxiety or disappointment to which misunderstandings can lead to. The difficulty of such interactions is highlighted by the black and yellow PVC pipes, usually inherent to danger warnings in industrial sites or traffic and road signs. In addition, steam generated by a fog machine connected to the pipes symbolizes the moment of conflict and clash in relationships and communication.

A black dog slowly walking out of the frame in this autobiographic piece indicates a specific person who inflicted pain onto the artist. Or, as she suggests, it may represent others in general as opposed to the woman in the back, who is the artist herself.

Lee Jee Young 7
Last Supper
Last Supper conflates the Christian image of the meal that foreshadows Jesus’ impending demise with the competition for limited resources illustrated by hundreds of rats racing toward the table from which the artist appears to be rescuing a plate of cheese.

Lee Jee Young 8
Birthday

Lee Jee Young 9
Maiden Voyage

Lee Jee Young 10
The Little Match Girl

Lee Jee Young 11
Food Chain

Lee Jee Young 12
Nightmare

Lee Jee Young 13
Nightscape

Lee Jee Young 14
Black Birds

As Hyewon Yi, Director and Curator of Amelie A. Wallace Gallery states, “Drawing upon prodigious powers of imagination, she labors for months to create effects that seem to expand and contract physical space. And always, a lone figure inhabits and completes her narratives. Jee Young Lee assumes the roles of set designer, sculptor, performer, installation artist, and photographer – and she executes them all magically.”

http://www.opiomgallery.com/fr/artistes/oeuvresphotographe/17/jeeyoung-lee

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Theater veteran brings modern touch to pansori

Posted on 18 September 2013 by admin

http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/Article.aspx?aid=2977739
‘I’ve realized that pansori is our great asset, and there’s a reason our ancestors enjoyed it.’
By Park Sang-moon

Yun Ho-jin

Yun Ho-jin

“Seopyeonje,” a book written by the late novelist Lee Cheong-jun, centers around the sad and often tragic life of a family of traditional pansori singers, traveling the country after the 1950-53 Korean War and performing their music. It has been made into a film and a musical – but, ironically, never a changgeuk, a Korean opera performed with pansori-style narrative singing.

(The pansori has just one singer, but a changgeuk can have up to 30 actors.)

Perhaps this is because many Koreans do not have much respect for either the pansori or changgeuk, considering them boring and difficult music forms, that theater directors have been so hesitant.

But Yun Ho-jin, 64, who is often referred to as “the godfather” of Korean musicals, challenged this notion, choosing to modernize the changgeuk into something that might “appeal to both Korean and international audiences.”

“I’ve directed theater plays and musicals but never a changgeuk,” said Yun. “So I had to research and study a lot about pansori, and I realized that it has such great strengths and charms of its own. But the reason it has been neglected even by our own people is the way it’s been presented.

“Many Koreans, especially the young these days, are exposed to Western-style music. Our ears are accustomed to the sounds of Western instruments, so traditional music such as pansori becomes tedious to the modern ear. In such a situation, just tossing together something very traditional and asking Koreans to enjoy it just because it’s ours isn’t the way to preserve our culture. We must make it a little more appealing, a little more interesting, so that audiences naturally get attracted to it. Otherwise, it only sparks resistance.”

Yun is the head of Acom, a theatrical production company, and the dean of the Graduate School of Performing Arts at Hongik University. He started as an artistic director for plays and expanded into creating Korean musicals, including “The Last Empress,” “Wandeuk” and “Hero.”

Now he has turned “Seopyeonje” into a changgeuk, a feat that was picked to open this season at the National Theater of Korea. The play, which is performed by the National Changgeuk Company, kicked off at the National Theater last Friday and will run through Saturday.

“The performance had been staged in March, right after I finished directing President Park Geun-hye’s inauguration ceremony,” said Yun. “I was really busy back then, so I couldn’t entirely put my focus on the production, but it still managed to receive a great response from the audience.”

To hear more about Yun’s changgeuk version of “Seopyeonje,” the Korea JoongAng Daily sat down with him last week. Here are some excerpts from the interview.

A scene from Changgeuk Seopyeonje. Provided by the National Changgeuk Company

A scene from “Changgeuk Seopyeonje.” Provided by the National Changgeuk Company

Q. You never directed a changgeuk or studied pansori before. How did you accomplish this?

A. Back in 1972, I had a chance to listen to the entire rendition of a one-person pansori performance of “Simcheongga,” which lasted about four hours. Despite the length, I was really touched by the performance. That’s when I realized that pansori is our great asset. I thought to myself that the pansori “Simcheongga” would be interesting to watch as a changgeuk, because in pansori, only one person sings all the characters in a story. But because I am a theater director, I forgot about it and carried on with my own work. When Ahn Ho-sang became the president of the National Theater of Korea in 2012, I happened to say to him in passing that great literary works like “Seopyeonje” would be far more interesting as a changgeuk than a film or a musical. So when Kim Seong-nyeo became the artistic director of the National Changgeuk Company, she called me and said that she had heard from Ahn about my comments and asked if I could do it. I accepted, but I had a lot on my plate, including the preparation of President Park’s inauguration ceremony, so I barely managed to stage it in March.

As I didn’t know anything about pansori, I worked closely with the veteran pansori singer Ahn Sook-seon to create “Changgeuk Seopyeonje.”

What was the main focus for you in directing “Changgeuk Seopyeonje”?

I really put a lot of thought into how to approach the audience, who think of pansori and changgeuk as boring and difficult traditional performances. I wanted to create a changgeuk that’s enjoyable. That’s why I decided to use the pansori “Simcheongga” as the main source of this production. The story is ironic, because in the story of Simcheong, the devoted daughter Simcheong sacrifices her life to give her blind father his sight back; but, in “Seopyeonje,” the father Yu-bong, who is a pansori singer, makes his daughter go blind because he believes that the sound of pansori can be elevated to the highest standard only through han [the collective feeling of oppression and isolation]. So the two contrasting sentiments works well in “Changgeuk Seopyeonje.”

Veteran film director Im Kwon-taek first made “Seopyeonje” into a film in 1993, and it was also produced as a musical in 2002. Did you watch them?

I’ve watched the musical while it was being staged and the movie, I downloaded it only recently and watched it. But both of them, in my perspective, have a crucial point missing, which is explaining the real reason why the father blinds his daughter. It’s dealt with quite vaguely in both the film and the musical. In fact, it’s vague in the novel as well. But I believe, to appeal to the modern audience, the story has to be logical.

For example, it’s hard to believe that the father makes his daughter go blind just so that she gets a profound sense of han and becomes a true pansori singer. What’s the real motivation behind that? The daughter Song-hwa and her brother Dong-ho are half-brothers and sisters. They depend on each other as they travel around performing pansori, so it’s quite realistic for them to feel something more than sibling love. The father could’ve found out about this, misunderstood their closeness and imagined something worse. It’s like a folk tale, but I heard that such situations existed in the world of pansori singers, as they traveled a lot, always spending time with each other. When they perform, they unite and become one and sometimes moral and ethical thinking collapses and things happened. So such a “real motivation” can be analogized from their lifestyle. The father not only made his daughter go blind because he wanted his daughter to become the best pansori singer through deprivation, but also because of many other reasons. In the end, the performance finishes with the daughter and the father reconciling, as the father realizes that the height of pansori cannot be reached only through han.

You said you’ve added modern touches to changgeuk to appeal to the modern audiences of today. Have you always been so concerned about Korean traditional culture such as changgeuk and pansori being neglected?

I’ve realized that pansori is our great asset, and there’s a reason behind why our ancestors enjoyed it so much in the old days. I wanted more people, including young Koreans and even foreigners, to appreciate pansori – not because we have to, but because we want to.

For example, let’s say we want to globalize cheonggukjang [fermented soybean paste soup that has a strong smell]. We don’t want to just thrust it on young Koreans or foreigners. It needs to have a story. Why cheonggukjang should be enjoyed, or why it’s delicious. You have to make people interested in it and motivate them to try it. And for them to enjoy it, you could cook cheonggukjang in a different way, maybe less strong or mixing it with something else, so that it can be enjoyed more by them. It doesn’t make cheonggukjang a Western food. It’s still a Korean food. I believe traditional culture is the same. While I was studying in New York, I heard from Americans that they’ve heard and seen enough of Korean traditional performances like pansori, fan dances and samulnori. They wanted something more than just that, something that is traditional and that can touch their hearts at the same time. That’s why I worked with Korean-Japanese pianist Yang Bang-ean for “Changgeuk Seopyeonje,” to give a sprinkle of Western sound, of a piano on top of the traditional Korean sound of the pansori. It’s more familiar and easier to listen to for the modern ear.

You said you want to appeal to foreigners as well. Will you have subtitles for them to enjoy “Changgeuk Seopyeonje”?

Yes, subtitles are provided in Engish. I realized that foreigners can really appreciate Korean culture through the performing arts. When the Bond girl, Caterina Murino, visited Korea in 2006, I heard her say in a press conference that she watched my musical, “The Last Empress,” the night before because she had some free time. I always have English subtitles for all my productions, so the musical had it, too. She said that she was greatly touched by it and said that she didn’t know that Korea had such a great show like that. There was also this foreigner in Korea who was head of the Korean branch of a foreign stock company. After watching “The Last Empress,” he told me that he’s been living in Korea for about two and a half years, but the two-and-a-half hour show of “The Last Empress” taught him more about Korean culture than his stay in the country. The following year, when we staged the musical again, he visited again with his parents-in-law. So, yes, “Changgeuk Seopyeonje” has English subtitles. And I want to say to [potential audiences], no matter what you’ve heard about changgeuk and pansori – maybe that it’s boring or difficult – that this production will be different. So don’t miss it.

BY YIM SEUNG-HYE [sharon@joongang.co.kr]

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