What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Kim Jong Il Bashing? An Interview With Bruce Cumings

Published in The Fanzine, March 2007

University of Chicago history professor Bruce Cumings has written about the politics of both Koreas for over 25 years, most recently in North Korea: Another Country and Inventing the Axis of Evil. He has been outspoken on the need for normalization of U.S.-North Korean relations and a diplomatic solution to the nuclear stand off. Cumings’ work has also been critical of U.S. support for previous South Korean dictators, such as Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan, who came to power through military coups and used torture and assassination to silence critics and repress labor movements. In this interview he gives a perspective on North Korea not often heard in mainstream news coverage and describes his own experiences under South Korean dictatorships.

For the interview check out The Fanzine

Guy Delisle “Pyongyang”

Originally published in Planet magazine, Summer 2005

Pyongyang records comic book artist Guy Delisle’s time in North Korea supervising productions at a Saturday morning cartoon maquilladora, where during food shortages France’s largest television network pays its staff of animators with bags of rice. His book is a portrait of both the transnational infotainment economy and the country famously included in Bush’s Axis of Evil. “North Korea is the world’s most isolated country,” says Delisle, “Foreigners trickle in. There’s no internet. There’s no cafes…It’s hard to leave the hotel and meeting Koreans is next to impossible.” Like all foreign visitors, Delisle’s travel is tightly controlled by his government-issued translators, who shadow him at every step. Even when he is able to shake them off, they somehow know exactly where he’s been. Propaganda blares from speakers in every office and portraits of the world’s only father and son Communist dynasty, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Son, adorn every wall. Despite the country’s poverty and corruption, the most scathing public criticism Delisle encounters is when one man admits he finds the propaganda films boring. Due to his government enforced isolation, Delisle is unable to answer to the most intriguing question, whether citizens are terrified to dissent or whether they actually support the system in place.

The Developmentally Disabled Blonde Girl from Oklahoma who Spoke Perfect Korean

A modern parable based on a misunderstanding of Chomsky’s inborn language hypothesis originally published in Kitchen Sink and Canadian literary magazine The Shore.

Most of the babies born in Oklahoma City in 1972 weren’t born with a preference for any particular language. They were born with brains eager to learn English or French or Taiwanese or the Cherokee language of Tsalagi. But there was a little girl born with textbook perfect Korean inside of her head. When the doctor pulled her soft round skull into this world she wailed “Gamsa hamnida!” which means “Thank you.”