“I wanted to capture something of the sadness, the shabbiness, and the fear in daily life. Everyone we saw wore a blank ‚mask‘,” describes writer D. B. John his visit of North Korea in interview for Lidovky.cz. He used his knowledge of this country to write political thriller Star of the North. The political thriller was published by Domino.
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| Author: © Ollie Grove |
Not at all – I really only wanted to write exciting stories that would take readers‘ minds to places they never imagined going. But I love the writing of George Orwell, Franz Kafka, Robert Harris, and Margaret Attwood, and I have been fascinated since boyhood by tyranny and dystopia, so I guess the stories I would end up writing would all be political to some degree. North Korea is especially fascinating since the regime there (like the Soviet Bloc in Stalin’s time) recognises no separation between public and private life. There is no thought or feeling that falls outside authority of the Party. Every subject is potentially political and potentially dangerous. This is why people in North Korea have to be very careful what they say out loud, even in front of their children.
Some publishers are not quite „open” about publishing a book that puts the plot in a place where the author did not live and has no further experience with him. How was it in your case?Many writers choose not to stray outside the landscapes they know best. Not even an imaginative genius like Murakami ever sets a story outside Japan. Perhaps because I grew up in a place I longed to escape from – a rough area of industrial South Wales in the 1970s – that I have always craved escapism and otherness. Setting a story in a culture radically different from my own was very appealing to me. Of course, to make it convincing and authentic to publishers and readers alike the story involved a huge amount of research, and and a visit to the world‘s last remaining totalitarian tyranny – not exactly a destination on everyone’s vacation list!
You visited DPRK in 2012. How did this experience help you write the story?
I don’t think I can write honestly about a place without seeing it with my own eyes. I travelled on an official tour, but what the regime showed me was very revealing and instructive. We had two North Korean guides, but I noticed that neither would talk to me unless both of them were present. This was becasue they kept each other under surveillance. (It would be suspicious if either of them were alone with a foreigner). I picked up many details that found their way into the story. For example I noticed that no one would EVER mention the Kims without carefully and respectfully affixing one of their titles – Great Leader, Dear Leader, and so on. I also sensed the deep insecurity behind the propaganda. I was in the country in April 2012, the centenary of Kim Il-sung’s birth. The regime celebrated by launching a satellite rocket that exploded before it reached orbit. When our guides admitted this they were mute with shame and loss of face. By the end of two weeks I think I was suffering from propaganda sickness. I realised that the North Korean worldview is founded on lies and made-up legends. It was very tiring to be told, many times, that the South started the Korean War in 1950 (it didn’t), or that Kim Jong-il was born on the sacred Mount Paektu (he wasn’t). Imagine someone escaping North Korea and discovering that the beliefs they’ve held all their lives are totally untrue. Some of the locations I visited, particularly the creepy Yanggakdo Hotel, feature prominently in the novel. At mealtimes we were served huge amounts of food – more than anyone could eat. The message to us was ‚see how much food we have!‘ This was depressing. We knew it was all for show, and that hunger and malnutrition were still common in the villages and rural towns. Most of all, I wanted to capture something of the sadness, the shabbiness, and the fear in daily life. Everyone we saw wore a blank ‚mask‘. It was impossible to tell what they were thinking or feeling.
Did you have the opportunity to see Pyongyang's non-touristic part during your visit? How was your visit?
Only by chance. With so many foreigners in the country for the celebrations of 2012 it was impossible to monitor all of us all the time, and occasionally we got a glimpse of reality behind the ‚stage scenery‘. I saw children in filthy clothes who were not at school and were obviously living on the streets; I saw empty factories, women washing clothes in a dirty river, and farmers ploughing rock-strewn fields with oxen. Some things were impossible for the regime to hide, for example the power cuts, when the hotel would suddenly be plunged in darkness.
A lot of scenes in the book are based on real events. How time-consuming were researches?
Well, the novel did take me five years, off and on – a long time. I read so many memoirs and histories, and of course I interviewed several North Korean defectors who were living in Seoul. As with all novel research, I only used a tiny fraction of what I learned. The novel took longer than expected to write becasue I took a break from it to work on another book: in 2015 I was given just four months to co-author The Girl With Seven Names, the memoir of North Korean defector Hyeonseo Lee. Her account of how she left North Korea and lived as a fugitive for years in China was so exciting that it felt as if I was working on a thriller. As you can imagine, I learned a great deal from her about life under the Kims. Her courage, intelligence, and strength of will inspired many aspects of Star of the North.
Was it difficult for you to write any particular scene, for example because you had to embrace North Korean way of thinking?
I had to be mindful of the way North Koreans behave. For example, it is UNTHINKABLE to criticise the government or the Kims. Such talk could get you killed. People do grumble, of course, but they do it in a very coded way. So when I was writing the market scenes I had to take care how the women talked and gossiped.
There are three main characters in the book: Professor Jenna Williams, the CIA wants to recruit, High North Korean officer Cho and Mrs. Mun, who is about to gain a better „social status” thanks to her entrepreneurial spirit. Did you know from the beginning, the fate of all the characters?
Yes, I knew from the beginning, although I changed my mind about the ending several times. I wanted the challenge of taking three totally unconnected strangers and seeing if I could make their lives connect. The plot was really the easy part. Much more difficult part was writing the characters, and making them believable enough to give you an idea of what life is like in North Korea. It took a long time before I reached that ,magical moment‘ where the characters took on a life of their own and I knew what they would say and do.
Character of Mr. Chong made me feel like I was reading about Mengele in some way. Did you not find an inspiration in him?
Definitely yes. Especially in the way Dr. Mengele would select his victims from open-air line-ups. Another true detail taken from Auschwitz was the deception used on people entering the gas chamber. They were told to fold their clothes carefully, remember their hook number; and that in return for their hard work they would be fed and their health cared for. North Korean labor camps are very similar to those of Nazi Germany in their brutality and appaling conditions. Some would even argue that they are worse, because there is less food. I don’t know if similar deceptions are used in the human experiments in North Korea. I fictionalised this for the novel.
Did you get any response from North Korean refugees after you published the book? If so, what did they say to the book?
The book has been translated into many languages, but not into Korean. This did not surprise me. South Korea does not regard its northern neighbour as a suitable subject for literary entertainment. Most people in the South prefer not even to think about the North. Kim Jong-un is like their mad uncle in the attic – a subject best avoided. So, sadly no defectors have given me their responses, though I hope one day some of them may read the book and tell me what I got wrong and what I got right.
I read, you would like to continue with the story. Will the DPRK play the role again in the story?
Yes, the story will continue with Jenna, and some of the other characters from the story, but this time the action is moving to another dictatorship: Russia.
The interview was originally published on server Lidovky.cz in Czech language.
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