The Forbidden City

 

This is a somewhat peculiar French documentary (but with English voice-overs) about life in Pyongyang, the national capital of the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea. In other words, North Korea. Obviously, almost everything in it has been approved by the proper authorities, so don´t expect too much criticism of the Communist regime. However, here and there, the moderators have inserted at least some disagreement with their chaperons, presumably after being safely back in the free world! 

Judging by the docu, Pyongyang isn´t the grand Potemkin village it´s often depicted as in Western media. Or perhaps it did look like that during the famine crisis of the 1990´s. If so, the city has revived considerably - it looks perfectly livable, but perhaps with more bikes than cars? We meet both middle class and working class people enjoying the happy life in Pyongyang, which turns out to include visits to the monuments of the great leaders, watching large TV screens in the town square, shopping, dancing, bathing, bowling, or going on vacation to a nearby beach (which Trump apparently really liked when visiting the country). Of course, there are some differences to a "normal" city: the ever-present personality cult of the Kim family being the most obvious. 

Change is slowly coming even to North Korea. For instance, it´s considered acceptable for both men and women to dress according to their own individual tastes, something originally frown upon, when uniform dresses were (perhaps) mandatory. One woman interviewed says that even fat people "choose the color that suits them", whatever that means exactly! There are also shopping malls of an almost "capitalist" character, but they are hidden away inside large buildings which look empty from the outside. These are controlled by a class of noveau riche allowed by the regime. A lot of Chinese tourists visit the country every year. 

The moderators inform us that under Kim Il-sung, North Korea was a virtual caste society with about 40 different categories of people (Japanese collaborators and their descendants being the lowest), and marriages were only allowed within each caste. This system has now broken down and been abolished, but other forms of segregation still persist. Pyongyang is a forbidden city to most North Koreans, while others can visit only on their holidays. Only the privileged (and, I suppose, their servants) are allowed to live in the capital, and those that break the rules can be expelled and sent into virtual exile to a poorer part of the country. 

The moderators almost sarcastically wonder why North Korea has never marketed itself as a model for sustainable development. The DMZ between North and South Korea has a lot of pristine nature and stunning biodiversity, North Korean agriculture use almost no pesticides, and due to electric shortages, there is very little light pollution even in Pyongyang...

Why indeed. The real question is how long it will take for this hermit kingdom to emulate the Chinese model. Especially in its current form, combining state capitalism with an almost totalitarian regime, it must be very tempting for Kim Jong-un to move in such a direction. A new visit to Pyongyang in five or ten years might be interesting.