Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
North and South Korea
My Friend Kim Jong Un by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, published by Drawn and Quarterly, opens with a map of Korea, showing the small dotted line separating North Korea from the islands near the DMZ, a small stretch of water the only thing making a border between two countries in an uneasy peace. Gendry-Kim shows her experience living on Ganghwa, one of these islands, and hearing loud booms from artillery practicing. With war literally on the horizon, she wonders if they should move, she maps out her plans to find shelter if shelling actually turned on the island, and she even suggests her French husband keep his passport with him at all times in case he is captured and considered a spy by either side. It is all part of life on the Korean Peninsula.
From her own experience, Gendry-Kim looks into the life of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Both studied abroad, where is where Gendry-Kim first struggled with the political differences in the Koreas due to diplomatic relations. To her, it was always just Korea, though the north was an impossible place to reach. For Kim Jon Un, he studied in Switzerland under the name “Pak Un,” as one of his friends tells during a CNN interview. “He was really into sports, movies, and computers.” Years later, his friend came to North Korea and met him again, calling him “my friend” and “a good guy.” The words are surprising to hear about a dictator who orchestrated restructuring, including executions, to maintain the control that his grandfather established.
This unexpected balance shows up again and again as a theme through My Friend Kim Jon Un. Gendry-Kim explores family dynamics and the complexities of younger family members acting out and then being erased. Her interviews are extensive, such as a defector who considers her time in North Korea as good training for the capitalistic world in the South, where everything should be considered a resource.
She interviews former president Moon Jae-In, who held hands with Un while stepping over the Demarcation Line in 2018 though talks in Hanoi later fell apart, seeing reunification on such a big view that it is like a corporate merger. Many of her interviews are portrayed with blank faces in the panels, protecting the interviewees since suspicion continues on both sides. One even notes during an interview that a black car has been circling, and it could belong to the South Korean National Intelligence Service.
Research and autobiography mingle in the storytelling of My Friend Kim Jong Un, showing both the detailed interviewing and archival study in Gendry-Kim’s Grass as well as the touching personal views of Dog Days. She concludes with the story of Pepino, beginning with the ghost of a boy appearing in her hotel room while on a book tour in Colombia. As a boy, Pepino was smuggled out of Korea by Colombian soldiers and raised with an adoptive family to escape the horrors of famine. He returns only briefly decades later, but he states that Korea is home. Gendry-Kim shows her final pages walking her dogs with the same note that Korea is home, no matter how complicated or noisy.
