North Korean Comedy Romances the World From Pyongyang

Jakarta Globe, Andrew Salmon, October 21, 2012

Filmmakers Anja Daelemans and Nick Bonner with a poster of their movie
Comrade  Kim Goes Flying, made entirely in North Korea, at the 17h Busan
International Film Festival on Oct 10. (AFP Photo)

               

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A romantic comedy may be unusual fare from a country better known for exporting snarling rhetoric.

But for one of the co-producers of the new North Korean movie “Comrade Kim Goes Flying,” such unconventional projects are business as usual.

“There is no great big, bloody mission here,” said Briton Nick Bonner, 50, who has been working with the reclusive state since the early 1990s. “It is about engagement.”

Engagement with North Korea is something Bonner knows well. He has guided more than 12,000 international tourists around the country — including Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler — co-produced award-winning documentaries and even taken a British women’s football team to play in Pyongyang. There are also some Singaporeans among his clients.

“Comrade Kim Goes Flying,” his first feature film, played at the Toronto and Pyongyang film festivals in September. Its South Korean premiere was at the Busan International Film Festival earlier this month.

It follows the odyssey of an attractive coal miner, (played by Han Jong Shim) whose dream is to become a trapeze artist in Pyongyang. Standing in her way is an arrogant acrobat (Pak Chang Guk), who refuses to believe that “Comrade Kim” has the right stuff — until he falls in love with her.

South Koreans, normally prohibited from watching North Korean media, were charmed.

“It was a bit like South Korean soap operas and home dramas with family settings,” said audience member Hwang Yun Mi, a 32-year-old teacher of English and film studies. “It was identifiable; it was not alien to me.”

The feel-good, “girl-power” flick, which cost 1 million euros ($1.3 million) to produce, is a three-way collaboration between North Korea filmmaker Kim Gwang Hun, Oscar-nominated Belgian filmmaker Anja Daelemans, and Bonner, whose Beijing-based company, Koryo Group, has been operating in North Korea since 1993.

“I had helped at the Pyongyang film festival and seen how ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ was received in 2004,” Bonner said. “It is about putting out a universal story with universal values; something that could be written and seen and understood by people outside North Korea.”

It has been a winding path for the Briton, who never specialized in North Korea academically and who, to this day, speaks the language only haltingly. His affair with the country came by chance.

Bonner, who originally planned to be a landscape architect, traveled to Beijing to visit a friend after graduating. While there, he played football with and befriended a North Korean who invited him to visit his country. After the visit, the friend — who comes from a family with good connections — suggested Bonner establish a tour company to bring Westerners in. The rest is history.

Koryo’s 13 employees in Beijing are Westerners and Chinese; in North Korea the firm works with the state-run Korea International Travel Company. While there are bigger Chinese tour companies, Koryo is believed to be the largest company taking non-Chinese into North Korea. It has since expanded into art, sporting and cultural projects, as well as tourism to other off-beat destinations, such as the Russian Far East and Central Asia.

Bonner has also worked on three British-produced North Korean TV documentaries, including “The Game Of Their Lives,” about the North Korean 1966 World Cup Squad which beat Italy in a shock upset, and “Crossing The Line,” about the last living American defector in North Korea.

Bonner said the North Korean officials he deals with are completely trustworthy.

“I have never been cheated by the Korean colleagues we work with,” he said.

His Korean contacts have proven tolerant of Westerners’ foibles, he said, citing the case of an American tourist who insisted on walking around without an escort.

“The guide said, ‘It is a pity he wasted his money, he has already made up his mind about our country,’” Bonner recalled. “The maturity was shown by the guide.”

On the more positive side, Bonner said some of his clients have played cricket and Morris danced (an English folk dance) in North Korea; one client even proposed to his fiancee there. And once, a marching battalion of soldiers, agog at the Western tourists, broke ranks and waved.

When it comes to questions of dictatorship, repression, human rights abuse, starvation and nuclear arms, Bonner declined comment, though he admitted operating in Pyongyang had difficulties.

“If you can make a romantic comedy in North Korea, you can run the six-party talks,” he said.

He was, however, more critical of the way the international community is driving Pyongyang further into isolation.

“A consistent policy of critical engagement would suit us,” he said. “We prove that you can engage with North Korean people.”

And his next adventure? Having taken Middlesbrough’s Women’s Team to North Korea, he is keen to do the same thing in reverse.

“I’d love to take a North Korean women’s football team to Europe.” he said. “Who wouldn’t?”

— Reprinted Courtesy The Straits Times

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