The strange, secretive world of North Korean science fiction

A plane is flying to the Philippines, gliding above "the infinite surface" of the Pacific Ocean. Suddenly, a few passengers start to scream. Soon, the captain announces there's a bomb on board, and it’s set to detonate if the aircraft drops below 10,000 feet. "The inside of the plane turned into a battlefield," the story reads. "The captain was visibly startled and vainly tried to calm down the screaming and utterly terrorized passengers." Only one person keeps his cool: a young North Korean diplomat who has faith that his country will find a solution and save everyone. And he’s right. North Korea's esteemed scientists and engineers create a mysterious anti-gravitational field and stop the plane in mid-air. The bomb is defused, and everyone gets off the aircraft and is brought back safely to Earth. This story, Change Course (Hangno rǔl pakkura) by Yi Kŭmchǒl, speaks about solidarity, peace, and love for the motherland, displaying an intricate relationship between literature and politics. It was first published in 2004 in the Chosǒn munhak magazine, only to be reprinted 13 years later, around the time North Korea claimed it was capable of launching attacks on US soil. "Political messages in every North Korean sci-fi can be hardly missed," historian of science Dong-Won Kim, who taught at Harvard University and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, told me. The genre grew under the wings of the supreme leaders. Late dictator Kim Jong-il referenced science fiction books in his speeches and set guidelines for authors, encouraging them to write about optimistic futures for their country. Stories often touch on topics like space travel, benevolent robots, disease-curing nanobots, and deep-sea exploration. They lack aliens and beings with superpowers. Instead, the real superheroes are the exceptional North Korean scientists and technologists who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. These stories are often rich in political tension, featuring "breathtaking confrontations between North Korea and the United States," said Jang Hyuk, a young math graduate who defected from North Korea a few years ago. As in Change Course, North Koreans in sci-fi are typically portrayed as trying to save somebody, while the Americans are the villains who want "to monopolize and weaponize [technology] to dominate the world," he added. To a Western reader, such plots might seem ludicrous, perhaps designed to boost the confidence of a nation with little contact with the rest of the world. However, exploring them deeper might reveal a more nuanced layer of understanding. "When I read Change Course, I find myself constantly thinking: If I were watching this same story as a Hollywood movie and the protagonists were Americans, my reaction would be very different," said researcher Benoît Berthelier, lecturer at the University of Sydney, who published several papers on Korean literature. "When you experience familiar plot structures and tropes but with the protagonists and antagonists reversed, there's a distancing effect that makes you question why only certain configurations of good and bad roles feel uncontroversial."

Building a utopia

At first, North Korean sci-fi sat on the shoulders of Soviet literature. Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea who ruled the country from its establishment in 1948, took a bit of inspiration from Joseph Stalin. Under the Soviet dictator, writers and artists in the Eastern Bloc had to follow official directives regarding content and style, so every poem, short story, or novel had to align with the party ideology. The thought that literature could be used to push propaganda resonated with Kim Il-sung, who recommended that North Korean authors translate Soviet works. They were also told to write their own stories depicting a thriving communist society. The main themes of early North Korean sci-fi revolved around the lives and struggles of ordinary people who used science and technology to better themselves and the world. Plots of man taming nature were frequent in both North Korea and the Soviet Union, which had slogans like "Correcting nature's mistakes" and "Man, in transforming nature, transforms himself." As the Cold War intensified, the Soviet Union's influence became stronger in North Korea, and in 1957, when Sputnik 1 was launched into space, the country's writers celebrated the achievement. Korean poet Paek Sŏk wrote a poem, The Third Satellite (Che 3 In'gong wisǒng), that tells the story of the journey through the eyes of the object going "beyond the atmosphere," "past the constellations and among the asteroids." The success of the Sputnik 1 mission meant that the Americans were no longer controlling the sky, a powerful message for North Koreans who remembered that the US Air Force bombed their country just a few years earlier during the Korean War. According to some estimates, American jets dropped 635,000 tons of bombs, which included 32,000 tons of napalm. Twelve to 15 percent of the population was killed, and Pyongyang and other major cities were almost reduced to rubble.

Seen through these lenses, the poem about Sputnik 1 is symbolic. It praises the Soviets, touching on concepts like liberation and freedom. The satellite mission offered "proof of the power and absolute morality of communism," wrote Korean literature researcher Kim Minsun in her paper "Inside North Korean Literature: The Hidden Meaning of Narratives." At the end of that decade, in 1959, the Soviets added another accomplishment when Luna 2 became the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon. Science fiction stories about lunar missions became a hit in North Korea, as the Moon was a mythical object that intrigued people of all ages. These works of literature often featured children. Authors "celebrated young, courageous, diligent, scientifically minded, and inquisitive boys and girls of North Korea who (often with Soviet guidance) thwarted evil plans devised by American imperialists," researcher Dafna Zur wrote in her paper "Let's Go to the Moon: Science Fiction in the North Korean Children's Magazine Adong Munhak, 1956–1965." Many of these stories highlight the power and influence this small country had on the world while underscoring "the crucial role played by scientific knowledge for the survival of the North Korean state," as Zur put it. Numbers and scientific jargon—more or less accurate—informed the young minds while engaging plots aimed to entertain and inspire, convincing citizens to choose lucrative careers in science and technology. But not all members of the audience were interested in satellites and lunar probes. These concepts were far too alien to many North Koreans living in the countryside, who used the wooden bull-carried plow. Sci-fi authors wanted to appeal to them as well, so they created stories around the technology peasants associated with liberation: the tractor. The agricultural machine had the potential to transform their lives, helping them achieve a higher status in society. The tractor was also a powerful symbol of Soviet propaganda, and it was featured in many romantic dramas and comedies. "A man attractive to women in Soviet cinema is not handsome but rather is someone proficient in operating a tractor," professor Rina Lapidus at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, wrote in her paper "The 'Erotic' Tractor in the Soviet Cinema." In many films such as The Rich Bride (romantic comedy, 1937), Tractor Drivers (romantic drama, 1939), or It Happened in Penkovo (romantic drama, 1958), tractors were sacred objects, and the mechanics operating them were almost superheroes. But the fraternal bond between the North Koreans and the Soviet Union started to fade away in the late 1960s when North Korea began to push its Juche ideology, which emphasized political independence and self-reliance. With this realignment, "a self-perception of Korea being the most important country in the world took hold," Kim Minsun wrote in her paper. "The rhetoric of a unique 'paradise on Earth' was brought to the fore through this process." Juche influenced science fiction, which started to feature an increasing number of North Korean scientists and engineers who explored space and acquired self-reliant technologies such as new energy sources or new minerals. At the same time, authors began to take more inspiration from their peers in China; both North Korean and Chinese sci-fi strongly emphasize nationalism and patriotism. North Korean writers even had a book on literary theory that was intended to teach them "how to apply Kim[-il Sung]'s ideas to their future works by providing them with Kim's words on the subject and their proper interpretations," according to science historian Dong-Won Kim. In the 1980s, when Kim Jong-il was officially appointed as his father's successor, these tendencies increased further. Kim Jong-il was deeply involved in propaganda and emphasized that sci-fi authors had to create literature that followed the party ideology. They had to show socialism triumphing over capitalism and how the ballistic missile program kept the country safe. To prevent any misbehavior, authors were forced to show their drafts to the censorship bureau, which had to green-light them before being published. Since even small mistakes could have long-term consequences, most writers avoided taking risks and followed approved story plots. Whenever in doubt, authors resorted to self-censorship. Obviously, mentioning the leader of North Korea in stories or novels was unthinkable. "To imagine and project the future of this entity that can never be at fault is close to impossible," Kim Minsun wrote. In North Korean sci-fi, "the highest dignity is depicted by means of its absence."

Recent science fiction works

Although North Korean sci-fi is unusual and often breathtaking, it's relatively unknown in the Western world. Few stories have made it across the border, and so far, none have been published in English. Berthelier, who provided the translation for Change Course, hopes that he'll one day be able to gather several sci-fi stories into an anthology. He's fascinated by them. Change Course, he says, features "a unique style of spectacular science fiction that mixes Cold War antagonism, spy novel tropes, and innovative military technology."

Some of these elements surface at the beginning of the piece, where the writer Yi Kŭmchǒl introduces his lead character: Kim Sǒkjin, the fearless North Korean diplomat who is flying home after having spent a long time in the United States. Soon after he boards the plane, Sǒkjin reminisces about his time abroad. He thinks about the foreigners he saw in the US who left their home countries after being "seduced by the promises of the free world." Often, these people "ended up wandering streets aimlessly" in places like New York, which the author describes at length:

The luxurious apartments on top of the high-rises, the lively avenues of Manhattan, the slums of Harlem and their atrocious stench… The depraved streets of New York, where, at night, jazz made people dizzy as if it had stolen their souls. The blinking neon lights that burned people's retinas...

Aboard the plane, Sǒkjin sits next to a young Russian woman, Nina Vassilievna, who is also returning home from the US. She is joined by her father, a gray-haired astrophysicist named Vassili Ivanovitch. The woman lost her mother "last fall, in a car accident in New York," and she can't wait to get back to Russia, where she feels safe. When news breaks that a bomb is on the plane, Sǒkjin keeps his cool. He finds solace in thinking about his country:

How sad would the motherland be upon learning that one of its sons had ended up in ashes, scattered in foreign skies. Ah, if only I could have looked at the motherland's plains and mountains one last time, I would have no regrets… Isn't there one final thing I could do for my motherland?

Eventually, the captain notifies the ground that there's a bomb, and soon, the whole world learns about this incident. Every country on Earth is asked to come up with ideas to save the passengers, but only one is capable of finding a solution: North Korea. So the plane's course is changed for Pyongyang. Meanwhile, aboard the aircraft, passengers learn that the bomb was placed by a group of Americans who wanted to assassinate the Russian Vassili Ivanovitch. The astrophysicist had worked for a US corporation "seduced… by freedom and democracy," but he quit after realizing the Americans wanted to use his skills for military purposes. They were "preparing to set up nuclear weapons in space." Thinking about all the people around him scared of losing their lives, the astrophysicist concludes, "This plane's passengers were going to be the new victims of the global strategy of the United States." But the tragedy doesn't happen—North Korean scientists save the day. They stop the plane in mid-air above Pyongyang, allowing it to float supported by an anti-gravity field. Robots defuse the bomb, and all the passengers are saved, reaching Earth safely aboard hot air balloons. The story ends with the Russian scientist praising his North Korean peers in front of a crowd of international journalists gathered in Pyongyang. The author then adds his moral touch, arguing that the field that saved the plane could, in fact, protect the entire country: "Maybe even the whole territory of North Korea might be covered by such an invisible shield." The story seems to be constructed "for the sake of this conclusion," according to Kim Minsun. "What the scene intends to demonstrate is the world becoming aware of the might of [North Korea]."

Imagining the future

Change Course and other North Korean sci-fi works can seem perplexing to people who have spent all their lives in the West. Protagonists of these stories are often caught between two versions of themselves: They question everything regarding technology, disputing every preconception for the pursuit of scientific truth. At the same time, they follow the party's guidelines blindly, without questioning its decisions or authority. In science fiction, "the ideal hero has a strong faith in the Supreme Leader ideologically, so they don't get confused with justice and truth," said Jang Hyuk, the math graduate who defected a few years ago. "The value systems of North Korea are quite different." With the image of the Supreme Leaders looming large and the propaganda machine pushing slogans like "we do whatever the Party decides!" or "self-reliant prosperity," writing about the future can be challenging. In some cases, imagining how great North Korea could be might draw attention to its current flaws. "Science fiction is about anticipation, and this is a big problem," said Antoine Coppola, a filmmaker who has studied cinema in both North and South Korea. "Society is perfect in North Korea; the hierarchy is perfect, so why dream about the future? How to imagine the future when society is perfect?" The contrast between the stories sci-fi literature tells and the daily lives of the people has only become sharper. "Since at least the 1990s, there has been not simply a gap but an abyss between the rosy future depicted in North Korean science fiction and the reality of life in North Korea," Harvard historian of science Dong-Won Kim wrote in one of his papers in 2018. But while the genre puts writers in a difficult position, it also gives them some leeway. "Authors tend to use things you do not see in other works of North Korean literature, like the depiction of foreign countries, international intrigues, suspense, even violence," Berthelier said. "Except for stories of war or resistance, violence is limited in other genres because the official line is that there's almost no crime in North Korea, and our people are good people." That leeway was also exploited in the past during the days of the Soviet Union, when sci-fi authors sometimes assumed a critical stance toward the regime. Yevgeny Zamyatin, for instance, satirized the increasing totalitarianism of his time, and although his novel, We, published in 1921, was banned by the censorship board, it circulated in samizdat, people illegally typing copies of the work and distributing them from person to person. Later, brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky used sci-fi to criticize Soviet society, taking liberties no other genre could have offered them. For one of their novels, Prisoners of Power, published in 1969, they imagined a totalitarian state always at war with its neighbors, a state that neglected its citizens, letting them live in misery while also demanding them to show enthusiastic gratitude to the leaders, the so-called "Unknown Fathers." As North Korean writers become more exposed to the West, the stories they write are slowly changing. "Recent sci-fi has that sort of sensationalism, the suspense, the conspiracy motif, probably tied to the increased availability of foreign media in the country," Berthelier said. "To me, it's revolutionary because there isn't quite anything like that in the country's literary history."