NK bestseller reprinted amid 2 Koreas' ties in smooth sailingBy Park Jin-hai
In a capitalist society,
there are various reasons for divorce. Money, domestic violence and unfaithful spouses are some of the most common triggers of family breakups, while celebrities or high-profile couples who don't want their private lives to be exposed to the public simply put it down to "irreconcilable differences."
What if the couples live in a dictatorial state? What would be their main reasons to end or decades of marriage life?
A North Korean bestseller "Friend" says there are no major differences in the causes of divorce between a capitalist society and the reclusive regime that is North Korea.
"Please help me end my marriage," deplores a 33-year-old woman to a local people's court judge overseeing the divorce cases in the novel written by Paek Nam-ryong. The estranged wife, who has a son, claims "disharmony" with her husband and "different lifestyles" are the reasons for their marital problems.
The novel, beginning with story of the divorce court, might sound lackluster, but it becomes a totally different story in that the author is a North Korean and he worked on the 1988 best seller based on true stories in the reclusive state.
The book was first introduced to South Korean readers in 1992 after a South Korean publisher released it. It gave them many surprises as they don't have deep knowledge about what's going on inside the regime, including marriage, divorce and other family relationships.
Equally shocking is that the divorce claim has been filed by a female spouse, a factory worker-turned-signer. She complained that her blue-collar worker husband is not ambitious enough to make efforts to climb the social ladder or seek educational attainment. In North Korea, divorce can be filed for not such grand reasons as life-threatening domestic violence or the spouse's adultery in a country where the family is said to be the basic "cell" of society and divorce is a social ill that poses a threat to making a united nation.
Riding on the amicable mood on the peninsula, in the wake of the historic inter-Korean summit last month, Paek's novel has been republished in South Korea this year amid the summit of the leaders of the two Koreas earlier this month.
"In North Korea as well, popular writers are those who write romances and something down-to-earth and close to the everyday life of people," said novelist Jeong Do-sang, who visited Pyongyang several times as part of an exchanges of authors agreed by the June 15 joint declaration after the first inter-Korean summit in 2000. "When I met North Korean authors in 2005, they showed great interest in South Korean readers. In the mood of rapprochement between Seoul and Pyongyang, the republication of the novel could open the gate for more discussions on North Korean literature."
The book's story revolves around a married couple's divorce process and the judge who visits the couple and their friends and struggles to resolve the case in the best interest of the couple's son. In so doing, it reflects on the regime's legal procedure and judicial system.
"While a judge usually handles a divorce issue by going through papers in the South, the North Korean judge in the book acts more like a friend who agonizes over how to minimize the fallout of the divorce and reduce pain for the child," said Jeong.
The novel, showing a clear departure from the ideology-heavy novels, became so popular when it was published in the late 1980s and it was adapted to a TV series on the Korean Central Television in 2001. Its French translation, "Des Amis," was published in 2011, the first French-translated North Korean novel.
The novel's author Paek, born in 1949 in Hamheung in South Hamgyong Province, worked in a machinery factory for 10 years, before entering Kim Il-sung University. He debuted in 1979 as a novelist.
When the novel was first introduced in South Korea in 1992, it was published without a proper copyright agreement. This time publisher Asia Literature signed a deal with the Seoul-based Foundation of Inter-Korea Cooperation, which retains the right to negotiate copyright issues for North Korean books.
Four more North Korean novels including Paek's "60 Years Later," and "A Hymn of Youth" by Nam Dae-hyeon will be published this month.
