Song Byeok was once a propaganda artist. Now he paints the reality of his native country.
Editor’s Note: The below is an expanded version of a piece that appears in the current issue of National Review.
Oslo
Some art exhibitions are unusual — but this one is especially so: in its art, yes, but also in the sounds coming from loudspeakers in the venue. We hear a man intoning, or barking, North Korean propaganda. We also hear birdsong — a sweet contrast to the barking. Later, the artist will explain the birdsong.
In North Korean propaganda, he tells me, there is a line that goes something like this: “In the socialist paradise of Chairman Kim, even the birds sing for joy.” The artist recorded the birdsong outside his home in Germany. The talking is borrowed from North Korean state TV (the only kind of TV there is in dictatorships).
Our artist is Song Byeok, and the exhibition is hosted by the Oslo Freedom Forum, the annual human-rights gathering here in the Norwegian capital. Song Byeok was once a North Korean propagandist, painting images that celebrated the regime. He would show, for example, happy laborers, working their hearts out for whichever Kim was in power. Now, however, he paints images that are ironic or satirical. For instance, we see a picture of Kim Jong-un with a dove of peace. In one of the chairman’s hands is a bottle of Coca-Cola; with the other, he is giving a thumbs-up.
What does this mean, precisely? I’m not sure, but I bet Chairman Kim wouldn’t like it.
Many of the pictures are in the pop-art style. Indeed, Song Byeok has been called the “Andy Warhol of North Korea.” But he has other styles as well. On one wall, for example, there is a string of pictures that tell the artist’s life story. It speaks for the lives of North Koreans in general, too. The pictures are simple, direct, and affecting. They are hard to bear, for they depict terrible things, including famine, brutality, and death.
The last of the pictures is a handprint. One of the fingers is severed. Song Byeok lost this finger, or most of it, during one of his terms in prison. When I shake his hand — I think of the picture.
To the guests at the exhibition, he says a few words, through his interpreter, Seongmin Lee, who is also from North Korea, and works for the Human Rights Foundation, which stages the Oslo Freedom Forum. (HRF is based in New York.) Song Byeok talks of hunger, which is hard to understand, he says, for those who have never experienced it. And by “hunger” he means outright starvation. “Nothing is more painful,” he says. “There is no greater suffering.” He saw parents abandon their children in the streets, unable to feed them. They would just die there.
Clearly, Song Byeok burns to tell North Korea’s story. He wants to shake the world by its shoulders. He wants to “speak up,” as he puts it, for those who cannot “speak for themselves.” At the end of his remarks, he says, “I ask you, in the name of justice, conscience, and morality, to help bring change to North Korean society.”
Then there is a candle-lighting ceremony, of a very unusual kind. Song Byeok has sculpted three candles, in the forms of Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping. He asks someone to light the candles. His point is that nothing lasts forever. Everything melts away, and so it will be with these tyrants.
The next day, I sit down with Song Byeok, and Seongmin Lee, who interprets. With Song Byeok is his wife, Miran Choi, who is from South Korea. The artist is a slight man, with long black hair and large glasses. I have said “slight.” For all I know, he is on the robust side for someone born and raised in North Korea. The only fat person in the country may be the dictator.
I have a memory, from the early 2000s. Bill Clinton spoke to a group of journalists at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Weight requirements for the North Korean military kept getting lower, he said. When soldiers defected to us, they often weighed under 100 pounds.
Song Byeok was born in 1969 in North Hwanghae Province. He was indoctrinated into the cult of the Kim family, as all North Koreans are. They are taught to worship the ruling Kim as a god. They are also taught that North Korea is unique — uniquely good, uniquely prosperous, uniquely humane. In the words of a popular North Korean song, “We have nothing to envy in the world.”
Another memory, also from the early 2000s, as it happens. I asked Jeane Kirkpatrick about U.S. policy toward North Korea. (Kirkpatrick was a distinguished political scientist who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during President Reagan’s first term.) “North Korea is a psychotic state,” she said, “and the world has had very little experience of such states.” Plenty of dictatorships are evil — oppressive, murderous — without being psychotic.
At age 24, Song Byeok started working as a propaganda artist. He would do this for seven years. He took great pride in his work, performing it with enthusiasm. He was a true believer in the Kims — the Great Leader (Kim Il-sung) and the Dear Leader (Kim Jong-il). He painted slogans such as “Let us become a bullet for General Kim Jong-il!”
I ask him whether his work helped him survive. Did he gain privileges, because of the work he did? Extra food, for example? No (unfortunately). “There were no differences whatsoever.”
How did he learn to draw and paint, by the way? “I was self-taught,” he says. His parents couldn’t afford to send him to a university. He practiced at home, drawing members of his family.
A further question: How did he acquire the materials? The paper, pencils, brushes, and so on? His parents sacrificed for him (as parents do). They purchased these materials for him, with whatever savings they had.
When Song Byeok speaks, it is usually softly, and reflectively, and poignantly.
North Koreans have never had very much to eat. But in 1994, a horrific famine hit, lasting four years. Masses of people died of hunger. Reliable numbers are hard to come by. The dictatorship refers to this period as the “Arduous March” or “March of Suffering.”
Like other North Koreans, Song Byeok took bark from trees and boiled it, just to get something in his stomach. One of his artworks is a sculpture, resembling the branch of a tree — but a branch that has taken on the characteristics of an animal. It is titled “Hunger.”
Song Byeok’s father, desperate to feed the family, set out for China, looking for food. He took Song Byeok with him. They got to China and got some food. On their way back, however, they were caught by North Korean guards, who took their food. It is illegal to leave the country without permission. And to bring back food was especially audacious.
The guards beat Song Byeok’s father to a pulp. They knocked his teeth out. Song Byeok was shocked by this. “My father was always such a strong man,” he says. “He was the pillar of our house, the pillar of our family.” And to see him assaulted like this; to see him helpless . . .
Song Byeok says he can still see the faces of the men who beat his father.
The two of them, father and son, were in prison for three months. They did hard labor. When they were released, they set out for China again, naturally. What else could they do? They and their family needed food; there was almost none.
This time, Song Byeok’s father died at the border — in the Tumen River, which separates North Korea and China. He was swept away. Song Byeok could not save him. He went to a checkpoint and asked the guards — North Koreans — to help save his father. Not only did they refuse, they said, “Why did you survive? You should have died in the river too.” Then they beat him up and threw him in prison.
Decisively, Song Byeok broke with North Korea. He broke with it mentally and spiritually. He broke with it, he tells me, when he saw his father’s face, as his father drifted away in the river.
Song Byeok had questions — angry questions: What kind of country makes it illegal for a man to get food when his family is starving? What kind of country treats its citizens this way? How can the Kims love us and allow this to happen?
He was full of “hatred,” he says — hatred for “the system.”
In prison, he saw inmates die beside him. One of his pictures memorializes this. It is called “Countdown.” A caption beneath it says, “When will it be my turn?” I ask Song Byeok whether the inmates died of starvation, torture, or both. He says they died of overwork, essentially. They did not get enough food for the hard labor they were forced to carry out. Song Byeok himself withered to almost nothing. He weighed about 65 pounds.
Another of his pictures is titled “Happiness.” There he is, emaciated, looking out a prison window. He longs to die, longs for the release of death. But, in reality, he kept waking up, which puzzled and disappointed him. Why didn’t he die, like the others?
After six months, the authorities released him. When I ask him why, he whispers the answer: “They don’t like to handle dead bodies. They don’t like to deal with corpses.” Song Byeok was at the point of death. They wanted him to die outside, not inside.
The warden gave him three packets of sugar. Then Song Byeok stepped out of the prison — and a strange feeling overcame him: an “attachment to life,” as he puts it. “I realized the importance of life. I wanted to live, no matter what.” And he was absolutely determined to leave North Korea, whatever it took.
He went to his uncle’s, rather than his mother’s. He did not want her to see him in his emaciated condition. He recuperated at his uncle’s. Then he went to his mother’s, to say goodbye. She gave him a small pouch with some red beans and some salt. According to Korean folklore, red beans contain good luck and the scattering of salt can drive away demons.
Once more, Song Byeok set out for China. His journey was dramatic –another terrifying experience in his life — but he made it across the river, never to turn back.
In China, he saw something remarkable: People gave animals, such as pigs, white rice to eat. In North Korea, that was a distant dream, for many people: white rice to eat.
When he got to South Korea, in 2002, he saw something even more remarkable: hospitals for animals. Also, he heard about “animal rights.” In North Korea, very few people had access to hospitals. And no one had rights.
There was electricity for 24 hours a day, in South Korea. There was hot water, too. These things seemed miraculous. Also, government officials treated you decently. They didn’t yell at you or beat you up. You were a human being, not a nonentity to be hit, killed, etc.
Song Byeok had a hard time with food — the abundance of it. The mere availability of it. He cried before it. How could he eat it, with his family going without? While he was in prison, one of his sisters had died of starvation. His mother would soon die of the same. His other sister, he would help escape North Korea.
One of the reasons that Song Byeok hates the North Korean system is that it is a destroyer of families, and he is a cherisher of the family. The system destroyed his family, he says, and it has destroyed countless other families.
In South Korea, Song Byeok received a college education. He earned both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree. He taught at a South Korean university, too. Today, he and his wife live in Frankfurt.
He has presented his work in various parts of the world, including the United States. North Korea is never far from his mind. He feels a responsibility to those he left behind, so to speak: his countrymen.
He has a recurring nightmare. Back in North Korea, he is having a meal with his mother and sister (the sister who perished). Suddenly, the police burst in, and his mother tells him to flee. He jumps out a window, but when he lands, he can’t walk. He can’t move. Then he wakes up, soaked in sweat.
Over the years, I have met many North Koreans, mainly at the Oslo Freedom Forum. They are all compelled to bear witness: to tell the world about the unbelievable — namely, the horror of life, and death, in North Korea.
Remember them, says Song Byeok. Remember the North Koreans. They have no freedom whatsoever. No freedom and no material comfort. (Those things go hand in hand.) Some of them die trying to get to freedom — in the Tumen River, in the Gobi Desert. Remember them. The rest of us are so lucky.