French-Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle’s graphic novel account of his time in Pyongyang, North Korea is mired
by a staggering sense of isolation.
Delisle’s pages are composed of hollow spaces, populated by cartoon characters
meandering through vacant hotel hallways.
He renders his two-month stay as an animation supervisor in pencil
washes, creating a world perpetually, beautifully out of focus.
Beside
his ever-present guide and translator, Delisle rarely interacts with any North
Koreans. Outside of his hotel, he is
chaperoned through the capital city’s most tourist-friendly landmarks,
inundated by tedious Communist propaganda.
Delisle maintains a sharp sense of humor and skepticism, challenging
jingoistic outpourings and exaggerated histories. Though he renders his anecdotes in clean
cartoon lines, he does not belie the horrors inherent to life spent under a
dictatorship. For every imposing
monument and smiling volunteer, there are stories of food shortages and
citizens informing on one another. Every
citizen he encounters is a beaming patriot, and so they often seem like caricatures rather than individuals. This may be a failing
on Delisle’s part to better connect with those around him, but I suspect that it
instead reinforces the book’s theme of loneliness amidst artifice.
I
sought out this graphic novel after the death of former Supreme Leader of North
Korea, Kim Jong-Il. I only had a cursory
knowledge of the man and his country—both mysterious and inaccessible— and I
felt a travelogue would be a good introduction.
Delisle makes no claims to be an expert, nor is the book designed as a comprehensive
travel guide. Instead, the book reflects
his changing temperaments in a very alien place: introspective, mistrustful, bewildered, humbled, etc. His visit is as much fascinatingly exotic as
it is alienating. Delisle’s story is
often distant and ambiguous, as gray as the buildings disappearing into the horizon.
Pyongyang by Guy Delisle
