The DPRK’s Feature Film Studios in the outskirts of Pyongyang were the second destination on my third day in North Korea, after visiting National Gifts Exhibition House, where we were not allowed to bring cameras – the place will be part of the “Other Locations” article towards the end of this series as it contained one of the most hideous pieces of art you will ever hear about.
Cholliwood (a not well-known portmanteau of Chollima and Hollywood; not to be confused with Chollywood, the nickname of the Chinese film industry) was founded in 1947 and became Kim Jong-il’s playground after he graduated university in 1964. You would think that a guy like him should be busy with other things, but people tend to forget that Kim Jong-il didn’t become the “Supreme Leader of North Korea” until he was 53 years old; that’s 30 years later and therefore plenty of time to visit the studio on more than 600 occasions. It’s said that Kim was a huge fan of action movies like Rambo and Godzilla, collecting more than 20000 video tapes and DVDs – but he started out as a scholar, and so his 1973 book “On the Art of the Cinema” became the bible for all filmmakers in the DPRK, claiming that “Creative work is not a mere job, but an honorable revolutionary task.”
Kim Jong-il’s love for movies got completely out of hand in the late 1970s when he had South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee abducted in Hong Kong and taken to North Korea in 1978 – as her recently divorced husband and famous director Shin Sang-ok came to Hong Kong to investigate he was kidnapped as well. They were kept separate at first and when Shin tried to escape he was put in jail for several years. It wasn’t until 1983 that Shin found out why he really was brought to North Korea and that his ex-wife was there, too. Kim then “suggested” that they should get remarried and start to make movies again; and since most people can’t dismiss advice like that from a person like that it was exactly what happened. Shin directed seven movies in three years under executive producer Kim, most famously the Godzilla rip-off Pulgasari. Him and his wife were able to escape from North Korea during the Vienna Film Festival in 1986.
Shin wasn’t the only foreigner working in Cholliwood. A couple of American defectors gained some local fame for playing the evil guys in North Korean propaganda and war movies – James Joseph “Joe” Dresnok probably the most of them. When Charles Robert Jenkins appeared in the movie series Unsung Heroes (shot from 1978-1981, a.k.a. as Nameless Heroes) it was the first sign that he was alive after defecting in 1965. The Unsung Heroes series also featured Larry Allen Abshier and Jerry Wayne Parrish and was rather successful by North Korean standards, being televised in China in 1982 and indirectly causing a little scandal when a South Korean politician sang its theme song at an official dinner while visiting the DPRK in 2005.
Facts about the Pyongyang Film Studios are hard to find, not even about its size – numbers range from 600000 square meters to 1 million square meters. Some sources claim that the studio produces 20 movies a year, others say that it churns out up to 60, while critics claim that only one or two movies are produced a year and higher numbers include documentaries and shorts; produced at other studios like the Korean Documentary Film Studio (I took a photo of that one from the top of the *Juche Tower*), the April 25 Film Studio of the Korean People’s Army and the Korean Science and Educational Film Studio. It’s not even really clear what sections there are. We saw the huge pre- and post-production buildings right at the entrance (though we didn’t enter those…) and then we drove to the outdoor sets on the hilly backlot. There we saw dozens of buildings used as sets for classic Korea, 1930s Japan / Korea and 1970s countryside Europe – and probably America. On GoogleMaps you can see another street and a train station (which is not connected to the outside world), so those might be different sets we weren’t shown.
After a rainy day in Pyongyang the storm god was in our favor and we were able to stroll through the sets with perfect weather. Sadly we didn’t see much activity on the premises – until we reached the European section, where about a dozen people enjoyed a break at the entrance of one of the houses. Personally I liked the Japanese section best, although I am sure the movies shot there weren’t exactly in favor of the former occupiers. My Japanese is basic, nevertheless it was nice to identify some fake advertising (for Morinaga Chocolate and tea) and building names / functions (station hotel, sport shop), some written old-style from right to left.
Although I was able to take plenty of photos I wish we would have had more time at the Pyongyang Film Studios – but well, what can you do? Group tours with tight schedules have some downsides… Luckily the next location was equally interesting!
(Please *click here to get to Abandoned Kansai’s North Korea Special* and *here for a map about the tour at GoogleMaps*. If you don’t want to miss the latest article you can *follow Abandoned Kansai on Twitter* and *like this blog on Facebook* – and of course there is the *video channel on Youtube*…)
*sound of heart breaking into shards*
The one thing that amazes me about all your photos from this trip is that no matter how old or in disrepair things are, everything looks relatively “clean”. I noticed the same thing about Seoul (yes of course there are slums) where there is always someone with a broom sweeping up the streets or picking up garbage – nowhere near the amount of detritus floating around like in so-called first-world countries…
North Korea is indeed a really clean country, which is especially clear when entering by plane from Beijing. Poor, but clean. It’s actually amazing how similar North Korea and Japan are…
Too interesting…. are you still there in North Korea right now? I guess not, eh?
No, I left May 4th after spending a week there.
Oh and you finally implemented a picture gallery (or rather, I just noticed it). Works very nice! Especially when the pictures are great and convey much more than just different light frequencies hitting your retina..
WordPress did some enhancements a while ago – using it is still as easy as it was 3.5 years ago when I started Abandoned Kansai. Everything just looks better now thanks to their improvements.
And thanks! There was a lot to see and therefore easy to take at least decent photos… 🙂