See You Again in Pyongyang: A Journey into Kim Jong Un's North Korea

by Travis Jeppesen

Overview

A "close-up look at the cloistered country" (USA Today), See You Again in Pyongyang is American writer Travis Jeppesen's "probing" and "artful" (New York Times Book Review) chronicle of his travels in North Korea—an eye-opening portrait that goes behind the headlines about Trump and Kim, revealing North Koreans' "entrepreneurial spirit, and hidden love of foreign media, as well as their dreams and fears" (Los Angeles Times).

In See You Again in Pyongyang, Travis Jeppesen, the first American to complete a university program in North Korea, culls from his experiences living, traveling, and studying in the country to create a multifaceted portrait of the country and its idiosyncratic capital city in the Kim Jong Un Era.

Anchored by the experience of his five trips to North Korea and his interactions with citizens from all walks of life, Jeppesen takes readers behind the propaganda, showing how the North Korean system actually works in daily life. He challenges the notion that Pyongyang is merely a "showcase capital" where everything is staged for the benefit of foreigners, as well as the idea that Pyongyangites are brainwashed robots. Jeppesen introduces readers to an array of fascinating North Koreans, from government ministers with a side hustle in black market Western products to young people enamored with American pop culture.

With unique personal insight and a rigorous historical grounding, Jeppesen goes beyond the media cliches, showing North Koreans in their full complexity. See You Again in Pyongyang is an essential addition to the literature about one of the world's most fascinating and mysterious places.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316509145
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	05/28/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,093,708
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Travis Jeppesen is the author of three novels, two volumes of poetry, a stage play, and a collection of art criticism. His critical writings on art, film, and literature have appeared in Artforum, Afterall, The Believer, Art in America, Flash Art, New York Press, Bookforum, and Zoo Magazine. He is the recipient of a 2013 Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital/the Warhol Foundation, and his text-based visual art has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions and was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Author's Note ix

Prologue 1

Part 1 Dreams of a Forgotten City 9

Part 2 "Worlds Worst Country" 49

Part 3 Norkorealism 81

Part 4 Us and Them 111

Part 5 The Atrocity Exhibition 137

Part 6 Victory Day 163

Part 7 Houses of Friendship 193

Part 8 Folding Screen 215

Part 9 Reconciliation 267

Epilogue 297

Bibliography 303

Editorial Reviews

"[Jeppesen] knows how to talk about art, and he comes alive in his granular analyses of what he dubs 'Norkore' propaganda music and regime-approved 'Norkorealist' painting.... He captures [North Koreans'] entrepreneurial spirit, and hidden love of foreign media, as well as their dreams and their fears.... What makes See You Again in Pyongyang worth reading is the tension between the bold explorer and the impenetrable country, the feeling of frustration in the face of lies and exclusion and petrified resistance."—Los Angeles Times

"See You Again in Pyongyang dramatizes a meeting point between an intellect with a passion for getting lost in other cities and landscapes, and an environment that by its very design forbids such a sensibility from ever gaining foothold. What ensues is not a polemic, but rather a romance of antitheses. Jeppesen ultimately accepts this lack of resolution, processing his relationship with the country through a combination of memoir, historical background, and the bringing to light of others' stories that our own ideologically biased media seldom care to find for themselves."—Los Angeles Review of Books

"A probing look ... inside Kim Jong Un's North Korea... Striking ... Jeppesen gives us a direct glimpse of North Korea's psychological techniques at work.... Artful... An up-close and vivid account."—New York Times Book Review

"Offers...thought-provoking first-hand insights into daily life in North Korea, deconstructing fallacies around a number of our stereotypes about that enigmatic hermit nation at the same time as it exposes their social constructions about us.... See You Again in Pyongyang is important reading for its timeliness at a critical juncture in U.S. negotiations with North Korea about denuclearization."—New York Journal of Books

"A moving memoir of the first American to study at a university in North Korea and an eye-opening clarification of the U.S.'s role in Korean history."—Ben Shields, Paris Review

From the Publisher

See You Again in Pyongyang is written in a crisp and engaging style…Structured as part memoir, part travelogue and part history, Jeppesen's artful narrative…provide[s] an up-close and vivid account of what life is like for an American tourist in North Korea…

The New York Times Book Review - Sheila Miyoshi Jager

07/02/2018
Novelist and art critic Jeppesen uses a 2016 study tour of Pyongyang and environs as a jumping-off point for a breezy overview of North Korea’s political history, various musings on its culture, and a speculative recreation of a typical day in the life of his North Korean travel agent. Perched uncomfortably among journalism, memoir, and pop history, this account is more an impersonal recitation of details than an evocation of inner experience; even a recounting of witnessing police brutality in broad daylight feels oddly detached, and Jeppesen mentions hiding his sexual orientation from his hosts almost as an afterthought. The few moments of feeling are concentrated at the end, leaching urgency and emotional connection from the rest of the narrative. There is some thoughtful interrogation of American journalism on and foreign policy toward the country, but condescension surfaces periodically: Jeppesen repetitively dismisses the public art he encounters as “kitsch” or “unintentional comedic atrocity,” sums up a Chinese-inspired interior design as “monkey see, monkey do,” and daydreams about someday persuading his tour guide he understands North Korea better than she does. It never becomes clear what has drawn him there except for curiosity about the forbidden. Though this book may appeal to readers seeking a big-picture introduction to the country, those seeking a sense of North Korean life will be disappointed. (June)

Publishers Weekly

2018-04-11
An American's travels in North Korea.Jeppesen, an American novelist (The Suiciders, 2013, etc.) and art critic who lives in Berlin, earned a doctorate in London and set off in 2016 to learn the Korean language at Kim Hyong Jik University in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital. A self-described wanderer drawn to "the seemingly incomprehensible," he has made his study trip (and several earlier visits) the basis for this first-person account of life in a "multifaceted, misunderstood, and unsummarizable" nation. The author read and traveled widely enough (to festivals, revolutionary sites, etc.) to understand that "paranoia and suspicion" are omnipresent in the police state, finding himself "alternately charmed, intrigued, disgusted, amused, terrified—often all of these at once." North Koreans are heavily monitored. (Jeppesen complains that he spent little time alone.) They are forbidden to speak or move freely, travel abroad, or watch foreign media. Amid the oppression of their lives in a poor country, the author was struck by the "humanity" and "sweetness" of ordinary people encountered in shops, museums, and elsewhere. Language barriers and Korean shyness often prevented interactions. Also, the "ultra-nationalist ideology" of posters, murals, mosaics, and the ever present patriotic music of the Moranbong Band (its 20 female members hand-picked by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un), combined with present-day state denunciation of "American bastards" and a brutal 35-year occupation by Japan (1910-1945), has fostered strong suspicion of foreigners. The author's account of his visit to the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities, with its "outlandish" claims of American brutality in the Korean War, will rattle many readers. Jeppesen insists the propaganda works both ways, with the U.S. decrying "the axis of evil" and enforcing an "unwritten rule" against positive news coverage of North Korea. Unfortunately, the author's constant "rendering" of information through dialogue with his travel companions adds little to the narrative. He finds "a great diversity of opinion unvoiced, unvoicable" and even small signs of resistance by individual artists.A candid and disturbing portrait of life under a dictatorship.

Kirkus Reviews