The Mural II

News of the demise earlier today of Kim Dae-jung, sometime President of South Korea—from what is described in Seoul as “multiple organ dysfunction syndrome,” in other words death—has once more focused attention on the anonymous artist responsible for those murals north of the border. Let us call him the Master of Pyongyang. This painter has evidently been active since at least before 2000, when, pursuing the so-called “sunshine policy” of engagement (햇볕 정책, Haetpyŏt chŏngch’aek), Kim decided to meet Kim, and was duly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. At length the other Kim reneged on his promise to pay a return visit to Seoul, a quid pro quo for which Kim is rumored to have paid Kim sums amounting to $500 million (about 750 times more than the 4 million Swedish kronor forked out by the Nobel committee), so the rapprochement fell rather flat. The crashing breaker mural we saw earlier is generally used for formal portrait photograph opportunities, Kim with Kim, Kim with President Vladimir Putin, Kim with President Bill Clinton, and Kim with whomsoever Kim can persuade to pay an occasional visit. The lunch mural, for want of a better title, strikes an altogether different chord—that of an evacuated spring-blossomy babbling-brook alpine hinterland glorious people-scape, in which the principal technical challenge for the artist was to crank up the volume of the foliage and the foreground blossoms, whilst reining in the waters, because for obvious reasons the plash and gurgle of cataracts can be counterproductive at lunchtime. However, in striving to achieve an appropriately soothing effect by suffusing the waters with a sort of pale milky blush of eau de nil, the better to slow them down, even warm them up a bit, most unfortunately the Master of Pyongyang creates the impression here not of a glacial burn or torrent fed by thawing snow, but rather the cloudy, acrid run-off from some unseen nuclear research facility a little way upstream. I gather this is what Kim, the Kims, and the South Korean delegation were laughing about so heartily in this charming informal group photograph.

The Mural

As far as I can tell nobody who witnessed President Bill Clinton’s coup de théâtre in Pyongyang last week has yet remarked upon that bizarre mural. Dear Leader seems to like it, because I recall having from time to time seen other unfortunate visitors lined up to be photographed in front of the same one. Combined with the appalling carpet—scrolling sprays of peony on a field of lime green; you really couldn’t make it up—and those creepy net curtains discreetly drawn over the windows of other sparsely furnished rooms (presumably to hide or at least soften the view), that mural certainly raises fascinating questions as to the larger purpose of totalitarian interior decorating. But who on earth painted it? Was the artist maybe recruited in Damascus and permitted to go home to the Assads after he finished the job, or was he set to work training an entire school of North Korean wave-bird-and-froth painters who await future deployment? Because quite clearly this is a work of some considerable technical accomplishment, even if the subject of estuarine breakers and a flock of undersized white sea birds viewed from a rocky bank or promontory (maybe) or some other high notionally downward-swooping, even airborne vantage point—at any rate vertiginous—creates just about the most disturbing visual effect that it is possible to achieve when converted into the floor-to-ceiling mural format. I wonder how this commission came about? Was it, perhaps, entrusted to Mrs. Kim, whoever she may be, or a terrified sub-committee of craven toadies? Perhaps the North Korean Communist Party observes a strict code of regulations in respect of decorating state facilities. Alternatively, was it bequeathed to the nation by Great Leader himself—who, as is not generally appreciated here in America, despite being dead, remains en poste as President of North Korea until the end of time? (Kim Jong-Il, his son, is merely Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea, and General Secretary of the Workers’ Party. Incidentally, it is rumored that the current Kim’s favorite dish is donkey.) In the face of so many more worrying aspects of this wholly benighted regime I suppose these questions are trivial, but there must be somebody who knows the answers.