Dear Playwright

Team America is not Kim Jong Il's first foray into musical drama.

John Gorenfeld from the January 2005 issue

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Some scenes seem intended to solicit knowing nods from diehard Juche wonks in the audience, who will get a kick out of seeing the origin story of the "Women's Association." The play also features the Kims' trademarks: unflagging hatred of the Japanese and a fearsome display of North Korean military might, neither of which has ever played well beyond the peninsula. Kim's captive movie director, Shin Sang-Ok, says he tried in vain to warn the future Dear Leader that audiences weren't going to be crazy about this stuff in, say, East Berlin. Still, Kim pressed on in his quest to create crossover Communist entertainment.

But for political impact, you can't beat Kim Jr.'s opera The Flower Girl, which has been blamed for a 1991 collapse of talks with South Korea over family reunions. Northern delegates stubbornly insisted on staging the play in Seoul; the Southerners refused.

The tale of a saintly peasant girl whose family is beaten up by a greedy landlord, The Flower Girl begins, like many other Kim productions, with everyone starving. Off-stage, the pang-chang chorus laments that, if you really think about it, the only things the peasants are harvesting are "sorrow and grief." Later, in what Kim describes as his favorite moment, they look toward the nighttime sky and reflect on how the moon, though seen by everyone, might find some people miserable and others happy. Such are the "contradictions of the exploitative society," writes Kim.

His nuclear weapons may be getting the headlines today, but Kim Jong Il has been producing bombs for years.