Dear Comrade

Dear Comrade the Leader Episode 181

interlude. The Republic’s First Christmas (1)

December 1997 was, in many ways, a monumental month for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

When the foreign exchange crisis occurred in South Korea and the high-ranking party government officials who served as the general secretary did not know that they stayed up all day and night while doing bailouts rather than bailouts, it was not a concern for most of the common people.

Their concern was the issue of making a living, similar to the southern Joseon neighborhood of the same period, but in fact (with the general secretary taking power), most of them have already been resolved, so the main focus was on how to eat ‘more’ and live ‘better’.

There was no difference between adults and children.

For adults with a job, the biggest concerns were whether the bonus system, which had only been heard as a rumor, would be introduced at the end of this year, how much it would be if it did, and that the workers in Rason’s oil company would receive a bonus equal to their annual salary.

For children, especially teenagers who are still in middle and high school, the biggest topic of discussion was the new product that came into the Nike store on Potonggang Street.

“What did you mean by asking me to buy it this time? Emmy… … What?”

“Air Jordan, Abaddy! Air Jordan! Be sure to buy the 1997 version! If you buy last year’s, you can’t do it! It’s bare soles, it’s soles!”

“Oh it was! Okay, okay… … Jegi, it’s hard to be a father, but this.”

Ryu Hae-il, a forty-year-old father, muttered like that as he hung up the phone when his son’s father asked him to buy American basketball shoes like Air Jordan or something.

However, there was nothing I could do about it, because in the entrance exam that separates vocational high school and high school this time, when my son enters high school, he will always save money to buy new shoes.

“When a child of a young man has already started to use dollars… … I mean when… … .”

When he was just starting out, Ryu Hae-il hung up the phone and put his strength on his shoulders again, grumbling that it was an Air Jordan and everything was humanization.

I just confirmed that I knew the right product name, and I put my name on the list of customers who reserved Nike in Pyongyang, so I should buy it around the evening and bring it home.

Aside from his own son, the clerk looked around Ryu Hae-il and even asked about his occupation when he asked whether he was already a famous product among the children of the family who said he lived in Pyongyang.

“This price is usually not cheap (cheap), but… … What’s your mate’s job?”

“No, why are you asking that? What should I say… … that… … Distribution work.”

Because what he (or his company to be precise about) is doing is still a rare job in this republic, Ryu Hae-il only pretended to be like that.

However, as soon as he heard the word ‘distribution’, the Nike clerk looked down at him with a very ignorant smile, which was still a hot thing for Ryu Hae-il.

“… … rationing? This comrade is still a people of Kim Jong Il! Girum isn’t going to be easy… … What kind of world is the world these days, and there are still people living on rations in Pyongyang?”

“… … What?”

Haeil Ryu, who had lost his absurdity, was able to be listed at the end of the list of customers who pre-ordered the ‘Air Jordan 1997 Edition’ only after explaining his occupation and income level in detail.

Anyway, his family affairs were resolved, so now he just had to settle the matter.

Read at readwn.com

No, in fact, it can be seen that the family affairs are finally resolved only by solving the problem, and once you earn money, you can buy year-end gifts for your son and Anhae (wife), and buy Air Jordan and anything else.

And in order for his company, which has been running on the road of growth so far, to make a lot of money, he had to overcome the problem he was facing now, the wall of the groupa members of the Propaganda and Agitation Department’s video censorship.

To be honest, Ryu Hae-il has been flirting with the committee members for several weeks already, bringing special gifts from whiskey to beef ribs for gifts.

I was worried that the priority might be to get caught by the Anti-Corruption Investigation Bureau before passing the deliberation.

However, Ryu Hae-il did not think that the funds for this ‘friendship promotion project’ (never use the word lobby) were excessive.

The guy he wants to bring in has already been proven successful in the United States, so if he can bring it exclusively to the Republic, he will sit on a cushion of money.

“Comrade Ryu Hae-il. what are you doing there The recess is over, so please come in.”

“Ah, Comrade Commissioner! ha ha ha… … The house bastards are always watching. Kids these days can’t remember the days before the general secretary period, so they’re hungry, so I want you to buy this and give it to me… … .”

“Stop talking nonsense and go inside. I don’t know what’s going on, but Comrade Hyun Young-sook, Chairman, came directly. If you look good, you will pass the deliberation very easily. If I were Comrade Ryu, I would try to look good.

“I, really?”

At those words, Ryu Hae-il did not put out the cigarette he was smoking properly, but threw it on the floor and went inside the building of the Propaganda and Agitation Department.

Isn’t Hyun Young-sook someone, the chairman of the Central Censorship Committee, which oversees the censorship of all media and videos in the Republic, and a member of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee?

With a single word from her, a small contractor like Ryu Hae-il could be sent away forever, or even floated above the clouds high in the sky in the distance.

Read at readwn.com

No matter how market economy was introduced, it was the current state of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, where political power was ‘yet’ rather than economic power, and the deputy director-level bureaucrats of the party leadership were stronger than 10 billion won.

And, unbelievably, when I entered the office, a woman in her 40s, still showing off her bright beauty, sat down and went through the documents she had requested for censorship.

As soon as she saw Ryu Hae-il, who cautiously entered the council meeting room, calming her beating heart, she asked briefly and formally.

“Sit down, Comrade Ryu Hae-il, I was looking at the documents submitted by Comrade to the Central Inspection Committee to pass the inspection.”

“Yeah, yeah… … comrade.”

“Looking at these documents, I can see that you have made quite a few films in theaters in the Republic. Maybe he has a good eye, and he has a high box office income, and he probably made a lot of money, right?”

“I only distributed those that passed the strict deliberation of the censorship committee! Believe it!”

“Hmm, for something like that, a movie that was ‘distributed’ by a distribution company run by a comrade… … The problem is that it is mainly an American film. The film requested for review this time is also unpublished… … It’s an American movie. I’m going to have to look into that here today.”

Ryu Hae-il swallowed his saliva at the pressure of Hyun Young-sook, who felt a chill on his back even though he didn’t raise his tone very much.

Yes, the ‘distribution’ that Ryu Hae-il does, and the company he runs is a movie import ‘distribution’ company that imports and distributes movies.

And from now on, depending on how he persuades Hyun Young-sook, chairman of the censorship, whether he will be able to hang the movie he brought in for the first Christmas of the Republic in the theater was in a situation.

There was silence in the conference room.

A little while ago, there was a bit of fatigue and slack from the boring discussion and deliberation, but with the appearance of Hyun Young-sook, ‘a long-time leader of the senior level,’ the meeting was again tense as if it were like that.

Of course, the most nervous among them was Ryu Hae-il, who swallowed his saliva to see if the film he had carefully selected and imported would pass the censorship review.

“The movie that my comrade’s company has ever tried to distribute… … Aliens, Terminator 2, Are There Die Hards? The deliberation is just going to take a long time. Aren’t most movies promoting the logic of American imperialism? Even if the United States and the Republic are not in an enemy relationship like the past, it is a bit difficult to do this.”

“Oh, no. comrade! Give me a chance to call! Aliens are aliens, and Terminators are robots from the future, aren’t they? It is by no means a film that distorts and rejects socialist comrades like the Republic like other imperialist films of the US!”

“So far, that’s it, but according to the records, didn’t your comrade’s company ever offer ‘The Exorcist’ to the Republic Theater, but it was rejected by the deliberation?”

“… … Gee, Gee, Gee, that has nothing to do with US imperialism… … .”

“As you can see, according to the censorship guidelines of our committee, we cannot accept content related to souls, spirits, and above all, religion, which is the opium of the people, because it promotes superstition, which is a corrupt feudalistic practice. It was obvious that anyone would take corrective action, but I don’t know why the censorship committee is increasing the task by posting this.”

At Hyeon Young-sook’s slightly chilled point, Ryu Hae-il could not help but become a honey-eaten dumb for a moment.

However, Ryu Hae-il also had something to say in his own way, and his censorship guidelines and review requirements were so jagged (jagged) that a movie that seemed like it would never pass sometimes passed.

It was arbitrary, such as movies that seemed to pass easily by anyone who saw them, had to take corrective measures at once.

The main reason was that the intensity of the work of the censorship committee skyrocketed as the people’s freedom to import and view videos suddenly increased during the ten years of General Secretary Geun’s reign.

And for another reason, the censorship members, who were not so different from the general public in their rigidity of thought and poor creativity, were almost culture-shocked when they tried to review videos in the free world of the West with the (notably poor) review guidelines. .

‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ was sometimes passed because it was ‘a socialist film in which the protagonist, a proletarian who grew up as the son of a peasant, triumphs over a small people-friendly army and a powerful imperialist enemy’.

On the other hand, in the next episode, ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, the deliberation was delayed for a long time, saying, ‘I’m your father’ is not in line with the sentiments of the Korean people. all of this is happening.

(Actually, there was a lot of gossip that this was because it might remind the people of the father-son confrontation between Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung in the past.)

In this transitional period of ‘earrings for ears, nose rings for nose’, when foreign film importers such as Ryu Hae-il passed the censorship, the most effective means of course was to collect bribes. .

However, the problem was that he was not the only one to use the means of bribes to bribe members.

“As you may have seen, Comrade Hae-Il Ryu, who is currently head of the department, has often plotted to bring films with questionable ideas into the republic. So, in order to catch up on the discipline of fellow film workers, who are slowly becoming full these days, it is better to take corrective measures with them this time… … .”

‘That old fox, Ganna cub, is doing the trick again!’

Ryu Hae-il deliberately coughed and secretly coaxed Hyun Young-sook, looking at a senior member of the beard Heo Yeon-beard, and inside, a thousand fires exploded.

In fact, there were quite a few film studios in North Korea (because Kim Jong-il was a movie buff), and the direction was a problem, but manpower and equipment were surprisingly well-equipped.

Therefore, in order to foster their own industries, Jeong-hwan and the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea implemented a screen quota system, limiting the number of foreign currencies that could be imported and opened in a year. A fierce competition ensued.

And the best way in that competition was to drop the other distributor from the deliberation and take away the limited quota, and now that senior member is also receiving money from Ryu Hae-il’s competitive distribution.

The reason that the review took so long right now was also because that goat-bearded inspector, who passed the movies of the company he was watching, ranted about Ryu Hae-il’s company and delayed the review, which seemed to have no problem.

But Ryu Hae-il was willing to put up with it, if it wasn’t for Goatbeard’s last trick.

“Besides, Comrade Director, I heard rumors that Comrade Ryu Hae-il used his position to adore American films that were ideologically unstable in private and praised them as being superior to Republican films.”

“… … Really? But, as you know, these days is not an era where just watching US-made films is not enough. Unless it’s a movie that goes against the socialist ideology… … .”

“It’s a problem because it’s straight up. As far as I know, there is credible news that Comrade Ryu Hae-il watched a movie called ‘Rambo 2’, in which an American imperialist soldier ruthlessly massacres socialist comrades in Vietnam (Vietnam)… … .”

“… … this! Where in the world are you lying? The company you look after was trying to put the ‘Top Gun’ on the deliberation on ‘Independence Day’ when the US chasers ran wild, but they took corrective action and were fined and did not wrinkle the noodles! There is no one who doesn’t know that there was a comrade behind that scheming, but you should be ashamed of such a blatant conspiracy!”