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Feature
Where North and South Korea Meet: On TV
A
popular show gives “defector beauties” a chance to tell stories from
the North. It’s loud and gaudy — and changing the conversation about
reunification.
CreditCreditJeongMee Yoon for The New York Times
Episode 376 of “Now on My Way to Meet You” aired in late February, three days after the second summit meeting
between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Labeled a “special feature,” it
began on the streets of Hanoi, a rare on-location shoot. One of the
show’s two hosts, the genial comedian Nam Hee-seok, stood behind a
police barricade with 30-year-old Shin Eun-ha, perhaps the most well
known of the South Korean variety show’s recurring personalities,
waiting for the arrival of Kim in an armored limousine. They were
surrounded by reporters and gawkers holding up cellphone cameras to the
North Korean entourage. When Kim’s limo appeared, Shin loudly, tearfully
called out a plea: “Sir, please help me get back home! Please help me
get back home!”
Shin is no acolyte of Kim or his Workers’ Party. She is a talbukja
— a defector to South Korea from the North — and what she longs for is
to see her hometown again and to be able to occasionally cross the
Demilitarized Zone. This vision of a comparatively open border and some
freedom of travel is increasingly what is meant on the Korean Peninsula
by “reunification.” There has been talk of normalized relations and
corporate exchange, and Seoul has even floated the notion
of a European Union-style confederation. Literal reunification, defined
as the abrupt political merger of the two Koreas, has mostly passed
into a prelapsarian dream of peace activists.
When
it had its premiere in 2011, “Now on My Way to Meet You” was a
tear-jerking reunion program featuring families separated by the Korean
War, but before the show had a chance to reunite anyone, it underwent a
transformation. The way the producers tell it, in their scramble to
recruit separated families, they kept running into a new generation of
defectors. So they made the rather canny decision to reorient their show
around appealing young women, whom they took to calling “defector
beauties.” The show’s on-location backdrops of humble homes and noodle
restaurants gave way to a glitzy game-show-type set, and estranged
septuagenarians were replaced with girlish defectors. Pretty soon, the
only thing left of the original program was its name and the desire for
reunion. A typical 90-minute episode might veer wildly from a report on
rice shortages to a joke about face cream. The aesthetic is loud and
frenetic, featuring sound effects and cartoon thought bubbles. At center
stage sit a dozen guests, many of them women in short, colorful
dresses, their legs all canted in the same direction. The two hosts
engage the group in rapid-fire patter, while an all-male panel of B-list
celebrities called the South 4 tosses out oohs, aahs and sexual
innuendo.
Since
its reinvention, “Now on My Way” has attracted a loyal audience, and in
the process has become a mass-market vehicle for notions of
reunification and North Korean identity, as understood by South Koreans.
The show was the first to approach North Korea not as news or
documentary but through comedic skits and tearful testimonies by young talbukja.
The marriage of silly themes and personal stories produced an aptly
incoherent vision of the North: depending on the segment, a hell that
must be escaped at all costs or a place of neighborly warmth. In media
coverage, “Now on My Way” has been portrayed as a gaudy curiosity, but
it’s better understood as a lowbrow show with good intentions.
Reunification is a constant sub- and supertext, endorsed by everyone on
set.
Episode 376
took this theme to a new level. A second segment from Hanoi was filmed
in a makeshift studio, a hotel ballroom, with Nam, Shin and several
others — talbukja, journalists and
a postdoctoral student in nuclear physics, each introduced with an
animated title card — seated in a talk-show half-moon. Shin, wearing a
demure yellow dress, offered a personal reflection: “As soon as I heard
that the talks had fallen apart, it hit me: It’s over. When will we be
able to hope for reunification again?” Jun Cheol-woo, a middle-aged
defector with a theatrical manner, chimed in. “Seeing Kim Jong-un, I
suddenly felt a rush of hope,” he said. “But now that talks have
collapsed” — cue close-up, soft piano music and here’s-what-to-think
subtitle (“Imagine how Cheol-woo feels!”) — “I thought, maybe I was
wrong to hope.”
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Twelve
minutes later, the Hanoi footage wrapped, and “Now on My Way” was back
where it usually is, on its elaborate studio set in Seoul. The pretaped
remainder of the episode made no mention of diplomacy. One of the South 4
had been swapped out this week for Hooni Kim, the Korean-American chef
behind Hanjan and Danji, upscale Korean restaurants in Manhattan. Kim
discussed his love of North Korean naengmyun (cold buckwheat noodles) and taste-tested a seafood stew cooked by one of the defectors. We may season things differently, the unsubtle message seemed to be, but we are one.
I went to see “Now
on My Way to Meet You” in person on a humid summer morning. It airs on
Channel A, a cable network started in 2011 by the conservative Dong A
Ilbo newspaper, which has its studios in Digital Media City, a cluster
of shiny high-rises on what was once a giant landfill. I’d been emailing
with the show’s executive producer, Kong Hyosoon, for more than six
months, and not without hiccups. She was immensely protective of “Now on
My Way” and its cast of defectors. The terrifying back and forth
between Trump and Kim Jong-un throughout 2017 — followed, confusingly,
by the scheduling of a first-ever summit meeting between the countries’
leaders — had put talbukja on
edge. The North Korean government was clamping down on the flow of
remittances that many defectors send home via Chinese middlemen. Kong
worried that I would interrogate the talbukja and write off the show as drivel.
On
set, though, the mood was relaxed, and Kong let down her guard. The
defectors, the hosts and the South 4 milled around, cracking jokes and
catching up like old friends. Many defectors had told me how much they
miss the intimacy of their neighborhoods in the North, a stark contrast
to Seoul’s cool, atomistic consumerism; but here, a tenderness
prevailed. The set was a cartoony village beneath a starry sky: cottages
and townhouses, planter boxes, a cobblestone path. Most striking was an
old-fashioned telephone booth (calling to mind the fact that the Koreas
had just re-established a diplomatic hotline) and a bus stop indicating transit between Pyongyang and Seoul. The props seemed designed to map an imminent reunification.
Kong Hyosoon, the producer of the show.CreditJeongMee Yoon for The New York Times
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The
theme of this episode was North Korean pop culture. The hosts, Nam and
the actress Park Eun-hye, asked the younger defectors on set about North
Korean millennials’ growing obsession with South Korean fashion, slang
and music. This, a South 4 member explained, represented the third wave
of defection. First was the kotjebi era of migrants fleeing the famine; second was the jangmadang era of protocapitalists seeking opportunity; and now came the gangnam era of young people “crossing the river to go South,” in search of fulfillment and cool. Everyone onstage nodded.
Defections
were relatively rare until the late 1990s: a few high-level desertions
of diplomatic posts and the occasional cinematic escape from a prison
camp. But the widespread famine of the 1990s drove hundreds, then
thousands of North Koreans to risk their lives by crossing the Tumen or
Yalu Rivers into China and hoping to find passage to the South. The term
used for that first wave, kotjebi, translates literally as “flower swallow,” after the scavenging motions of homeless children in the North.
South
Korea is the logical destination for refugees from the North — not only
for cultural reasons but also because it provides them with citizenship
and generous benefits. Upon arrival, talbukja
are subjected to lengthy interrogation to make sure they aren’t North
Korean spies or Chinese-Koreans (ethnic Koreans living in China aren’t
given the same benefits) and are then placed in a three-month adjustment
program run by the Ministry of Unification, a 50-year-old agency that
handles everything from inter-Korean development initiatives to
cross-border family reunions. Defectors learn how to take the subway,
shop for groceries, use smartphones and master the “Seoul accent.” Once
they graduate, the government gives them cash benefits and a housing
subsidy, vocational training and scholarships but also places them under
surveillance. More than 32,000 talbukja now live in South Korea — up from just over 1,000 in 2001. (Some 400 have appeared on “Now on My Way.”)
Female talbukja, having come up in a society untouched by feminism, are viewed by South Koreans as meek and old-fashioned. “Now on My Way” has been criticized for peddling this stereotype,
but in the episode I saw being taped, the emphasis was more on romance —
what Kong calls “interpersonal reunification.” Following a “Lady and
the Tramp”-style skit set in a Pyongyang restaurant (think spaghetti and
flirtation at a small dinner table), two new defectors emerged from
backstage. One was a 20-something woman who teetered in white platform
heels; the other, a stylish, brooding young man with floppy hair. Kong
whispered, “He’s a huge YouTube star.”
Shin Eun-ha and Kim Ara (left to right), North Korean defectors on the set.CreditJeongMee Yoon for The New York Times
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Before
and after the taping, in a greenroom marked “VIP,” Kong supervised my
interviews with the two hosts; with the head writer, Jang Hee-jung; and
with the defectors Shin Eun-ha and Kim Ara, the show’s most popular and
glamorous regulars. Kong warned me several times not to ask about
politics. “Now on My Way” had been accused, especially early on, of
demonizing the North. In a recurring segment called “Defection Story,” talbukja
gave unverifiable accounts of the conditions they left behind. In
articles, blogs and online forums, other defectors called the program
“shameless” and “80 percent lies.” The criticisms were small and large —
it wasn’t true that toothbrushes were rare in the North; it was
irresponsible to say that 90 percent of defectors had been sexually
trafficked. One defector I met in Seoul blasted the show for presenting
an outdated view of North Korea, all abuse and starvation. “It makes it
harder to achieve reunification with all the inaccuracies on the show
and because it reflects an earlier reality,” he said.
Shin
and Kim joined the program in Season 1 and have continued to appear,
week after week. In some episodes, they say very little — the more time
passed, the less direct knowledge they had of North Korea. But the women
are always game to clap and laugh and cry, offering their alabaster
faces for reaction shots. Shin defected with her entire family in 2000;
her mother and sister have appeared alongside her on the program. Kim,
on the other hand, has been separated from her father since 2008, when
she left the North, and has a bit more of a crusading air. “Reliving my
trauma is worth it, because I can spread a message to people from
different governments and others watching the show,” she told me.
Outside “Now on My Way,” Kim is a model and an actress and recently
played a Chinese-Korean maid in a soap opera. Her celebrity, she said,
was a platform for human rights that she used to endorse diplomacy with
the North. “I now have real hope to reunite with my family,” she said.
“Until last year, I didn’t think it’d happen until after I die. Our show
might be partly responsible.”
Kong
guffawed. “That’s definitely not true!” she said. “Don’t print that.”
Despite her reticence about politics, Kong did acknowledge that “the
point of our show is to demonstrate the value of reunification.” Jang,
the head writer, said, “There’s room for this show until reunification
happens.”
Last May, in an episode
following a summit meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea,
the hosts asked the day’s cast of defector beauties and the South 4 not
for policy prescriptions but for feelings and gut reactions. A defector
in a scarlet dress spoke of her changed opinion of Kim Jong-un:
“Before, I really disliked him, but seeing the way he spoke and acted at
the summit, I was impressed by his sincerity.” Yoo Jae-hwan, a stocky
pop singer on the South 4 panel, spoke next, over footage of the two
Korean leaders smiling at each other along the Demilitarized Zone. “I
got teary, watching them hold hands,” he said. “Even now, thinking about
it again, I feel like I’m going to cry.” An animated balloon reading
“almost cried” popped up, to the sound of a cartoony pow.
The show has been portrayed as a gaudy curiosity, but it’s better understood as a lowbrow show with good intentions.CreditJeongMee Yoon for The New York Times
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Though “Now on
My Way to Meet You” was birthed by a right-wing media company that
opposes dialogue with the North, its focus on emotion over politics has
translated into a vague endorsement of peace. Seoul’s policy toward
Pyongyang has vacillated: hard line and militaristic under conservative
presidents and conciliatory under liberals. The current South Korean
president, Moon Jae-in, is a liberal with an additional, personal stake
in North Korean rapprochement — his parents came south as refugees at
the height of the Korean War; his mother’s sister still lives in the
North. Before becoming president, Moon was a democracy activist, a civil
rights attorney and the chief of staff to the left-wing president Roh
Moo-hyun. After talking Trump down from threats of war in 2017, Moon
used last year’s Winter Olympics to draw North Korea into the global
arena and met with Kim soon thereafter. In April 2018, in their Panmunjom Declaration,
named after the truce village along the Demilitarized Zone, Kim and
Moon pledged to bring an official end to the Korean War, create “a new
era of national reconciliation, peace and prosperity” and re-establish
cross-border “railways and roads.”
The
idea of a railway, however theoretical, captured the imagination of
South Koreans, who aren’t permitted to visit the North. In February
2018, “Now on My Way” dedicated an episode to the past and future idea
of a transcontinental train. Shin held up an enlarged copy of an
old-timey passenger ticket. It belonged to Sohn Kee-chung, the Korean
marathon runner who won a gold medal for colonial Japan in the 1936
Berlin Olympics. Sohn had traveled by train from Japan to Germany, via
Korea, China and Russia. “Right now, South Korea is an island,” Shin
said. “But it wasn’t always that way. It’s because the peninsula was
divided. If we were reunited, we could take the train all the way to
Europe.”
Moon talks a lot about unity
and peace but avoids “human rights,” a phrase that, from the North
Korean perspective, smacks of imperial overreach rather than reasonable
condemnation of totalitarian control. Seoul has adopted a “spillover”
approach, hoping that an emphasis on diplomacy, aid and economic
development, paralleling the American focus on denuclearization, will
eventually improve the status of human rights in North Korea. Moon is
also careful not to put too fine a point on “reunification,” lest he
imply a German model of takeover. His Ministry of Unification highlights
what it calls the Three Nos: “no desire for the North’s collapse, no
pursuit of unification by absorption and no pursuit of unification
through artificial means.” For this, Human Rights Watch and defector
groups have condemned him for whitewashing abuses. “Now on My Way” has
generally fallen in line with Moon’s principles, though some of its
defector beauties now support regime change in the North. “I think it’s
great that people from our show are advocating human rights and talking
about their experiences in North Korea,” Kong said, “but that shouldn’t
be seen as being done under the color of our program.”
Most
South Koreans believe that reunification is necessary, but just 19
percent want it to happen “quickly.” Younger adults are much more likely
than those over 50 to support a gradual, deferred reconciliation. Krys
Lee, a novelist and professor in Seoul, told me that TV programs like
“Now on My Way” are helpful in getting students to identify emotionally
with reunification. “I can see the difference since ‘Now on My Way’ went
on the air,” said the defector Kwon Seol-kyung, a musician who leads
the all-North Korean Pyongyang Art Troupe. “There’s an openness and good
feelings about reunification.”
“Now
on My Way” has given rise to numerous copycat shows, including a nearly
identical program called “Moranbong Club,” named after a North Korean
girl group, and “Love Reunification! Southern Man, Northern Woman,” both
seasons of which had a South Korean man playact marriage with a dainty,
naïve talbukja. “In South Korea
today, there’s isn’t a TV program that doesn’t deal with the North,”
Kong said. Last fall, during yet another inter-Korean summit meeting,
the journalist Jin Cheon-gyu held a news conference in Seoul to announce
the start of the “Reunification TV” channel, to go live in 2019,
befitting a “new path of dialogue between South and North.” It would
feature history, culture, food, lifestyle, education, arts, sports and
music programs, along with soap operas and films — “but nothing
political.”
To endorse reunification,
though, is ultimately a political act. I had seen, in watching “Now on
My Way to Meet You,” how the idea of reunion could be made to feel
inevitable, willed into existence, even on an otherwise silly show.
“We’re trying to make the audience more curious,” Kong said. “First it
was: ‘Wow, we have this many defectors in South Korea? Is that how they
live?’ Then, in time, people gained more knowledge about North Korea and
the lives of defectors. Now the question is, ‘What happens after
reunification?’ ”
E.
Tammy Kim is a freelance reporter, a contributing opinion writer for
The New York Times and a former lawyer at the Community Development
Project of the Urban Justice Center.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page 28 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Where South Meets North. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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