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Journalism of Courage
Gone with the Wind may well be rewritten in its reading in North Korea
When it was reintroduced in North Korea in the mid-1990s,Gone with the Wind became a favourite with the late ruler Kim Jong-il and a literary sensation in the country. Now,reports have framed the intimacy that North Koreans,across all walks of life,have developed with Margaret Mitchells civil war epic. The worlds only hereditary communist regime is generally thought to take a leaf out of Stalins book when it comes to literature; that is,it doesnt allow it,apart from romance novels richly laced with propaganda,detective stories and presumably unthreatening foreign classics like Don Quixote. Pyongyang is inscrutable about its reasons for allowing the publication of Mitchells novel. It may have offered an escape for thousands of North Koreans,and descriptions of the decadent Old South must have chimed with rumours about Kim Jong-ils fabulous lifestyle.
As for Gone With the Wind,the novel about a valiant last stand against Washington might also have been introduced so that North Korean apparatchiks,when faced with US criticism,could declare rather grandly: Frankly,I dont give a damn.
