Reflections on a North Korean Propaganda Film

Apartments and the DPRK

The film begins with a young child observing longingly her schoolmates joyfully run home to their parents waiting on the doorsteps of an apartment building. As the little girl sadly walks away towards her home in the farmlands, she tells us her dearest wish: to live in an apartment.

In The Schoolgirl’s Diary, a North Korean (DPRK) propaganda film released in theatres in 2007, a struggling rural family experiences the sacrifice and pain of an absent father as his“contribution to the collective future”working as a factory engineer, keeps him far from his family and home. His two daughters feel the burden of “being left behind” by both their father who works and lives at the factory, and by their leader Kim Jung Il’s great development plan for the nation. The daughters yearn to be noticed and accepted by their father. They earn good grades in school and play competitive sports in hopes of receiving praise from him.

The 94 minute film ends on a climactic note, when at long last, the father is nationally recognised. At last the years of sacrifice and suffering are rewarded as the family is relocated to a “Khrushchyovka” -like concrete apartment building in the outskirts of the city. The daughters no longer feel left behind by their father and nation, living in their small community a couple miles away from the children who lived in apartments. The wishful child from the beginning of the film has her dearest wish granted  by the “father of the Nation” (as the film refers to the leader): living in an apartment. 

Despite living on their own plot of land in an intergenerational home, surrounded by caring and helpful neighbors (the film depicts the neighbors helping the women of the house fix their chimney since no man is home to do so) and despite having an ill mother who is cancer-ridden, the eldest daughter’s most sincere wish is merely to live in an apartment. Struggling through her childhood in a broken family, with an absent father and and a cancer-struck mother, all that the daughter yearns for is for her family to leave their farm home behind and go integrate in the socialist urbanity.

“The Schoolgirl’s Diary”, partially written by Kim Jong-Il himself, was viewed by nearly 8 million North Koreans, almost one third of DPRK’s population. It was broadcasted on national television at 8pm, following the most watched television news segment. Families gathered around the TV set to watch this North Korean “blockbuster” film. The main actress, who played the oldest daughter, became an overnight star and was granted the highest artistic honor of “people’s artist” by Kim Jong-Il. All propaganda movies push an ideological agenda destined to convince and subvert its viewers. Usual propaganda tropes are boasting national pride and convincing the viewer of the “righteousness of the nation.” Propaganda movies tend to center around the heroic and idealized traditions of a nation. Interestingly The Schoolgirl’s Diary’s message is not convincing the viewers of Kim Jung-Il’s supremacy; rather, the film’s main message is simply on the desirability of apartments.

This begs the question: what about apartments is so important to the DPRK?