It’s fairly well-known that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il fancies himself as a bit of a film buff, taking it well beyond the bounds of rationality when he kidnapped South Korean director Shin Sang-ok in 1978 and forced him to direct multiple films in the DPRK. Well, perhaps “films” is too kind – these pieces of cinema are nothing more than propaganda vehicles for the dictator and his now deceased father. Rather shocked to find a common interest between myself and an Asian dictator, I decided to take a look at the Godzilla knock-off that Kim produced, featuring the world’s first (and to my knowledge only) socialist giant monster, Pulgasari.
A period piece set in an indeterminate time in Korea’s history, where the good, salt-of-the-earth, working people are trodden upon by a despotic and parasitic ruling elite, who are more interested in amassing weapons than keeping the populace supplied with food. If any of this is seeming ironic for a pro-Kim propaganda film, that is because it is ironic. If you didn’t know better, you’d swear that Kim Jong-il was a secret dissident, seeking to undermine his father’s rule. But sadly not, this is merely a phenomenally short-sighted propaganda piece. An elderly blacksmith, consigned to prison, fashions his last hope for his fellow serf’s salvation out of a ball of rice – the socialist monster Pulgasari. Brought to life by a drop of blood from the old blacksmith’s daughter Ami (Chang Son Hui), Pulgasari exhibits a prodigious appetite for iron, an immensely scarce resource. This does rather make you wonder why in the world the old blacksmith would call forth a monster with such a specific and hard-to-satisfy appetite, but we’ll let that slide for now.
Meanwhile, Ami’s cousin Inde (Ham Gi Sop) is busy stirring up trouble with his group of bandits, and naturally soon falls foul of the authorities. Saved from execution by the rapidly-growing Pulgasari, Inde leads his ragtag band against the corrupt government with the help of their monstrous ally. A steady diet of metal makes Pulgasari grow until he is roughly the size of an office block, and easily able to overcome the spears and swords of an increasingly desperate imperial army. After multiple plots to take down the huge beast, Pulgasari and the rebels sweep into the capital city, kill the king and his generals and take back the land for the proletariat. But they are sadly met with a problem. Along with his size, Pulgasari’s appetite for iron has grown exponentially, forcing the poor farming folk to sacrifice their tools to satisfy his appetite. But facing starvation, Ami decides that this is a bridge too far, and sacrifices herself to destroy Pulgasari once and for all, so that the people might live once more in peace.
So, to re-cap, we have two separate and clear metaphors contained within this film, both less-than-flattering to the Kim dynasty. First, we see a desperate and trodden-on people who are kept in line by violence and starvation, while the ruling class act as war-mongers and despots. Secondly, the people are saved by a powerful monster and overturn the old order in a glorious revolution, only to discover that their supposed saviour is merely another menace to their freedom and livelihood. It’s rather incredible to think that Kim Jong-il failed to notice these obvious connections to the failures of his own regime, but when dealing with someone quite as mentally unbalanced as he, it becomes less surprising.
From a purely objective stand-point, Pulgasari is competently-enough made, with Japanese monster masters Toho supplying both aid with the special effects and miniature work (which is, as always, exemplary), and Kenpachiro Satsuma, the actor who portrayed Godzilla from 1984 to 1995, taking the role of Pulgasari himself. The acting is as hammy as you might expect from a rubber monster movie and there are some very unusual sound choices, especially the “shing” of the swords. The film, sadly, has aged badly, as the synthesiser-heavy soundtrack will attest, but otherwise has enough action and story to keep your interest throughout, provided you can ignore the phenomenal political hypocrisy, and the rather sinister feeling that the man behind the camera was taken against his will, and only escaped when he attended a business meeting in Vienna. Mr. Kim should stick to watching films rather than making them, as he shows as little flair and imagination as is to be expected of the object of an obsessive cult of personality.