Nicholas Bonner with his book on North Korean graphic design published in 2017 / Courtesy of Nicholas Bonner

By Park Ji-won

Nicholas Bonner, a British man who is co-founder of one of largest tour companies traveling to North Korea, has publicly released his decades-old collection of North Korean graphic art in Seoul.

As co-founder of Koryo Tours, he has visited North Korea countless times and gathered stamps, posters, tickets, sweet wrappers and comic books. The exhibition "Made in North Korea: Graphics from Everyday Life in the DPRK" offers a glimpse of some 200 graphics collected by Bonner since the 1990s. All North Korean designs must get government permission for publication as they are used to promote state propaganda according to media reports.

In an email interview with The Korea Times on Jan. 29, he explained the North's designs not only cover propaganda but also show unique and bright color combinations that we wouldn't expect from a totalitarian state.

"Prior to the digital age the North Korean designers drew inspiration in particular from traditional art, calligraphy, symbols and designs including the Korean palette ― bright fun colors, reds and pinks, which contrast sharply with the muted tones we usually associate with socialism. I think we tend to think the graphics would be covered in propaganda imagery but this just is not the case," Bonner said.

The poster of "Made in North Korea: Graphics from Everyday Life in the DPRK" / Courtesy of Culture & I Leaders

Most of all, he hopes people in the South could learn from his first exhibition here about ordinary North Korean society and its people, which have been demonized here for so long.

"The beauty of visiting the exhibition lies in getting a glimpse of something human behind all the political rhetoric, a link to the person on the other side of the 38th parallel who also washes clothes, buys sweets for their kids, goes to the cinema, etc."

He said he started to pay attention to the country as a lecturer in landscape architecture after witnessing Pyongyang's "fascinating" and "unusual" scenery for study purposes. He recalled that the capital had an "amazing array of styles including Russian-influenced neoclassicist architecture, a large-scale interpretation of Korean architecture in concrete plus modernism and brutalism, and all of this decorated with socialist realist art, mosaic and sculpture."

After setting up Koryo Tours in Beijing in 1993, the very first year he visited Pyongyang, he expanded his interests into other cultural areas of North Korea. Graphic design was one of them. He published a graphic book based on the collection called "Made in North Korea: Graphics From Everyday Life in the DPRK" in 2017, which led to holding his design exhibition in London and here.

Claiming that "North Korea has in my mind some of the best graphics on the planet," he pointed out some graphics are hard to obtain as they are limited edition and outsiders have limited access to them.

He mostly collected goods allowed outside of the country. But some items such as bottle labels are basically not allowed to be taken abroad because of their poor quality. He had to persuade North Koreans of the beauty of the country's designs and received permission to bring some designs out.

He selected a simple sugar sachet as representative of North Korean design that foreign tourists could get on Air Koryo flights in the early 1990s for its rarity and design value. "It is a rare item. Air Koryo were flying in approximately 100 tourists a year in 1993 and current numbers are still low, under 4,000 Western tourists," he said.

"And, in a country not ever associated with frivolousness, this pretty little item, with such simplicity and complexity wrapped up together in its very existence, is perhaps the most representative of why there is the reason for design."

He also hoped his exhibition could give South Koreans a better understanding of the North as the two ironically have limited knowledge about each other.

"There are of course many more aspects but perhaps realizing that there are both differences and similarities in both parts of your country. For example, the symbolism used on many of the North Korean graphics are unique to the North; every North Korean seeing an image of the Kangson Steelworks ― representing the industrial capacity of their country ― knows that the product is selling itself as strong and reliable. But in both parts of Korea you would understand that designs featuring pine trees and flying cranes symbolize longevity while the Kumgang Mountains are representative of products associated with vitality and health, and sadly a divided country."

The show runs in the third gallery of Hongik Daehangno Artcenter in Seoul until April 7.