Notes: Pyongyang aromas [comparing three generations of industrial perfume policy, speculative scent memory, hyangsu vs. hyangsu, scent portraits of the leaders, crab apple perfume craze]
◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨ [SPECULATIVE SCENT MEMORY (edited twice after writing the rest)]
⛋ I can see Pyongyang in some combination of imagination, frames of streaming video, coffee table books, PDFs. This is not much, but it is something. Publicity posters, drone sweeps across the city, computer graphic mockups of new aquariums and amusement parks, the Tongil Silbo shots of crowds in halls and women clustered, smiling, around a display case in a new department store. I can hear Pyongyang. I have heard the city at midday. Tourists record the street announcements and they sound just like those that play at five p.m. from a speaker on a pole outside my building, incomprehensible, muffled except for the opening and closing chimes. But I want to smell Pyongyang. I can do this only in my own imagination. I can only collate scent memories of cities near the same latitude. Are there gingko leaves rotting on the sidewalk, as there are in East Tokyo, filling the night air with a putrid almost-sweetness? They are closer than you might think: does Pyongyang smell of raw sewage and sesame oil, like Itaewon back streets do? Could I base this aroma on wintertime in Changchun, where the air was—or still is, perhaps, right at this very moment—powdery with Gobi dust, coal dust, concrete dust, and the type of dust that can only be tasted on the tongue as it begins to snow? Are there any references possible to forgotten arcades and department stores in Sapporo and Vladivostok? I remember they smell of industrial disinfectant, floor polish, and sweat from inside parkas. Would I smell scallops being shucked into basins, as I recall from Pao’ai, and frozen fish being sawed into portions? Do they store cabbage in the landings? Are there women on the sidewalk outside of the apartment blocks at night deep frying skewers of shrimp and offal to order? Maybe not. But they must roast sweet potatoes or chestnuts, right? And I am sure there is corn steaming beside it. What about the body heat of the passengers on the Metro? Is it perfumed with the Pyongyang Perfume Factory’s Okryu or the Sinuiju Cosmetics Factory’s Pomhyanggi? Are the private school girls still wearing their apple perfume or have they switched to Jo Malone? Can it overcome the synthetic deodorant pumped into the cars?
⛋ I have no experience. Speculation does not work. What did I think Sapporo smelled like? I don’t remember, but now I know that it is charcoal and vaporized chicken fat coming out of restaurant exhaust fans in Susukino. What did I think Dandong smelled like? I don’t remember, but now I know that it is the piney, sweet-sour smell of pineapple skins—just the smell, suddenly, through the dust and the background smells of a winter city. I went around a corner and saw them, dark green and bright yellow, scattered in the slush around a tricycle, where a man was hard at work carving them on a nail. What could I someday remember from Pyongyang? Something more colorful than this speculation, I hope, or certainly more genuine. I am not feeling creative: Let me hope it is a spritz on the collarbone of a shop girl of alcohol, industrial stabilizers, synthetic apple aroma, and extract of Siberian crab apple (Malus baccata). ⛋
◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨ [hyangsu/향수/乡愁/NOSTALGIA FOR ONE’S NATIVE PLACE | hyangsu/향수/香水/PERFUME (a note apart from the rest of the entry)]
⛋ A team of young defectors in Seoul made a perfume a few years ago, which attempted to recall a march up Mount Paektu. They have sense memories of these places. Homesickness is remembering the smells of moments that can’t ever be experienced again. They had more modest ambitions. The perfume is heavy on oils of bergamot, sandalwood, and cedarwood. It smells like the forest.
⛋ This was too romantic. They are also more than a decade behind the Pyongyang Natural Perfume Institute, which developed and introduced a “very efficacious green pine perfume into various fields.” The Institute’s perfume, marketed as a component in an air fresher, is capable of “keeping the air in the room fresh” and also “protecting the health of computer users, developing IQ of children and increasing the kinesthetic reaction of sportspersons.”
⛋ This was a missed opportunity. An entire line could be developed, and sold, as long as the nation is divided, in Chongryon meeting halls, in Pyongyang department stores, among the last generation of refugees and left-wing activists. After reunification, when both sides grow nostalgic for the places and experiences and smells made possible by the old division, the recipes might stay the same but the labels modified. And I might finally know what a winter night in Pyongyang smells like. ⛋
◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨ [SCENT PORTRAITS OF THE LEADERS: KIM IL-SUNG THE SHAMAN / KIM JONG-IL THE DANDY / KIM JONG-UN THE DEODORIZER]
⛋ Kim Il-sung must be treated with some dignity. He is a shamanic figure, emerging from the forests of the borderlands to expel the invaders. Those that mock this mythology do not realize that it does not actually matter how much is true—as long as there is just enough. He built industry and put up concrete blocks and imported computers. He smelled of red cypress (Taxodium distichum), Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis), needles, pollen, sap, heartwood, and also grease, concrete dust, Hwang-geumbeol-brand tobacco, and the soaps made in his Sinuiju Cosmetics Factory.
⛋ Kim Jong-il was a dandy. And so, even if he most likely smelled only of Martell and Benson & Hedges, I grant him Yves Saint Laurent Pour Homme and worn-out air conditioning, Cepacol Mint and Vinylon, pomade and the gentle powdery smell of Shiseido foundation. This is not the same romantic portrait as his father earned. It is even less accurate.
⛋ Kim Jong-un is many things. He might save the country. He might plant the trees that his father turned to pulp. He might have everyone grow as plump and happy as he is. He might send the birthrate to South Korean levels. But, above all, he is the great deodorizer. He has remade the nation’s interiors to look like computer graphic mockups. He has given up on the neoclassical halls designed for his grandfather by Soviet and East German architects, and on the internationalist and neotraditionalist structures of his father’s generation; he has allowed Korea to embrace a modern, truly global architecture, shared by suburban housing developments outside Bangkok, professional offices in Decatur, diplomatic compounds in Mombasa—because it was turned out by the same computer programs, built from materials moved on the same logistics chains that came from the same factories in the Pearl River Delta. These Korean interiors smell the same as they do everywhere else, too. Although the industrial scents turned out by the Pyongyang Essential Oil Factory in peach, lemon, mint, strawberry, and aloe might vary slightly from Unilever’s offerings, but they are close enough, I am sure. This is a scent portrait of Kim Jong-un: an underused lobby in a newly-opened official building, industrial mint enhancing the smell of off-gassing plastics. ⛋
◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨ [PERFUME POLICY / JUCHE PERFUME 1: industrial memoir]
⛋ I think of Jiang Qing again, choking on Gardénia and her special blend of Yunnan tobacco, watching Camille for the hundredth time, perhaps imagining herself as Marguerite in the Baron de Varville's mansion. Her aesthetic vision for the country only hinted at her own tastes. What would Jiang Qing’s fragrance for the masses have been? We don’t know. The Chinese through the 1960s and 1970s, I suspect, did not produce even a drop of cologne. Material conditions are the explanation I prefer, but maybe also beliefs among the leadership, perhaps also Jiang Qing herself, about the dangers of luxury. I want to make a comparison. Kim Il-sung, even, who rhapsodized about the beauty of lady guerrillas, and certainly Kim Jong-il were not interested in certain types of austerity being inflicted upon women. Like the Soviets, who nationalized and streamlined their imperial parfumeries but still produced fragrances (Krasnaya Moskva, the most popular, was from the same batch of pre-1917 recipes that also resulted in Chanel N°5), and perhaps under their influence, the Koreans made perfumes, too.
⛋ Perhaps something has already been written about socialist perfume policy. It is a worthwhile area for research, I believe, since fragrance is tied up with conceptions of modernity and civilization, and production of sophisticated modern perfumes, especially working with extracts from natural ingredients, requires advanced technology. Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il could provide the case studies, one shakily following the Soviet line, which had little to do with local conditions in Korea (the Soviet Union had the equipment, expertise, and access to raw materials, all of which Korea had to import), the other trying to develop a cosmetics industry, with perfume as part of it, as part of an attempt to move away from the heavy industrial model—and both arriving at about the same result, which was, due to the problem of importing materials, limited production. Kim Jong-un’s perfume policy needs a more thorough treatment than I can provide.
⛋ Kim Jong-un saved Korean perfume. Production declined over the years. The chaos of the Kim Jong-il years and the sanctions were too much. Kim Jong-un began the trade with China in essential oils and other raw materials. He initiated a longterm collaboration between state cosmetics companies and French fragrance manufacturer Jean Niel. Through the leadership of the Ministry of Daily Necessities Industry, he also turned the industry as much as possible toward self-sufficiency.
⛋ The Institute of Perfume and Cosmetic Engineering or the Pyongyang Natural Perfume Institute sends its recipes to the Pyongyang Essential Oil Factory, who produce extracts of a range of flowers, including roses, sweet briar (Rosa rubiginosa) a variety of apples, quince, peaches, Korean ginseng (Panax ginseng), peppermint (Mentha × piperita), magnolia berry (Schisandra chinensis), Siberian sagewort (Artemisia messerschmidtiana), and wild strawberry (Fragaria orientalis). These materials and imported chemicals are combined at the Sinuiju Cosmetics Factory (they produce the Pomhyanggi line of fragrances, among others), the Pyongyang Cosmetics Factory (responsible for the Unhasu line), the Pyongyang Perfume Factory (makers of Okryu), Chongjin Cosmetics Factory, and the Hamhung Perfume Factory.
⛋ What do they smell like? Bold and boozy, dense and sweet… One review mentions “mystical,” “Oriental,” or “watery green.” The preference is for heat and robustness for men, and floral scents for women. They must compete with fusty European aromas. There is limited innovation, except in industrial processes. This is why Kim Jong-un sparking a craze for apple perfume several years ago is notable.1 ⛋
◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨ [JUCHE PERFUME 2: industrial romance]
⛋ Maybe the perfume industry is all a byproduct of industrial scents and flavorings. It follows chewing gum and air freshener. But that is not enough to explain it. There is in this perfume industrial policy a new sense of competitiveness. These are intended to compete with or at least match foreign fragrances, rather than simply being a low-grade substitute. This is made explicit in cosmetic industry exhibitions that feature in their literature direct comparison with French brands. This is the subtext of the industrial romance novel I Will Love You, in which the foreign cologne of a woman’s lover is contrasted with the smell she carries on her body from working as a chemist in a beauty industry research institute: advanced industry smells good; the local version must rise to its level and smell good, too.2 ⛋
◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨◧◨ [WHEN WILL I STICK MY NOSE INTO YOU? (attempting a few different conclusions)]
⛋ These kernels of thoughts have been developed already into clear ideas, researched and noted, written down in dissertations locked away on websites that lock away academic PDFs from Korea. Maybe some maximalist version of them can be found in the statements at the head of documents from the Pyongyang Natural Perfume Institute or the The Institute of Perfume and Cosmetic Engineering. So, even if it seems there is something original here, I am sure there is not.
⛋ What is the problem? I might have the focus to write about wider industrial perfume policy, fragrant futurism, the triumph of light industry, the political uses of perfume, or what young women are wearing on the Metro, but I need to go there. I need to move beyond speculation. But is the border open yet? Will I ever scrape together the money or find someone to pay the extortionate fees charged by my potential fixer? ⛋
This section draws heavily on Mysterious Pyongyang: Cosmetics, Beauty Culture and North Korea by Sung-wook Nam, Ga-young Lee, Su-lan Chae. The book’s title is misleading, since it is a fairly dry account of the development of light industry since the 1990s, with an emphasis on health and beauty products. The trivia about apple perfume (popular with students and young urban women after 2016) and the descriptions of various fragrances comes from Mysterious Pyongyang.
Other details come from material in Foreign Trade of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as well as a range of state media sources.
My description of the industrial network is shaky. It should not be taken completely seriously, although I hope I have the vague outlines.
Details about the novel come from “Discovery and Representation of the Body Captivated by the Senses: Ryom Ye-song's ‘I Love You,’ a North Korean Short Story” 감각에 사로잡힌 몸의 발견과 재현 - 북한 단편소설 렴예성의 『사랑하노라』를 중심으로 by Lee Ji-soon, which is summarized in a KBS report, “북한의 향기산업” [“North Korea’s Fragrance Industry”].