East Berlin, late 1990s. Across the street from a block of run-down 1970s East German housing projects sits a decrepit-looking factory building from the turn of the 20th century; a former backyard building to be correct, since the front building was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War. The site of that former front building is now a flattened, debris-strewn parking lot with several car wrecks rusting away. There is no trace left of what kind of factory that former back building might have housed, and from the outside it looks fairly abandoned. The door is wide open and the hallway full of garbage. The staircase walls are covered with punk graffiti and, up to the 4th floor, the steps are littered with thousands of techno party flyers – apparently, somebody just opened big boxes of them and threw them down the stairs. A stairway to hell for anybody used to clean and orderly environs.
And yet, U Kun-chol, Secretary of Economic Affairs at the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s Berlin diplomatic mission, climbs these stairs several times a week, always accompanied by whatever translator he can fetch from his diplomatic outlet as he doesn’t speak a word of either English or German. The stairs lead him to a freshly painted white door and behind it, a spacious former factory hall, now all painted white and converted into a big, sleek office space with brand-new iMacs on the desks. It houses the headquarters of an independent movie theater operation that started out as a punk / squatter movie den in the rebellious Kreuzberg area of West Berlin in the early 1980s and which by now has grown into a cinema enterprise that runs several theaters across town.
U Kun-chol always politely knocks on that white door and, expecting no answer, opens it himself. One of a number of guys working in the office, all of them skinny like junkies, dressed in black leader and sporting disheveled post-punk haircuts eventually looks up from his computer screen and grunts: “We’re busy. You gotta wait a bit.”
U and his translator sit down and simply wait for somebody to have time for their business, helping themselves to a cup of instant coffee over at the small kitchen table. He is in his late 40s and his temples are graying, but he has a friendly face always ready to smile and wears decidedly Western clothes – a German army parka over a light gray business suit. He doesn’t fit into these environs of post-punk cool at all.
But he has good reasons to be patient: his predecessor contacted all the Berlin movie theaters listed in the Yellow Pages and all of them answered straight into his face with typical Berlin bluntness: “Get outta here,” once he had introduced himself and his business proposal. These punk guys here however seem to need the money offered and have agreed to work with that representative of the “Office for the Protection of the Interests of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” – the diplomatic mission North Korea maintains in Berlin at the time. The predecessor has returned home to Pyongyang and now U carries on with the business.
After a while, one of the young Germans comes over and sits next to U, asking “Whassup?” This is U’s moment. He produces a long type-written list of film titles from his parka pocket and demands: “I need these films. As soon as possible. Can you manage?” “Huh, difficult, that might involve a lot of work and won’t be cheap.” the reply invariably comes, to which U says: “Doesn’t matter. I need the films.” None of the theater managers asks any questions about what U needs the films for.
