ABSTRACT
The True Identity of 'Pear Blossom' (Pear Blossom) is a graphic novel published in 2004 by Kumsong Youth Publishing House. Through an analysis informed by studies of comics and graphic novels as multimodal media and North Korean cultural production, this chapter examines how Pear Blossom engages with the family theme through focalization, closure, metalepsis and braiding. Apart from the juxtaposed panels of performed harmony of family and society, motifs of trees and calligraphic slogans, the most potent motif distributed throughout the general arthrology of Pear Blossom is the scar. In the analysis of narrator and focalization as they are organized in the spatio-topical system of Pear Blossom, the chapter looks at inter-panel relations within the sequence, which Groensteen calls restrained arthrology. But panels show that the transition from other panels was actually more significant: grandmother and granddaughter are seen back-to-back, wide awake, with troubled, restless expressions – they are sleepless in the DPRK.
