Nonfiction graphic novel, written and illustrated by Guy Delisle. Subtitled "A Journey in North Korea," it was published by Drawn & Quarterly in 2003.
Delisle is a Canadian cartoonist best known for his graphic novels about his travels in Asia and the Middle East, but he's also an animator who's worked as an animation supervisor (generally, checking the work of other animators to make sure everything is working smoothly and clearly) at cartoon studios in Asia. At one time, Delisle spent a couple months as an animation supervisor at a studio in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, and that's how this book came to be written.
I don't believe it'll be a surprise to any of you that North Korea is an extremely authoritarian, extremely isolationist, extremely poor, extremely militarized, extremely controlled, and possibly insane nation in East Asia. It's not a surprise to Delisle either when he arrives in the country. This isn't a story of a naive animator discovering that North Korea is corrupt and totalitarian; it's a story of Delisle discovering the oddities of North Korea from inside the highly-controlled Potemkin city of Pyongyang. To be frank, it's fairly plotless -- you don't expect a plotline from a travelogue, and that's basically what this is. Delisle doesn't tangle with North Korean guards, he doesn't venture into the forbidden regions of the country, he doesn't smuggle any contraband, he doesn't have a showdown with Kim Jong-Il. He goes to work, he goes to lunch, he gets to take a few supervised trips out of his hotel.
There's plenty of humor in this book, much of it surreal in ways that only an insane authoritarian regime can get. Delisle stays in one of the only hotels reserved for foreigners in Pyongyang, a luxury high-rise in which all the guests stay on the 15th floor, so it's the only floor with power. He loans a copy of George Orwell's "1984" to a North Korean assistant, who fearfully returns the book after a couple weeks, clearly terrified he'll be sent to a prison camp for reading such subversive literature. He sees people mysteriously walking backwards and soon learns it's a Kim-approved form of exercise. There are tremendous skyscrapers, all empty, epic monuments to the Kims, some still unfinished after decades of work, museums full of praise for the all-powerful, all-beloved Kims, nearly always empty, aside from docents blissed-out from close contact with the relics of the Leader.
And there are plenty of little moments where Delisle shares small moments of humor or surrealism -- the hotel employee who insists on coming into Delisle's room in the middle of the night to replace the water bottles in his mini-fridge, the perpetually filthy conditions and low-quality food served at the "world-class" restaurants, the ridiculously puffy shoe guards all visitors have to wear at the International Friendship Exhibition.
And there's horror, too. The work of any dictatorship is to ensure that the population is too terrified to act against the leaders. Delisle's book makes reference to the madness of Kim's regime more than once -- though we don't see these horrors in action, it's clear that they exist, and that they're a threat to every North Korean citizen. The book notes that there are detention and re-education camps all over the country, with many of them designated for permanent detention -- and if the regime decides you are guilty, then your entire family shares your punishment. Delisle also points out that the regime strictly rations food. Party leaders and army brass get lots of food, skilled workers and Pyongyang residents get enough to live on, and millions of other citizens get little to nothing to eat.
And you can get designated as disloyal if you don't wear your pin of the Kims, if your pin isn't polished enough, if you weren't enthusiastic enough at a demonstration of party loyalty, or any other reason someone feels like reporting you for. And this isn't limited to adults either -- Delisle watches a concert of eight-year-old girls, all playing accordions, all wearing rigid, bared-teeth smiles, with the implication that if their rictus smiles falter, if every note they perform isn't perfect, they and their families could all get sent back to their impoverished villages for embarrassing the regime.
And the entire time Delisle is in Pyongyang, he never can tell if the North Koreans he's working with are really as devoted to Kim as they say they are, if they really believe the Kim family are gods worthy of worship, if they really believe North Korea is the envy of the entire world -- or if they're pulling a desperate and lonely con on their leaders to protect themselves and their families, never knowing if anyone is safe to share their secrets with.
Art style? Very simple and cartoonish for people, especially for Delisle himself, but for architecture, extremely detailed, most notably for the many ornate monuments and structures dedicated to the power of the Kims and the regime.
Got an interest in North Korea or dictatorships that can't be quenched without some quality cartooning and the kind of surreal humor and horror that aren't permitted in the entries in Wikipedia? Then you'll surely want to pick this one up.