This is a very fascinating video, one of only two documentaries I have seen of North Korea, the hermit nation. A team was allowed a rare opportunity to film inside of North Korea, though there were many restrictions and I’m sure the video that came out of the country was controlled. It’s against the law for citizens to look at foreigners, so you never see any citizen even peak at the camera. While in the North you also can’t share that you’ll visit South Korea for some reason.
They get a tour of the only library in Pyongyang which includes many references to the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung. Many fairy tells about their “Great Leader” were created and are taught as truth. One example is that cranes flew down after the death of Il-Sung and carried him to where he was buried. There was even an interview with a North Korean (escaped to South Korea) who worked in the story-making propaganda department where he told about how a story was fed to him to teach like it really happened. He finally fled the country after his wife and one of his daughters died through malnutrition and health problems. While visiting the huge statue of Il-Sung the documentary crew was forced to present flowers and bow to it. Even the date system revolves around the guy, the year this documentary was taken was 89 on the North Korean calendar which starts on the birth year of Il-Sung.
The crew stayed in a large hotel which was virtually empty. The hotel and the area outside of the hotel looked very surreal. There weren’t many people (old people are sent out of the capital and handicapped people are asked to stay inside) and there were even less cars. Even with virtually no vehicle traffic, there was a police woman who was directing the non-existent traffic (there are apparently no traffic lights). The only large gathering was 50,000 youth which practice six hours every day in order to prepare for an upcoming ceremony.
There is a very interesting part where they walk through a museum and teach about the Korean war. The “Yankees” are talked about like the scum of the Earth. The tour guide focuses on the war crimes committed against women and children and even mentions a plane that was shot down by “our ladies.”
While on the North side of the DMZ, the North Korean soldier said that the reason they hate the Americans is because they separated Korea after 5000 peaceful years. Um. … no, I seem to recall the go-ryo (an ancient kingdom in now-North Korea) having war with shilla (one of the other ancient kingdoms located in the south), but I guess that doesn’t really matter to them. Then he directly tells the Japanese tourists that are there that the Japanese are guilty also and that they should promote unification back in their home country. The soldiers also point out a wall that South Korea apparently has built to protect itself against a North Korean invasion. The documentary says that South Korea has so far denied the existence of this wall but I have not personally looked into the claim.
I’m just going to make some notes and observations that I find interesting as I read each chapter of Mastering Business in Korean, so don’t expect an exhaustive review.
The first chapter is a brief history of Korea that the author says Koreans might expect people to know about and would help with their relations.
I had always assumed 한글 was adopted right from the get go. I guess 한글 was loathed for a while. It says the educated people disregarded 한글 because “even the women could learn it.” I remember seeing how women couldn’t go to school in the drama, 대장금, so I guess that was an accurate portrayal. The author states that 한글 became widely adopted once the bible was translated by Christian missionaries in the late 19th century.
Another interesting fact was that Pyongyang (current capital of North Korea) was seen as the Christian capital of Korea and Seoul (current capital of South Korea) was the hot spot for debate between the left and the right, so the U.S. and Soviet Russia seemed to have the wrong halves of Korea after World War II.
One thing that seems a little backwards in retrospect is that the U.S. forces tried to keep South Korea’s army very small prior to the Korean war. They felt their job was to stop South Korea from trying to invade the north. This is similar to their policy in Japan, though South Korea was in more danger of being invaded. Of course, Soviet Russia helped North Korea build up invasion forces during this time. Wow, smart move on our part . I have to wonder how much intelligence we compiled together at the time and if we knew that Soviet Russia was building up the North Korean forces.
North Korea’s history doesn’t have much to say about the 500,000 Chinese that died to push the U.S. forces back down to Seoul (which later retreated to the 38th parallel). I’d say that’s in line with their policy of trying to show how independent they are from other nations and how much Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il are gods on Earth.
. I have to wonder how much intelligence we compiled together at the time and if we knew that Soviet Russia was building up the North Korean forces.
