This post is a response to watching DPRK: The Land of Whispers (North Korea Travel Documentary) (2013), produced and directed by Chrystian Cohen.
First off, Pyongyang is a very strange place. From what I have read, it does not accurately represent the rest of the country. The North Korean regime is all about propaganda and appearance. In another documentary (I do not remember which one it was), I pretty much gathered that since Pyongyang is all you can see from the DMZ separating North and South Korea, it was erected to look appealing to the South and tempt them to join the North once again. A very small percentage of North Korean citizens live in Pyongyang, ant of those that do, a lot of them are government workers or people who are huge supporters of the North Korean ideology. In essence, the people who live in the relative luxury of Pyongyang are the elect.
The regime has made huge efforts to make Pyongyang look like a normal metropolis. After all, it is where most of our footage comes from. It has skyscrapers, hotels, all the amenities of a busy city, but in actuality, most of it is deserted. It appears the children are mostly taught performance in school. The filter of this video included footage of a performance they were shown at one of the schools. He commented that these 5 and 6 year olds were better than most adults. He was right, they were very precise, which leads me to believe that they emphasize performance of the arts. He also included footage of a probably record setting performance acne they went to-over 100,000 people took part in it, a celebration of the anniversary of the great leader developing some ideology.
So, the documentary was filmed by Amanda who was able to travel to North Korea. Something new I learned is that 1000-2000 foreigners are allowed to visit a year. There is apparently a company that you apply with and they will organize a trip for you. Some of the stipulations are that you have to go with a group and you have to be lead by guides on a very set itinerary. The visitors see only what the government allows them to see, of course. They are basically in the care of minders who lead them from one sense of normalcy to another. There are a lot of rules they have to follow.
This group started out in Pyongyang in a 50 floor hotel with a revolving restaurant on top, empty except for their party. It had a casino, a pool, a karaoke room, and multiple restaurants, all deserted. This seems to be standard when entertaining foreigners. The entire city is pretty much a facade to make NK seem normal to outsiders, after all.
There are mythical, romantic stories about where The great leader was born, the group was taken to the place where he was rumored to have been born. He was actually born in Russia, but the citizens of North Korea appear to have been told a different story. The sites they were shown throughout the trip were mostly monuments to Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung. Statues, places they had visited, a poem one of them had written, a document signed by one. Other than visiting sights, watching performance s, staying at creepy deserted hotels and drinking, the only thing they could do was watch TV, a constant stream of propaganda perpetuated by the government.
The filter kept trying to speak with the guides, but they wouldn't really talk to him. After a while, one guy was willing to answer questions. He had agreed to give an interview when he was suddenly pulled away and sent to a different assignment. It is unknown whether this was a coincidence or not. Another one of the guides told the filter that it was very dangerous for him to be allowing the camera to document the trip.
It was actually one of the more upbeat documentaries I have seen on North Korea. The citizen (whether genuine, heavily brainwashed, or faking for the foreigners), seemed happy. The filmer made a point to speak of the attributes of the North Koreans, despite the strange circumstances.
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