Four North Korea Documentaries

Media Section THE REAL NORTH KOREA Four North Korea Documentaries

REVIEWED BY CHARLES K. ARMSTRONG

THE REAL DR. EVIL What we rarely see in any of the com- University, clearly a foretaste of evil to come. DIRECTED BY ROB LEMKIN mon media representations are images of the The kidnapping of South Korean film direc- A BBCW PRODUCTION everyday lives of ordinary North Koreans. In tor Shin Sang-ok and his wife Choi Eun-hee DISTRIBUTED BY FILMS FOR THE HUMANITIES the last two or three years, a few television is described as having “never been fully AND SCIENCES and feature filmmakers have tried to docu- understood,” which puts it mildly indeed. The DVD, VHS AND DIGITAL ON-DEMAND, ment real life in this isolated and carefully ongoing intelligence battles and low-intensity 46 MINUTES, COLOR, 2003 controlled society. In late 2006, for example, conflict between North and South Korea is CHILDREN OF THE SECRET STATE: Diane Sawyer (who happened to be in North never explained; as in the James Bond film NORTH KOREA Korea at the time of the October 9, nuclear Die Another Day, South Korea itself barely PRODUCED AND DIRECTED test) gave a wide-eyed-American-girl-in- registers except as a victim of North Korean BY CARLA GARAPEDIAN Pyongyang report for ABC television, with violence and perfidy. North Korea and Kim NARRATED BY JOE LAYBURN mixed results. Three of the four films Jong Il personally may indeed be responsible HARDCASH PRODUCTIONS, LONDON, ENGLAND reviewed here attempt to get below the sur- for some unsavory and even heinous actions, DVD, 46 MINUTES, COLOR, 2000 face and reveal everyday life in the Democ- but armchair psychologizing and close-ups of ratic People’s Republic of Korea, in various Kim’s beady eyes will do little to help us NORTH KOREA: A DAY IN THE LIFE ways and to varied degrees of success. understand them. PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY PIETER FLEURY DISTRIBUTED BY FACETS MULTIMEDIA DVD, 48 MINUTES, COLOR, 2004

ENGLISH SUBTITLES

A STATE OF MIND PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY DANIEL GORDON DISTRIBUTED BY KINO INTERNATIONAL DVD, 94 MINUTES, COLOR, 2003 ENGLISH SUBTITLES

ORTH KOREA PRESENTS AN IRRE- Kim Jong Il. ©2003 BBCW Production Malnourished North Korean Child. SISTIBLE TARGET for Western, and ©2000 Hardcash Productions Nespecially American, mass media. THE ONE FILM THAT DOES NOT DIG INTO Typical media images of North Korea range ORDINARY LIVES, THE BBC’S THE REAL DR. CHILDREN OF THE SECRET STATE focuses from goose-stepping soldiers in military EVIL, exemplifies many of the problems with on another image of North Korea, that of parades to grainy shots of starving children. media coverage of North Korea, beginning starving children brutalized by famine and Often, media images alternate between evo- with its title (shouldn’t Mike Myers, creator the oppressiveness of the North Korean cations of fear and of ridicule. But most of the Austin Powers films, own the copy- regime. Much of the footage was shot often they focus on Kim Jong Il, the North right on the “Dr. Evil” name?). Focusing on secretly and at great personal risk by North Korean leader variously described as a play- the sinister and the absurd, The Real Dr. Evil Koreans who fled to China. The film makes boy, a madman, a ruthless dictator, and (by plays up to every stereotype and sensational- for grim viewing and is not recommended George W. Bush) a “pygmy.” With every istic tidbit related to Kim Jong Il, however for younger children. For high school and launch of a missile and, most recently, test- tenuously these may be supported by the college students, the film can serve as an ing of a nuclear weapon, Kim’s face makes facts. A psychological profiler for the CIA, important starting point for a discussion of the covers of Time, Newsweek, and the for example, explains how Kim’s alleged the politics surrounding the North Korean Economist, usually sporting strange and murder of his younger brother, who drowned famine of the late 1990s and the country’s overly large sunglasses. With a mass media when they were young boys, may have continued economic problems, which are that sensationalizes even the most banal and affected Kim’s personality and leadership not unrelated to the nuclear crisis between trivial events, North Korea is almost too style. A defector describes Kim’s poor atten- North Korea and the US. good to be true. dance and on-time record at Kim Il Sung

THE FASCINATING 2004 DUTCH TELEVI- A STATEOF MIND, by the SIONDOCUMENTARY NORTH KOREA: A British filmmaker Daniel Gor- DAY IN THE LIFE, made “under the guidance don, stands far above the rest. of the Ministry of Culture, Democratic Peo- It is not only superior to the ple’s Republic of Korea,” lets North Kore- other films reviewed here, but ans speak for themselves. It is unlikely that to virtually every other documentary made foreign audiences will interpret the North about North Korea, with the exception of we visit the friend of one of the girl’s Koreans quite as the Ministry of Culture Gordon’s own previous film The Game of fathers. The climax of the film is the girls’ intended. The film follows several people of Their Lives, which concerned the 1966 performance at the Mass Games, which is various ages and occupations around North Korean soccer team that astonished breathtaking. Whether one sees the Mass Pyongyang. A child goes to kindergarten the world by making it to the quarter-finals Games as a confirmation of North Korea’s and is lectured at length about the glorious of the World Cup in Britain. A State of Mind uncompromising social solidarity (as the (and entirely fictional) childhood exploits of appears to be the second part of a trilogy North Koreans apparently believe) or as a Kim Jong Il at his father’s “revolutionary that will conclude with a film about four chilling representation of the most extreme base camp” on the slopes of Mt. Paektu; on American soldiers who defected to North totalitarian regime of our times, the games the way to school her mother sings songs Korea in the 1960s. are undeniably impressive. A State of Mind with her about how “our great People’s In 2003, Gordon, his producer Nicholas is a first-rate documentary; as a glimpse of Army shakes heaven and earth, making the Bonner, and cameraman Nick Bennett were life in North Korea, it has no peer. n American dogs tremble.” School corridors given unprecedented access to film two are festooned with drawings of North Kore- Pyongyang families, who both had daugh- an missiles and soldiers crushing Ameri- ters training for the Mass Games, North cans. Women are working at a textile facto- Korea’s extraordinary showpiece sport that ry when the electricity goes out, interrupting combines theatre, gymnastics, and thou- CHARLES K. ARMSTRONG is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Korean a recorded song about the Great Leader; the sands of audience members creating enor- Research at Columbia University. He has published blackout is blamed, as usual, on the Ameri- mous propaganda images with hand-held widely on contemporary North and South Korea, can imperialists. The strange and the ordi- signs. The film takes the girls through modern Korean history, the international history of nary co-exist without comment; this is months of grueling training for the games, East Asia, and US–Korean relations. His most everyday life in North Korea, at least in the shows their families at home, work, play, recent books include The Koreas (Routledge, 2007); Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy, and capital, and the film should be commended and school, and interviews several family the State (editor; Routledge, second edition, for its intimate, straightforward glimpse into members at length. We also get a glimpse of 2006); and The North Korean Revolution, that life. the countryside outside of Pyongyang when 1945–1950 (Cornell, 2003).