DOCSLIB.ORG

Four North Korea Documentaries

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
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 50 EDUCATION ABOUT ASIA Volume 12, Number 1 Spring 2007 Cover of the DVD package. Scenes from the 2003 Mass Games. ©2004 Golden Monkey Enterprises ©2004 Very Much So/Passion Pictures THE FASCINATING 2004 DUTCH TELEVI- A STATE OF MIND, by the SION DOCUMENTARY 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). 51.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Exhibition Inscriptions
    Photographs Prison/Concentration Camps Foreigners are closely followed at all times and are prohibited from leaving their hotels North Korea currently operates sixteen confirmed concentrations camps where up to at night. Photographs are only allowed in a small number of state-approved locations and 200,000 men, women and children are incarcerated. Some are the size of cities and mortality under no circumstances may they be taken of military personnel. In order to document real rates are high since prisoners are forced to perform dangerous slave work and are regularly life in North Korea, Daoust made use of a hidden shutter-release cable to take photographs tortured. Note: Many of those imprisoned are not guilty of any real crime: one man was sent secretly in the non-approved locations. to prison for ten years for absent-mindedly using a newspaper printed with a photograph of Kim Jong-Il to mop up a spilled drink. Pleasure Brigade Bicycles The Kippumjo or Gippeumjo (translated variously as Pleasure Squad, Pleasure Brigade or The late Kim Jong Il reportedly felt that the sight of a woman on a bike was potentially Joy Division) is an alleged collection of groups of approximately 2,000 women and girls dam-aging to public morality. It was the last straw when, in the mid nineties, the daughter of that is maintained by the head of state of North Korea for the purpose of providing pleasure, a top general was killed on a bike. From this point forward, the law has periodically banned mostly of a sexual nature, and entertainment for high-ranking Workers’ Party of Korea women from riding bicycles and they are generally restricted from holding driving licenses.
    [Show full text]
  • North Korea Summer School: Inside North Korean Literature, Art and Film May 16 – May 27, 2022 | York University, Toronto
    North Korea Summer School: Inside North Korean literature, art and film May 16 – May 27, 2022 | York University, Toronto The North Korea Summer School: Inside North Korean Literature, Art and Film is a unique opportunity for graduate and undergraduate-level students to explore aspects of contemporary North Korean culture with a focus on literature, film, fine-art and propaganda. This intense and highly interactive two- week summer school is taught by Professor Immanuel Kim and Mr. Nicholas Bonner. Immanuel Kim is Korea Foundation and Kim-Renaud Associate Professor of Korean Literature and Culture Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at George Washington University. He is author of Laughing North Koreans: Culture of the Film Industry, Lexington Books, 2020; and Rewriting Revolution: Women, Sexuality, and Memory in North Korean Fiction, University of Hawaii Press, 2018. He is also translator of Friend: A Novel from North Korea, by Paek Nam-nyong, Columbia University Press, 2020. Nicholas Bonner, is author of Made in North Korea: Graphics from Everyday Life in the DPRK, Phaidon 2017 and co-author of Printed in North Korea: The Art of Everyday Life in the DPRK, Phaidon 2019. He has been involved in the production of various documentary films on North Korea including Crossing the Line and the feature film Comrade Kim Goes Flying. He is the head of Koryo Studio and has been travelling to North Korea most months since 1993. He has commissioned North Koreans artists and architects on various projects including the Asia Pacific Triennial and Venice Architectural Biennial. The first week of the summer school, directed by Professor Kim, will be an introduction to key elements of North Korean culture.
    [Show full text]
  • North Korean Mass Games and Third Worldism in Guyana, 1980-1992 「鍛錬 された民のみぞ国づくりに役立つ」ガイアナにおける北朝鮮のマスゲー ムと第三世界主義 1980-1992
    Volume 13 | Issue 4 | Number 2 | Article ID 4258 | Jan 26, 2015 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus 'Only a disciplined people can build a nation': North Korean Mass Games and Third Worldism in Guyana, 1980-1992 「鍛錬 された民のみぞ国づくりに役立つ」ガイアナにおける北朝鮮のマスゲー ムと第三世界主義 1980-1992 Moe Taylor Abstract: As the 1970s drew to a close, Forbes appealing to a certain widespread longing Burnham (1923-85), Guyana's controversial within Guyanese culture for a more leader of 21 years, received Pyongyang's "disciplined" society. assistance in importing the North Korean tradition of Mass Games, establishing them as a major facet of the nation's cultural and political life during the 1980-92 period. The Introduction current study documents this episode in In the final months of 1979, while the Iran Guyanese history and seeks to explain why the hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Burnham regime prioritized such an Afghanistan dominated international headlines, experiment in a time of austerity and crisis, its the approximately 750,000 citizens of the South ideological foundations, and how Guyanese American republic of Guyana (formerly British interpreted and responded to Mass Games. Guiana) were informed by state-owned media I argue that the Burnham regime's enthusiasm about the coming arrival of a strange and for Mass Games can in large part be explained mysterious new thing called Mass Games, a by their adherence to a particular tradition of spectacle event that would be, according to one socialist thought which holds education and editorial, "the most magnificent in the history 1 culture as the foundation of development.
    [Show full text]
  • Gendered Rhetoric in North Korea's International
    University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 1954-2016 University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2015 Gendered rhetoric in North Korea’s international relations (1946–2011) Amanda Kelly Anderson University of Wollongong Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses University of Wollongong Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorise you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. You are reminded of the following: This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this work may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the permission of the author. Copyright owners are entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. A reproduction of material that is protected by copyright may be a copyright infringement. A court may impose penalties and award damages in relation to offences and infringements relating to copyright material. Higher penalties may apply, and higher damages may be awarded, for offences and infringements involving the conversion of material into digital or electronic form. Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed in this thesis are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the University of Wollongong. Recommended Citation Anderson, Amanda Kelly, Gendered rhetoric in North Korea’s international relations (1946–2011), Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong, 2015.
    [Show full text]
  • Korea and the Global Struggle for Socialism a Perspective from Anthropological Marxism
    Korea and the Global Struggle for Socialism A Perspective from Anthropological Marxism Eugene E Ruyle Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies California State University, Long Beach Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea (1951) CONTENTS Introduction .............................................................................................................. 2 What Is Socialism and Why Is It Important? .................................................. 3 U.S. Imperialism in Korea ...................................................................................18 Defects in Building Socialism in Korea ..........................................................26 1. Nuclear weapons 2. Prisons and Political Repression 3. Inequality, Poverty and Starvation 4. The Role of the Kim family. Reading “Escape from Camp 14.” A Political Review.................................37 For Further Study:.................................................................................................49 References cited.....................................................................................................50 DRAFT • DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION Introduction Even on the left, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) is perhaps the most misunderstood country on our Mother Earth. Cuba and Vietnam both enjoy support among wide sectors of the American left, but north Korea is the object of ridicule and scorn among otherwise intelligent people. In order to clear away some of the misunderstanding, we can do no better than quote
    [Show full text]
  • NORTH KOREAN PERSPECTIVES JULY 23–OCTOBER 4 Mocp.Org
    NORTH KOREAN PERSPECTIVES JULY 23–OCTOBER 4 mocp.org Viewer’s Guide This guide serves as a viewer’s supplement to the exhibitionNorth Korean Perspectives and contains information about the works on view, the history of North Korea, questions for looking and discussion, and suggested readings. You may download this guide from the museum’s website at mocp.org/education/resources-for-educators.php. A PDF with images that can be projected for classroom use can also be found there. To schedule a free docent-led tour, please complete the form here. mocp.org/education/tours-and-print-viewings.php. Generous support for North Korean Perspectives is provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Cultural Services at the Consulate General of France in Chicago, and Hahnemühle. The 2014-2015 season is sponsored by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, BMO Harris Bank and the Illinois Arts Council Agency. It is also partially supported by a CityArts Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Marc Prüst, Guest Curator Introduction How should we approach the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as North Korea is formally called? The country seems practically sealed off from external influence and impenetrable by anyone from beyond its borders. Travelers to North Korea can visit the country only on planned tours with state-appointed chaperones, or “minders,” who follow virtu- ally every step they take. Independent, uncensored media do not exist in North Korea; the state press agency, Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), is the only source of photographs by North Korean nationals.
    [Show full text]
  • ISSUE BRIEF China-North Korea Relations
    ISSUE BRIEF China-North Korea Relations DANIEL WERTZ November 2019 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Daniel Wertz is Program Manager at NCNK, where he has worked since 2011. Wertz manages NCNK’s research and publications, and is the lead researcher and editor of North Korea in the World, an interactive website exploring North Korea's external economic and diplomatic relations. Prior to working at NCNK, Wertz was a research assistant at the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Wertz received master’s degrees in International and World History in a joint program from Columbia University and the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree in History from Wesleyan University. NCNK The National Committee on North Korea (NCNK) is a non-governmental organization of persons with significant and diverse expertise related to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. NCNK and its members support principled engagement with North Korea as a means to promote peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and to improve the lives of the people of North Korea. NCNK also works to provide policymakers, the academic and think tank community, and the general public with substantive and balanced information about developments in North Korea. NCNK was founded by Mercy Corps, a global aid and development organization, in 2004. CONTACT Honorary Co-Chairs: Amb. Tony P. The National Committee on North Korea Hall and Amb. Thomas C. Hubbard th 1111 19 St. NW, Suite 650 Steering Committee: Brad Babson, Washington, DC 20036 Robert Carlin, Katharine Moon, Susan www.ncnk.org Shirk, Scott Snyder, Robert E.
    [Show full text]
  • Policing Literary Theory
    Policing Literary Theory Edited by Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu Takayuki Yokota-Murakami LEIDEN | BOSTON For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV 300845 Contents Notes on Contributors vii Editors’ Introduction 1 part 1 Theories of Policing in Literature and Literary Criticism 1 After Theory: Politics against the Police? 15 Vladimir Biti 2 Theory Policing Reading or the Critic as Cop: Revisiting Said’s The World, the Text, and the Critic 31 Reingard Nethersole 3 Le cercle carré: On Spying and Reading 44 Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu part 2 Case Studies 4 Dear Leader! Big Brother!: On Transparency and Emotional Policing 73 Sowon S. Park 5 The Charisma of Theory 89 Marko Juvan 6 Within or beyond Policing Norms: Yuri Lotman’s Theory of Theatricality 111 Kyohei Norimatsu 7 The Oppressive and the Subversive Sides of Theoretical Discourse 135 Péter Hajdu For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV 300845 vi Contents part 3 Policing Literary Theory across the World 8 Roman Nikolayevich Kim and the Strange Plots of His Mystery Novellas 149 Norio Sakanaka 9 Kafka, Snowden, and the Surveillance State 166 John Zilcosky 10 The Genetics of Morality: Policing Science in Dudintsev’s White Robes 178 Yvonne Howell 11 In Lieu of a Conclusion: Policing as a Form of Epistemology – Three Narratives of the Japanese Empire 195 Takayuki Yokota-Murakami Index of Subjects 207 Index of Names 213 For use by the Author only | © 2018 Koninklijke Brill NV 300845 chapter 4 Dear Leader! Big Brother!: On Transparency and Emotional Policing Sowon S. Park Abstract Damned to silence or condemned to compliance: these are the two options open to writers in North Korea – the ultimate police State, whose panoptic perfection of power is a living example of what Bentham and Foucault theorized.
    [Show full text]
  • The Arirang Mass Games of North Korea
    Rudiger Frank: The Arirang Mass Games of North Korea. The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 46, No. 2, December 2013, http://japanfocus.org The Arirang Mass Games of North Korea Rudiger Frank1 Purpose and focus Having grown up in East Germany, from early on I have been familiar with all kinds of mass performances, including organized parades, meetings, or so-called mass games or mass gymnastics. All of them involved large numbers of people, often in the thousands or tens of thousands. 2 The performances were characterized by a high level of synchronism and uniformity. They included music, artistic components, dancing and marching. They brimmed over with symbolism. The 대집단체조와 예술공연 아리랑 (Mass gymnastics and artistic performance Arirang), in the West usually known as Arirang Mass Games (henceforth Arirang) of the DPRK, or North Korea, thus do not strike me as particularly “breathtaking”, which seems to be the typical reaction of most visitors. This does not mean, however, that Arirang is less worth of our attention. Technically speaking, Arirang is a visual and acoustic artistic and gymnastics performance that takes place in a large stadium. It is said to involve 100,000 participants who either perform on stage or as “pixels” in a large “living” screen, a human canvas on which various images and slogans are shown. I look at Arirang as part of my attempts at understanding the North Korean system through the lens of its own public statements, often referred to as propaganda. I will thus not discuss the aesthetics or explore how the mass games relegate the individual to the role of a tiny piece in large machinery, how they suppress individuality and show that usefulness is only in the group.
    [Show full text]
  • Mass Gymnastics in Korea Mass Gymnastics in Korea
    MASS GYMNASTICS IN KOREA MASS GYMNASTICS IN KOREA Foreign Languages Publishing House Foreign Languages Publishing House Pyongyang,Pyongyang, Korea Korea Juche Juche91 (2002) 91 (2002) CONTENTS PREFACE (6) THREE MAJOR COMPONENTS OF KOREAN MASS GYMNASTICS (9) First Component: Gymnasts (10) Gymnasts Are the Most Important Means of Presentation (10) Gymnasts Must Not Dance (12) Equipment and Costumes of Gymnasts (15) Some Secrets The Trapezoidal Graph (11) Ranks of Flag-Bearers Acting as a Curtain (18) The Largest Picture in the World (26) Commands and Signals for the Backdrop (27) The Rule of Giving Orders to Gymnasts and the Rule of Dynamics (29) The Overall Direction (37) 3 Second Component: Backdrop (20) New Ground Is Broken (20) Presentation of the Backdrop (22) Backdrop Art (24) Hand Props for the Backdrop (25) Episodes Kanemaru Shin Sheds Tears (19) The Secret of the Backdrop (27) The Wish of a King of the Professional Wrestling World (33) The Mass Gymnastics Performance, P rosperous Nigeria (43) Third Component: Music (28) The Only Mass Gymnastics Band in the World (30) Indoor Mass Gymnastics (31) Impressions I am Fortunate (14) "The Acme of Art, Something beyond the Imagination" (44) 4 THE SYSTEM OF CREATING MASS GYMNASTICS IN KOREA (35) The Mass Gymnastics Production Company, Known as the "Centre of Fantastic Creations" (36) The Schoolchildren's Physical Training School (38) Putting Mass Gymnastics on a Mass Basis (38) State Financial Assistance (40) WORLDWIDE EXCHANGES AND COOPERATION IN MASS GYMNASTICS (41) Friendly Sports Delegations
    [Show full text]
  • TOTALITARIAN TEARS: Does the Crowd Really Mean It?
    TOTALITARIAN TEARS: Does the Crowd Really Mean It? WILLIAM MAZZARELLA University of Chicago The death of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il hit the world headlines on Monday, December 19, 2011, two days after the fact. A black-clad female newsreader announced his passing on state television with, she said, “the gravest emotions” (Las Vegas Badger 2011). Kim Jong-il, known in his country as Dear Leader, had, it was reported, died of heart failure on a train at 8:30 in the morning on December 17 as a result of “physical and mental over-work” (Jones 2011; Huffington Post 2011). In grand state socialist style, Kim’s body was wrapped in red cloth and put on display in a glass coffin, with rows of medals and a pair of gold epaulettes at his feet, not far from the embalmed body of his father, the founder of communist North Korea, Kim Il-sung, otherwise known as Great Leader. A border made of hundreds of white chrysanthemums surrounded the coffin with, closer to the younger Kim’s body, two strips of a specially hybridized red begonia known as—what else?—kimjongilia (Silver 2011). Judging by the images and reports pouring out of North Korea, the an- nouncement of Kim’s death triggered a veritable hurricane of public grief. The North Korean state TV network described the people as “engulfed in incredible sadness” and “convulsing with pain and despair” (Jones 2011). Much was made in Western news media of the mourning’s corporeal intensity. Mourners seemed to be losing control, racked, collapsing on the streets and in the offices of the capital, Pyongyang, in a manner that one journalist described as “both moving and in- CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • THE GAMES ARE BACK in NORTH KOREA the Arirang Mass Games
    THE GAMES ARE BACKERIC LAFFORGUE The Arirang mass games were stopped in 2013. Today the north korean government announced that they will return in 2018 to celebrate the 9th of September that marks the DPRK's 70th Anniversary. This incredible spectacle of gymnastics, acrobatics, dance and propaganda featured some 100,000 participants, and drew spectators from all over the world, including USA, for what was the biggest and most elaborate human performance on Earth. All year long, in Pyongyang’s giant town square, performers train under the command of one megaphone-wielding woman in preparation for the Arirang. Over 100,000 performers prepare the show. The youngest participants join the others after school. The gigantic May Day stadium in Pyongyang (the “North Korean Maracana” as the North Koreans affectionately call it) is home to these mass games. After years of serving their country, some soldiers are rewarded with access to the spectacle. Outside of the stadium, two girls are late and are seen rushing to perform. They were already dressed in their gymnastics uniforms. The fake sailors continue to train in the parking lot up until the last minute before the show. They strive for nothing less than perfection. Entering the stadium, spectators are struck by the colorful stage, which contrasts sharply with the rest of Pyongyang. Everything, including the lights, is operated by humans. No high tech here. 20,000 young Koreans sit in the stands facing the spectators. They flip colored cards at high speeds, forming mosaics of nationalist imagery. Each time the teens flip their cards, they cry out.
    [Show full text]