Monday, May 14, 2007
Inside North Korea
It's a little late in the evening to start to put a post together, but having watched a most incredible, in part, secretly filmed, forty five minute documentary on North Korea, I did a search and came up with two ten minute clips from the program. All I can say is watch them, it will save me a million words, and if I wrote them you might have trouble believing them. I haven't watched the clips through but opening scenes of both clips are from the same documentary. Honestly, they are a must see. The Dear Leader. Click pic and see the size of the people in the foreground.
Update: Apart from the opening few seconds there is little content in the first clip that is from the documentary I watched. The second clip, although drastically short is from the right production (Nat Geo) therefore, being so short, there is no mention of the many concentration camps throughout the country. These camps are massive, holding hundreds of thousands in each and where for such a simple thing as complaining about the food ration (in civilian life) whole extended families are rounded up and incarcerated for life.
Given this fear combined with the harsh realities of life, millions malnourished and dying of starvation (three million died in the last recent famine) and juxtapose this with the Dear Leader's god-like status and a whole nation that can only be described as the greatest cult the world has ever seen, or likely to see, I just find the whole thing so mind blowingly bizarre.
The narrator asked the question, 'how much is fear and how much is conditioning?' irrespective of either there appear to be masses that are genuinely on the full kool aid diet. This man is as near to being a god as it gets.
I grant there will be many very quiet dissidents but the reality of North Korea makes Orwell's 1984 read like a fairy story.
The secret filmed part of the documentary was undertaken by western journo's posing as part of the Nepalese eye surgeon's team who travelled to North Korea to perform a thousand free eye surgeries on cataract sufferers in the country.
If you can come across the documentary in its entirety it is well worth watching. National Geographic, Inside North Korea.blog
National Geographic Home page.
You can view NG's own intro clip to the program but you will have to search "North Korea" I can't hotlink to it.
Update: Full movie, not available in UK.
Inside North Korea (a few clips) -Part 1 Dead link
Inside North Korea (a few clips) - Part 2 Dead link
So sad. HH
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