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The human face of North
Korea
By Alisa Givental
NEW
YORK - Few Americans know that no army won the Korean
War - it ended in a truce. But most are familiar with
United States charges that North Korea has weapons of
mass destruction, and they might also be used to
thinking of the communist nation as a serious threat. A
new documentary titled North Korea Beyond the DMZ
looks at the human side of this country, and discusses
the origins of the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea's (DPRK) outlook on the world and the US in
particular.
The film analyzes Korean history
from World War II until the present. Using footage from
the US and the North Korean capital Pyongyang and
environs, combined with TV broadcasts, photographs
interviews and archival footage, this film creates an
image of the DPRK that differs from the harsh version
usually presented by traditional news sources.
"Our goal was to create some glimpse of what
life there is like, that there are people there.
Usually, we are only seeing coverage about the
leadership," said one of the documentary's two
directors, J T Takagi.
Accomplishing that
mission was not easy. It took three years of paperwork
for a crew of two to get permission to enter the DPRK
with their subject, a young Korean-American woman on a
quest to locate her father's long-lost family.
After the Korean War - in which more than 30,000
US troops and 2 million Koreans died - ended without a
peace treaty, more than 10 million families were
separated and have remained so for more than 50 years.
The young woman's father had a brother and
mother left in the North from whom he has never heard.
On arriving in the country, she learns about the
contemporary culture of North Korea, one of the last
communist countries.
The young woman is exposed
to juche, a system of thought created by the late
ruler Kim Il-sung, which teaches that "everyone is
master of his own fate and the power to control that
fate lies within oneself". Self-reliance has been the
official mantra of North Korea for more than 50 years.
The documentary discusses the life of modern
North Koreans and their problems: the lack of
electricity and hot water, the famines caused by massive
flooding at the end of the last decade and the economic
crisis precipitated by the loss of the country's main
ally, the Soviet Union.
Though often portrayed
in the West as a country run by a maniacal militaristic
leader, the film portrays North Korea as much more
complicated than this simplistic version allows. It is a
nation of few freedoms but an almost 100 percent
literacy rate. It is a place with little nightlife or
entertainment but a country that has proclaimed every
Saturday a countrywide study day.
According to
Takagi, the current tension with the US is the result of
fear and propaganda, and the fact that "people in the
North have grown up with the idea that the US would
inevitably invade". North Koreans feel that they are
under siege and respond accordingly, she said in an
interview.
"North Korea has been trying to
change, to move to a market economy or at least to an
economy that could interface with the world market,"
Takagi said, "yet the US has been preventing that from
happening. "The existence of North Korea as a supposed
threat is a good reason to maintain a military presence
in the area," Takagi added. Today, Washington has 37,000
troops stationed in South Korea.
Takagi, a
Japanese-American independent filmmaker who works with
Third World Newsreel, a media arts center in New York
City, co-directed the film with Hye Jung Park, a
first-generation Korean-American independent filmmaker,
film curator and college professor.
Third World
Newsreel produced the hour-long film. This documentary
about the country that ABC-TV dubbed "the weirdest place
now on Earth" will premiere at the New York Museum of
Modern Art's Gramercy Theater on December 13.
(Inter Press Service)
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