I'm pretty fascinated with the so-called Hermit Kingdom of North Korea. It has a rich history dominated by colonization and wars, primarily with Japan and I truly feel for the people who live there and are forced to stay. I try to watch as much footage of people inside DPRK as I can because I can't quite decide yet whether this fawning obsequiousness and over the top emotion for that country's leader(s) is merely people acting out a fiction because they know they must in order for their families to survive, or whether at least some of them are truly that brainwashed after years and years of nonstop programming.
In any case, I was very much looking forward to this film and the first hint that it would not be what I was looking for came in the opening credits where it was listed as a project supported/funded by the Colin Powell School for "Civic and Global Leadership" which itself is a neocon/neolib propaganda generation and indoctrination operation.
The first 30-40 minutes of the movie were OK if a bit slow. The director leaves any textual material on the screen for WAY TOO LONG; almost as if it was made for audiences "of all ages" (including young children) or people who are not proficient at reading. The narrator begins as she enters North Korea from China in the north of the country and she talks about the experience while sometimes filming from the tour bus in an unauthorized manner. The DPRK 'minder' (people who accompany foreigners in NK and closely monitor/guide their activity) warned her about it but it seems as though she kept on recording. It's also hard to tell how much of this footage is really from other peoples' works, because it's obvious much of it wasn't recorded on the narrator/director's trip.
As with any DPRK related material, we are reminded of how bad it is there, the cult of personality that the original revolutionary communist government devolved into over the years and that there was a war that divided north and south back in the 50s. As such, it's fine by my book because as I mentioned to start, I want all the footage from inside DPRK and of its people that I can get. I like to look at the psychology of it all. But then things took a left turn.
We are then guided through the different versions of the war between north and south and told how the north is telling lies to its citizens about who really began the shooting on June 25th early in the morning. The south side gets to go last and thus the message is that it's the US/SK official version of events that is correct and all other contextual detail can be ignored - i.e., the north started the war, as a complete surprise, unprovoked, and in brutal fashion. As a student of history I can tell you that this is not the case at all. The Colin Powell neocon folks couldn't help themselves and decided to turn a movie about a very propagandized society into a propaganda vehicle of their own.
A quick summary of what really happened to start the Korean War is as follows:
Mark E. Caprio, professor of history at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, points out:
"On February 8, 1949, the South Korean president met with Ambassador John Muccio and Secretary of the Army Kenneth C. Royall in Seoul. Here the Korean president listed the following as justifications for initiating a war with the North: the South Korean military could easily be increased by 100,000 if it drew from the 150,000 to 200,000 Koreans who had recently fought with the Japanese or the Nationalist Chinese. Moreover, the morale of the South Korean military was greater than that of the North Koreans. If war broke out he expected mass defections from the enemy. Finally, the United Nations' recognition of South Korea legitimized its rule over the entire peninsula (as stipulated in its constitution). Thus, he concluded, there was "nothing to be gained by waiting."
also
As to who did in reality fire that shot, Bruce Cumings, head of the history department at the University of Chicago, gave us the definitive answer in his two-volume The Origins of the Korean War, and The Korean War: A History: the Korean war started during the American occupation of the South, and it was Rhee, with help from his American sponsors, who initiated a series of attacks that well preceded the North Korean offensive of 1950. From 1945-1948, American forces aided Rhee in a killing spree that claimed tens of thousands of victims: the counterinsurgency campaign took a high toll in Kwangju, and on the island of Cheju-do - where as many as 60,000 people were murdered by Rhee's US-backed forces.
Rhee's army and national police were drawn from the ranks of those who had collaborated with the Japanese occupation during World War II, and this was the biggest factor that made civil war inevitable. That the US backed these quislings guaranteed widespread support for the Communist forces led by Kim IL Sung, and provoked the rebellion in the South that was the prelude to open North-South hostilities. Rhee, for his part, was eager to draw in the United States, and the North Koreans, for their part, were just as eager to invoke the principle of "proletarian internationalism" to draw in the Chinese and the Russians.
So there we have it. A film with a good premise but too much ideological baggage thus bringing nothing new to the table, including no interviews with actual North Koreans, no unique or novel footage of the country, and definitely nothing new to say about the situation.
Sadly, I cannot recommend. There are better DPRK documentaries out there. 2/10 for being a neocon Trojan Horse rather than an honest documentary.
In any case, I was very much looking forward to this film and the first hint that it would not be what I was looking for came in the opening credits where it was listed as a project supported/funded by the Colin Powell School for "Civic and Global Leadership" which itself is a neocon/neolib propaganda generation and indoctrination operation.
The first 30-40 minutes of the movie were OK if a bit slow. The director leaves any textual material on the screen for WAY TOO LONG; almost as if it was made for audiences "of all ages" (including young children) or people who are not proficient at reading. The narrator begins as she enters North Korea from China in the north of the country and she talks about the experience while sometimes filming from the tour bus in an unauthorized manner. The DPRK 'minder' (people who accompany foreigners in NK and closely monitor/guide their activity) warned her about it but it seems as though she kept on recording. It's also hard to tell how much of this footage is really from other peoples' works, because it's obvious much of it wasn't recorded on the narrator/director's trip.
As with any DPRK related material, we are reminded of how bad it is there, the cult of personality that the original revolutionary communist government devolved into over the years and that there was a war that divided north and south back in the 50s. As such, it's fine by my book because as I mentioned to start, I want all the footage from inside DPRK and of its people that I can get. I like to look at the psychology of it all. But then things took a left turn.
We are then guided through the different versions of the war between north and south and told how the north is telling lies to its citizens about who really began the shooting on June 25th early in the morning. The south side gets to go last and thus the message is that it's the US/SK official version of events that is correct and all other contextual detail can be ignored - i.e., the north started the war, as a complete surprise, unprovoked, and in brutal fashion. As a student of history I can tell you that this is not the case at all. The Colin Powell neocon folks couldn't help themselves and decided to turn a movie about a very propagandized society into a propaganda vehicle of their own.
A quick summary of what really happened to start the Korean War is as follows:
Mark E. Caprio, professor of history at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, points out:
"On February 8, 1949, the South Korean president met with Ambassador John Muccio and Secretary of the Army Kenneth C. Royall in Seoul. Here the Korean president listed the following as justifications for initiating a war with the North: the South Korean military could easily be increased by 100,000 if it drew from the 150,000 to 200,000 Koreans who had recently fought with the Japanese or the Nationalist Chinese. Moreover, the morale of the South Korean military was greater than that of the North Koreans. If war broke out he expected mass defections from the enemy. Finally, the United Nations' recognition of South Korea legitimized its rule over the entire peninsula (as stipulated in its constitution). Thus, he concluded, there was "nothing to be gained by waiting."
also
As to who did in reality fire that shot, Bruce Cumings, head of the history department at the University of Chicago, gave us the definitive answer in his two-volume The Origins of the Korean War, and The Korean War: A History: the Korean war started during the American occupation of the South, and it was Rhee, with help from his American sponsors, who initiated a series of attacks that well preceded the North Korean offensive of 1950. From 1945-1948, American forces aided Rhee in a killing spree that claimed tens of thousands of victims: the counterinsurgency campaign took a high toll in Kwangju, and on the island of Cheju-do - where as many as 60,000 people were murdered by Rhee's US-backed forces.
Rhee's army and national police were drawn from the ranks of those who had collaborated with the Japanese occupation during World War II, and this was the biggest factor that made civil war inevitable. That the US backed these quislings guaranteed widespread support for the Communist forces led by Kim IL Sung, and provoked the rebellion in the South that was the prelude to open North-South hostilities. Rhee, for his part, was eager to draw in the United States, and the North Koreans, for their part, were just as eager to invoke the principle of "proletarian internationalism" to draw in the Chinese and the Russians.
So there we have it. A film with a good premise but too much ideological baggage thus bringing nothing new to the table, including no interviews with actual North Koreans, no unique or novel footage of the country, and definitely nothing new to say about the situation.
Sadly, I cannot recommend. There are better DPRK documentaries out there. 2/10 for being a neocon Trojan Horse rather than an honest documentary.