/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM: Documentary Highlights Human Side of North Korea

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alisa Givental

NEW YORK, Nov 11 2003 (IPS) - Few Americans know that no army won the Korean War – it ended in a truce. But most are familiar with U.S. 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 United States in particular.

The film analyses Korean history from World War II until the present. Using footage from the United States, 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, in an interview.

Accomplishing that mission was not easy. It took three years of paperwork for a crew of two to get permission to enter 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 over 30 thousand U.S. troops and two million Koreans died – ended without a peace treaty, more than 10 million families were separated and have remained so for more than 50 years.

Upon 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-Song, 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 over 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 United States is the result of fear and propaganda, and the fact that "people in the north have grown up with the idea that the U.S. would inevitably invade". North Koreans feel that they are under siege and respond accordingly, she adds 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 says, "yet the U.S. 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 adds. 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 centre 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 Theatre on Dec. 13.