The Intriguing World of North Korean Entertainment

Entertainment Made By North Korea

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Summary

In a captivating exploration of an overlooked aspect of North Korea, Paper Will ventures into the lesser-known realm of North Korean entertainment. While the predominant narratives about the country often focus on severe topics such as human rights violations, nuclear tests, and censorship, this deep dive shines a light on the films, music, video games, and TV shows that North Koreans consume. The journey reveals a surprisingly rich tapestry of cultural products, from propagandistic cinema to subtly thematic animations and surprising collaborations with foreign entities. It’s an eye-opening look at how entertainment serves as a tool for both control and expression in one of the world’s most closed-off nations.

Highlights

The video unveils unusual aspects of North Korean media, detailing a diverse selection of movies and animations that deviate from the typical propagandistic fare. 🎥
A deep dive into the creation and impact of North Korean entertainment uncovers unexpected international collaborations and influences. 🤝
Viewers are introduced to charming and complex North Korean cartoons that incorporate allegories and folktales to convey messages. 📚
The exploration covers how certain North Korean films, like 'Flower Girl,' signal shifts in artistic style and political storytelling. 🌺
The transition of leadership from Kim Il-sung to Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un is mirrored in the evolving focus of North Korean media productions. 👥

Key Takeaways

North Korean entertainment extends beyond propaganda, encompassing a wide array of films, music, cartoons, and TV shows, often with surprisingly creative content. 🎨
In addition to crafting its own media, North Korea participates in international film co-productions, showcasing its creative reach. 🎬
Despite the country's isolation and ideological constraints, North Korean animators and filmmakers produce works with a degree of artistic sophistication. ✨
While maintaining strict control over its narratives, North Korea occasionally allows glimpses of innovation and subtlety in its media. 🔍
The shifting landscape of North Korean media reflects both internal changes and external influences, providing insight into the country's evolving cultural dynamics. 🌍

Overview

North Korean entertainment is often overshadowed by the country's more notorious international headlines, but it holds a treasure trove of fascinating media that deserves its own spotlight. However tightly controlled by the state's Propaganda and Agitation Department, these works reveal layers of creativity and expression, offering a rare glimpse into North Korean society beyond the usual political narratives.

Through the lens of North Korean cinema, music, and animation, we discover a surprisingly vibrant cultural scene that diverges from the expected rigid propaganda. Collaborations with foreign filmmakers, though rare and often politically motivated, have brought different styles and techniques into North Korean art, enriching its cultural landscape.

Despite the country's isolation, North Korean artists find ways to innovate and subtly critique through their work. The nation's shifting cultural narratives, influenced by leadership changes and international relations, reflect broader social dynamics, making North Korean entertainment an intriguing subject for those looking to understand the elusive country's softer side.

Chapters

00:00 - 02:30: Introduction to North Korean Entertainment The chapter delves into a less commonly explored aspect of North Korean culture—their entertainment scene. Unlike the usual focus on human rights violations, nuclear tensions, and the dictatorship, this chapter shifts attention to the cultural side of life in North Korea. It discusses what movies and music the average North Korean might enjoy, providing a different perspective on the isolated nation.
02:30 - 10:00: Historical Context and Early Korean Cinema The chapter explores the entertainment industry in North Korea, focusing on the country's historical context and the development of its early cinema. The narrator initially underestimated the volume of North Korean entertainment, expecting to find limited content. However, over a span of 18 months, the narrator explored a substantial amount of North Korean entertainment, including over 500 films and 300 cartoons, which indicates a more extensive industry than anticipated.
10:00 - 15:00: North Korean Propaganda in Cinema This chapter delves into the unique and often surreal world of North Korean propaganda in cinema. It covers a wide range of entertainment forms that the regime uses to convey its messages, including TV series, sketch comedy shows, mobile games, and even fake Disney performances. The narrative doesn't stop there, as it features numerous unusual spectacles such as fight dancing, accordion shows, cooking specials, and AK-47 pole dancing. Furthermore, it talks about Dove Magic on Ice performances, military-themed tap dances, and religious animations with Jesus at the center. The chapter also highlights extravagant shows like mass gymnastics and underground teenage rock bands, not to leave out the shiny farm girls and orphan talent shows that provide a glimpse into the cultural life orchestrated by the state – all constituting the diverse, state-controlled entertainment landscape.
15:00 - 22:30: Post-War North Korean Entertainment The speaker is dedicated to exploring unusual media, including North Korean entertainment, but rather than mocking it, they aim to genuinely understand it. The journey through history will explore the development of North Korean entertainment, particularly starting from the post-war era, in order to gain insight into its evolution.
22:30 - 30:00: 1970s-1980s Animation and Cultural Influence The chapter explores the entertainment industry in Korea during the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on the cultural influences and animation.
30:00 - 37:30: Kim Jong Il's Impact on North Korean Entertainment The chapter discusses the historical impact of Japanese colonial rule on Korea, focusing on how the annexation by Imperial Japan affected Korean society and culture. Koreans were forced into Japanese citizenship, and subjected to harsh conditions including forced labor and the confiscation of land and resources. Korean traditions were suppressed, and dissent was met with severe punishment by Japanese authorities.
37:30 - 45:00: The Influence of Shin Sang-ok The chapter discusses the influence of Shin Sang-ok in the context of Korean society under Japanese imperial rule. By the 1920s, Korea was importing a significant number of films from the West, such as 'Robin Hood,' 'Way Down East,' and 'Metropolis,' which became quite popular among Korean audiences. Despite Japan also showing their own films, these did not achieve the same level of popularity in Korea, highlighting perhaps an element of cultural resistance or preference.
45:00 - 52:30: Chongryon and Zainichi Koreans The chapter discusses the creation and evolution of Korean cinema, particularly focusing on the choices of some Koreans who prefer making original Korean films rather than consuming foreign ones. There is a debate about what constitutes the first Korean movie, with different criteria based on definitions of 'first,' 'Korean,' and 'movie.' The 1910s Keno dramas are debated as potential firsts in Korean cinema.
52:30 - 60:00: 1980s-1990s: Decline and Change The chapter discusses the evolution of traditional theater performances into dramas that incorporated projectors for background scenery. Despite the fusion of old art and new technology, these were not considered true movies. The transcript also touches on early full feature films, highlighting '1923's Vow Made Beneath the Moon,' a film about a Korean man whose gambling addiction leads to massive debt, and his devoted fiancee's sacrifices to help him.
60:00 - 67:30: 2000s-Present: Modern Developments The chapter discusses the modern developments in Korean cinema from the 2000s to the present, focusing on the influence of external forces in the production and thematic elements of Korean movies. It highlights the case of a film paid for and produced by Japan, 'Vow Made Beneath the Moon,' which contained a narrative justifying the colonization of Korea by portraying Koreans as inherently good but prone to corruption. This reflects on the cultural and political dynamics affecting Korean cinema during this period.
67:30 - 70:00: Conclusion and Reflection The chapter titled 'Conclusion and Reflection' discusses the emergence of the first real Korean movie, identified as 'Arirang' from 1926. This film follows a young Korean student who engages in protests against Imperial Japan but faces brutal treatment by the authorities. 'Arirang' is described as a bold declaration of Korean independence and sparks inspiration among other Korean filmmakers to create their own pro-freedom works, until Japanese intervention limits such expressions.

Entertainment Made By North Korea Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 so I had this idea for a short video about North Korea most videos on North Korea focus on the country's human rights violations nuclear weapons test extreme censorship and of course an authoritarian regime led by a fanatically worshiped Supreme dictator those topics get a lot of attention because well they're really important but in my video I wanted to focus on things like what kinds of movies do they watch what kinds of music does the average North Korean listen to
00:30 - 01:00 what about video games TV shows cartoons just what kind of entertainment does North Korea have honestly I figured there wouldn't be that much stuff so I'd watch whatever North Korean entertainment I could find write a quick script and my whole video would be done in a few weeks right that was 18 months ago because it turns out North Korea's got a lot more entertainment than I expected in the last year and a half I've watched over 500 North Korean films 300 cartoons 10
01:00 - 01:30 full TV series and lost I don't even know how many hours on North Korean sketch comedy shows mobile games fake Disney performances fight dancing accordion shows cooking specials AK-47 pole dancing Dove Magic on Ice military tap dances Jesus animations Mass gymnastics underground teenage rock bands shiny farm girls orphan talent shows yes orphan talent shows plus so so so so so much more and today you're going to have to hear about about all of
01:30 - 02:00 it hi I'm paper will I make videos about unusual media and it doesn't get much more unusual than North Korean entertainment now look it'd be easy for us to just comb through their media find the weirdest stuff point and laugh at it for being weird and be done but we're not going to do that I want us to make a genuine effort to understand North Korean entertainment and that means we got to go back to the beginning so suit up and strap in as we travel through history to watch and and try to make
02:00 - 02:30 sense of the entertainment made by North [Music] Korea before there was a North or South Korea there was just Korea which had been a single unified Kingdom until 1910 when Imperial Japan colonizes Korea as part of the Japanese empire Japan justifies this to Koreans telling them hey we're not you know colonizing you we're protecting you from other for
02:30 - 03:00 powers that want to take over your country and in fact from now on you're all Japanese citizens too and it's not optional because life under Imperial Japan is brutal for Koreans hundreds of thousands of men and women are put into forced labor and service land is confiscated resources are taken Korean Traditions are actively and sometimes violently suppressed and anyone speaking out against this abuse is subject to beatings arrest or far worse by the Japanese authorities yeah modern Japan pretty chill Place early 20th century
03:00 - 03:30 Imperial Japanese military not so chill and the mistreatment of Koreans extends to every level of Korean Society including movies by the 1920s Korea is importing lots of western movies uh not like western western movies but like movies from the West Robin Hood Way Down East Metropolis these are all huge hits drawing in gigantic crowds of Korean audiences Japan's also screening some of their own movies but those were slightly less popular in Korea I wonder why hey
03:30 - 04:00 guys welcome to the show sorry about all the slavery stuff anyway please enjoy another film about how amazing Japan is but some Koreans don't want to watch foreign films they want to make their own original Korean films however there's some disagreement over exactly what the first Korean movie is because that label really depends on how you want to define the words first and Korean and movie some people argue that the first Korean movies are these things called Keno dramas in the 1910s but Keno
04:00 - 04:30 dramas were really just traditional theater performances that used projectors for background scenery it's a very cool idea fusing old art and new technology but they're not really movies then we get some full feature films like 1923s vow made beneath the moon it's about a Korean man who loves his fiance but gets addicted to gambling and activities of ill repute and he goes into massive debt his faithful and loving fiance spends all her life savings to pay off his loans and and then the the end that's that's that's
04:30 - 05:00 the end of the movie not exactly a feel-good ending but that should count as the first Korean movie right absolutely but also not at all movies like vow made beneath the moon were being paid for and produced by Japan to justify colonizing Korea the message being hey Korean people you are inherently good but you're easily corruptible so maybe it's best if somebody steps in and helps you from making bad choices uh what do you think so I'd
05:00 - 05:30 argue that the first real Korean movie doesn't come until 1926 is Ari wrong are Ari wrong am I saying that right look I'm a butcher some Korean pronunciation today so let's all just let's all get real comfortable with that so in the film Ari wrong we follow a young Korean student engaging in protest against Imperial Japan but he's caught and he's brutalized by the authorities the whole movie is an unabashed Declaration of Korean Independence and inspires lots of other Korean filmmakers to make their own Pro Freedom works until Japan steps
05:30 - 06:00 in and is like uh no and starts arresting Korean directors writers actors and authors as the ARs become just another casualty of the occupation but I don't want to give you the impression that Korean people are taking all this mistreatment laying down because they're not multiple factions of Korean resistance Fighters start popping up all attempting to free their country and in one of those factions is a young man named Kim ILS it's actually a nickname he gives gives himself and it
06:00 - 06:30 means Kim becomes the son and that sun thing is going to get really important today so keep it in mind Kim ilung likes two things he likes the idea of a free and independent Korea and he really likes the hot new trend of the 1930s socialism Kim msung wasn't the major figure of the Korean Liberation movement but it's true that he got the attention of Japanese authorities who chase him and his entire faction North out of Korea into the Soviet Union by Joseph
06:30 - 07:00 Stalin anyway World War II breaks out and it's a whole thing but in Asia Japan squares off against the United States and the Allied Powers the US drops some atomic bombs in Japan the Soviets invade Japanese occupied Korea Japan surrenders World War II ends the world debt peace and Korea is now finally free to rule itself but not really there are now two competing superpowers in the world the pro-socialist Soviet Union and the pro
07:00 - 07:30 capitalist United States and they don't like each other this is known as the Cold War and it was also a whole thing but you don't have to understand everything about the Cold War to see that Soviet and US troops moving into Korea is bad news for Koreans the two countries agree to sort of pull Korea in half creating two new koreas while installing governments and leaders aligned with their superpower Papas on the American side is South Korea led by President Sigman Ree and on the Soviet side is the Democrat atic People's
07:30 - 08:00 Republic of Korea also known as the dprk or North Korea led by you guessed it Kim brings the Sunny D ilung he's back he's ready to fight capitalism and he's kind of an [ __ ] to be fair both Sigman re and Kimo are kind of [ __ ] each quickly becoming dictators Gathering as much power as possible violently eliminating voices of protest and imprisoning political opponents Kim msung also begins transforming North Korea into a socialist State you know
08:00 - 08:30 let's end private ownership and give the public control of the economy to create a truly classless equal society that kind of socialism although by give the public control Kim ilung really means give him control Kim is also taking inspiration from Joseph Stalin laying the okay okay Stalin turn it down that's enough like Stalin Kim is laying the groundwork for his own Cult of Personality in the dprk an image that Kim lung is this heroic perfect General slf father figure SL not Supernatural
08:30 - 09:00 but like h a little Supernatural infallible leader and he's rewriting history to say that he was the one that freed Korea from Japan with some help from his good friends the Soviets that's not true but who cares what's true Kim gets to write what's true and he's going to write it with entertainment Kim elung forms the propaganda and agitation department or the p a remember that which starts cranking out media movies music and more to support his leaders ERS ship and his teachings from the
09:00 - 09:30 moment the pad is founded with very few exceptions all North Korean entertainment of every medium is under direct Kim control it's a means for him and the leadership to dictate public opinion revise history and reinforce the Kim family Cult of Personality North Korea does not make entertainment for the sake of entertainment they don't there's always a goal behind the art and that's not my opinion that's the official public stance held by kimlong and his successors now it's going to take a couple of decades before Kim UNG
09:30 - 10:00 really achieves that all powerful Godlike Supreme status that we associate with North Korean leaders now but Kim and the P they start here with North korean's very first movie the 1946 documentary our construction although calling it a documentary might be a little charitable it's really just some clips from a recent kiml song rally our construction also shows the very first North Korean Parade ever held yeah what will one day turn into this started out like this I don't know about you but
10:00 - 10:30 this parade looks a lot more fun to me there are people dancing people cheering people doing something here it really looks like a giant party and there ain't no party like a North Korean party cuz the North Korean party's got prisoners Japanese PS some police and one dude just just getting pulled in a cage he's probably fine right but after the kiml song speeches and the prison pity parade party our construction turns to its main topic industrial Manufacturing there's shots of factories smelters train yards
10:30 - 11:00 coal steel Machinery ropes got to got to have ropes got to have ropes Kim elung believed that the key to building his socialist North Korean Utopia wasn't through agriculture or consumer goods but through heavy industry there are some other documentaries we could look at but let's fast forward to North Korea's first feature film 1949's our home Village our home Village set back during the Japanese Occupation of Korea begins with a song about how the Korean
11:00 - 11:30 people are suffering and praying for a savior to come rescue them in a village we see a greedy capitalist landlord and his evil wife abusing the Farmers on their land collaborating with the Imperial Japanese forces you suck the greedy landlord demands that a farmer returns some Dead Leaves because you know he's greedy but the farmer proudly refuses to comply and starts a fight he's tossed into a prison by Japanese authorities and thinks about how the Korean people are suffering and praying for a savior to rescue them
11:30 - 12:00 meanwhile the jailed Farmer's mother goes from one terrible scene of Koreans being mistreated to the next unwanted advances forced labor and attacks the mother is overwhelmed by how the Korean people are suffering and prays for a savior over and over oh won't someone come and rescue us isn't there anyone any wonderful perfect hand handsome man who can save us okay cut before we go any further you see what's happening right all these prayers from the open opening songs to the jail scene to the
12:00 - 12:30 mother it's all to set up Kim msung as the literal answer to the prayer of suffering Koreans and it's definitely not a coincidence that during all of those moments of prayers and hope and despair we see characters looking directly at the sun which represents Kim brings the son ilung and in this All Is Lost moment the jailed farmer meets a very special man a freedom fighter who has been tiously fighting against the Imperial Japanese a man who wants to free the Village a man who's got
12:30 - 13:00 something to say and that man is Kim ung's friend it's yeah it's not Kim ilung it's it's just one of his friends here's the thing the pad uh remember the propaganda and agitation Department in charge of all North Korean entertainment doesn't want movies to directly show kiml s they believe it's better to keep him as this unseen mysterious being as more than a man a near intangible force of Nature and freedom so we don't get to see Kim but we do get to see his friend and comrades that appear and talk him up
13:00 - 13:30 kind of like a cult of personality hype man he also talks about how Kim totally isn't hiding in the Soviet Union what that's where'd you hear that no he's in a secret base on the nearby Mount piku waiting for the right moment to strike inspired by this speech the prisoners stage a breakout and try to retake their Village they are shooting at soldiers they're blowing up model trains clearly they are courageous and unrelenting but it's not enough they are not in enough to save their country not by themselves
13:30 - 14:00 lightning strikes from the heavens the ground rumbles everyone dashes outside to see that Kim's Army has come down from Mount piku where they totally were this whole time and he's here to save the town oh hell yeah finally after an hour of melodrama and PowerPoint esque slideshows of people suffering we're about to get the greatest and most cathartic Battlefield action scene in the no I'm just kidding they skip it the movie skips right over it we just we just hard cut to the Village being
14:00 - 14:30 freed and everybody cheering for kiml which might seem like it'd be a heartwarming moment except as they're cheering they're ripping the Japanese Army the police the landlord and the landlord's wife apart literally ripping them apart but as gruesome as that sounds the way the scenes are shot makes them very very funny like all the freed villagers are tearing into somebody and then one guy runs in front of the camera and is like all right guys to the the police station and then they all run to
14:30 - 15:00 the police station and then another guy is like okay he's like okay to the landlords and then they attack the landlords and then to the landlord's wife it's it's all very like slapstick three stoes comedy it's not supposed to be funny but it's very funny then they um tie all the corpses to trees and leave them there forever so that's um that's less funny anyway the movie ends with a big theatrical speech about how Kim UNG is the greatest and he he's giving control
15:00 - 15:30 of the Farms back to the people permanently and forever no more landlords will tell them how to farm so ouram Village is a very propaganda heavy movie but it is a very effective movie it hits every talking point in Kim lung's agenda capitalism and greed are the causes of suffering under socialism Koreans will prosper and be free kimlong is the savior of Korea who freed the country from Japan again not true that was the Soviets and you know America had a little something to do with Japan being defeated in World War II but all
15:30 - 16:00 right and of course the final point kimlong is a little mystical in answer to the very prayers of Koreans that's why this movie is full of references to Kim being on Mount piku and coming down from the mountain to free Korea that mountain has deep connections to Korean mythology that we'll explore later and to make sure that message really sinks in our home Village is being shown everywhere not only cities like North Korea's capital pongyang but also in factories post offices Farms anywhere
16:00 - 16:30 the pad can set up a cheap projector and that works the film is a big hit with North Korean audiences in a powerful first step in Kim's March towards control and the second step is going to be music much like with films Kim declared that North Korean music would have to support his leadership the Workers Party of Korea and the values of collective effort a big part of socialism even the way that music is presented had to reflect those values solo performers which glorify individuals were played down and
16:30 - 17:00 Collective performances like ensembles and orchestras are played up you could enjoy some vocals with the state merited chorus you can tap your foot along with the marching band of the Korean People's Army or you could take in a show from the state Symphony Orchestra and help fight bis Z class music with the boys with Z classy music bis Z class music boys with zcl Classy music no okay but anything you're listening to it's all going to sound like 1940s Soviet music because that's what early North Korean
17:00 - 17:30 music is based on especially in how it glorifies the leader like 1946's song of General Kims the most played song in North Korea it's a military song about how incredible Kims is and how he saved the country right out the gate there's some lyrics about blood and rivers of blood and bloody rocks and I don't know it feel like it's coming on a little strong right personally I like the North Korean youth March a lot more [Music]
17:30 - 18:00 this one's about the explosive power of young people to work hard and build a prosperous Utopia it also takes almost 30 whole seconds before the Kimo song worship kicks in so that's that's not bad unlike the song of women the song of women is about how important women will be to the success of North Korea sounds very Progressive Until you realize most of the song is about how the women are all working really hard for a man kiml I mean yeah who doesn't want to get together tightly
18:00 - 18:30 with the general G but it's basically a woman empowerment song that's about how great this guy is we could do a few more songs but I want to see what's happening over in parade music while these early parades are smaller than the ones we see later good God that's a that's a lot of pom poms that's a lot of that's like a lot of pom poms do you think they do you think they have to buy the pom poms or do you think the pom poms are like given out as you going I'm saying pom poms too much I'm sorry while all these parades are smaller than later ones the core
18:30 - 19:00 experience essentially never changes it's all flaunting power while perfectly synchronized soldiers staring right to face the supreme leader all showing their impressive skills by holding their sharpened bayonets right up against the neck of the guy in front of them all right guys remember nobody sneeze I swear to God we lost 50 Men last time nobody sneeze but for the parade music itself well take a listen to this Parade's version of the North Korean national anthem and tell me if it sounds familiar [Music]
19:00 - 19:30 wait for it wait for it and there it is MHM in the 1940s the North Korean national anthem was the very not North Korean Melody all long sign the Scottish folk song people sing on New Year's see years prior a Korean composer had put some Pro Korean Independence lyrics to The Melody so for like 2 or 3 years both North and South Korea's national anthem was a Scottish folk song but by 1950
19:30 - 20:00 North Korea has replaced that with an entirely new original composition titled A Au Au auka auka look I told you my Korean pronunciation in this video is going to get straight up embarrassing and you've been warned so I'm going with auka auka but some of you might be wondering okay so far we've only been talking about new North Korean songs but what happened to Old Korean music what happened to traditional Korean music stuff produced before 1945 like take panor if you've never
20:00 - 20:30 heard of panor it's a form of musical theater that's often described as Korean Opera which is accurate-ish but a little misleading there are no complex set pieces or crowded dance numbers like in Western Opera in penor there's usually one singer and one drummer on stage equally telling a story there are all these different schools of musical technique and other excuse me paper will sorry to interrupt but my sensors indicate you've gone a bit off topic oh uh thanks sorry everyone I forgot to introduce you
20:30 - 21:00 to Ivan Ivan here has been programmed to monitor my commentary and help me from going a bit too off topic hello everyone I'm Ivan the robot well you're not really a robot you're more of an AI program well you're not really a YouTuber since you haven't uploaded in like two years all right it doesn't matter just everybody seriously Google panor it's neat not that North Korea's government thinks so kimlong believes that traditional Arts like panori had become a pastime only for the wealthy class of society and since that doesn't
21:00 - 21:30 jive well with revolutionary socialist classist struggles plus Kim's less concerned about Reviving traditional art as he is with reuniting with South Korea I admit I kind of skimmed over the North and South Korean split earlier but you can imagine how horrible this was for Koreans right it's terrible and both koreas were making songs about the dream of reunification with North Korea's most famous being train of reunification runs
21:30 - 22:00 but Kim doesn't just want to sing about reuniting the two koreas he wants to actually do it and he's going to do it by force Kim oong travels to Moscow and asks Stalin for permission to invade South Korea and reunite the two sides under his rule Stalin very reluctantly approves figuring America just got out of World War II they're not going to go back to war over Korea whoops Kim also steps over to the
22:00 - 22:30 Communist People's Republic of China and ask their leader Mao zong for help Mal promises to provide a volunteer force of a few million soldiers which could be used if necessary Mal figures America just got out of World War II they're not going to go back to war over Korea whoops and so in 1950 Kim lung marches his army across the line dividing North and South Korea and starts the Korean War South Korea does their best to fight back but they're
22:30 - 23:00 just outnumbered and outgunned and get absolutely wrecked it's not even a close fight Saul the capital of South Korea Falls in like 3 days there are some Rumblings of an international military response but Kim figures hey America just got out of World War II they're not going to go back to war over okay seriously what was it about us history that convinced three different presumably competent leaders to all think oh yeah America no they hate Wars they hate Wars they're totally fine with the spread of Communism socialism really
23:00 - 23:30 so I guess to the surprise of nobody except those three guys a United states-led multinational Force enters the war and helps the South Koreans fight back against the North Korean army the US command engages in an aggressive and devastating bombing campaign of the north the majority of estimates say that the North Korean civilian casualties here they start they start in these six digits over 80% of all North Korean infrastructure that's hospitals schools
23:30 - 24:00 houses dams are wiped out Saul may have been captured in 3 days but North Korea's capital pyong Yong it's just gone it's just not there anymore and by the way I'm not talking about the deadliness of the US bombing campaign just to bash America just like I wasn't talking about the cruelness of Imperial Japan to bash Japan I'm an American that lives in Japan and I love both of those countries but all of this context will be essential in understanding North Korea's entertainment anyway ma Dong's
24:00 - 24:30 Chinese volunteer army is deployed and pushes the US forces back down to the original division line and the war is going to stay there for a couple of years but while the war is happening North Korea is still making movies now the physical North Korean Film Studio isn't around anymore due to uh various factors but the Studio's filmmakers are still out in the field producing movies as the Korean war is going on for example teen gorilla Fighters a group of North Korean boys are
24:30 - 25:00 frustrated that they're too young to join the Korean army and take out some of those dirty filthy American bastards a that's me so they decide that even if they can't be army soldiers they'll be the next best thing child Soldiers the boys tell their idea to their school teacher who loves the idea he he loves it he's immediately 100% behind all this Child Soldier stuff I guess the kids aren't old enough to enlist but they are old enough to wage asymmetrical Warfare against against seasoned US Marines as
25:00 - 25:30 the American forces approach the North Korean army soldiers tell everyone in the village not to worry everything's going to be fine but also they out they they're out they're they're leaving one of the villagers asks hey what about us aren't we going to get attacked now but another villager tells him oh no look how clever Kung is for instead of staying and protecting us they know it is better to strategically Retreat and come back later remember that North Korean audience if your village is under attack by a Americans and the Army abandons you always know they are
25:30 - 26:00 strategically abandoning you so it's fine so the North Korean army leaves and predictably incomes the Americans USA USA USA look at them they're beautiful these are as I'm sure you figured out just North Korean actors using white makeup wigs sunglasses hair dye and plastic Prosthetics to look like stereotypical
26:00 - 26:30 Americans got to give some credit the prosthetic noses look decent but check out check out this guy he he looks like he looks like the big boy hamburger boy so after the Americans move in and uh remove half the Village from the movie they are warmly announcing to the other half don't worry we are here to help the Americans are then baffled that the now significantly smaller Village doesn't embrace them in Open Arms well except for this one traitor in the
26:30 - 27:00 group you know he's getting ripped apart by a crowd later oh and maybe you've noticed everyone in this movie is speaking in Mandarin Chinese and not Korean that's because the only remaining copy of the film we have is the Chinese dub version which fun fact won an international award at a film festival there as for the original Korean copy a lot of 1950s North Korean films have been lost to time again due to various factors anyway the teen gorilla
27:00 - 27:30 Fighters agreed to gain the Americans trust and then sabotage their base from the inside but one kid gets found out and interrogated by the big boy hamburger boy this interrogation scene is one of the best North Korean scenes up until the 1950s it's really intense and well-directed you know the kids a goner but you never know exactly when the Americans will take him out although it does have some clunky dialogue like where the big boy hamburger boy says hey boy you should trust me us American men love young
27:30 - 28:00 boys what the that's the that's the most suspicious thing you could possibly say to a child finally the kid declares he'd rather sacrifice his life for the greater good than betray his friends so he's tied to a tree and uh removed from the movie but if these Americans seem a little over-the-top evil just wait later they go full on laughing as they run down blind orphans with their car evil but in the finale of teen gorilla Fighters we get a big All
28:00 - 28:30 Is Lost moment and you know what that means Kim ung's North Korean army returns and saves the town lots of cheering lots of celebrations and all topped off with that traitor from earlier getting the crowd pleaser squeezer of ripping a dude into pieces but right before the crowd can get their hands on him one soldier stands up and says my fellow North Korean countrymen stop stop this isn't how we practice Revenge anymore we have a justice system to handle him it's a really modern and civil approach to dealing with captured
28:30 - 29:00 prisoners and I I guess it shows that maybe North korean's justice system isn't quite so oh uh my mistake they actually tied him to a train track and removed him from the N screw it they shot him they tied him to a train track and they shot him holy crap I mean that's better than having your arms ripped off but um it's still pretty cold one of the team Gilla Fighters announces our Village's win is good news but children in North Korea should pick up the fight to free Korea and that North Korean Victory is assured because
29:00 - 29:30 everyone is doing their part next up after that movie is the film Scouts there's a North Korean Recon team infiltrating enemy camps confounding the Americans with their cunning and revolutionary skill and and okay okay we got to talk about the American costumes man first off hey North Korea I know you want to illustrate the gluty of the capitalist Americans and fine but this this is clearly just a dude with pillows up his shirt and what happened to the face Prosthetics like like I get it it's
29:30 - 30:00 probably really hard to do good plastic mold work during a war but hey buddy hey buddy hey buddy your forehead is physically peeling off and it's giving me the creepy jeepies and it's not just this movie there's another Korean War film where instead of getting a North Korean woman to dress up as an American nurse they just stick a wig on this poor dude and call him Betsy he looks he he looks miserable I I went to 9 years at acting school for this crap what the hell C anyway the scouts move in for a night
30:00 - 30:30 attack on the Americans but they're soon pinned down by enemy fire there's another big All Is Lost moment so of course the North Korean army arrives and saves the day with stock footage and victory is Promised another film from the time is Miss gorilla fighter a movie about how women are also fighting and doing their part and when I say doing their part women aren't like waiting back stitching up uniforms or cooking dinner for the troops now they're pissed they got guns and they're using them I'm not going to lie that's uh that's doing
30:30 - 31:00 something for me I don't I don't know I don't know what it's doing but it's working I'd love to talk more about this movie and actually a few more movies from the time but unfortunately they simply haven't been archived very well I mean God this one looks like it got video recorded on a flip phone from 1998 from inside a bottle of Windex but maybe it's just as well we don't recap all of these because all of them in the same way anyway people fighting Americans all his lost moment a few sunshot came s forces arrive boom boom boom clack clack clack the fake Americans get crushed by
31:00 - 31:30 a tank or something and victory is assured because everyone is doing their part so what do we make of these movies that were made as the Korean War was happening well for starters the quality is h a little touch and go not because of bad film preservation but just due to the fact that they're movies being shot in the middle of a war it's actually astounding that these movies were made at all considering the limited resources filmmakers had I respect that yet that doesn't change the fact that these movies are generally awful the camera
31:30 - 32:00 sometimes goes in and out of focus the acting's poor their skiing action scenes probably to save money and you know I'm less than happy with movies telling kids to get themselves blown up for the glory of kiml sun that's not great like there's this scene in Scouts that we didn't even talk about where all the guys are discussing who they miss back home but you know who they miss it's not their family it's not their kids it's not like a girlfriend or something it's Kim lung they they all just take turns caressing this picture of Kim msung what what is this I know that
32:00 - 32:30 manipulative wartime media is not unique to North Korea it's not but even in that genre the false worldview presented in these movies is absurdly one-sided and you know we're really lucky to live in a country where we have access to good information but there is a concerning Trend in modern media where algorithms are working behind the scenes to reinforce our world viiew and limit our perspective on important events which is why I'm happy to introduce today's sponsor ground news I'm like legitimately thrilled to have gril news as this video sponsor a couple of months
32:30 - 33:00 ago I asked my audience to recommend a service or a company from a YouTube sponsor that they tried and could vouch for and the number one response I got back was ground news that's what inspired me to check them out in the first place ground news is a website and mobile app that consolidates news stories from various sources into one place and lets you compare how those stories are reported here's a really good example a few weeks ago Russian President Vladimir Putin sent the current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a Brand New Limousine as a gift pretty
33:00 - 33:30 straightforward news story right Putin gave Kim Jong-un a fancy car and on first glance you can see that among the over a hundred articles that groundw collected for this story Putin's gift to Kim was covered almost equally among left leaning Center and right leaning sources but and here's the cool part you can quickly look through each source's headline and see their country of origin by the way you can check this out at ground. newspaper the link is below so while headlines in the first few sentences from Russian sources May focus more on Putin and Kim jong-un's
33:30 - 34:00 political bromantic relationship headlines from other countries are more likely to cover if the gift was a violation of un sanctions and the tensions that violations might cause cool right I mean violating un sanctions isn't cool I mean the ground news feature is cool and if you go to ground. newspaper you'll get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan Link in the description I really think their platform is a game changer and I hope you'll check them out now let's get back to the North Korean entertainment video uh where where were we U 1950s Korean
34:00 - 34:30 War grown men caressing a picture of kimlong okay yeah so we cover North Korea's films during the Korean War but how about their music from the war unfortunately every tune and Melody is named something like like song of defending the motherland song of defending the Fatherland my song in the battlefield my song in the trench pick whatever song you want they're almost all saying the same things kimlong is great sacrifice yourself do your part Victory is assured and even if you find the occasional song
34:30 - 35:00 that's not about the war it's still about the war like there's this love song called nobody knows here's the problem with writing a Love Song in North Korea in the 1950s kimlong hated the idea of personal or romantic love in Media or or really in society he wanted people to love the country to love the Socialist movement to love him but not love other people in a romantic sense so in this quote unquote Love Song a young woman gets a letter from a handsome young Soldier she knows but the letter doesn't say anything about how he misses the girl or
35:00 - 35:30 wants to see her he's just telling her I've killed 100 Americans and I would like to kill some more but you know for all these songs and movies of defeating Americans with ease of inevitable ever closer Victory being assured as everyone does their part the Korean war was not going very well for Kim oong it's not really going well for anybody but it definitely wasn't going well for Kim and he wanted out this leads to the signing of the 195 three Korean armed assist agreement which brings hostilities to a
35:30 - 36:00 stop the agreement has a bunch of rules but the most important is that it sets up the Korean demilitarized zone or the DMZ a well-guarded buffer zone between the North and the South so let's recap Kim elung began the Korean War to in his words reunify Korea under his rule save Koreans from oppression and kick out all Western powers from the peninsula instead he actually lost a bit of land 4 million Koreans have lost their lives and now there's a guaranteed American Military presence in South Korea for the
36:00 - 36:30 next century and for all his trouble all he did was get North Korea burned to the ground our beloved kiml song Everybody the average North Korean at the time may have been forgiven for asking if all these movies and songs were telling us that kosong is an Ever Victorious Iron Will unbeatable leader who promised to reunite the peninsula and win the war how the hell did he lose [Music]
36:30 - 37:00 well Kim's response was he didn't lose because his invasion didn't fail because North Korea didn't invade South Korea of course yes Kim claims that it was actually South Korea that invaded the north all under pressure from the evil American bastard dog people yeah never mind all the Soviet and Chinese documents showing kimone going to their countries and asking permission to invade South Korea I guess we're just we're just not going to talk about that all right cool furthermore it was only thanks to Kim's skill and intellect and
37:00 - 37:30 some help from China that North Korea survived this totally unprovoked attack from the south and he would have done even better if not for all these damn traitors yeah that's good traitors all these traitors in the country as Kim ung's official biographer wrote to have successfully fought us imperialism while spy clicks were entrenched in the party and carrying out their intrigues how great is comrade Kim UNG little brown noser and while it's a complicated issue basically Kim's PR strategy of nuh-uh
37:30 - 38:00 totally works it works I don't know how but it works and now having completely averted blame Kim shifts his attention away from the war to rebuilding North Korea which wasn't going to be easy because North Korea was now a giant pile of Ash but Kim gets a break both communist China and the Soviet Union really want North Korea to be a socialist success story on the world stage especially compared to South Korea so the two countries pick up the North Korean reconstruction Tab and offer lots and lots of financial aid thanks to this
38:00 - 38:30 help North Korea's economy was able to recover pretty quickly pongyang in particular is rebuilt as North Korea's shining capital city of culture and opportunity in fact for roughly 15 to 20 years North Korea would outpace South Korea in economic growth but there's a problem food North Korea has very little aable land and a bunch of other problems so there's not enough food to make up for this issue North Korea starts relying heav heavily on fertilizer and Machinery to help stabilize food
38:30 - 39:00 production which makes their farming system critically reliant on oil which makes North Korea critically reliant on oil imports from the Soviets and China that'll be tragically important later but at least for now North Korea was mostly fine and with this post-war bustling economy their Korean Film Studio is rebuilt with a much wider diversity in content don't get me wrong the P never stops making anti-japanese occupation movies and Korean War films but they're also delivering new kinds of propaganda in fresher ways we get movies
39:00 - 39:30 about things like families separated by the Korean division or the DMZ but we see Espionage films warning citizens to be ever Vigilant of South Korean spies there are even a couple of adaptations of Korean folktales like the tale of shim Chong unfortunately that original film has been lost a time due to no no not this not this time uh I think that movie was actually just lost hell sometimes Old North Korean movies get wiped by North Korea if an old movie's message is in conflict with new
39:30 - 40:00 policies the pad just goes back and wipes the dialogue the scenes or the entire film from the record but there's still a lot of interesting new kinds of movies coming out you want spy films we got spy films with circuses now and yes North Korea has a circus now with um a lot of bears a lot of bears North Korea circus like even today really really like circus Bear shows it's actually super depressing the first time I saw these clips I actually thought they were like people in Bear suits like doesn't that look like a dude in a bear suit
40:00 - 40:30 he's sitting down like an old guy at the park but nope real bears it just keeps getting worse and worse and okay yeah this is actually buming me out so uh let's let's get back to the post Korean War films huh now sure these new kinds of films are still propaganda separated family films are designed to show how terrible life is in South Korea spy films are really about breeding paranoia against foreign influence and folktale adaptations are about modifying the original Tales with more anti- capitalist sentiment but even as
40:30 - 41:00 propaganda they're much more watchable thanks to the introduction of the flawed protagonist until now the main characters in North Korean films were always these insufferably perfect doll-like figures that never make mistakes and do everything in service of the country and love Kim blle but now the pad is letting filmmakers write characters that change over the movie and grow into better versions of themselves you know like a like a human being like a human for instance the 1955 film the newly wids after a long day of
41:00 - 41:30 work at the factory a group of women are walking home and decide to chick in on their former coworker Anil Anil used to be one of the best Factory workers but now that she's married she stays home and takes care of the cleaning and the cooking for her husband Anil enjoys the stories of life back at the factory and later sees the town with all her comrades performing their duties for rebuilding the country she's overtaken by shame seeing that she hasn't been contributing enough and is too focused on her own family so she goes back to
41:30 - 42:00 work at the factory but her husband is furious wanting his wife to be a traditional Korean wife and to take care of the home like like his generation before him he he storms out of the house saying he's going to go sleep at his workplace instead tonight to get some peace and quiet godamn it yeah he's not going to get that hey guys guys it's really late uh I had a big fight with my wife I'm really tired I want to get some sleep can we can we cut the accordion can we can we for the love of God it's 4:00 a.m. stop
42:00 - 42:30 playing accordians man I know that feeling Bud North Korean music really likes accordion they're in stage shows movies children's dances mass games they got cartoon fraking light bulbs playing them in the 2000s accordians are everywhere and that's great if you like accordians but I don't I don't like the way that they sound and honestly what's up with all the buttons right like that's has has no one ever talked about this that's too many buttons and I don't think they do I don't think they do anything I've seen the science and I
42:30 - 43:00 don't buy it the husband finally gets some relief from the accordians but the next day his train breaks down and it's a big emergency until he sees his hardworking wife helping to fix it with her Factory magic and he learns how important it is for women to work too obligatory sunshot to represent kiml song and the couple Embraces oh y'all better leave room for kimus even this Embrace was considered too romantic for the P so future films cut these hugs out now it'd be very easy to watch this movie and think huh what a progressive
43:00 - 43:30 attitude about equal Partnerships in marriage and empowering women to work if they want to but while women are being encouraged to work and help rebuild North Korea the movie makes it very clear they're still expected to clean the house and raise the kids while the husband relaxes that's not Progressive it's just saying women have to do both now that hypocrisy aside North Korea's post-war films we're still a small step up in quality thanks to these changes in character growth but there are other less VIs ible changes in films happening too for example film credits disappear
43:30 - 44:00 they're gone and can you guess why well the talentless dimwits at the oh sorry uh I mean the wise and creative people at the pad thought credits and movies celebrated individual directors or actors too much putting their names on the big screen gave those names and those people power and if one of those people became too famous or too beloved by the public they may be able to influence and shape public opinion so credits go poof but some something way more unusual is Vanishing from movies
44:00 - 44:30 pictures of Joseph Stalin and Ma dong until this point North Korean media was putting Kim UNG Stalin and maong roughly on equal levels although maybe with Kim as the first among equals but when Joseph Stalin dies in 1953 he's replaced by this guy Nikita kusf and kusf is about as far from Stalin as a 1950s Soviet leader could possibly be he hates Cults of personalities like Joseph Stalin had and is working to reverse many of those policies so he summons
44:30 - 45:00 kimlong to Moscow and tells him hey stop purging people stop this Cult of Personality crap it's a total betrayal of true equal socialist values and we're getting back on track now by the way thank you f finally somebody says it you got North Korean Farmers working 20 hours a day in the field while Kim mung is driving around in convertible limousines and building giant statues of himself how is this an equal society and some North Koreans agree when Kim is in Moscow getting the verbal Beatdown of
45:00 - 45:30 his life other factions back in Pyongyang are trying to remove Kim from Power entirely this is known as the August faction incident and for its perpetrators it goes about as badly as possible uh Kim finds out what their up to and puts them all in jail this time kusf gets really angry and he's joined by Mao zong even Mau thinks Kim is over the line here the Soviet Union and China both demand that Kim release those political prisoners and maybe try going 5 minutes without purging people huh Kim gives in because he knows he can't stand
45:30 - 46:00 up to a united front but as fate would have it relations between the Soviets and China soon began deteriorating over other issues which is a whole thing this is a godsend for Kung it's the luckiest break in history because now that unified front is gone and furthermore these Soviets in China start competing for influence in North Korea they get into a decades long bidding war offering kimlong generous trade deals Aid agreements and massive amounts of money and with the Soviet Chinese unified
46:00 - 46:30 front gone Kimo Sun can go back to Gathering Power and purging anybody he wants he's also re rewriting history in this new new reality Not only was he the one who freed Korea from Japan with even less help from the Soviets but that it was entirely his leadership that saved the country during the Korean War and not so much the million Chinese soldiers so there's no room on the wall for Chinese or Soviet leaders in North Korean movies anymore and that tension between North Korea and the Soviet Union
46:30 - 47:00 is likely what ruins the next movie we'll look at Brothers Brothers was a 1957 movie filmed together by the North Korean and Soviet Union film studios conceived as a way to rebuild relations between the two countries after all the hubub of the previous year it was made to show that the Soviets and the dprk sure they have their problems but at the end of the day they're comrades they're friends they are Brothers naturally the film was
47:00 - 47:30 immediately banned in North Korea but hold that thought two Korean Brothers have been divided by the DMZ uh remember the DMZ is that demilitarized zone the line dividing the North and the South one brother song lives in the North he's a zealous power plant worker dedicated to rebuilding the beautiful and glorious dprk after its senseless and unprovoked attack by America the other brother tol lives in South Korea as a scientist now tol is a good man who wants the best for the Korean people but he's conflicted
47:30 - 48:00 about socialism and capitalism he doesn't know which is better for his country one night CH was invited to this opulent gorgeous party full of corrupt South Korean businessmen and real foreigners no more terrible Prosthetics or wigs or uncomfortable questions about the ethics of Whiteface actual real Russian actors pretending to be actual real American Mr monopolies and they're really really enjoying their experience of women in scantily clad outfits and oh my don't forget this was going to get
48:00 - 48:30 shown to a North Korean audience couples aren't even supposed to hug too much there this is New Territory this Great Gatsby esque party fills chel with disgust the obscene consumption the wasteful spending the objectification of women's bodies and yeah that that that one's Fair no argument on that you're right uh so chel Runs Out outside he's confronted with the true reality of South Korea under Us control kids are fighting for scraps homeless people are walking around in tatters it's a gloomy abyss of capitalist degeneracy chel
48:30 - 49:00 decides to smuggle himself into North Korea and see if things are any better in a socialist country he reunites with his brother's song he sees that Koreans in North Korea are happier healthier and Freer he meets up with an old love interest and the film ends with a long series of infrastructure development shots of the country you might be thinking why the hell would this movie get banned in North Korea it's pro-socialist it emphasizes the terribleness of the South it shows all of North Korea's industrial Works where's the problem well it wasn't
49:00 - 49:30 really one problem it was uh like five one kimlong was still Furious about the whole kusf thing and the movie has a lot of positive references to the Soviet Union two the very idea of a protagonist who is internally debating if socialism is good or not that's a kind of freethinking attitude the pad really didn't like three there are slight hints of an intimate romance between a Russian man and a North Korean woman but North Korea's got some uh ethnic Purity stuff that we'll tackle at a different part of
49:30 - 50:00 the video but basically this this not okay four the South Korean scenes are just too hot to handle for North Korean Society having the same actress play both a dancer here and ch's love interest while an interesting directorial decision didn't really do them any favor with the dprk sensors oh and five the greatest defense of all the movie has no references to Kim ilung none zero no portraits no big speeches no nothing he is utterly non-existent in
50:00 - 50:30 this movie that alone was probably enough to get it all banned so North Korea never sees the movie Brothers it will however see a new kind of media appear so far we've seen North Korea's music and films have mostly been aimed at adults or general family audiences but kiml slung and the P need to make something that can more directly connect with children something flashy something playful something animated they need cartoons North Korea's
50:30 - 51:00 animation history starts with the Pyongyang Animation Studio way back in 1948 North Korean illustrators and Painters from all over the country were brought in and told to create cartoons that would support Kim and his government's ideas good plan great plan one small problem though they didn't know how to make cartoons that wasn't the fault of the illustrators or painters or anything animation is just a highly specialized skill set it's a medium that lives and dies on experience and learning from previous animators in
51:00 - 51:30 the 1950s Disney was making animation as good as Peter Pan and Alison Wonderland because the studio had experienced animators from older Productions teaching the Next Generation North Korean artist simply didn't have any animation experience to draw on if the managers of the pongyang animation studio wanted to make some cartoons and also not get fired they were going to need some veteran competent animation teachers so the studio artists were put on a plane and FL halfway across the world to go learn from some of the best
51:30 - 52:00 in the industry to Czechoslovakia when I first heard about this story my reaction was Czechoslovakia they don't they don't make cartoons but it turns out I'm a huge [ __ ] because in the 1940s and' 50s Czech animation was considered some of the best cuttingedge work in the world they were crafting masterpieces like inspiration a reimagining of 16th century Italian comedies made entire with glass figurines or invention for Destruction which combined live action
52:00 - 52:30 animation and stop motion to tell a mixture of Jules Vern's Collective works or or or or the poorly drawn hin which was about um it's it's a cartoon about drawing chickens look it's not all artsy smartsy but it looks really good right and Pyongyang animation artists are learning as much as they can while there and in 1957 they returned to North Korea as qualified certifiable animator refounding their Animation Studio as the 426 children's Film Studio quick tangent
52:30 - 53:00 the studio will get renamed like eight times over the years um here's all the names but I'm going to keep calling them 426 Studios for now okay okay you might anticipate that 426 Studios would be making animated cartoons about how cool kiml is and how smart he is and how he has a 9 foot vertical leap or whatever but they didn't do that instead 426 Studios introduces a unique take on propaganda to toally unheard of in previous North Korean entertainment being subtle with your messaging here is
53:00 - 53:30 1959's our garden set in an empty rural Village a brother and sister are taking care of a little tree so it can grow up to be big and strong they spend time with it water it read to it weird and then the cartoon's over that's the whole story kids tree kids and Tree the end nobody's living under Japanese oppression no one's fighting Americans neither of the kids make any speeches about only thanks to our fastidious application of the Invincible revolutionary thoughts of Kim osung have
53:30 - 54:00 we achieved the most glorious victory in tree raising no it's just kids and Tree at least that's the message children would take away from the cartoon but let's run the tape back and this time pay a little more attention to the background at the beginning of the cartoon behind the kids in the tree there's almost zero infrastructure sort of a Shabby Farm or two right it's practically feudal yet over the course of the story as the kids carefully nurture and raise and protect their society more and more buildings and urban sites can be seen appearing it's a
54:00 - 54:30 subtle message but it's there kids North Korea has to be rebuilt through hard work and effort but it will lead to the country's Prosperity these are the same ideas we've seen in music and films but now the message is cleared up to be more palatable for kids one thing of note are the decorations on the tree making it look like a Christmas tree which seems very out of place in North Korea the country has very few real religious freedoms and frequently portrays Christian it negatively so at first I couldn't figure out why they had a Christmas tree but this isn't a
54:30 - 55:00 Christmas tree it's actually called a New Year's tree it's an idea from the Soviet Union to keep Christmas trees but take away all the religious connections it's even got a little red star of Communism at the top North Korea's next animation was a 2d paper stop motion cartoon called The Lazy Pig four animal characters are off to hike on a mountain and gather some fruits there's Mr goat rabbit what I what I think is a deer I don't know mouth is all weird and and tentacle it's gross and lazy Pig who is
55:00 - 55:30 a lazy Pig the pig slows them down eats their food and refuses to work together preferring a more individualist approach to picking fruit but because he works alone he fails and he falls and he bust his bacon as an animator like an animator like physically spins the illustration panel and everybody laughs at him in the end the lazy Pig learns the value of teamwork they all walk off into the sunset check that sunbox off there while kids at home learn that Collective efforts are better than doing things by yourself we see that in other
55:30 - 56:00 cartoons from the time too like in Little redstar the three swallows just cartoons about kids and animals working together to succeed at something but even if the theme is the same the quality of these cartoons is improving dramatically with each new release and pretty soon 426 Studios would release their first fully handdrawn animation small flower pot can we start by recognizing small flower pot looks amazing 426 animators went from this all
56:00 - 56:30 the way to this in less than 5 years that's crazy in small flower pot the main character is given a flower and told to bring it straight to school he starts off doing his best ignoring distractions like a dog a goat some birds but it all goes sideways when he's unable to resist the sweet musike call of a crab I'm sorry I'm sorry I've been working on this video for almost 2 years and it might have had some effect on my brain and what I find funny because I
56:30 - 57:00 find this very very funny anyway the kid realizes he should work harder he delivers the flowers and he gets a round of applause from some sliding children small flower pot is a simple tale about being responsible and a few animation wrinkles aside a completely respectable first step into handdrawn cartoons another medium where North Korean skill is really on full display are magazines North Korea launches a monthly cartoon pictorial called The Arrow full of drawings strips and informative
57:00 - 57:30 illustrations and I really really like the art in the arrow you and I don't have to be socialist comrades to recognize this is pretty cool I would buy yeah I would buy some merch with this their comic strips aren't quite as good though sometimes I can't even tell if they're trying to be funny like in in this one an alien is looking through a telescope trying to figure out what this thing surrounding Earth was and the other alien is like haaha it's of course the amount of cot fabric North Korea has produced recently get it seriously do you get do
57:30 - 58:00 you get it I don't get it is the joke that North Korea makes a lot of cotton that's not it's not a joke it's an observation it's cotton but high production quotas do fit with North Korea's word of the 1960s [Music] growth entering the 1960s everything for the dprk was all about growth kiml Sun's growing unchecked power growing military investment more growing industrialization and above all else a
58:00 - 58:30 growing economy the country still had a lot of problems especially with food but the general direction North Korea was moving in at least seemed good kimlong was also implementing new Mass labor programs intending to push or sustain the economic development through strong propaganda some sources say these labor programs were based on Mao zong's Great Leap Forward where Ma would use posters slogans radio and symbols to help motivate workers usually the symbols were really cool and inspiring there's a
58:30 - 59:00 lot of dragons other times the symbols could be as simple as a man paddling in a giant hollowed out Peanut on a river who looks at this picture and is like huh I should work harder like it's just it's a dude in a peanut and now it's time for Kim's program the Chala movement a chalama as everybody knows is an ancient mythological winged horse famous for flying quickly something kimlong was hoping North Korea's economy would be a to do posters and slogans of the talama were plastered everywhere
59:00 - 59:30 newspapers posters statues Billboards pushing people to push themselves if you worked in a factory you were expected to hit record levels of productivity or discover new methods of processing materials and if you were on a farm well little context remember this line from our home Village yeah that's not that's not happening anymore because in 1958 the government takes back control of the land from the farmers and what's worse
59:30 - 60:00 forces them to work on Cooperative farming plots whether they want to or not crops grown on Cooperative Farms are taken by the North Korean government then passed out among the entire country via their public food distribution system this distribution system requires a lot of oil to power trucks to carry the food around and that's also going to be tragically important later but not everyone in North Korea was on board for this Cooperative farming stuff and backbreaking work demanded of them so the pad needed ways to motivate people
60:00 - 60:30 and one way they did that was through films there are endless Chala films about farming or industry like the red Frontier seagull Island the spinner Red iselia Square ball or in full bloom labor college student on a farm but of all the films that I watched I think the most standard Benchmark experience for a Chala film would be endless my hope this movie is about a hardworking woman named Park gimell living in a village of lazy farmers who spend all their time complaining but the worst job that
60:30 - 61:00 nobody wants is pig farming so park dedicates her life to caring for the pigs decades later she's invited to Pyongyang to present her research on pig feet the emotional impact of which is a tiny bit diminished because she does it in front of a Kim mils statue whose head is like like obviously 10% too small for the body like I'm not I'm not the only one who thinks this right it looks it looks like one of those Koopa troopas from the 1990s Mario movie movie tiny headed kimlong statues aside parkim is declared a true tala Rider someone
61:00 - 61:30 willing to go the extra 10,000 miles for the country who succeeds in the impossible with willpower alone and atalar riter wasn't always a farmer or a factory worker it was anyone who surpassed expectations in order to benefit the country take the movie flowering time the main character is a highly skilled and well-known surgeon and his work-related dilemma isn't hitting production quotas it's helping imposs possible to treat patients like this young man with a severe leg injury forcing him to walk on crutches I love
61:30 - 62:00 this guy because when the other patients try to cheer him up with an accordion he's like yeah I don't want a fuing accordion I want to walk godamn it yeah I'm glad it hurts you jerk I hope you broke your other hand interestingly enough flowering time was actually condemned by many North Korean film critics perhaps the least important job ever because they believe it didn't glorify kiml Su enough which is ridiculous because every time the doctor has a powerful moment or an epiphany there's a Kim ilung portrait literally
62:00 - 62:30 above his head like a like a double chinned light bulb of bad ideas this is actually something I've been confused about ever since I started this project if you a North Korean who actually buys into the Kim worship how do you reconcile a food shortage in your neighborhood while Captain cheesecake here is looking plumper by the portrait like am I missing something here paper will sorry to interrupt again but I believe you're going off topic yeah but it doesn't make any okay sorry sorry you're right you're right there's lots more Chala films of
62:30 - 63:00 hard worker achieve some goal the end but there were a few cases where a film writer took that obligatory message and conveyed it through more original means like through traditional Korean fairy tales by taking old fairy tales and infusing the perfect combination of TMA herbs and spices they could produce something fun and ideologically on brand like 1962's the tale of hungu and nulu there were two brothers hongu and nou who each received half of their father's inheritance but the corrupt noou steals
63:00 - 63:30 Hong Buu's half and kicks him out of the house bye-bye noou becomes a greedy landlord with his evil wife no hey there's that Trope again while hungu and his family leave to build a new farm for themselves they work on the land together they harvest together they sleep huddled together and while they suffer difficulties they do so with a smile one day hungu saves a baby swallow from a sneak attack and the bird rewards him with magic pumpkin seeds the seeds grow to be gigantic and when finally
63:30 - 64:00 cracked open a sick ass house appears full of expensive and beautiful garments and then magical women appear offering valuables the family celebrates knowing that their hard work paid off but they won't become lazy Aristocrats instead sharing their money with the community while continuing to plow the fields noou also wants a magic pumpkin house and you know who can blame him but he doesn't get one by saving a bird he throws a bird on the ground and then pretends to it in return he too gets some pumpkin seeds but when his
64:00 - 64:30 open they blew up his house not the new house they blew up his old house I they blew up his house I think his kid was still in there but like I said film adaptations of folktales like this were getting changed a bit and infused with more North Korean friendly messages in the original tale hungu didn't give all his stuff away to the community and keep farming he kept the money and became wealthy but in North Korean stories wealth can't be the reward that's to capitalist so in North Korea's version hung Buu's reward is getting to return
64:30 - 65:00 to the fields and live a life of dreary farming till he dies but it's still nice to see a North Korean film playing with allegories which makes the propaganda more interesting and that comes with the benefit of boosting the film's appeal to International audiences that's something weighing heavily on the mind of a new figure in the pad who is encouraging these changes and improvements from behind the scenes someone with a deep interest in film who wanted North Korean movies and media to get critical International Acclaim you may know him as the chairman you may know him as the
65:00 - 65:30 presidium leader you may even know him as the guy who is going to kidnap a South Korean director and force him to make a Godzilla knockoff film it's time for the one the only let's hear it for Kim j e okay let's cut the music that's that's enough yes to the uninitiated this is Kim Jong ill the son of Kim ILS in the next leader of North Korea Kim Jong Il will become without a doubt the single
65:30 - 66:00 most influential figure in North korean's entertainment but all of that is later let's talk about his birth according to His official biography Kim jong-il's arrival was foretold by the song of a bird and in 1942 he was born at top mount piku both a rainbow and a new star appeared in the sky the son of the great leader was here the young Kim jongil would move to Pyongyang with his father and begin school there his teachers were shocked to discover that the boy was would would you believe it a once in a generation gifted Prodigy his
66:00 - 66:30 biography is full of these stories of how he deduced why rivers flow and why rocks fall and how he solved all the many problems of philosophy all of them nailed them just took them out and mastered horse riding and never broke a promise and how he was ambidextrous because of course he was ambidextrous and he deeply understood film and art and almost everything I just said was a lie and I don't mean just the Double Rainbows or swan offes or magic thunderstorm shouts no all of it Kim Jong-il wasn't born on Mount piku Kim
66:30 - 67:00 Jong-il wasn't even born in Korea Kim Jong-il wasn't even born Kim Jong-il he was born in the Soviet Union when Kim oong was still hiding from Japan his birth name was Kim UD ovit although he would change it in his 20s but the one thing from his biography that is true is that Kim jung-il was passionate about arts and entertainment film most of all and not just North Korean films he'd smuggle in British comedies French romances American spy Thrillers he didn't care what country the film was from he only cared if the film was good
67:00 - 67:30 once he became an adult Kim Jong-il joined the Workers Party of Korea in 1961 and quickly ascended to a high position in the propaganda and agitation department now he's not running the pad at least not yet but he's getting involved with their creative output like with Chala music so as we covered Chala films are being produced to motivate workers but they have a blind spot you can't exactly set up a film projector in a field bu all day every day to get Farmers to work harder but music and getting people to
67:30 - 68:00 sing while they work you can definitely do that the leadership sends a bunch of musicians and singers to go to farms and perform there they'd be responsible for singing cheerful talama music that invigorated workers and reminded them what they're really working so hard for giant golden statues of kiml that's a joke I'm sorry kimlong doesn't have any golden statues in the 1960s he gets those in the 1970s but after that run in with kusf Kim is trying to get rid of Soviet influences
68:00 - 68:30 in North Korean music he's going to replace that music with more songs that are more authentically Korean traditional Korean folk music you'll remember that originally kimlong was trying to downplay traditional music but now he's bringing it back but before he can Kim wants some what he calls improvements to be made updating songs to be more in line with his teachings and adding lyrics about the Korean war or the importance of strong singular leadership they are also once again in quotes here improving traditional instruments adding additional strings
68:30 - 69:00 changing their tuning increasing their range and so on changes like these let traditional Korean instruments be combined with Western orchestras giving North Korean classical music performances a very unique and authentically Korean [Music] sound do these musical changes make any impact on the Tama labor movement hard to say in fact how's that movement going while the Chala labor campaign does lead to a short-term rise in North Korea's productivity the long-term results are a
69:00 - 69:30 little mixed but for any criticisms there are of North Korea's economy in the 1960s well it's not like things are going a lot better in South Korea after the Korean War South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world trailing North Korea by a huge distance and struggling with all sorts of domestic issues economic slip-ups and political chaos which is in large part due to South Korea's leader Sigman ree remember him yeah he's still a dictator he's still an [ __ ] and he's still somehow getting worse like ordering
69:30 - 70:00 soldiers to open fire in crowds of protesters worse but in 1960 South Koreans had had enough leading to the April 19th Revolution which forces R to step down which is good but it actually plunges the country into more political chaos which is bad not for Kim msung though he had never given up hopes of taking South Korea and now it seemed like only a matter of time before the South collapses like Kim move in he would finally rule over the entire Korean Peninsula and the pad is setting
70:00 - 70:30 the table for this potential reunification in their media there are comic strips and films emphasizing how terrible life is in the South now and how reunification under Kim is enevitable I mean that's what they said back in the 1950s but this time this time's for realsies one of the movies showing how bad life is in South Korea was the road to growth which is a buck wild movie it is a it is a treat it's that film we talked about earlier where a bunch of those like us soldiers are laughing as they run over a blind orphan
70:30 - 71:00 with their Jeep and that's not even like that's not even like the top 10 worst things done in the movie there are these South Korean spies dressed up as Catholic nuns wiretapping crucifixes to spy on the prayers of starving children this is wow wow but as evil as those scenes are they're the only good parts of the movie this is a big problem with 1960s dprk films it's like somebody told their filmmakers that the trick to making good movies is obnoxiously loud
71:00 - 71:30 emotional music and long uncut moments of people staring at each other here here watch this scene I'll set the timer ready [Music] go y y see it's too it's too long that's too long this is uh oh great female lead dramatic stare followed by male lead dramatic turn female lead dramatic stare
71:30 - 72:00 male leads dramatic stare somebody say something I'm getting like I'm getting like secondhand social anxiety from this somebody has to say something you're not allowed to do this this is this is a crime oh okay there there we go thank you thank you and there's so many scenes like this from the road to growth and other 1960s films as South Korean political chaos happens in the background they're all the same unfortunately for Kim his that South Korea was actually going to collapse is ended when a new figure appears a South
72:00 - 72:30 Korean army General named Park Chung he Park Tangi installs himself as a military dictator of South Korea he suspends the Constitution he dissolves the National Assembly he censors the press and the media and he restricts civil liberties but he also normalizes trade with Japan and makes sweeping farming reforms and he introduces a series of beneficial economic policies Park is an [ __ ] but it's undenied able that under him the South Korean economy begins rapidly expanding and growing uh he signed an agreement with
72:30 - 73:00 the United States which renegotiated the US Armed Forces presence in South Korea on more equal terms which is good not for Kim mung of course this new more stable South Korea sends Kim into panic mode but he's got an idea on how to throw a wrench into all of this he knows the United States is busy in the war in Vietnam which was a whole thing so Kim starts sending small small groups of infiltration agents pass the DMZ into South Korea the plan is by causing just
73:00 - 73:30 enough trouble for America who is focusing on Vietnam maybe the US will just leave Korea once again betting on America not going to war very smart but how does Kim justify this new conflict to the people of North Korea and to his socialist allies around the world easy he claims that the United States had broken a condition of the Korean armed assist agreement and he's completely right in the original armed assist agreement everybody promised not to introduce nuclear weapons into the Korean Peninsula but like 5 years after
73:30 - 74:00 that America decides we're just going to do that anyway and we put nuclear weapons in South Korea Kim msung tells America hey you can't put nukes in South Korea you you promise not to do that and America's like uh what are you going to do about it spend Decades of your country's budget get a bunch of foreign loans uh smuggle in imported weapons technology and develop your own nukes I don't think so I'm sure that won't come back and bite Us in the ass or anything but Kim's now got his justification for sending in agents to attack South Korea
74:00 - 74:30 this begins what's known as the Korean DMZ conflict sometimes called the second Korean War there are no massive battles but it's got a huge focus on spies and infiltration a focus that sneaks its way into North Korean entertainment North Korean spy Thrillers become much much more common as our films made to warn the populace about staying Vigilant of foreign agents and spies North Korean movies get TI like suspicious radio waves and operation document or ooh
74:30 - 75:00 that's some classic that's some classic sneaking music but not even Star Trek original series levels of fight scenes can save all these movies from the greatest enemy of all boredom DMZ conflict movies are boring they're long they are repetitive and they're very boring they take a genre the Spy genre the Spy genre and they make it boring somehow the only good spy film I saw from this entire B B is a comedy called boasting too much in boasting too much we follow a newly
75:00 - 75:30 engaged couple and their parents and parents-in-law going through a series of unlikely misunderstandings it's less light-hearted misunderstandings like Oh I thought you were going to bring the tickets no it's more like are you a spy are are you aing spy oh my God he's got a gun it's a toy gun just so you know there aren't actually any spies in this movie Just One of the characters was bragging too much about his local Factory's new amazing Secret weapons project and the Rumor spread and people thought there was a spy somewhere by the way have you noticed
75:30 - 76:00 that the dialogue in these movies always seems slightly off time with the actor mouths like they're just they're just out of sync well that's not an issue of audio sync up North Korean film studios didn't have onset microphones so all the actors would have to go back and re-record their lines and over themselves later that's why everything is just off anyway boasting too much pretty good movie it's a shame that fun film like this are really the exception in the 1960s North Korean filmmakers show a lot of promise and talent whenever they're allowed to
76:00 - 76:30 display it but the restrictions on them make that hard to see although it's a bit more complicated with their animators up until this point the animators at 426 Studios had worked exclusively on projects that taught kids basic socialist friendly lessons don't be lazy work as a collective team goats are jerks all the important stuff but as the DMZ conflict builds up they're told to make more anti-American work welcome to Time Bomb set during the Korean War time bomb stars a young North Korean boy
76:30 - 77:00 living in a village occupied by US forces the boy is taking care of his Ambiguously sick sister while passing out socialist reading material around the town but as he's painting the town red come on that's clever red he's painting the town red like like communism that's funny damn it paper I'm limiting you to three puns for the rest of the video that was the first also I'm going to beep cut you back to the script wait what's a beep the local US Commander orders his men to plant Bombs
77:00 - 77:30 all over the village one soldier even trying to blow up Ambiguously sick sister but when the boy returns home to save her the American Commander sends his dog after the kids but the young boy is smart and agile and a bloodthirsty monster so after tiring the dog out with the Chase he sort of vomit comets the poor dog into a telephone pole ties a bomb to the dog's neck and kicks his ass home Jesus Christ kid I know the dog was trying to kill you but the telephone pull was enough the telephone pull was enough after the dog has the Chala
77:30 - 78:00 beaten out of him he races back to his owner for cons solitary scratchies and treats and maybe a walkie maybe a walkie or two with the no they okay they just they shot him in the face they shot the dog in the face his little leg is twitching H but since shooting an ass whip dog doesn't magically disarm any explosives on his neck the time bomb blows up and the whole US base is destroyed the boy and his now Ambiguously cured sister look on with with a look that can only be described as pure satisfaction and the young boy wept for
78:00 - 78:30 there were no more dogs to conquer only a few short months after Timebomb came burned Squad of flies this one was more about the United States's alleged but probably untrue use of biological weapons in the Korean War for the record we got into some messed up stuff during that war but I don't think bug bombs were part of it the cartoon opens on some American leaders looking at their laboratory bugs that are absorbing deadly viruses these bugs are fiercely loyal to their American masters with one
78:30 - 79:00 mosquito in particular running drills to get them all in tiptop shape the infected bugs are flown into North Korea while the pilot imagines all the riches and gold he'll be rewarded with one day and hm okay just really fast there's a quick and very um uncomfortable note that I'd like to make some researchers have suggested that early depictions of foreign villains in North Korean cartoons in intentionally use some really ugly anti-semitic stereotypes
79:00 - 79:30 exaggerated facial features they're seen as scheming and untrustworthy I mean good God their motivations are outright shown to be piles of gold like does the evil boat need a nose does the American missile need aing nose come on there are lots of theories as to why anti-semitic stereotypes appear in North Korean cartoons some of it is connected to hateful cliches about Jewish capitalism and other dumb crap like that but let's just get back to the cartoon the pilot and bugs are shot down but the insects start spreading out everywhere luckily
79:30 - 80:00 for North Korea they're defended by a team of flamethrower wielding automatons or something seriously what what the hell are these things we we've already established the world has people what are they supposed to be but the super patriotic mosquito spots the Fallen pilot and tries to drag him to safety but the pilot takes a couple of pot shots at him afraid of getting sick causing the mosquito to realize he's been manipulated as they all burn to death on the surface time bomb and burn Squad of flies have a lot of similarities but the more I rewatch
80:00 - 80:30 these two animations the more differences I noticed like Time Bomb is if you were judging it purely on the merits as an animated story functionally it's a really well-made cartoon and I'm not just talking about the dramatic bump in quality of Animation like without a single line of dialogue we understand who this character is that he's kind responsible and despite being smaller and weaker he can overcome any challenge that's a very good use of show don't tell burn Squad of flies is a little more shoddily made and it's more lecture
80:30 - 81:00 heavy but it does contribute something important to the North Korean animated Zeitgeist the way the Flies and mosquitoes are portrayed they aren't just bugs they are depicted as soldiers soldiers that have been used and subjugated by the evil Americans they're stand-ins for South Korean soldiers big American animal allegory controlling small weak South Korean animal allegory is a Trope that we'll see repeat a lot today so burn squat FES is at least an important cartoon if not a very good one it's also the last 426 animation to
81:00 - 81:30 directly show the Korean war or American soldiers ever that's really strange right in the dprk's 70-year history of Animation as far as I know only these two cartoons ever do that they they are the only two that ever really show the Korean War why these kinds of propaganda cartoons came and went so quickly is a mystery but I think it boils down to a couple of things first is Effectiveness in these cartoons the Americans are portrayed as evil but they're also hella stupid like for a kid
81:30 - 82:00 growing up in the 1960s who wasn't even alive during the Korean War their takeaway might be look a little kid defeated a whole US Army base look Americans aren't a threat to me that's the total opposite impact the pad wanted the other maybe more important reason Korean War cartoons vanish might have been Kim Jong-il remember the son of Kim elung who now works in the pad Kim J understands that while cartoons like this may be okay for domestic audiences they really don't lend themselves very
82:00 - 82:30 well to foreign film Awards or International Acclaim things that Kim tongil desperately wants when he becomes the leader of the pad which might be sooner than he expected outside of entertainment outside of North Korean movies outside the DMZ conflict something big is about to happen inside North Korea that will forever change the country's trajectory think back to that August faction incident where Kim msung purged most of the factions that opposed his leadership by 1967 only one of these
82:30 - 83:00 factions still remained the capson faction the capson faction wants to get rid of kimlong but they don't have nearly enough power to do that so they're going to do the next best thing they want to pick the next leader whoever comes after kimlong and the capson faction has a pretty big Ace up their sleeve they just so happen to run the entire propaganda and agitation Department how the caption faction got control of the pad is a long story lots of political maneuvering and Intrigue but the point is they run the department now and these figures decide to use
83:00 - 83:30 their influence over North Korean entertainment to support their preferred successor Pak Kum another veteran of The Liberation movement in 1967 they released a film about pack titled an act of sincerity the last North Korean film ever made that intentionally even if quietly questions Kim mong's singular Authority but Kim mung and his son Kim dungill who is a part of the pad quickly sniff out what's happening have the movie erased from existence and Purge the entire caps and faction Kim msung
83:30 - 84:00 also condemns the group not for questioning his leadership but for committing one of the filthiest blasphemies of all glorifying individual heroism really Kim really Kim really Kim really Kim really Kim Kim really Kim really Kim Kim Kim you got your name scratched into a mountain Kim you don't think that's glorifying into individual heroism a little and here's the thing he's just getting started after the caps
84:00 - 84:30 and faction incident kimlong decides that no threat to his authority can ever be permitted to fester in the country again and here right here in 1967 is the moment where he turns North Korea into well North Korea a monarchy run by the Supreme Leader the only man with the wisdom and will to lead who demands worship by the population at a level not even Stalin or mauo ever dreamed of it's the most pervasive Cult of Personality ever created now with more ties to mount piku more historical revisionism more
84:30 - 85:00 mystical properties stifling Dogma purges jailings reality warping and controlling the truth and while many North Koreans then and even now don't believe all this nonsense they still have to act like they do and to ensure that Kim's new reality can be sustained he has to keep the country quarantined border security is heightened to prevent information from getting in travel permits to other countries are banned and most non-north Korean media is prohibited and the canvas on which Kim is going to paint all of this new reality is ju at its base level ju is a
85:00 - 85:30 belief system that North Korea should be completely self-reliant and self-sustaining politically self-reliant making their own decisions without foreign influence financially self-reliant producing their own goods and foods and militarily self-reliant strong enough to resist any foreign interference and no you would not be the first person to point out that ju is completely at odds with with North Korea's entire existence their political structure was installed by a foreign power their economy and agriculture is
85:30 - 86:00 held together by foreign aid and the country only exists again because foreign armies have come in to fight for them but ju isn't really meant to make sense it's meant to be a tool for Kim osung and his descendants to demand falty while removing threats to his control so we're moving into the 1970s where the DMZ conflict has most mostly wound down but now Kim's got a much bigger issue on his plate North Korea's economy is not doing so hot they're
86:00 - 86:30 finding it harder and harder to hit economic goals they're taking on piles of debt from other countries to make up for shortcomings and all the while South Korea's economy continues to catch up Kim osung needs help to reach his people in ways unimaginable before so he takes a walk down to the Korean film studio and has the filmmakers all gathered into a single room which if you were one of the North Korean film guys would probably be the most pants pooping scariest thing imaginable Kim mung had just purged a lot of these guys bosses
86:30 - 87:00 for making a film he disliked in the caps and faction incident and now he's here shouting at them he's asking them why are our citizens growing tired of our movies why aren't our films capturing the hearts of our countrymen completely oblivious that this is all his fault what's new kimon goes on and says doesn't anyone here have the courage to guide the North Korean Film Studio back in the right direction in accordance with ju values the room goes dead quiet until a single man's voice rings out I father will take
87:00 - 87:30 on this responsibility yes it's Kim jung-il and now he's put in charge of the entire propaganda and agitation Department from here on out he's responsible for ensuring that all music all films parades and propaganda sufficiently put his father and juch center stage with an authentic Korean nationalistic style so naturally he just steals an idea from China in the 1960s CH had begun releasing what are called the eight revolutionary operas big spectacular state sponsored Works
87:30 - 88:00 combining Opera ballets and stories of the working class defeating larger tougher often foreign enemies with a lot of ma zong's teachings in the mix Kim Jong ill recognizes the potential in this idea so he takes it and makes five of his own operas and he humbly titles them the immortal Classics there are five of these operas in total but Kim's focusing a little bit more on the Opera's movie adaptations than the stage Place starting with the first immortal classic film sea of blood allegedly
88:00 - 88:30 written by kimlong during his gorilla fighting days which yeah okay Kim jungel sure your dad wrote an opera while he was freezing on top of a mountain sure sea of blood is set in the 1930s during the Japanese Occupation of Korea surprise and follows Sano a villager living near Mount piku after most of her family is killed in a fire bummer Sano joins kiml song's Korean Independence Movement smuggling weapons and explosives for his war effort she gets caught though but thanks to her due and willpower she never gives up any information but kimel's forces and the
88:30 - 89:00 villagers manag to free her while wiping out all the Japanese soldiers but although Kim jongil produces sea of blood he is not the director that was CH iku the second of Kim's Immortal Classics is true daughter of the party about a medic during the Korean War who takes care of the troops in the end she sacrifices her life to save other soldiers very ju and with her dying wish she asked for the only thing she ever really wanted in life to be admitted to the Workers Party of Korea after she
89:00 - 89:30 dies yeah I know I know it sucks even the two Kims dislike this movie despite overseeing its production and having Absolute Total creative control to change anything he wanted Kim Jung ill publicly vented disappointment about the project see this is what drives me crazy about Kim Jill sometimes he'll work on a film or or something and it's not bad so people credit him as a respectable artistic Visionary then he'll work on something and it's terrible so he blames the film crew and actors as though it's
89:30 - 90:00 only thanks to him that the film isn't worse than it actually was I I mean it's very on brand for Kims to turn failures into bragging but it's still really annoying so Kim Jong ill once again joined by Chay gu is coming to the plate with an unsteady film batting record when he releases his third revolutionary Opera adaptation 1973's the flower girl and ooh oh good we're in color great the flower girl Stars a young woman named kotun who is living under Japanese Rule and evil Korean landlords and she
90:00 - 90:30 has pretty much the worst life ever her father has worked himself into an early grave due to a pair of evil landlords her sister is blinded by the landlords with boiling water for touching a pot her brother is put into prison for attacking the landlord for blinding the sister for touching the pot and her mother is sick and dying from overworking under the landlord because she couldn't get help from the brother who is imprisoned for attacking the landlord for blinding the sister and there's a hole in the bottom of the sea copen spends her day is selling flowers in town to provide for her family no matter how shameful she feels practically begging for money one day
90:30 - 91:00 her young blind sister heads into town to help raise money singing as she sells flowers kpoon freaks out when she spots this chastising her sister for shaming herself the same way that kpoon does anyway their mom dies it's a very big scene lots of crying Capon goes to see the brother in prison but he's dead very big scene lots of crying returning to the Village Capon learns that her sister's probably dead maybe killed by the landlords or got lost in the snow big scene lots of crying Capon now enraged and with Nothing Left to Lose confronts the landlords no longer bound
91:00 - 91:30 by concern or fear she goes full super du in 2 and is here to self-reliant kick some landlord ass y'all ready to die [ __ ] the understandably confused landlords think she's nuts because they actually didn't have anything to do with the sister's Vanishing but Capon here for Revenge so she whips some boiling oil on them and she's about to chase them into the house but she gets sucker punched by another guy and gets jailed this enrages the town Who start a big Riot Kon is reunited not only with her sister who
91:30 - 92:00 was actually still alive but also her brother who was actually still alive too and escaped prison to join kiml Sun's forces although yo he looks different I know Imperial Japanese prison's rough man but you look 30 years older it's only been like 2 years what happened the brother gives a big speech about the evils of landlords and capitalism and how Kim msung will save the Country the movie ends and North Korean audiences lose their minds the flower girl was the biggest movie success in North Korea's
92:00 - 92:30 history it was epic it was fresh it was in color even today flower girl is often said to be the most iconic North Korean movie of all time at least domestically oh yeah we'll get to you pulgasari we'll get to you China and other countries in the Communist sphere love the flower girl too Kim Jong ill finally had his first globally recognized success and now's the part of the video where I anger some fans of North Korean operatic [Music]
92:30 - 93:00 Cinema I don't think the flower girl is that great of a movie look look look look it's a cultural media Landmark with high production values it sounds good it looks good and that stuff is great but and I I say this as someone who has seen every North Korean movie building up to the flower girl the movie is just as rigid and overpowering and mediocre as all the films that came before it the impact of almost every scene is totally dictated by how loud the music can get while an actor scream cries for the 30th
93:00 - 93:30 time like Jed main character suffering unbelievable tragedies in dealing with a greedy landlord repetitive scenes of injustices shots of characters looking up at beams of sunlight to represent kimlong and everything ending with a big speech about how great he is we've seen all of this we literally saw all of this in the very first North Korean film remember our home Village flower girl is just our home Village in color with better music it's the same movie I'm not saying the flower girl is a bad movie because it's not I'm not even saying
93:30 - 94:00 that the immortal Classics are all bad films although they they mostly are yeah but they at least Mark a point in time where you can start seeing a slight positive trend in quality thanks to Kim jong-il's additional funding and support for the Arts I just I don't think the flower girl is a leap frog in quality people think it is but that's just my opinion lots of North Korean media fans disagree with me uh Jesse over at North Korean uncovered which is a very very good channel that does in-depth long form analysis of North Korean films and topics has a completely different view
94:00 - 94:30 on the film and I highly recommend you check it out uh it'll be linked in the description and the immortal Classics are if nothing else a spectacle but for now the director J gu had his sides on a very different kind of spectacle he's helping to design North Korea's new mass games [Applause] [Music] okay we're not we're not there yet uh that comes later back it up the idea of
94:30 - 95:00 mass games or Mass gymnastics originally started in Europe in the 1800s but the Soviet Union adopted these events and began holding their own mass games in Moscow as a means of encouraging Soviet loyalty and youth participation Stalin loved that kind of crap and Kim used to love the crap that Stalin loved so in 1948 we see the first North Korean mass games they were relatively small scale affairs until the 1970s where J IU pushes for them to be turned into big extravaganzas colossal displays of
95:00 - 95:30 adults and children performing dances gymnastics and salutes to the great leader and while North Koreans were the main audience a small number of the people watching are foreign tourists a lot of people have this idea that no one is allowed into North Korea but that's not true at all visitors from other countries have been welcomed since the 1950s after all tourism offers a great chance to showcase the dprk's accomplishments spread some of its IDE ology and make some money in the process it's a win-win win while CH igu is upgrading the mass games Kim Jong ill is
95:30 - 96:00 fine-tuning the country's animation but Kim Jong-il doesn't want propaganda cartoons to be as transparent as DMZ conflict content was instead he wants to blend the subtlety of earlier animations with ju encouraging animators to incorporate more allegories folktales and Korean Legends for instance 1975's dog and cat on a farm there's a dog and a cat standing guard carefully each day to ensure that none of the little cutout paper chickens are harmed but one little chicken is really interested in what's
96:00 - 96:30 outside the farm so he sneaks through the wired fence divider and escapes the little Scamp however as soon as he gets past the fence and leaves the safety of the farm he's attacked by a series of dangerous predators dog and cat save him and return him to the farm and baby chick learns his lesson that life is better and safer back home yeah it's not a coincidence that this cartoon comes out the same year that the South Korean economy officially passes North Korea and never looks back and it isn't just a financial thing the basic standards of
96:30 - 97:00 living are also improving in South Korea with people getting better education they're living longer they've got improved health care and they have access to cheaper highquality consumer goods compare that to what's happening in North Korea's sluggish economy Kim lung's unending focus on heavy industry his poor Resource Management ill-informed trade policies and let's not forget trying to make your country self-reliant even though your country physically can't do that has left the country uncompetitive and faltering even all the aid from the Soviets in China
97:00 - 97:30 which is substantial is barely enough to keep the country afloat and North Koreans were starting to see this you can lie to your population about record growth and soaring industrial output all you want North Koreans aren't stupid they can see deteriorating infrastructure they can feel hunger in food shortages and word will get out that South Korea is doing better so in 1975 while it's still rare for North Koreans to try and defect from the country it is happening more and the leadership is painfully aware of this
97:30 - 98:00 growing problem hence cartoons like dog and cat which are very early attempts to instill this subconscious idea into kids that while the grass might look Greener over there it's an illusion so stay on this side of the fence where it's safe and this sort of allegorical warning cartoon can be used for any social issue or idea that pad or Kim wants to push for example let's say they want to promote the importance of remaining Vigilant of attacks from foreign enemies how do you do that well 426 will make something like the proud rooster also
98:00 - 98:30 said on a farm this cartoon centers on rooster a bird who isn't really concerned about Predators or dangers thanks to his high perch in a tree but soon Fox appears who coaxes the proud rooster down from his perch Fox snatches rooster up but she's stopped by dog and the entire Farm who chased Fox into some water where the dog very methodically drowns her oh a okay so that's an easy allegory for kids be vigilant spies or sneaky but here's a real challenge how
98:30 - 99:00 do you teach kids the evils of capitalism through animation that's a really tall order right to show how corrupt an economic system can be through allegorical Animal Farms like these cartoons and nobody could do that so in those cases 426 Studios likes to break out some Korean folktales swap some bits out to be more in line with ju and release cartoons like the golden lump and the and the Gang G gang gang screw it we'll use the translation the golden lump and the special kind of
99:00 - 99:30 rice made out of a particular kind of corn in the golden lump and the special kind of rice cake made out of a particular kind of corn we see a very unhappy feudal Village Under the thumb of a greedy landlord and his evil wife of course but one day a terrible rainstorm comes and drowns the entire land the poor farmers who don't have very much are able to pack up their belongings and meager rice cakes made out of a particular kind of corn and escape to the safety of the trees but the landlord and his wife are so weighed down by their Treasures that they oh uh
99:30 - 100:00 oh yikes uh I mean the now single landlord is so weighed down by his treasures that it's hard for him to escape but he does manage to hide in one of the trees soon enough the landlord grows hungry begging a nearby servant to trade some of his rice cakes made out of a particular type of corn for his gold the servant says no food is the true Treasure of life and the landlord is reaping what he I I guess didn't SE it does seem a little harsh to let a man starve in a tree but we get a flashback of the landlord whipping the Serpent's sister for a while so I get it I you
100:00 - 100:30 know I get it finally the landlord and all his treasures fall into the water as a beam of Kimel Sunny D hits the village the flood vanishes and the servants go back to farming so you get it greed is bad don't give up what you have for the Allure of gold and treasures oh and in case you're thinking that I'm like cherry-picking or ascribing meanings to these cartoons that weren't intentional I'm basing all of this off Kim Jong 's own writings about media he's publishing books and literary works by the dozens openly saying that art and media without
100:30 - 101:00 ideological meaning or messaging should not be made by North Korea his most famous book on the art of the cinema is written with all the undeserved confidence of a self-taught amateur whose dad plays God on TV it offers chunks of wisdoms like the best dialogue in movies is full of meaning and is easy to understand originality is the essence of creation the actors are the face of the film I consider makeup to be a noble art okay actually I like that one you know what I like that one makeup makeup
101:00 - 101:30 is a noble art and the rest of Kim Dill's writings are all equally hard to get through on the art of opera on the art of the drama on the art of the dance on the art of Music on Fine Art on du literature on the theory of circuses on architecture on developing forestry on improving Land Management on chicken farming what the do you know about chicken farming Kim jungil the only chicken you ever see comes with a side of barbecue sauce and talking about a subject without the slightest hint of expertise is something both Kim ilung and Kim Jong do they have these on the
101:30 - 102:00 spot guidance events where they go to a farm or a factory and tell the experts everything they're doing wrong I keep tapping on the pudding cup but it doesn't open you should make them open when I tap it that way I can roll the pudding in my hands and pop it into my mouth with much revolutionary Zeal what a good idea sir also this glass bottle line is too slow you should throw them like bowling balls we get her we'll get our best men on it sir and these bicycles you design you say they have brakes to slow them down it seems our citizens could be going much faster
102:00 - 102:30 without the brakes oh we'll we'll look right into that sir I would pay anything I would pay anything for one of the experts to put Kim on the spot and be like hey uh do me a small favor could you identify a single object on this table like anything here on the table just tell me what it's called seriously just just tell me the name paper I think you're going yeah yeah yeah yeah off topic I know thank you so Kim Dong ill cartoons right this is squirrel and Hedgehog originally airing as a four-part series squirrel and Hedgehog
102:30 - 103:00 was set in the fictional region of Flower Hill one night the squirrels of squirrel Village see that bird Village has been attacked by the evil armies of the weasel from Black Rock Mountain along with their subordinates SLS slaves maybe the mice squirrel Village is terrified but a mighty bear lives in their Village and he tells them they shouldn't worry he'll protect them with his big bear arm the squirrels agree to rely on him for protection and perhaps only to mock the god of narrative irony they host a big
103:00 - 103:30 Feast to celebrate how safe they are we're never going to die but one Hedgehog warns the squirrels that they shouldn't depend on stronger animals for protection Hedgehog Village builds their own defenses and they spend their time training for War One squirrel gold squirrel wonders if his village too should follow their example but the rest don't seem that worried never ever going to die back at Black Rock Mountain a weasel officer officer hatches a plan to send a bottle of poisoned alcohol to bear in order to incapacitate him allowing the weasels to sack squirrel
103:30 - 104:00 Village as the village gets attacked gold squirrel tries to wake bear up to save everyone but he can't do it luckily he's rescued by hedgehogs who decide that now is the right time to serve him up a dozen hot plates of we told you so you know while everyone gold squirrel has ever loved is being cooked to a crisp in the background thanks thanks hedgehogs later on the weasels tried to send some of their mice to disguise themselves as squirrels and sneak into Flower Hill the Hedgehogs not being blind immediately notice what's
104:00 - 104:30 happening because squirrels squirrels don't look like mice they're they're going to they're going to recognize you and beat you up see that's exactly what happens a lot more stuff happens over the first few episodes but basically the squirrels the Hedgehogs and the Ducks they launch a counter offensive that cripples the weasel Empire and the four-part series ends with a warning directly to the audience that even though we've won the war always be wary of foreign evils and be prepared to lay down your life to fight I think you
104:30 - 105:00 picked up on all the big headline messages here right the duj message of don't rely on other groups for self-defense always be self-reliant etc etc but beyond that there's a very popular interpretation of this cartoon that each type of animal is a representation of a real world country these squirrels hedgehogs and Ducks represent three aspects of North Korea squirrels are civilians who only want to farm hedgehogs are the military who understand the value and justification for using resources for self-defense even in peace time and the Ducks are the
105:00 - 105:30 Navy protecting the Seas with mines and patrols then you've got the bear who is the Soviet Union undeniably strong but flaky and unreliable the weasel represent maybe Japan but probably America and UN forces and the most interesting characters are the mice they according to this Theory represent South Korean soldiers they're small and weak too but instead of fighting for themselves like the squirrels do they let the big American weasels boss them
105:30 - 106:00 around earlier cartoons like burn Squad of flies presented South Korean soldiers as brave but misguided now they're cowardly and submissive it's an important distinction so this is the often repeated interpretation of squirrel and Hedgehog and while it is a fun Theory there's some skepticism around it in North Korean academic studies nobody questions that the show's message to kids is hey trust the military self-defense foreign influence is bad wink those ideas are definitely in play here but how directly should these metaphors and allegories be
106:00 - 106:30 applied do the weasels represent America or more of a general idea of foreign threats it does the bear represent the Soviet Union or is he just a metaphor for the poor choice of relying on strong people to defend you you see what I'm saying here you could interpret this very very directly but I don't know if that was necessarily the outward intention of the animators but you what what do I know oh and by the way if you'd like to watch this entire Series in English you can in 2015 an Italian children's animation producer named Mondo TV licensed squirrel and hedgehog
106:30 - 107:00 from North Korea cut out all the propaganda dubbed the whole thing in English and released the series go call the magp so the series is at least kind of popular internationally but that's nothing compared to its popularity inside North Korea squirrel and Hedgehog is the first of the big three North Korean animated franchises and the reason for its widespread popularity is television by the 1970s only a few people could afford to get televisions
107:00 - 107:30 in North Korea but if you were lucky enough to live in pangy Yang there was a decent chance you at least knew somebody who had one we know that there were three channels the general allpurpose KCTV montai TV on the weekends with films and entertainment and the Korean educational and cultural network with educational content and this slowly growing TV audience enables shows like Hedgehog to take off with reruns in a way it just couldn't have in theaters other TV shows are launching too like North Korea's First comedy series that's
107:30 - 108:00 so funny imagine a sketch comedy show but the sketches are like 15 to 20 minutes long they are full of dialogue about how great kiml is and like any good comedy they stop the show every so often to interview the guy who wrote the joke to explain the joke which always ends the same way but really it's only thanks to kiml song's revolutionary zeal I was able to write the joke he's such a funny guy also I'm in no way saying these performers lack talent I I'm sure they're funny this
108:00 - 108:30 woman her delivery her acting it's it's funny it's just the writing that's bad what that one of my favorite videos I've seen on this project was this clip of a North Korean street magician just some guy getting a girl to laugh this hard any impression you have that North Koreans are mirthless stone-faced brainwashed zombies to only laugh or smile on Q that's totally false North Koreans love to laugh the comedy is just not great but let's change gears a bit
108:30 - 109:00 because there's a much better TV show airing in the 1970s unsung heroes inspired by many of the popular 1970s Cold War spy films the 20h hourong unsung heroes was North Korea's own attempt at a televised spy drama set in South Korea during the last year of the Korean War the plot isn't easy to keep track of so stick with me here with kimlong leading the North and Sigman re hey remember him leading the south things are according to the series going
109:00 - 109:30 very well for North Korea sure and kimlong is ready to graciously end the violence with the signing of the Korean armed assist agreement all he wants is peace mhm Kim ilung thinks the weak and old Sigman re will be easy to negotiate terms with but there were rumors of a coup in South Korea so kimlong sends a spy named udim into South Korea to stop this coup from taking place udim does a bunch of spy stuff stops the coup and kimlong is able to cleverly trick the
109:30 - 110:00 American bastards into signing the Korean armist agreement what North Korea always wanted all along obviously there's a lot wrong with the history of this series the most outrageous claim being that Sigman ree was a peace seeking wimpy dude that wanted to in the war no he wasn't Sigman re completely opposed making any peace with the North in fact he refused to sign the Korean armed assist agreement only North Korea China and the US did I don't really care though because thanks to unsung heroes
110:00 - 110:30 we get to have some more of those fake foreign guys and they look weird Jesus he doesn't even look like a person he doesn't he doesn't even look like a human being but what really makes unsung heroes a strange watch is that some of the white guys are played by actual white guys look at that a real white guy another another real white guy another real white guy coming get your white guy lots of white guys and these white guys aren't Russians acting they are Real Americans who defected into North Korea
110:30 - 111:00 in the last 70 years there have been four or five or six or maybe seven American soldiers who were stationed in South Korea after the Korean war that crossed the DMZ to defect into North Korea I say four five six or seven because while the first four definitely defected on purpose the fifth Roy Tong may have been kidnapped the sixth Joseph T white has very little information on him and the seventh no joke as of the
111:00 - 111:30 day that I'm writing this script like like today like today like this morning the seventh was reported to have run into North Korea I don't know what the situation is with him so let's just stick with the first four guys and I know what you're thinking what would possess somebody to run into North Korea because once you're there it's very unlikely you're coming back out but whatever their original motivations were all four of these soldiers quickly regretted their decision and they attempted to seek asylum in the Pyongyang Soviet Embassy in 1966 the
111:30 - 112:00 embassy said no and they were all returned to some pretty angry North Korean officials during their time in North Korea they were beaten tortured forced to study the ideological teachings of Kim UNG and later Kim Jong-il and were being incorporated into North Korean English propaganda big Publications showing how happy all of them were for finally escaping capitalism the papers even had a section called letters from Abshire and dresnok with such natural and unsuspicious quotes like dear old fellow friends here
112:00 - 112:30 we go enjoying warm welcome from the North Korean people to tell the truth the people of North Korea are enjoying freedom and happiness inaccessible to the working people of the United States P.S we definitely didn't write this at gunpoint or anything thanks for asking but the worst Injustice pressed on these four guys was well it was probably the torture that was the yeah I bet I bet that was the worst part and then the beatings and the starving but like the ninth like the ninth worst Injustice
112:30 - 113:00 pressed on these four guys was that they had to act in North Korean spy soap operas like unsung heroes the poor bastards but all the involuntary acting and historical accuracy issues aside the camera work is great there's all these upclose personal shots that add to spy tension but then they open it up for more interesting angles and wider shots the acting seems better the writing seems a little more natural it's an overall better experience and I think these are the kinds of impacts Kim Jong
113:00 - 113:30 ill is having it's not overnight artistic Leaps and Bounds like people think the flower girl was it's Kim providing more funding and more training opportunities for his filmmakers which in turn lets them make better stuff and although the entire series was shot in the North Korean Film Studio they did a terrific job designing sets for these foreign countries with shots of desolate South Korean streets CD music bars dark rides through evil enemy American control territory it's great imagery and it's really important imagery the pad
113:30 - 114:00 can't present the north as economically ahead anymore so instead they have to present the South as yes maybe wealthier but the quality of life is terrible like in the movie The Fate of Kum Hui and unui this movie compares the lives of Two Sisters separated at Birth with Kum Hui ending up in the north and unhu in the south kum's life is wonderful healthy bright and happy and she becomes a very successful drum player in the sparkling
114:00 - 114:30 city of pongyang and hu's life in comparison is less wonderful she's singing in this horrible hole-in-the-wall bar surrounded by drunks and flues she's in debt she gets hit by a car I'm sorry for laughing I just it's a lot of it's a lot to take in and everyone she knows is getting beaten or stabbed it's really it's cartoonishly awful and all the people in the South look like sickly their healthc care is portrayed as incompetent and
114:30 - 115:00 greedy there's barbed wire imagery everywhere shots of the north constant March towards Utopia are cut between shots of the miserable South Korean life it's like the director is taking your hand and racing you back and forth to nail this point in good bad good bad here good they're bad here good they're bad there's another film kind of like this one called yui and Yong returned to their socialist Homeland great title starring a young actress named Kim hyan Hui be sure to remember that name
115:00 - 115:30 because in like an hour she's going to blow up a plane we'll get there but first I want to look at a different movie a day at the amusement park in the film a day at the amusement park there are two families trying to arrange a marriage and they've decided to hammer out all the final details at where else a recently State renovated amusement park I guess like what better place to decide your daughter's future life partner than while getting crushed to death between bumper cars or reliving your carean War
115:30 - 116:00 trauma Real Talk the whole story is just a big flimsy excuse to fill a 48-minute movie with 46 minutes of advertisement for a brand new amusement park look at the colors look at the fun that people are having uh look they have an amusement park look how much better life is here look look at how much better life is here audience the film also might be a light critique of the concept of arranged marriages at the end of the
116:00 - 116:30 movie The outdated traditional parents realize that in this new modern Korea people should get married with the people that they love working with the people that they love working with hardworking loyal humble workers are a good marriage choice you shouldn't pick someone's marriage partner because they would be a good match for your family they should do it based on who works hard in fact there's another major film genre about hard workers that starts the 1970s it's called hidden Heroes hidden
116:30 - 117:00 hero movies at a glance are easy to confuse with those old chal ryer films and there is a lot of overlap people triumphing over some sort of farming or factory or work Problem by pushing themselves to their absolute limits you see that in both types of films but in Hidden hero films the hero is supposed to be well hidden you shouldn't work hard for Applause or flowers or Glory you should do it for the nation and never seek out appreciation or thanks do it for Kim just do it do it for Kim and
117:00 - 117:30 hidden hero films tend to be a little more flexible than Chala films were at least in their subject matter sure there's lots of hidden hero farming or industrial films but there's also reunification films uh spy films there's a whole subgenre of hidden hero Apple harvesting films my favorite hidden hero Apple harvesting film is of course when we pick apples cuz the protagonist in this movie is the smuggest Apple picker in the world all she does is passive aggressively judge people for how they
117:30 - 118:00 handle apples you should be more careful with your apples miss you should handle them like an egg mhm oh look Chief look at all the apples on the ground maybe somebody should do their job better mhm which one of you rotten little poop stains bruise my precious and thankful apples the movie's also got the dprk equivalent of like a like a hot car wash scene where the girl girls du around spraying each other with they they spray each other with like dangerous
118:00 - 118:30 insecticides but not every hidden hero film is as positive as when we pick apples some take the reverse approach showing a former hidden hero that's lost their way like this comedy our family's problems here's a hardworking selfless post office chief who's doing everything he can for the country and the collective good with no expect of personal rewards he's a classic hidden hero but his wife is greedy and selfish warning her husband to use his
118:30 - 119:00 position as a leader to get them special treatment the chief lets her behavior slide until one night he just like he snaps he rolls up his sleeve and he prepares to hit his what um Ian are we are we sure this is a comedy oh definitely all right so the husband's about to hurt his wife but she gets so terrified of him that she passes out in shock the chief is horrified by what he almost did to his wife and begins giving in to all of her demands as well as
119:00 - 119:30 learning to partake in the Finer Things in life himself this former hidden hero whose only goal in life was to contribute to society out of the spotlight is corrupted but one day he and his wife's Antics caused a critical delivery failure and he's dragged in front of a self-criticism meeting these are very real things in North Korea and in the meetings people are accused of or admit to wrongdoings in front of their Community the post office Chief is hit with overwhelming shame of his actions and he realizes that he's allowed his
119:30 - 120:00 pursuit of material rewards to steer him to evil he resigns his job and it's kind of implied that he throws himself off a bridge at the end Ivan all right so it's a little dark but it is a comedy I mean it does have some really funny moments Kim Jung ill even thought that our family's problems put too much emphasis on comedy this is comedy I guess and not enough about his father of course but don't too worry he made sure to rectify that by producing 12 sequels to this
120:00 - 120:30 movie all with less jokes and more Kims imagery but Kim jongil doesn't want to just put more references to Kims in movies he wants to put Kim lung into movies so far Kim lung's only appearances in movies were as paintings and statues sometimes that unseen force of nature right things would look dire All Is Lost a character would be hit by a beam of metaphorical kiml sungl light there's some lightning or something and the day is saved without Kim showing up in person the idea was to make kiml S
120:30 - 121:00 mysterious and a bit Supernatural but it also left him a little unrelatable impersonable maybe distant and so in 1977 Kim ilung makes his cinematic debut he's usually not the protagonist of the movie though that that might humanize him too much so in most films he'll do like a a quick Stanley Cameo at the end of the film just to give a quick speech an awkward non-committal wave yes
121:00 - 121:30 hello hello hello there yes good work people and then vanish to wherever he came from that's like that's like 99% of these Kim appearances but there are exceptions though like star of Korea a 10-part retelling of Kim ung's Life as a gorilla Fighter the filmmakers play it real safe though Kim's always hit with perfect lighting and Camera framing as his comrades listen to everything he says like like Jesus and the apostles but these Kim pance films serve a wider
121:30 - 122:00 purpose than glorifying Kim UNG they're also glorifying Kim's bloodline we see movies starring Kim ung's mother his father his uncle his grandfather his ancestors the whole the whole family line they come from is shown to have a long history of duj loving Visionary thinkers and Warriors and the implication is continuing forward Kim Jong ill is using his control of the pad to very coily suggest that you know after Kim UNG is gone it only makes sense to replace him with another Kim
122:00 - 122:30 with his blood right the thing is Lions of succession after a cult of personality leader dies have historically ended uh messy so to even have a Fighting Chance of taking power after his father dies Kim Jong-il is pouring the concrete for his Ascension now in the late 1970s with films that hitch his legacy to his father's Legacy but it isn't working despite his early successes Kim
122:30 - 123:00 jong-il's new age of North Korean films was starting to fall right back into the same cliche patterns from before meanwhile Kim Jong ill is seeing his worst enemies Japan the US South Korea sweeping International Film contest and awards Kim Jong-il wanted those wins he wanted those Awards he wanted to build North Korea's relevancy in the world stage so he does the only reasonable thing there is to do he decides to kidnap a South Korean director so say
123:00 - 123:30 you're Kim dungill and you want to kidnap a South Korean director to improve the qualities of your North Korean films well how do you choose who to kidnap actually um hold on hey Ivan can you do me a favor and uh make a list of some of Kim jong-il's favorite foods his favorite foods yeah yeah yeah yeah it's going to be super important for a for a movie we talk about I I I promise oh okay I'll be back in a few minutes then be sure not to go off topic while I'm gone you got it
123:30 - 124:00 buddy okay he's gone welcome to who should Kim Jong ill kidnap hi folks I'm paper will and this is who should Kim jung-il kidnap the extraordinary game show where Kim Jong-il decides which South Korean director to kidnap and force to make movies Mr Kim tell me what you're looking for in a director tonight paper will this is exactly what you said you wanted to avoid big long off topic tangents also how how long did it take
124:00 - 124:30 you to make this game show set like uh a week uh the set was really easy but this little this little bow tie was really hard to draw it kept coming out too big and then it was too small and it was okay that's all I needed to hear beep cut not the beep cut not the beep so there are lots of South Korean directors Kim dungill could trap but Kim also needs someone he could actually trap someone that could be baited out of South Korea someone desperate for work someone like shin sang o during the 1950s and 60s Shen sangok had been a key
124:30 - 125:00 figure in South Korea's golden age of film he opened his own Production Studio Sheen films and he married the very talented actress Chay anhe for years Sheen and Chay were the sollywood power couple producing hundreds of South Korean movies however in the mid 1970s Sheen's life takes a pretty hard turn for the worst his marriage ends as some of his extramarital Affairs become public then he found himself at odds with President Park Tong he you remember
125:00 - 125:30 him he's the military dictator that's running South Korea now while the economy may be improving under Park his government is becoming increasingly conservative and restrictive with their media and if there's anything you need to know about Shing sangok it's that he hates restrictions so after breaking the government's media rules a few dozen too many times Sheen has his film license revoked bringing his career to a complete halt it also ruins chayan he's career just out of association with
125:30 - 126:00 Sheen until 1978 jayan he receives an invitation to direct her own film in Hong Kong she travels there excited to get started she meets the staff and then she disappears without a trace she sok hears about this and despite their separation travels to Hong Kong to search for clues about her Vanishing and then he vanishes too which wasn't that uncommon during the 1970s and 80s North Korea operated an abduction program
126:00 - 126:30 kidnapping people from various countries and forcing them into training North Korean spies in customs and languages we don't know how many victims there were and North Korea has since only admitted to a handful of cases the stories of those victims are tragic and important so if it feels like I'm weighing the value of shin sangok and Chan he's cas above other victims I'm sorry that's not my intention but this is a video about North Korean entertainment and in a few years Shen and CH are going to resurface
126:30 - 127:00 in North Korea and change the country's entertainment forever as the 1980s begin North Korea is not okay internally resources are Slimmer and poorly managed the systems for producing and distributing food which remember need for an oil to work are becoming vulnerable to collapse food is starting to slightly thin out minor electrical blackouts are becoming common
127:00 - 127:30 hospitals are having trouble keeping their lights on Factory supplies are dwindling they're spending way too much on Military expenditures and while the economy isn't in a freef fall it's hanging on by a few fragile threads and that's all in direct contrast with what's happening only a few miles down from them South Korea's pursuit of foreign investment and high-tech production play a pivotal role in accelerating their economic growth for anyone paying attention South Korea is looking like the Korean success story but the thing is most countries aren't
127:30 - 128:00 paying attention not yet South Korea still hadn't been able to shake that image of that barely recovered War torn destroyed country from some American war but that's all about to change with five rings president Park Tung he is preparing South Korea for a bid to host an upcoming Olympic Games he's hoping it'll be opportunity to show the world that his country is a prosperous developing Nation deserving of respect and relevance the same things North
128:00 - 128:30 Korea has been desperate for sadly for Park tongi he'll never see his Olympic plan come to fruition he's killed and later replaced by another military dictator Chan Duan but Chun liked Park's Olympic idea so he makes a bid for South Korea to host the 1988 Summer Olympics and wins and North Korea hates that South Korea being chosen for these Olympics is deeply upsetting it's a great big nail in the coffin of hopes that North Korea would gain International respect and relevancy over
128:30 - 129:00 the South they are supposed to be the legitimate Korea they are supposed to be prosperous they are supposed to be marching to Victory so why is Saul getting the Olympics Kim ilung and Kim Jong-il know that now more than ever North Korea needs some very visible wins that means even more money for the already bloated military for a new batch of absurdly large statues for the Kims and and for some New Media to rest strengthen their grip on the population and what better way to do that than with a brand new music craze let's do this
129:00 - 129:30 [Music] thing what what's this shiny outfits pretty women in giant 80s hair a a team of electric violinist Kars what the hell is this well in the 1980s Kim Jong-il has noticed that North Korea's kind of fallen behind on the music scene while his country is still focusing on Military orchestras and marching bands the rest of the world is entering the
129:30 - 130:00 age of Electronica music synthesizers drum machines chart topping caty synth centered songs the younger Kim sees an opportunity to continue making propaganda packed Melodies but actually making music that doesn't suck huh huh won't that be fun music it doesn't suck yeah we can do that Kim orders the for of two new Electronica bands the pambo electronic Ensemble or p and the Wang Jon light music band so while old music
130:00 - 130:30 sounded like this their new stuff sounds like [Music] this damn cim I know it's not him writing this but but he paid for it so damn damn Kim This song is called play with flowers and man that's smooth so smooth I'm slipping I'm slipping off I'm slipping I'm slipping see once again
130:30 - 131:00 this proves that as long as you give North Korean artists a fraction of freedom to do something fun they will deliver this is wonderful okay uh no no we don't need any horn in our electronic song thanks thank you we don't need any thank you yes have a nice day weirdo there we go back to back to the good I I especially like our next track Bellow's [Music] ballot oo it's kind of wrappy huh the
131:00 - 131:30 song's about a peasant Village trying to farm rice and yeah see there it is uh let's unleash our hatred of 10,000 years with Spears and swords and beating landlords whatever I still like it okay so pambo and Wang Json might be changing up the music game but there's still vehicles to deliver social messaging and propaganda want to remind people to work faster hit him with that new pambo tune about being efficient at your job think people aren't being patriotic enough drop a wang Jon on the scene and there's
131:30 - 132:00 always room for more crowd-pleasing military songs both band's song list are full of glorifying the North Korean Armed Forces what is life is a song about soldiers who get killed during the Korean War which is like there's nothing wrong with making a song about respecting soldiers that's fine but they make it really weird when one of the dead soldiers starts haunting the song from Beyond the Grave asking what life is and remembering his last moments that's too much it's it's it's
132:00 - 132:30 too dark for me thanks thank you Kim while wiang Jon is mostly a musical Performance Group their shows often have big dance numbers as well and I don't know about you but I love me some big shiny overalls look at that look at that Beed rustic socialist realism realness baby I love it but if sparkling farm girls aren't really your thing something's wrong with you but even so you might prefer a more electronic traditional Korean Music Fusion like our rhythm is pleasing to the ear that right
132:30 - 133:00 there that is two great tastes that taste great together I can I can get into this then there's something called shoulder dance which is right what it says it is and while the old rules about love songs not focusing directly on romantic love are still in play they've been relaxed ever so slightly like I'll give you red flowers this song follows two regular people in love with one another in their first relationship neither are soldiers neither are dying for their country they're just a regular normal first dat
133:00 - 133:30 couple I mean relatively normal and this is the point you know the P stuck their big stupid noses in the song finishes asking when the couple will take their relationship to the next level by picking up a gun themselves and fighting for the country imagine somebody inviting you on a date being like hey baby want to Pledge Your Life to mil milant du socialism that would be well okay if somebody did that to me I'd be like I'd probably be down because that that person sounds amazing but for normal people that's weird the song was
133:30 - 134:00 still popular though with adults and kids because pambo and Wang Jon aren't only being played on radio and television these songs are being taught and performed in schools all over the country like here's that same song from earlier play with flowers being performed by obscenely skill North Korean [Music] kindergarteners hyper talented North Korean children performances are one of its most well-known cultural displays
134:00 - 134:30 which begs the question how are they doing this ideological education in North Korea starts early like really early and one of the most effective ways of instilling respect and loyalty is through music in the ' 50s and 60s and' 70s kids that showed great musical potential would be given special training at their school Under Kimo the funding for these music programs was a bit limited but in the 1980s and with Kim Jong ill in charge all that changes
134:30 - 135:00 way more money is diverted into young Arts programs and the most talented kids are put into specialized performance schools to better cultivate and Foster their talents the best of these students will spend the rest of their lives involved in the music scene of the country and if you're anything like me your knee-jerk gut reaction is sympathy for these kids right but while these schools are incredibly stressful and put way too much pressure on children getting into the North Korean musical world offers kids and their families opportunities in life they could never
135:00 - 135:30 have imagined sometimes even raising their fam's songbun oh uh songbun God I should have talked about this in like the 1960s uh sbon is a class system kiml Sun began which categorized all citizens into three groups loyal wavering and disloyal to put it very very simply and maybe overs simply being in a Higher song Boon like State musicians can improve your access to better rations work opportunities marriages housing and more if I was a parent in North Korea I'd much rather have my kid forced to play the violin and be wellfed then
135:30 - 136:00 forced to work on a farm during a food shortage right and I've talked about this before but I'm going to keep saying it North Koreans are people they're not soulless they have hopes and dreams and want what most of us want they they want a good life and a good life for their family they love their kids in an Ideal World their kids would be free to live comfortably pursuing any any interest they wanted but they aren't in an ideal world they're in North Korea and hey if you're the son of a witless dictator with a God complex that really doesn't
136:00 - 136:30 care about the welfare of kids I guess you can't argue with Kim jong-il's results North Korea's Factory efficient art programs will begin to produce some of the most impressive youth performances on the planet but for now instead of looking at what kids are performing let's look at what kids are watching in the 1980s the two big forms of entertainment aimed at kid kids were comic books and cartoons unfortunately even though millions of these 1980s comic books were printed very very few of them would survive to the 1990s for
136:30 - 137:00 very very sad reasons that we'll get into later if you want a hint the comics were printed on rice paper yeah although there's one really weird comic I found that I I I don't understand and no one has been able to explain this to me this is a North Korean comic from the 1980s called of course you realize this means war nothing out of place so far except if you look up here it says one of the artists in the series is Steve ditco the
137:00 - 137:30 comic book Legend known for creating the greatest superhero of all time the question and Spider-Man or whatever I would really like to know what the deal is here is this a labeling mistake is it some outsourced work is it fake seriously if anybody knows leave a comment this drove me crazy as for animation though 1980s car Tunes continue to embrace animal allegories fables and folktales they remained a simple but effective way to carry political messages in digestible forms
137:30 - 138:00 for kids good example of one of these animations is the bear is back way up in the mountains bear lives in a poorly constructed Log Cabin it's full of smoke due to him cutting Corners in the ventilation system and also not opening the damn chimney where did my design go wrong instead of making the right changes in fixing up his house bear keeps trying to take the easy way out rabbit his neighbor encourages him to work harder and do better for the community but gets undercut when Fox shows up Fox tells him H don't worry
138:00 - 138:30 about all that just come live with me in my house log you ever want to live in a log now you can Fox ends up betraying bear you know gasp and bear almost freezes to death until rabbit saves him together they rebuild bear's house with bear learning The Importance of Being a self-reliant and ju boy the end lots of familiar Parts here don't sit around and wait for your problems to get solved be self-reliant be ju nothing unique but as a cartoon it's not bad then there's the
138:30 - 139:00 classic cartoon a hedgehog defeats a tiger deep in the forest all the animals are holding a strength contest until tiger and fox crash the party tiger starts pushing everybody around and taking the prize medal without even competing but no one is brave enough to stand up to him oh and takes special notice of the fox here acting as a little minion for the tiger we've seen that before right but soon the little hedgehog braver than all the other animals challenges the tiger to a fight
139:00 - 139:30 I will defeat you tiger and you will no pain while physically outmatch the Hedgehog uses his brains to beat the tiger and it quickly devolves into like outright bullying very quickly after a few minutes of this the tiger is begging to be let go and that he's sorry and that he'll never do it again but the Hedgehog is like no no now I poke you in the eye and put out your
139:30 - 140:00 whiskers please God please somebody save me there is no God here only hedge only hog Hedgehog is declared the best of all the creatures not because they were the mightiest but because they alone were willing to stand up this genre of big strong animal is stupid small animals are smart cartoon repeats a lot in the 19 80s frog guard the rabbit and the lion stupid bear plus like 20 more identical cartoons that are all variations on the same idea here the stupid bear is a real bummer too the
140:00 - 140:30 bear keeps forgetting his own strength causing problems for this old man who took him in and in the end when the bear sees a fly on the Grandpa's head he like bludgeons the grandpa to death that's that's the end of the story I don't know what we I don't know what we learned here today but while all of those cartoons are hitting the same check boxes of d in self-reliance they're missing something where's the Kim where's the ill where's the S you will never ever ever ever see one of the Kims
140:30 - 141:00 in an animation not a direct portrayal not a background statue not even a portrait they are non-existent in animation Kim dongel tries to rectify this a little bit by introducing more stories that feature strong Village leaders in Korean history usually those with some hints of hereditary succession like North Korea very first fulllength animated film Swift tala this animated movie depicts a coastal farming town in feudal Korea constantly under attack by Japanese
141:00 - 141:30 Pirates but the town is kept safe thanks to the wise Village Elder and his magical drumstick marking him as chosen by the Heavens to lead whenever the Japanese Pirates attack he just bangs his drumstick against a rock and it scares them away but one night the Pirates sneak in and break the drumstick The Village leader orders his son to the land of drumsticks to get a new one by flying on a chilma horse there things get RPG fetch questy very quickly he has to first pick up a flower then use the
141:30 - 142:00 flowers do to awaken a stone owl then use the stone owl to get a brass key and then use the brass key to open a sliding door in an old wooden tree which reveals a world full of crystals among these crystals is a new drumstick with even greater power than the last one had the sun returns to the Village whacks a rock and sends all the Japanese Pirates Back to the Sea as their ships burn the village leader and the rest of the Town declare that the young son will be the next Village leader big shot of the kiml son the end one interpretation of Swift
142:00 - 142:30 Chala is that the protagonist represents kiml wielding Authority decreed by the gods and having cleared out the foreign enemies but I I don't think Kim moong is the protagonist here I think he's the village Elder yeah in the past he used his abilities to drive out foreign forces but one day a successor will be necessary and and it can't be anybody it has to be his son and someone who will continue to protect the country even after the father passes and if all this interpretation sounds like a stretch Swift TMA and the other cartoons like it
142:30 - 143:00 went into production the same year that Kim Jong ill was officially declared the future leader of the country after Kim mung the same year he began openly establishing his own Cult of Personality this is not a coincidence I mean there's a literal baton passing in this cartoon this is all this is all intentional especially considering Swift Chala is a precursor to a much bigger series the second of the big three North Korean animated franchises the young General
143:00 - 143:30 the young General revolves around a boy named Som living in the Korean Kingdom of Grio in the six Century so dutifully listens to his mother values his village over himself and looks up to the soldiers who protect the town from foreign threats soldiers like his highly respected father who has just been killed but nobody tells so meanwhile a new figure appears in town H be who is actually a spy from an enemy Kingdom and the guy that killed som's dad Hobie also for reasons I still don't
143:30 - 144:00 understand beats the crap out of Som for a while som's mom finds him tied up and finally tells so the news of his father which he handles [Music] well drama queen Soul takes his father's sword and swears to defend the Village from all the foreign Devils after some training Som and Hobe face off in a hunting competition and although Hobe tries to cheat he's ultimately outmatched by Som who wins the event
144:00 - 144:30 earns the respect from the Army leader and enlists a fight he is a young General and that catches you up to episode two there are 98 more episodes of the show released over like 40 years and we're not going to cover all of them but you can probably guess how they go so defeating foreign Invaders and evil Village Chiefs ultimately becoming an amazing General like his father aren't hereditary leadership roles wonderful hint hint hint wink wink wink that's layer one but the young General and most cartoons set in the gogrial Kingdom have
144:30 - 145:00 a second layer behind the idea of promoting hereditary leadership they're also working pretty hard to tie North Korea all the way back to the original Korean Kingdom from thousands of years ago as part of the Korean mythology there's a god named hung who has a son named tongun tongun was born on Mount piku yes that's where all the piku stuff comes from and tongun founds the first Korean Kingdom godosan later Goan breaks up into three smaller pieces Baka Sila
145:00 - 145:30 and Grio I think I got at least one of those but North Korea claims that only Grio was the legitimate successor to gojos son North Korea claims to be the rightful successor to goo and therefore the successor to godosan which directly connects them to the divinely ordained and rightful Korea North Korea being seen seen as the real Korea is a critical part of their narrative versus South Korea going all the way back to the 1940s and then there's a third layer to the young General in that hobi the
145:30 - 146:00 main antagonist of the show well he isn't American or Japanese or a corrupted Korean General Hobe is from China why would they make China the enemy in a cartoon and not just any cartoon a 100 episode Mega franchise the biggest North Korean cartoon ever obviously you could argue the show is just set in Korea's history and China has historically had some conflict with them but as we've seen North Korean media is very deliberate with its
146:00 - 146:30 messaging and by the 1980s China's changed man China's been engaging in a series of economic Financial reforms that North Korea doesn't like uh more Western trade more autonomy and Enterprise wage changes banking regulations these are Big policy changes and they make North Korea nervous there are some very real strains on the North Korean Chinese relationship in the 1980s and I suspect those strains explain Hobe and other media painting China in a more negative light it's a calculated
146:30 - 147:00 response to remind kids hey China's our friend but not always for now we'll back away from cartoons about complex geopolitical relationships and instead let's talk about something a little less complicated religion a stone Buddhist statue spent all his time cooped up in his Temple reading old religious texts meanwhile some young animals warned the stone Buddha about an old dead tree that poses a danger to the temple as it could fall over or catch fire but the stone Buddha stops them saying yes it's an old
147:00 - 147:30 tree but it's been here for so long removing it now would be breaking with tradition sure enough one night a lightning bolt hits the dead tree outside setting it on fire and the fire jumps to the temple the stone Buddha desperately looks for Solutions in his ancient text and books as the Flames rise higher until the animals arrive right on time and put the fire out this is kind of a unique message the stone Buddha is only interested in learning from the past and from his old text so he's stuck in this dogmatic mentality
147:30 - 148:00 that prevents him from using new ideas when the temple catches fire he he can't even think for himself on how to combat it the cartoon is saying look old texts and religions may have had some value in the past but now it's time to leave back those old dusty ideas and look forward to a more modern thinking not that all books are learning is portrayed as bad in North Korea far from it in the 1980s North Korea school system is adding a heightened emphasis on scientific education so that students will one day grow up and discover new juj rific ways
148:00 - 148:30 to make the country more self-sufficient and that new emphasis on science enters animation with the third and final member of The Big Three North Korean cartoons clever raccoon dog and yes a raccoon dog is a real thing it looks like a normal raccoon but it is cute as hell it's got Charming little look it's got a Charming little bushy tail and okay okay it sounds like screaming monsters but it's cute right uh at any rate uh at any rate shut up shut up you
148:30 - 149:00 little monsters shut up at any rate clever raccoon dog shakes off traditional messages of Korean War allegories and strong leadership and demonizing foreign influences and instead tries to just be educational each episode depicts raccoon dog and his two best friends cat and bear as they're confronted with some daily challenge cat usually tries to solve her problems with Speed and Agility while beay uses his strength but raccoon dog well he's kind of he's kind of husky and slow but he wins those challenges by applying
149:00 - 149:30 science and critical thinking skills this is the pattern most of the First episodes of the show take but soon I think the writers started running out of ideas So Stories get weirder and weirder as the show progresses like when the kids are getting chased by drunk tigers or they have an episode where they have to figure out how bear can ice skate with an El okay but weird plots aside clever raccoon dog is a good show and it really is educational I am not too proud to
149:30 - 150:00 admit I didn't know you could start a fire with a small cone of ice that's cool I'd be thrilled if all North Korean cartoons from the 80s was education Centric light propaganda like this show but a lot of it isn't let's talk about pencil missile it features a modern-day kid named so Paul who's out hunting rabbits and doing sweet flip kicks on bushes he heads home to study but he doesn't want to deal with all this book stuff he's more interested in imagining shooting US soldiers than learning how to use a
150:00 - 150:30 protractor while studying soal drifts off to sleep and he dreams that he's firing artillery shots at some enemy except all the missiles and guns are made out of pencils and Skool supplies since he doesn't know how to use a protractor his shots continue to miss and he fails to protect North Korea as he's blown to smithin the penil missile is just the kind of Animation you'd expect from North Korea in 1983 it's got some levels of educational content but there's a huge Twist of lemon militarism
150:30 - 151:00 still 1983 is a very important year in North Korean media for a whole other reason it's the year Shen sang A returns like we talked about earlier North Korean films under Kim Jong-il are getting stale again and they're simply not keeping Pace with South Korean Cinema even North Koreans felt things had gotten a little flat and movie attendance was failing this is something I haven't talked about nearly enough but North Korean audiences they can be a lot pickier than you'd think they get bored of certain topics and they stop showing up in large numbers there's occasionally
151:00 - 151:30 an interesting movie like notes of a war correspondent or wiy Island which are both fine I I enjoyed them and I love a good explosion or two but even if North Korean audiences saw them the propaganda is still so over the top that they've got no chance at winning International Awards Kim Jong-il wanted those Awards yeah yet he didn't know how to leave the propaganda behind Kim Jong ill needed that Shen Sayang shock to the system the last time we saw Sheen and Jan he was in the late '70s being kidnapped in Hong
151:30 - 152:00 Kong and smuggled into North Korea but that was four or five years back where had they been all this time upon their arrival in North Korea they were kept apart and placed in small residences under the watchful eye of bodyguards Shen sangok was made to watch several North Korean films a day and write notes about how each movie could have been improved this movie sucks but Sheen does something far more gutsy and stupid than give his kidnappers movies one star reviews Sheen tries to escape a lot like
152:00 - 152:30 a lot like a comedic amount of times the first time he does it by simply jumping out of his house window busting his leg and getting caught by a guard like immediately not a solid plan but you do have to admire the attempt right it's very on brand for the guy who hates restrictions to just jump out of a window Sheen's not chastised too badly for this Escape but he UPS the anti in his second breakout stealing one of the party officials cars and driving off
152:30 - 153:00 hoping he can drive through the DMZ but since there aren't that many 1980s Mercedes bins 450 SLS zooming around North Korea's Countryside they find him pretty easily as punishment he's temporarily sent to a low-level North Korean re-education Center but he's released back out after a couple of months so the guards tell him look just buckle down just get your D study on oh oh my God oh my God he escaped again guys he's running guys God damn it Shen God damn it with all the confidence of
153:00 - 153:30 an escape artist but none of the skills of an escape artist Sheen tries to break out one more time and fails but this time he's sent to a North Korean prison camp and that's when this story gets dark I mean it was already he was already a kidnapped victim so it's like it was already pretty dark but it gets darker in North Korean prison camps you'll be forced to confess to any crimes they think you're guilty of you'll be beaten for not following a command you'll be starved regardless of if you follow a command and you'll be tortured and if you're very very lucky
153:30 - 154:00 you won't die there prisons have an estimated 30 to 40% mortality rate and that's where Shen sangok will stay for almost 3 years but in 1983 he's let out he's given a nice suit he's driven to downtown pongyang and he's brought to a fancy party of North Korean social ites and among them were both Kim Jong-il and Chay anhe Kim Jong-il confidently announces to the crowd that together he Chay and Sheen were now ready to build a
154:00 - 154:30 new film industry for North Korea an industry that would shape the nation's image on a global stage as a formidable cinematic Juggernaut not that Jay and Sheen had any choice in the matter later the two of them would finally be able to speak in private and they decided they'll make their escape someday but that's going to be tricky because even if the two of them escaped they knew there'd be some suspicion over whether they'd been kidnapped or had actually chosen to defect to North Korea so chayan he quietly purchases a cheap tape
154:30 - 155:00 recorder and begins secretly recording every conversation they have with Kim Jong Il there are quite a few of these recordings but my favorite is the one where Kim Jong-il apologizes to Sheen for all the kidnapping and the torturing saying it was a it was a big misunderstanding nice save there Kim the recordings also have Kim criticizing his country's movies saying North Korea had the world's worst film industry naturally he never blames himself even though he ran the film industry but he asks Sheen and Chay to make some movies
155:00 - 155:30 with huge budgets full set Authority and access to anything they need but this is quite a pickle huh how can Sheen make a movie that pleases foreign critics and delivers dprk propaganda Sheen's I think brilliant answer though was 1984's Emissary of no return an adaptation of one of those stories kimlong pretends he wrote Emissary of no return is the Trish story of reun a Korean Emissary in 1907 who is sent to an International Peace conference in the Netherlands there he
155:30 - 156:00 pleads for help against the oncoming Japanese Occupation against the Korean people with a big melodramatic powerfully emotional and very long speech Region's call for help is ignored though so in a lasage effort of protest he takes a sword and ends his own life heavy stuff folks heavy heavy stuff didn't actually ever happen but heavy stuff but it doesn't matter that it never actually happened I'm sure Shing sangok knew it didn't happen he doesn't
156:00 - 156:30 care he's here to not go back to prison by making a good movie and he succeeds Emissary of no return is a big hit abroad winning a prize at the carav carav the car the car great great another language I'm beating up with my stupid mouth the film wins a big prize at a big Film Festival okay and it shows the world that the dprk wasn't a on hit one flower girl Wonder they're back on the cinema scene it's also a big hit in
156:30 - 157:00 North Korea North Koreans loved Sheen's fresh directing style especially compared to these stiff and lifeless shots that have become the standard for North Korean films Sheen's camera work is dynamic the storytelling is visual scenes look expansive and expensive and most of all the films just feel different right out of the gate you can feel Shen Sang's influence first credits are back and in the front of the movie now Shen sangok convinced Kim Jong ill that credits had given cast and crew a little moment in the sun which would
157:00 - 157:30 help motivate them to work harder and create better films but way more important than that it's that the film isn't being filmed in North Korea it's shot on location in the Netherlands or in Czechoslovakia pretending to be the Netherlands but still they're filming outside North Korea shin sangok and Chay had gotten permission from Kim Jung ill to leave the country to get some footage under heavily armed guards of course and it makes the films so much more visually exciting imary of no returns use of these authentic International filming
157:30 - 158:00 locations are letting North Koreans see the outside world for the first time in such high quality the world likes this movie North Koreans like this movie and most importantly the Kims like this movie by using a story written by Kim oong Shin sangok checks the propaganda boxes but since the story is said in 1907 before kimlong was even born he's never mentioned or seen like I said brilliant for his next Works runaway and salt Sheen sangok takes a crack in a more traditional North Korean story you
158:00 - 158:30 know set back in Korea under Japanese Rule and greedy landlords but despite being designed around those worn out ideas he finds ways to keep these films interesting and he puts a bunch of ABBA music in runaway you know Abba the Sweedish pop group and doing that gives runaway soundtrack an salt and runaway like Emissary of no return are well received by audiences domestic and abroad at least in socialist countries really I think everyone is happy with these movies
158:30 - 159:00 except for one guy Chay IU the director of the flower girl and sea of blood he was put in charge of overseeing Sheen Sango Productions and on paper he was Sheen's boss but since Sheen couldn't stand the guy mostly because Chay would complain about things like you're using too many camera angles and too many Cuts you should use one long rigid cut which is exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from a North Korean director so Shing sangok just ignores him Shing sangok may be a prisoner but he's got way more power than Chay does now and
159:00 - 159:30 most importantly he's got the trust of Kim Jong-il after all from Kim jong-il's warped point of view he saved Shing sangok and shanhe from obscurity he gave them back everything they'd lost in South Korea they had a Film Production Studio again the right to make movies status as media Darlings a large state provided house Kim thought it was only natural that they were loyal to him now grateful even after a runaway insult Ching takes his work in a very different Direction with film versions of Korean
159:30 - 160:00 folktales the most important being an adaptation of the tale of Chun hyang arguably the most famous love story in Korean folk literature with a romance comparable to something like Romeo and Juliet Lancelot and gvir Wesley and Princess Buttercup set in feudal Korea the lowborn girl named Chan Hong and the high born son of an important magistrate ye hard to say last name fall in love due to the difference in their social hierarchy that love is forbidden but they get married in secret anyway soon Y
160:00 - 160:30 and his father have to move to Saul leaving chongyong behind and promising to return one day y's father is replaced by a new evil magistrate Beyond The Vicious beond falls in love with Chong and tries to take her as his own but Tong is faithful to ye refusing even when threatened with death right before tanong is executed Ed y returns now a very important Royal inspector and saves her y punishes the evil magistrate the two lovers are reunited and they live happily ever after Shan sok's adaptation
160:30 - 161:00 of this story won't be the first time anyone's tried to bring the tale to film it'll be the 16th the first three Chung films were made when Imperial Japan controlled Korea's media output so they're all lost media and that's to be expected since there are movies from the 1920s and 30s stored on nitrate film a material that would sometimes just like up and explode the wrong conditions uh like for example when it's exposed to light that paper come on this is interesting nitrate film used to just explode sometimes I promise this is the only tangent okay fine great so this nitrate
161:00 - 161:30 stuff wasn't only an issue with Korean or Japanese films it was such a big problem that it led to the creation of projector booths which would close off in the event of a fire and seal in the worker to just I I I guess just die one November 1936 issue of international projectionists while making a defense of this practice was proud to say that only one projectionist was dying every 18 days that's that was this is a quote not a bad average oh my God it wouldn't be
161:30 - 162:00 until the 1950s after the North and South Korean split where Korean filmmakers were able to adapt Chang Hong entirely on their own now without the restrictions and rules of Japanese censorship okay let me do one more tangent paper you promis to stick to the bullet points I swear I swear I swear it's it's important all right keep it short or I'm beep cutting you okay okay okay I'll make it quick so there was a 1960 North Korean semi adaptation of the tale called morang it's directed in North Korea but by a French socialist
162:00 - 162:30 film director named Claude Jean Bernardo who works with the North Korean Film Studio to adapt Chang but he doesn't want to do some simple straightforward retelling of the story no no no no no Bernardo is an artist you know he wants his film to uh to challenge the conventional narrative Norm of imperialist cinematic agenda you know cuz he's a douchebag so he sets Chan Hong's movie in the Korean War and it's actually a film about filming a performance of chunyong presumably he
162:30 - 163:00 had a point to doing all of that but it's lost on me and apparently also lost on French censors who ban [ __ ] bong for its gratuitous pro-socialist elements but the movie also gets banned in North Korea not because of its content but I think because of the way the movie is shot which was unintentionally subversive since it's a film about filming a film the fiction of the movie is constantly bringing attention to the fact that it's a movie with the camera pulling out to remind the audience that what's on screen it's all a production
163:00 - 163:30 that what they're seeing is fake that it's not reality this is a very useful filming style that pushes an audience to question the nature of film and then in turn question the nature of their own lives and the reality that they accept it's the kind of Brean meta Epic Theater commentary that's great if you're trying to win smuggest movie of the year award and not so great if you want to get a film past North Korean sensors who ban the movie I fully support all of these bands because I think the whole movie is
163:30 - 164:00 horribly pretentious and it's so far up its own butt that it's coughing up farts there's a scene where a theater gets blown up which you know you know Bernardo was so godamn smugly pleased with yes you see the destruction of the movie theater is uh important in establishing the freting nature uh you're the worst berardo you're the worst North Korea has another try at a Chong Hong movie in 1980 which is a great film but it's kind of romanceless the film's much more interested in
164:00 - 164:30 demonstrating the evils of classes and non-socialist societies that said again pretty good film and that catches us up to Shan sok's 1985 adaptation which he titles love love my love this adaptation by Shen sangok is a total heel turn on how North Korean media handles Romance the main character is more physically engaged than anything I've ever seen in any North Korean film this look at this this happens the first time Y and Chong hang meet it's unbelievable that Shing
164:30 - 165:00 got permission to do this I I can't even imagine how North Korean audiences responded this is the hottest thing I've ever seen oh my God I can see her clavicle I'm about toing juj and like look here's the two leads after their first night together who proceed to do a downright gorgeous dance number running through their own story book and love love my love is not only one of North Korea's earliest real romance films it's one of their best musicals with sharp choreography upbeat music even
165:00 - 165:30 disney-esque villain songs in the end Y and chongyang reunite get married and then as every book about North Korea will tell you share the first onscreen kiss in North Korean Cinema but not really there's a movie called 10,000 Mi along the railroad from a year prior that had a brief onscreen kiss still love love my love was another milestone for Shen sok's career being so popular in the country that movie theaters kept running out of physical ticket stubs to sell people were no
165:30 - 166:00 longer going to theaters just for something to do people were going to see films because films were incredible now Kim Jong ill must have been very happy about all of this but maybe he shouldn't have been Sheen's films were doing their job as North Korean propaganda but they had some side effects that nobody saw at the time until this point North Korean movies and really all media had portrayed foreign countries as crumbling frayed and scary places but Sheen's films didn't depict them like that his movies showed foreign
166:00 - 166:30 people with fun experiences high quality of life nobody's farming all day nobody's working in factories and and look at all these beautiful shots of abroad while pongyang looks like a hot gr dump in comparison a number of North Korean defectors cite these films as the tiny seeds of doubt that made them question why North Korean life was the way it was why life looked better in other countries on screen and also what's this Abba thing and how can I get more of it they'd been told life was happiest in
166:30 - 167:00 North Korea that was very important propaganda so if that was a lie what else are they being lied to about Sheen's films also had a second side effect as well he had shown North Korean audiences how good film can be how good film should be and he raised their expectations for all directors in the country so how did the more traditional North Korean filmmakers handle this new challenging film environment mostly they totally failed I mean yeah these boring
167:00 - 167:30 films will occasionally stumble into being enjoyable but it's almost always unintentional like there's this one scene in a movie called my happiness in the scene a soldier returns to his home Village but his girlfriend's like wait I thought your legs got blown off and he's like yes my legs were blown off but the doctors fixed me TI up and she's like how did the doctors how did the how did the doctors reattach blown up legs and then he cuts to like it cuts to a bunch of limping doctors and nurses and the
167:30 - 168:00 soldier says oh my doctors and nurses donated their own bones and tendons and muscles they gave me their legs North Korea doctors don't do that North Korea doctors can't do that but fun moments like that are really rare in North Korean films from this time it's mostly ret trading old plots you get films like my Commander's former Superior or through the ordeal forging the yalu river what I must do echo in the jungle
168:00 - 168:30 tinan ultimate Mission all right that's that's that's a different thing we'll get to that but the rest of these films are the same five plots over and over and over spy film hidden hero farming Factory war go around collect 200 2J but every now and then you'll find movies where even if the film itself isn't very good it's different enough from what came before it to be enjoyable great example the tale of 15 children set in the early 1800s this story features 15 kids who decide they'd rather go live on a
168:30 - 169:00 deserted island than stay and be oppressed by local landlords in class-based discrimination but once the kids arrive in their new deserted island home they realize how difficult life is going to be most of the film shows them struggling not against some evil foreign power but the challenges of surviv diving in the wild also the island is vaguely implied to be cursed that's not going to get brought up ever again in the movie but hey Island curse it's different and it's all going really well
169:00 - 169:30 until another boat appears and things take a slightly racially uncomfortable turn hey hey the kids are horrified to find that the other boat is run by Americans I honestly cannot tell if this guy's one of those us Defector soldiers they're forcing to be in North Kore Korean Media or if it's a North Korean guy in makeup because the whole face looks like a like a plastic mold also on the boat is a North Korean actor playing a black slave and yeah it's uh
169:30 - 170:00 yeah but to make things even trickier to get into this slave character isn't a villain in fact he's a hero he helps the kids escape the Americans and they thank him for being a good guy see North Korea has a tricky relationship with race internally the leadership the Govern and the media promote racial pristineness Korean ethnic Supremacy and blood Purity gross racial mixing isn't merely discouraged but immoral it's one of the
170:00 - 170:30 reasons that 1957 Russian North Korean joint project Brothers was banned with its vague hints towards a Russian and a North Korean relationship but that's the internal messaging externally in propaganda North Korea claims their country is the final Bastion of true Racial equality unlike the way minorities are persecuted in the United States but don't be fooled it's talk and sometimes the mask slips in 2014 the North Korean State News Agency published a report saying that then US President Barack Obama and I'm quoting here looks
170:30 - 171:00 like an African native monkey with a black face the final Bastion of true Racial equality ladies and gentlemen and in the tale of 15 children we see that racial hypocrisy on full display yes this character helps the kids but he's also played as old wolfish as barely capable of speech as practically an animal it's disgusting and it's far worse than any of those white face characters ever got portrayed as okay maybe not those guys that were running
171:00 - 171:30 over blind orphans and laughing about it that that's a high bar that's a high bar anyway the 15 kids escape from the evil Americans and agree that trying to rely on help from others was wrong very ju and the film reaches its ending as the kids prepare to go home before they head out one kid has a dream of everyone being reunited with their families and living happily ever after and also firing flaming arrows into the evil landlord's chest the end but not really as the kid wakes up from his dream the
171:30 - 172:00 movie leaves it kind of ambiguous as to whether or not the kids will ever make it back to their Homeland or sink and die in the ocean which is dark but again it's different ambiguous endings like that they don't happen very much in North Korea and if you want to talk about really different let's talk about Hong Kil dong in the original Fable Hong Kong was the illegitimate and therefore lowborn son of a noble father he learns martial arts from this old mysterious Guru in the mountains comes to lead a band of Outlaws and overthrows the
172:00 - 172:30 corrupt Monarch and takes his place North Korea's film follows those basic beats but with some classic Kim Jung ill changes first the final boss of this film isn't a corrupt King the real final boss is a bunch of Japanese Ninjas why are there ninjas invading Korea who knows and frankly who cares the fight choreography is great In fairness the way they eventually defeat the ninjas gets a little brutal uh let's uh we're going to throw a mosaic on that and that and that
172:30 - 173:00 but if you don't mind a little blood on your camera lens it's a great scene the second big change is that even after Hong kilong saves the country from Beach Ninjas the king refuses to let him marry his daughter because of their differences in class hongil dong decides to dramatically leave the country to search of a place that has no class A place where peasants and the wealthy are equal and I get why they made some of these changes I get why the king can't be fully evil and be overthrown like in
173:00 - 173:30 the original story because the idea of encouraging the population to overcome an evil dictator it's a little too close to home but the movie still has a protagonist that in the face of an oppressive government chooses to escape the country in a period of time where North Korean Defector numbers are on the rise I wonder if North Korean filmmakers really didn't think this one through they do something similar in another martial arts movie order 027 but again they don't really think these things through because they set this martial
173:30 - 174:00 arts movie during the Korean War there's a reason that you don't usually set Kung Fu films in modern war movies it's cuz gun beat hand gun beat hand Kim dungill poor premise aside I will fully admit the martial arts are so over the toop and vicious that you can't help but love it and look at all the flips and jumps and stuff of the wait hold on wait wait back it up yeah where did this guy go where did where did this guy just go he just he just flipped into outer space Oh or this guy rolling around they can't
174:00 - 174:30 hit me if I don't stop twirling despite these Savage kill shots hilong in order 027 were really big successes with kids inspiring a whole generation of North Korean children mostly boys to get interested in fighting and North Korean martial artist ain't no joke I was watching some clips of them earlier and it's like like look at this holy sh that dude's that dude's God and like Jesus Christ oh my God but in comparison to
174:30 - 175:00 boys hoping to one day have their arms destroyed by a sledgehammer many young girls had a different dream job they wanted to be directors of traffic because automatic traffic lights were expensive and vulnerable to electricity blackouts in the 1980s North Korea relied on traffic directors young women standing at the center of intersections in sharp white or blue uniforms these traffic director jobs were considered highly respectable and prestigious and critical to the city's moderately growing traffic naturally it was only a
175:00 - 175:30 matter of time until somebody made a comedy about them giving us traffic directors on Crossroads in the film a traffic director named unuk has a runin with a truck driver named kyong who is speeding unsta comes down pretty hard on kyong but later discovers that his blatant disre regard for the safety of others was motivated by him trying to deliver a washing machine to her house she hides in her room as kyong complains about how strict traffic directors are kyong you were going 50 m an hour down
175:30 - 176:00 Main Street to deliver a laundry machine cut the attitude huh over the movie unuk and kyong come to better understand each other that unuk isn't a cold vindictive person she's simply trying to keep people safe kyung on the other hand isn't lady get out of the street you got a kid for God's sake yeah the film is just a tight 58 minute PSA about telling people the importance of driving safety but you know what it's not about Kim ilung or Kim Jong ill the Father the Son and the Holy beer guts are never
176:00 - 176:30 mentioned or seen ever no statues no portraits no speeches no nothing okay yeah everyone's wearing little pins with Kim UNG on their clothes but but everybody wears those anyway that that's not part of the film this lack of Kim mentions may be a response to these Shing sang Blockbusters of making films with lighter propaganda to open up space for more interesting stories while still encouraging audiences to listen to authorities that or Kim dungill just wanted to make space for a scene where kid sing about a zebra getting splattered by a
176:30 - 177:00 [Music] car another film clearly influenced by Shing sok's impact is after a long separation another spy circus film mercifully without the Bears this time the story itself isn't really worth diving into a North Korean circus travels abroad where all the people who watch it are mov moved and impressed by North Korea's groundbreaking acrobatics the whole film goes Circus Circus spy spies koreen War memories circus spy circus spies reunited family family ripped apart by I think it was South
177:00 - 177:30 Korean spies this time but what makes this movie interesting is even though Shing sang o wasn't the director the movie is being filmed in Paris well actually Czechoslovakia with stock footage of Paris but it's said in Paris like one of the bad guys in the movie goes to a French nightclub but acts like someone who has never who has never been in a nightclub in his life o you know that's duj cuz Jam don't shake like that and really why wouldn't everyone in this club be breaking down some sick moves to yes another ABBA
177:30 - 178:00 [Music] song North Korea the West has other music than Abba it's not always Abba this isn't even like this isn't even the original version of the ABBA song either they didn't have a tape lying around they didn't choose to buy that CD they recorded a cover of an ABBA song all right you know what forget this movie so in review North Korean 80s movies aren't always great but there are some interesting films being made even so I
178:00 - 178:30 think you could say that the directors of those films aren't breaking any rules they're just following Shen sang o in bending old genres but Shen sang O's next film it's not just going to bend the rules it's going to snap them smash them polarize them it is finally time for shinen o pulgasari opening on a small feudal
178:30 - 179:00 Village of farmers we see they being forced to give up all their metal to a local evil Lord without that metal The Village can't Farm or harvest and they're going to die so a few peasants attempt to speak out against the suppression one of them is a blacksmith but he gets thrown in jail without any food or water the blacksmith children throw a rice ball into his cell but instead of eating it he shapes the rice ball into a rice doll representing a legend he once heard the spirit of pulgasari after the blacksmith dies you know because he didn't eat the rice ball
179:00 - 179:30 his daughter gets a hold of the tiny action figure and after some accidental blood magic pulgasari comes to life and he is adorable look at him in the little box look at him hey hey there little guy hey there little gari oh who's a good spirit who's a good who's a good spirit eating a needle eating a lot of needles okay he's eating guys he's eating a lot of needles he's eating a lot of needles after a few days pulgasari is
179:30 - 180:00 grown to the size of a particularly threatening baby who begins fighting back against the feudal Lord's forces he's eating their metal swords and attack no plasari no not the face no eating faces no eating faces somebody get a spray bottle as pulgasari grows he inspires the villagers to take up arms and fight back against the feudal Lord's troops the feudal Lord tries to blow plasari up with artillery which doesn't work after that they try to burn him in a cage that doesn't work their dumbest
180:00 - 180:30 their dumbest plan is to throw him down a hole yeah we'll throw we'll throw the giant monster down a hole defeating him forever also doesn't work finally pulgasari reaches the Lord's Palace and in some of the best practical special effects of any North Korean movie he smashes the palace up now they were truly pulgasari that's two puns paper you only get one more yeah but I think it was worth it had the film ended here it'd be a pretty easy movie to analyze pulgasari
180:30 - 181:00 is the undying dedicated Spirit of the working class but plasari doesn't end here there's still 10 minutes left of plot and those last 10 minutes are the most important of the entire film because pulgasari is still hungry he begins eating all the iron in the now freed country it becoming more dangerous to the villagers than the feudal Lord ever was left with no other choice the blacksmith's daughter hides in a big metal bell and tricks plasari into
181:00 - 181:30 eating her consuming her blood breaks the spell that brought pulgasari to life causing him to peacefully and calmly pass on to the next world that'll work too from poosari ashes a new baby sari appears turning into energy and I think bringing the girl back to life maybe it's kind of ambiguous but she starts crying so I think she's alive pulgasari is ending where even after the evil feudal Lord is
181:30 - 182:00 defeated he remains a threat well it can be a little puzzling and numerous interpretations have been set forth the most common interpretation is that the film is criticizing feudalism's abuse of the working class which is solved by capitalism or poosari but capitalism can only be a temporary solution because its insatiable growth and materialism ends up becoming destructive and has to be replaced with another system socialism but a very different Theory says the movie was a way for shin sang A to mock
182:00 - 182:30 his North Korean captors in this theory pulgasari is not capitalism he's the Kim Dynasty who once did fight against an oppressive government but has now become worse than what was there before but I don't really buy either of these theories I I I don't think it's really about capitalism or socialism or fism or hating on the Kims I I think Kim Jung ill just saw the international success that Japan's Godzilla series had and was hoping to copy it Kim as a big fan of international films knew that Godzilla
182:30 - 183:00 movies are about more than their big rubber suit fights Godzilla movies are about something early 1950s Godzilla films were critiques of nuclear weaponry 1970s films were about pollution and environmentalism so Kim who was involved with this film's writing wanted to insert the illusion of some deeper meaning into pulgasari because that's what he thought would make it into an international Blockbuster now domestically pulgasari did great it was Shing Sang's most popular film inside North Korea there are Defector accounts
183:00 - 183:30 from the time talking about how people would see this movie five 10 20 times internationally the world responded with more of a eh and it didn't make a splash plasari would eventually get some popularity with Kaiju fans in the late 1990s a decade after its relase but it's hard to tell if pulgasari really deserves that cult classic status it's just a c minus Godzilla knockoff that's only popular due to the scandalous kidnappy circumstances of its creation In fairness to shing sang A and chanhe
183:30 - 184:00 they had more important stuff in their mind than writing a perfect giant monster movie they were getting ready to escape North Korea in 1986 as part of their film creation duties Shing sangak and chanhe traveled to the neutral city of Vienna with their three body guards SL minders upon arrival at the hotel Sheen and CH slip a note to the hotel staff explaining who they are that they were kidnapped victims of North Korea and that they needed asylum in the nearby US Embassy originally I had a
184:00 - 184:30 whole 8 or N9 minute breakdown of how they escaped then I'd finished the section with a big retelling of how they they burst into tears as the US Embassy took them into protection they were free Happy Endings all [Music] around but this is isn't a movie it's real life and happy endings are messy Sheen and chay's life never return to normaly they're given asylum in the United States in exchange for those recordings of Kim Jong ill they get to
184:30 - 185:00 reunite with their kids and they do end up remarrying each other so all that's good but after that the two of them rode a slow descent into awkward obscurity Shing sangok made a few movies of note in America most famously the three ninja series as well as the movie galgameth which was a lowbudget knockoff of his own movie pulgasari which was a high budget knockoff of Godzilla but neither project was the Mega success that producers were hoping for for years the couple battled with protest and
185:00 - 185:30 condemnations from some groups accusing them of having purposefully defected to North Korea and then changing their mind and leaving which I don't know how anybody can believe that since we have Kim Jung ill on tape apologizing for kidnapping them but okay I guess it's almost cruel to say this but sh sok's career as a successful director died the day he escaped from Kim Jong-il so I don't know if I call that a happy ending but it's better than the alternative incidentally Kim dongil does not take
185:30 - 186:00 their escape very well go figure he orders their names to be stripped from all film credits he forbids filmmakers from talking about the the traitors as he called them he even sets up Nationwide re-education lectures designed to inform the country that Shin sang A had betrayed the country and was not to be praised for his work and part of me can't help but feel a little bad for Kim Jong ill because the way Shing xang a and Chan he talked about their relationship it feels like they were some of the only people the only friends that Kim could openly speak with and
186:00 - 186:30 their accounts of what he was like are way less damning than you'd expect Sheen and Chas said he was genuinely embarrassed by the cheering and leader worship and crying treating it as this unpleasant role he had to play a performance that he was required to take on in Kim jil's words it's all bogus it's all pretense but any drops of sympathy I have for Kim vanished when I remember he also oversaw a totalitarian hellscape with some of the worst human
186:30 - 187:00 rights abuses on the planet atrocities against his own people and the most heinous things he does haven't even happened yet so yeah uh that guy and I'm glad the post Shing sangok period for North Korean films never ever hit the heights it had in the 80s but Kim jongil doesn't have time to cry over losing his kidnapped best friends since their escape is the least of his problems in a time where Kim Jung ill is granted more and more power ruling the government from his father North Korea is starting to come apart at the seams but let's go
187:00 - 187:30 ahead and put a pin in that for a second because in the 1980s there's something else happening in North Korean media over in Japan do you remember way way way way way back at the beginning of this video when I said that one of the ways Koreans were mistreated under Imperial Japan was through forced labor now I'm seriously asking do you do you remember that because that was hours ago even I barely remember saying it and I recorded that this morning while forced Korean labor was mostly focused in Korea
187:30 - 188:00 hundreds of thousands of Koreans were also made to relocate to Japan and do difficult jobs farming Mining and factory work after World War II ends in 1945 most Koreans returned home to Korea but some chose to stay in Japan those that did are known as zichi Korean an and unfortunately they often suffered various forms of discrimination from the Japanese government which led Z Koreans to form two support groups for themselves the pro-s South Korean group mindan and the pro-north Korean group
188:00 - 188:30 Chong ran both groups were dedicated to promoting better treatment for their members but they differed a lot in their approach mindan wanted zi Koreans to maintain their Korean identities while also engaging in Japanese Society they fought for equal rights under the law and were in mental in getting zioni Koreans the right to vote the much larger Chong wrong on the other hand was fiercely anti- assimilation and I mean the hardcore don't dirty your pure Korean blood with Japanese blood levels
188:30 - 189:00 of anti- assimilation barf by the way Chong Rong did everything they could to keep members isolated from engaging with Japanese Society even setting up special insular Chong Rong schools all funded directly by North Korea their students would even take special trips to the DPR to touch on their cultural roots in the 1960s Chong gr even had a repatriation campaign to get zichi Koreans to move to North Korea on a one-way no return Boat Trip promising a life of equality and
189:00 - 189:30 prosperity they usually went on this boat the M gang bong but once we catch up to the 1980s Chong rang's Heyday is long over news had gotten back from zichi Korean that had moved to North Korea that well it sucked and they were receiving worst discrimination in North Korea than they were in Japan and it didn't help Chong gr when stories of abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea became public causing their membership numbers to plummet they start tweaking the propaganda from Japan sucks go live in North Korea to their official
189:30 - 190:00 slogan of Japan is where we live but North Korea is where our minds reside and they would use movies to help deliver that message and keep members Chong Rong film studi starts getting funds from North Korea to produce their own fulllength feature movies using bar North Korean actors and directors the movies tend to act like Parables for zichi Koreans living in Japan reminding them of the daily discrimination in their lives while trying to reinforce two big Ideas one don't leave Tong wrong
190:00 - 190:30 and two don't assimilate to Japan even if you've decided to stay here for the rest of your life we can see those two messages all over their first movie 1985's a silver hair pin a silver hair pin Stars an aging but devoted Chong Rong member R jein so who rain or shine never fails to deliver the Chong rung newspaper to its members he raises his daughter to be a model girl who's in a happy relationship with another Chong rung member the two even kiss on screen one day Jean's neighbor asked for his
190:30 - 191:00 help in Saving her daughter AA acha was once also a good kid but has recently decided she hates being Korean she's wearing sexy clothes and worst of all you might want to sit down for this she's dating a Japanese guy Bo what about the bloodline Jean eventually tracks the girl down to a late 1980s disco bar which has to be one of the saddest locations on the planet there he tries to confront the
191:00 - 191:30 girl about her recent decision to hold on is that fing Abba again North Korea Abba isn't countercultural degenerate music it's what they play at Christian Youth parties for pre-teens it's just like you know what you know what whatever so Jean confronts Oak and no no no no I'm not done with this Abba isn't even like contemporary music in 1985 bang a boomerang came out in the 70s why are they gansa confronts AA and her evil Japanese boyfriend uh he almost gets a
191:30 - 192:00 little hero moment where he stops the boyfriend from taking a swing at her which would be a pretty dope scene except right after Jean then smacks the hell out of her for not listening to him that showus for getting hit by a non- Korean you dumb broad after knocking her out Jean takes her home and so Ober up delivering a speech about how Korean and Japanese blood just just shouldn't be mixed AKA after getting punched takes this skin crawling horrible monologue to heart and returns to being a good Chong
192:00 - 192:30 Rong girl a silver hairpin was quickly followed up by Chong rong's second film thaw this film opens up in the 1930s as a group of Koreans are being forcefully rounded up to work in Japan including a man named hyang after being brought to Japan h teams up with another Korean to fight a guard and flee the other Korean is shot in the legs and seemingly dies but kyung escapes however he never forgets the selfless deed of the other man and all of this is premature setup for a plot twist coming 140 minutes
192:30 - 193:00 later in the movie as we hard cut to Modern Day New York City a Korean college professor is giving dumb revisionist history about how North Korea is great and America sucks but one of his college students stands up and one of his one of his colle student stand hello hello yes I am 19-year-old American student I like beer feetball and imperialism Christ look at this whole Circus the film is being shot in Japan so do you think they just do you
193:00 - 193:30 think they just went out and grabbed some tourists off the street and offer them some money look at that look at that dude that's a homeless dude that's just a homeless dude the college professor wrecks the 35-year-old North Korean guy pretending to be a young white kid all to thunderous Applause but later he receives a letter from his friend hang hang has become a wealthy zichi Korean in Japan and his daughter is about to get married so he wants the college professor to come to the wedding but when the professor arrives in Tokyo he hears from hon that the marriage is
193:30 - 194:00 actually cancelled hon who is in the meon group remember that's the South Korean group has found that his daughter's fiance is in Chong and he cannot have that the reason Hong has a problem with Chong Rong is that he thinks it's a harmful organization to Modern zichi korean's image it's the kidnapping I think we can all agree whatever the politics involved this is going to be a hard and delicate conversation to have uh you're telling your daughter that she cannot get married to the person she loves so it's essential that you pick somewhere that
194:00 - 194:30 will allow you to to have a private and safe place to discuss okay no he takes her to a strip club H's daughter who has now again been taken to a strip club with her father to hear about her marriage getting canceled runs away she takes some illegal substance for her grief almost kicks the bucket and gets brought to the ER there hung and the girl's ex fiance's family race to see her hyong recognizes the father as plot twist in the last 5 minutes of the movie the same man who helped him Escape all
194:30 - 195:00 those years ago he has a big overacted moment of if the man who saved my life all those years ago is in Chong Rong well then it's okay for his son to marry my daughter a silver hair pin and thaw were made by Chong Rong to be relatable stories for zi Korean living in modern Japan and to make sure those films are relatable to that audience the Japanese setting has to be kind of realistic right I mean they live there they know what it looks like so unlike a lot of North Korean movies Chong rag movies
195:00 - 195:30 don't depict Japan as dark and miserable it's depicted as a bright modern country with bullet trains and parties and lots of food and nobody's farming constantly they're going on romantic motorcycle rides they surf they have fancy giant screen televisions for the time these movies make Japan look downright lovely here's the problem with that some wonderful beautiful [ __ ] in North Korea's propaganda and agitation Department made the decision to also release these Chong wrong films in North
195:30 - 196:00 Korea with very few edits in censorship you can see why that's going to be an issue right imagine being a 20-some year old North Korean in 1985 your whole life you've been told that your country is better than anywhere else in the world that Japan is like South Korea a morose cruel joyless Purgatory for lost Koreans who only wish to return to the motherland sure there's some trouble in North Korea the economy isn't doing that great I guess daily Life's a little
196:00 - 196:30 harder than it used to be food is sparer there are more power outages a lot more actually like a lot but still life for you is better than those poor zichi Koreans oh how that situation breaks your heart and then you go to the theater and see this and this and this what the hell that that City looks great and why do all these zich Koreans have big beautiful houses they have so much food their world is practically electrified in neon cars are everywhere
196:30 - 197:00 any anybody can get a car anybody can get a car or a motorcycle people can go on romantic motorcycle Escapade road trips to play on the beach whenever they want what the hell these two movies which were much better off than zichi Koreans and Japan are instead directly showing them how much worse their lives are how can how can the P be this bad at their job pretty soon they realized what they done and in a fit of textbook damage control
197:00 - 197:30 media quickly release another movie called The Nation I saw this film is literally just about a journalist who travels to North Korea and finds how amazing life is and how the whole world should learn about their utopian society but it's also not nearly enough because in the late 1980s in North Korea news about the quality of life and forms of recreation available outside the country it's all seeping in there's even a very small number of people who are smuggling in some foreign media possession of this
197:30 - 198:00 media was inexpressibly illegal so it's a big risk but even so some people are getting a little taste of what's outside North Korea and they like it see what did I tell you about the importance of getting more than one side of the story which again you can do with ground news Okay that was not a that was not a clean segue I I will admit that but honestly thank you again to today's sponsor ground news my videos tend to be clearly very long form Deep dive content that
198:00 - 198:30 takes a long time to make so I go long stretches of time without any uploads one of the best ways you can support me is by using that link gr. newspaper getting yourself 40% off Advantage plan Link in the description read the news while thinking critically about the news you read that's kind of catchy now back to how absolutely fed Kim Jong and Kim are what's going on with North Korea North Korea is more dependent on foreign aid than it has been in decades agricultural mismanagement continues to cause food
198:30 - 199:00 shortages countries are hearing about North Korea's human rights violations South Korea continues to widen their economic Gap and damn it those saw Olympics they're on their way so Kim Jong Il and Kim oong build a onew punch plan one they do what they could to to undermine the upcoming 1988 sa Olympics then they opened North Korea up to more tourism now anybody could go unless you were from Taiwan Japan South Africa the United States or Israel and one of the things they highly recommend their
199:00 - 199:30 tourist see is their brand new International Film Festival welcome to the pffo T N AA o DC the Pyongyang Film Festival of the non-aligned in other developing countries the only Film Festival whose name is easier to say than its own acronym that's a guarantee pro-socialist and neutral countries from all over the world are welcome to come watch some films and if your movie is deemed ideologically acceptable it can even be shown to a real North Korean
199:30 - 200:00 audience and compete for North Korea's Grand film prize the Golden Torch award between screenings you'll stay at the luxurious fourstar yako International Hotel conveniently isolated only a single mile offshore from Pyongyang come and enjoy a night of bowling where relax in the massage parlor or how about a swim just be sure not to go to the fifth floor instead why not go for a spin on our revolving restaurant at the top that's much better than time at the fifth
200:00 - 200:30 floor personally I recommend taking a look don't go to the fifth floor okay not that there is a fifth floor because there's no fifth floor button on the elevator and if there was a fifth floor it' have a button on the elevator wouldn't it stupid that's why you shouldn't believe rumors of guests who use the Serv stairs to investigate and reported that there surveillance systems keeping eyes on all the guests you silly silly goose now let's resume the action at the film festival and the grand prix winner of the first Golden Torch award goes to oh my cam it's North Korea North
200:30 - 201:00 Korea wins The Golden Torch woo they did it nobody believed they could win North Korean squeaks out a win with 1987's a broad Bellflower a broad bell flower is the tale of an old man who abandoned his home Village decades ago looking for a better life in the city but now he's returned to ask for forgiveness and joined by his son other than a really fun scene where the son wrestles a cow off a bridge a broad belflower story is a bit on the Bland side but its message
201:00 - 201:30 is really worth exploring because it can tell us a lot about the state of North Korea in the late 1980s the movie portrays this old man's choice to depart his home Village all those years ago not as a young man seeking Adventure in the world but as a portrayal of his roots and comrades and the film really hits you over the head with this over and over and over about how wrong he was to leave his hometown how selfish he was for going to the city and how you the audience should also stay where you're from or you'll regret it too so why
201:30 - 202:00 would they go with a message like this at the time North Korea was suffering food shortages worse than what had come before although not as bad as it's going to get soon and they needed people to be farming and keeping agricultural output high so they begin pressuring farmers in the countryside to stay where they were born don't leave for better greener grass stay where you're born and maybe a deeper message here is stay where you're born in North Korea defections are still not a severe issue but the numbers are on the rise and the Kims as always are
202:00 - 202:30 very aware of it but the pongyang film festival isn't the only way North Korea is trying to build some cinematic credibility abroad while making some dough on the side Kim Jong ill also cracks the country's window just a smidge by allowing for more intern Al co-produced films to be made that's big news the last time North Korea was doing co-productions with foreign countries was back in the 60s with that Soviet project brothers and the terrible French film [ __ ] bang both of which were banned from screenings in the country
202:30 - 203:00 although strictly speaking that's not true there were also some films directed by a former Cambodian and pro-socialist King who was living in Exile in North Korea named norodom Sanuk but those aren't really International co-productions they're just basically home movies of a Cambodian King so let's talk about the real International co-productions of the 1980s the first three are joint projects created by North Korea and the Soviet Union in the mid 80s there was some tension between the two countries which
203:00 - 203:30 I know what's new but this time it was due to Soviet leader M gorbachov gorbachov has been engaging in some capitalist economic Market reforms which North Korea decried as abandoning the Socialist cause which yeah that's fair so these co-production films presented a great opportunity for the Soviets to smooth things over with Kim and as such all three movies are written around one single theme the friendship between the Soviets and the dprk their first co-production would be 1985's Eternal
203:30 - 204:00 comrades this movie depicts the life of Yakov Novi Chinko a real Soviet soldier who actually once saved kiml song's life someone threw a grenade at the stage Kim was giving a speech on but Yakov here dived on it covering its explosions with his body to prot protect Kim and the crowd of people around him yakov's story makes a ton of sense as a good starter film it's a reminder of a Time Gone by where Soviets and North Koreans were so close that a Soviet Soldier would give his life to protect himlung after
204:00 - 204:30 Eternal comrades came a more traditional War film from Spring to summer in 1945 three Soviet soldiers and a Kim msung gorilla fighter arrive in Korea on a submarine one of the soldiers is a girl named Mara who bonds with the Korean gorilla fighter over her interest in Korean culture Marca and the team are sent on a mission to investigate Japanese biological weapons being transferred to a secret base but things go south really quick and only Mara survives later re the son of the gorilla soldier from the submarine that had died
204:30 - 205:00 saves Marsha's life and ooh that's painful on the elbows that's Rock that's Rock that's going to scrape those elbows that's going to hurt R and Mara Bond and while their relationship was almost certainly intended as two friends fighting the threat of Imperial Japan the is filmed in a way where it's very hard not to see their relationship as a little romantic luckily everyone manages to avoid this uncomfortable topic when Mara blows herself up to destroy a base leading to the final Moss films joint project shore of
205:00 - 205:30 redemption in the story set in 1905 a group of Russian Navy soldiers and a priest get marooned on a Korean Coastal area after a fight with Imperial Japanese battleships at the time Russia and Japan were in a war which was a whole thing then some Japanese Bandits who are looking to plunder an ancient Korean burial ground you know cuz they're evil or whatever kill some local villagers but the villagers think that the maroon Russians did it you with me so far okay so while all of that is
205:30 - 206:00 happening there's also a forbidden romance between a Korean girl in Exile and a guy she loves and they both do Taekwondo everything gets wrapped up in the end with the Russians and the Korean villagers team up and it's a big fighting spectacle yay Russian Korean friendship roll credits ultimately it's hard to say whether these films succeeded in their goals of fostering better relations between North Korea and the Soviet Union but at least we know the films did get screened in both countries and can still sometimes be seen on North Korean television so they
206:00 - 206:30 didn't get banned what wasn't aired in North Korea was tinan Ultimate Mission I told you we'd get to this okay so this is director for dardo Baldi he was a big name in Italian Cinema working with Orson Wells Ben gazara even The Beatles well some of the Beatles well one of the Beatles well it was Ringo Star all right it was Ringo that's still a big deal he was very good at organizing and producing International co-productions
206:30 - 207:00 he worked on collaborations with countries all over the world so when North Korean filmmakers contacted him in 1987 to make a movie he was excited fand baldi's a straightup capitalist but here he is in North Korea making a movie giving us tenzan the the ultimate mission in the near future a mad scientist named Professor Larson is running genetic experiments on kidnapped girls and it's up to two rude dudes with tudes Lou and Lou and Ricky to stop him and his
207:00 - 207:30 plan to rule the world and this movie's in English think for as long as it takes to have a long pee and then decide the super soldier Duo managed to stop the bad guys with guts uncomfortably low paced car chases and as many explosions as humanly possible in a lowbudget 84-minute action film there's sexy betrayal with guns helicopter escapes with guns train fights with guns and
207:30 - 208:00 shockingly tranquil peaceful Shrine prayer scenes with guns there's even a woman who gives us the only crossbow kill in North Korean cinematic history so was tinan Ultimate Mission a good movie no did the story make any sense no was it visually striking did it do anything new did it have any artistic value is there anything at all interesting about the movie other than the fact that it was filmed in North Korea no but the important question for Baldi in North
208:00 - 208:30 Korea was did it make a bunch of money and no it didn't it was a giant Money Pit North Korea and baldi's Company couldn't agree on negotiation rights so it didn't get released in many places it never had a shot at release in North Korea and the film film probably finished off the career of half the people in it while doing nothing for North Korea standing in the film world and as all of this is happening we're getting closer and closer to South Korea's 1988 Olympics don't forget Kim UNG and Kim Jong ill know that a
208:30 - 209:00 successful Olympics by South Korea could show the entire world how modernized and successful that country had become especially in comparison to North Korea this was an existential threat North Korea demands that the international Olympic Committee May make the 1988 Olympics a co-hosted event held equally between the two koreas North Korea pulls the mafia Don Godfather move of I don't know you got some real nice Olympics here it'd be a real shame if things took
209:00 - 209:30 a violent turn capiche that's a real quote by the way you can ignore my crappy Mafia impression North Korea literally threatened the ioc with violence if the ioc didn't give into their demands which is exactly what the ioc does doesn't do wait I mean they don't give into the demands because they don't decide where to host the Olympics based on who threatens them the most I think Kim jungil was just improvising as he went hoping to keep that co-hosting window open while also praying that South Korea could get hit by another
209:30 - 210:00 wave of political instability and in the games bad news on that because in 1987 an outpouring of pro-democratic activism dismantles the South Korean military dictatorship government and instead of falling into chaos this time it leads to a highly stable democratic government the one that's still in power today these are all really positive changes happening right in time for the Olympics and the Kims handle this about as well as you'd imagine they blow up a plane on
210:00 - 210:30 November 29th 1987 an explosive hidden on Korean airflight 858 is set off taking the lives of the 115 people on board the two North Korean agents who had planted the bomb were soon found one didn't survive but the other was restrained and her name was as you probably remember Kim Hanan Hui after leaving the North Korean child acting World Kim haui went to college at the pongyang University of Foreign Studies she was then later recruited to the
210:30 - 211:00 North Korean intelligence agency and assigned to the Korean airflight attack to according to her obstruct the upcoming South Korean presidential election and the Olympics as directly ordered by the two Kims and if you're curious where all the footage I'm using came from it's taken from the 1990 dramatized movie of the attack titled mumi virgin terrorist can you think of a director who would be gung-ho and insane enough to make a boundary pushing rules breaking dramatized version of an attack
211:00 - 211:30 from 2 years prior and name it maumi virgin terrorist of course it's sheen sangok sheen had gotten permission from the victim's families to make this film probably hoping it'd get him back in the good graces of South Koreans through an anti-north Korean movie might have worked but for God Only Knows Why Sheen filmed the plane explosion scene Remember full of South Koreans as violently gorily and graphically as he could there's these scenes where people are falling out of the plane and they're
211:30 - 212:00 like skin is being ripped off people are burning alive a dude's eye pops out for no reason uh and while all of that's happening there are these hard cuts to actual footage of the victim's real families mourning the deaths of their loved ones Jesus Christ Sheen did you did you think you were going to get into South Korea's good graces by showing 115 South Koreans getting viciously and gratuitously torn apart in a bombing from 2 and a half years ago this is this is cruel as for the actual attack Kim Jong ill denies North Korea had any
212:00 - 212:30 involvement in demands that due to these unfounded and baseless accusations come on man it was two North Korean spies come on the Soviet Union and China should join them in boycotting the Olympics as it's finally time for the South Korean 1998 olymp Olympics they begin as all good Olympics do with a tiger owned water skis and it gets better from there with a series of traditional Korean dances that could give the North Korean mass games a run for their money but the real show starts when each of the participating countries
212:30 - 213:00 enters the Olympic Stadium first up was the USA h a little little plain uh India okay I'm into it um Bahamas Bahamas getting maybe the best reaction of the entire ceremony after that is the Netherlands with umbrellas sure I guess it rains in the Netherlands uh Liberia not too bad not too bad the soon to disappear country of Yugoslavia boy that is the that that is
213:00 - 213:30 the Walk of a group of people who know their country is not going to be here for the next Olympics uh a bunch of other countries and then China and the Soviet Union who decide that showing up at the Olympics was more important than listening to Kim lung's stupid wine good for them each group then circles the center stage as the most 80s song you've ever heard plays it's really a stark memorable event unexplainable animal suits and all it's a major touching moment in Olympic history
213:30 - 214:00 that's a little undercut when the Olympic Fire is lit and a flock of doves gets cooked alive in front of two billion television viewers they don't they don't allow doves at the Olympics anymore but ignoring that one snafu the 1988 Olympics in Saul were one of the most successful Olympics ever not the sports stuff who who cares about that no the event was successful because it had the world take notice of South Korea's rapid economic modernization immediately
214:00 - 214:30 after countries began pursuing South Korean trade deals business Partnerships financial investments cultural exchange even socialist countries like the Soviet Union and China started granting them diplomatic recognition the 1988 Olympics were instrumental in taking South Korea's image from that war country from the 50s to a real player on the global stage it was also everything the Kims feared would happen but don't worry North Korea is about to get their own shot at International recognition by hosting the 1989 World Festival of Youth
214:30 - 215:00 and students and it went really well thousands of visitors from over 160 countries come to North Korea in the week-long event kicking off in pyongyang's new May Stadium one of the largest stadium in the world the event was full of breathtaking International sporting performances thrilling dances cultural Partnerships circus shows unpleasant handholding boat races paintings condemnations of the Americans who established a fascist system to
215:00 - 215:30 impede the Revolutionary thrust of the people and cruy respond to the broad masses of the workers also calligraphy that's pretty North Korea even got 426 Studios to animate an entire 10-minute cartoon to play celebrating friendship peace and Independence they really they really gave up at the end there didn't they most of the cartoon follows an it's a small worldes team of kids flying around pongyang to witness the city's great urbanization halfway through an American allegory appears but the kids use their
215:30 - 216:00 Dove beams to Peck the evil imperialist eagle to death go peaceful doves kill kill remember remember your well-cooked brothers and the World Festival of Youth and sports wasn't just for foreign visitors North Korean citiz cens are given previously unheard of levels of freedom to come and interact with everything and everyone visiting after a week of international camaraderie and performances the World Festival of Youth and sports concludes and is judged a well-organized fun experience by both
216:00 - 216:30 foreign governments and the North Korean populace and it was pretty much all for absolutely nothing first spending $5 billion on a week-long event to encourage Goodwill with socialist allies doesn't really do much when your socialist allly are Vanishing several months after the festival many of North Korea's allies and other socialist states begin to fall Hungary Bulgaria Mongolia Albania Czechoslovakia Romania the Berlin Wall it's all coming down and
216:30 - 217:00 maybe even more terrifying the Soviet Union which has its own mix of problems cuts off North Korea from discounted trade and its loans wholesale second the World Festival had been the last in a decade of things allowing wider foreign culture into North Korea's media sang Ox Works Chong rong's films co-productions with the Soviets and of course a lot of interaction between average citizens and foreign visitors during that World Festival Kim Jong ill held the event to ignite interest in North Korea from the world without realizing it would also
217:00 - 217:30 ignite interest in the world from North Koreans possession of smuggled foreign media becomes much more common so to recap North Korea is going broke they're more isolated socialism seems to be dying and there are cracks in the leadership's ability to control information and the narrative things things look a little Bleak although you wouldn't know it from their entertainment at the [Music] time in the early 1990s North Korean
217:30 - 218:00 media is about putting a smile on everything wayang Jon and the pambo Electronica Ensemble are still together and they're putting out some of their most cheerful joyful upbeat work yet like the days of the week song [Music] oh yeah that's the optimistic musical Band-Aid this gun start wound of a country needs and whoa and who doesn't love a song that stops every 20 seconds to scream a day of the week especially since the song has nothing to do with the days of the week it's actually a
218:00 - 218:30 countdown song in the week of February to Kim Jong 's birthday and that's interesting isn't it uh qu uh until now Kim Jong-il had mainly been producing entertainment that glorified his father to take his father cult of personality and turn it into a cult of near Divinity but kiml song isn't going to live forever and the two Kims know that in order to one day assure a peaceful transition of power to Kim Jong Il he's officially anointed the successor of Kim UNG given more power over the military
218:30 - 219:00 and starts Sue and starts making significantly more appearances showing up in more military parades in those on the spot guidance stories and frequently being the subject of new musical releases Mo that was a short one but Kim Jong ill is now fusing his status with his father's toe fusing his status with his fathers and elevating his own name the one and only Kim Jung ill and I'm not speaking figuratively
219:00 - 219:30 about elevating his name one of the peaks near Mount piku is literally renamed to Jung IL Peak I can think of no higher honor than being the name of a mountain peak paper that's p number three I I'm now ejecting the pun drum Kip no please I I have a joke coming up later about this fabric North Korea made called vinalon which is made out of limestone it's a fabric literally made out of rocks and then they made a song about the rock Fabric and I was going to say that the song rocks and oh God damn it no with North Korea's music Kim Jung's
219:30 - 220:00 also giving himself some of his dad's more mystical properties like in the song The General uh that's one of Kim jong-il's names the General Uses warp warp is a translation of the word yeah I'm not even going to try and pronounce that so it's a mystical ability to move at superhuman speeds or outright teleport I'm inclined to think it was originally a magic power but over time has been redcon into a metaphor especially in recent years where North Korea has outright denied that the Kims were ever capable of it I've also seen
220:00 - 220:30 some people suggest this power has only ever been claimed by the Kims but that's not true hu kyong yyong a South Korean politician and maybe cult leader also claims he can use it he also claims that he can levitate that he has an IQ of 430 impressive and that by looking at him in the eyes you can become more attractive he even has a song about it okay first off that's definitely the Inspector Gadget song and secondly why
220:30 - 221:00 the hell am I making a video about North Korea I need to make a video about this guy I can't tell if he's serious with all this stuff or if he's a joke or if he's like a a cartoon character that somehow crawled his way into our world but I'm here for it let's get back to the uh wow less bizarre topic of North Korean music which wasn't all tunes about Kim Jong ill there are even some love songs now and I don't mean those old 50s and 60s North Korean love songs where Kim msung wanted romance to be about banging a North Korean flag or
221:00 - 221:30 something these are real actual factual love songs like the 1992 hit [Music] whistle on the surface whistle is about a guy who is in love with a girl every night he goes to her balcony and whistles at her hoping for her attention she usually ignores him and the flowers he tries to throw up to her balcony but he's got weeny weeny armies so she just laughs she just laughs at him go to the gym go go go to the gym it's flowers you
221:30 - 222:00 can't throw flowers to me but since the guy won't take no for an answer he stalks her at her job hey hey it's me you know me the guy I'm the guy I'm the guy who who stands outside your window every night embarrassing himself but again she ignores him the next night he does manage to Kimel flung the flowers to her second story balcony but he starts he starts gesturing her it legitimately looks like he's telling her to jump jump jump down I could go take
222:00 - 222:30 this stairs no just jump it's fine whistle is an odd song but compared to the lack of romance from older music it's something I guess it's subjectively a song about a guy in love with a girl but just because it's dropped the whole love for the country is the best kind of romance propaganda that doesn't mean it's propaganda free the girl in whistle and other love songs like it have to fit into a certain mold they have to be chased rejecting any advances from guys while the men in the songs on the other hand have to pursue the girl like a like
222:30 - 223:00 a trophy no matter how many times she tells you to get lost women women love that right girls in these songs also have to be diligent hidden hero workers at whatever job they do while avoiding any individual praise once again as clinical and sterile as this romance might look it is still an actual romance so why did North Korea start allowing that in their music it was likely a bunch of factors changing sensibilities that were bleeding over from romance films Kim Jong 's interest in new forms of music but I'd venture to say the
223:00 - 223:30 biggest reason for this change was just necessity despite North Korea's increasingly strict laws about possession of foreign media Contraband music is continuing to get into the country and North Korea's music creators for the first time had real competition now K-pop and for the small but growing number of North Koreans listening to it it's mind-blowing it's unlike anything they've ever heard there are so many North Korean defectors who have said that exposure to this music like exposure to shing sangok films had pulled them towards questioning elements
223:30 - 224:00 of their entire Society I mean like nobody's hopping the fence cuz they heard a song they like but these are the seeds of doubt that are getting planted facing this infiltrating musical Menace North Korea's leadership had two options they could either lean hard into romanceless love music that nobody liked or relax their own rules just a bit hoping it would keep people's attention while still drilling the idea that North Korea is the best country the the best country in the world also love is okay I guess like in the song My Country is the
224:00 - 224:30 best with lyrics about a woman who's traveled all over the world somehow and she's seen other flowers she's tasted other water she's listened to other music and she's here to tell you n you don't you don't need to go to those other countries North Korea is the best seriously ser seriously don't leave seriously even animation starts changing up their game a bit to keep young people loyal and in North Korea 426 Studios makes an animated North Korean original sequel to the famous turtle and the rabbit Fable but in this cartoon it's
224:30 - 225:00 their descendants competing and instead of a foot race turtle and rabbit are seeing who can first take enough water from the nearby Pond and use it to fill up their fish statue Turtle plays the game nice and slow mindfully carrying one large bucket back and forth forth from the pond but rabbit speeds around with his two small buckets despite the fact that rabbit spends most of his time mocking the other team and slacking off and doing little doing little Victory poses a it still seems like he's going to win the turtle team gets really upset
225:00 - 225:30 questioning why they're losing even though their guy is doing things the right way some of them are even thinking about defecting I mean leaving the team yet in the end we see that the turtle was actually winning the entire time his clever water carrying techniques allowed him to outplay a faster opponent even when it looked like he was losing the not so subtle message here being kids while it might seem like our side is losing don't worry it only seems that way when all said and done it'll be clear that we were always ahead most of
225:30 - 226:00 North Korea's cartoons in the early 90s are just like this of coming out on top in the end and using brains over Brawn or speed animations like a radish asked for by a goldfish or the great miraculous Peach the Jade stone the Fountain of wisdom boy Hunter uh who's a boy who is a hunter it's not a it's not it's not like a boy Hunter it's a boy never mind so a kid and his bare friend are trying to stop this big evil white tiger right and there's this really really gruesome knockdown drag out fight
226:00 - 226:30 the whole brawl is vicious the boy and the bear somehow manage to kill the tiger and the Music Stops and for a few seconds there's a somber moment of reflection the noble Beast is dead and while we had to kill him we respect the fight he gave for he was an honorable opponent and then the kid just jumps on the Tiger's corpse and starts cheering the the comedic timing of this
226:30 - 227:00 is so good that I don't think it was intentional as per usual North Korea's animators are still releasing works with more classical themes like want to tie ancient goril to North Korea to demonstrate its legitimacy make more episodes of young general or their beautifully animated princess hadong movie hoping to remind kids of how dangerous foreign powers are poisonous Fox will fit that bill what I'm trying to demonstrate here is that it's not that certain stories are the only kinds of stories being told it's that there's an EB and flow in what state sponsored
227:00 - 227:30 media wants emphasized and at this point in time it wants to emphasize outplaying bigger opponents but they're still making everything else and that e and flow of certain ideas getting more emphasis applies to all of their media especially film from 1990 to 1993 North Korean movies continue touching on all the genres we've seen before but there's a flow of more movies focusing inward on the country that's a huge change from the 80s back then there was so much International focus with foreign filming
227:30 - 228:00 locations and signs of Friendship with the world but now there is a tangible noticeable pullback from all of those ideas instead we go back to film topics like North Korean industrialization North Korean farming North Korean daily life domestically aimed films that are only there to remind the audience why they should be so grateful to Kim UNG and his family for their entire way of living and the few remaining films that do dabble with International elements are always written to condemn those elements not support them case in point
228:00 - 228:30 a new film franchise nation and Destiny nation and Destiny was planned as this epic 100p part film series to show North Koreans why life outside the country is terrible and inside the country is just the best for example parts one to Parts 4 depicts the experience of Chay daen a South Korean soldier who had been involved in some of the most brutal suppression of socialism in South Korea back under Sigman re over these movies he begins to wonder if he's been lied to about which Korea is the actual better Korea even getting interrogated for
228:30 - 229:00 having those thoughts when he finally gets the gets the gets the they're torturing him with ABBA music it's rock me that's that's Rock Me from ABBA I don't even care anymore why is it always Abba maybe it is always Abba maybe I've gone my entire life thinking there were multiple bands and singers but all music is actually Abba that's the only thing that could explain why North Korea uses ABA music for all of its goddamn foreign soundtracks they just they just realize
229:00 - 229:30 it's all Abba it's all ABBA all the way down and not just music we're all we're all made of ABBA it's in our jeans it's all F Other Nation and Destiny stories follow Korean composers martial artists political prisoners but the lesson is always the same here life in North Korea is good life out of North Korea is bad our culture good foreign culture bad good bad good bad got it good a different film series but with a similar idea is the girls of my hometown the film starts with an astonishingly
229:30 - 230:00 freethinking conversation between three girls debating the nature of morality but pretty soon it falls into bashing materialism and capitalism from the West before a title drop and the movie actually starts this movie shows two sisters unha and unyong living in a rural Town unha wants to be a good pure-hearted contributor to society while unyong likes tight dresses foreign music and western dancing unha is set to marry a boy named s but he's tragically blinded during a construction accident unang pressures unha to drop the
230:00 - 230:30 engagement because she thinks that marrying a blind person would be the worst thing in the world and and that's what unha does she just ghosts the guy doesn't go to see him doesn't call just drops off the planet look I'm not saying you have to marry the guy but at least like tell him you're not getting married but unang is not done she also convinces her sister they should move out of this dumpy Village and go live in the city you've probably noticed this but pongyang is always portrayed as this shining City on a Hill for North Korea its cultural and economic centerpiece
230:30 - 231:00 constantly growing and morphing into a modern Metropolis but in girls of my home Village wanting to go there or one of the other smaller cities in the country is portrayed as selfish that's a theme that might sound familiar but hold on let's wrap the movie up S falls in love with another more loyal girl and the two get happily married unha comes to realize the error of her ways and chews out her sister for all those corrupting foreign ideas about how girls should be okay so girls of my home Village deals with a lot of themes the
231:00 - 231:30 main being the dangerous sway that foreign Concepts have on everyone even the pure and righteous unha got corrupted but this film is more than its condemnation of foreign contaminants it also goes a long long way to make life on a farm and villages look terrific where you can come meet pretty girls find happiness and be satisfied if only you'd go live in the countryside which is a really great segue to our next theme go live in the countryside this is a very close theme to what we heard back in the 80s with a
231:30 - 232:00 broad Bell Flower right a broad Bell flower's message was you should stay where you're born whether that means a home Village or maybe your home country but now the message is a little different it's if you're born in a farm or Village sure stay there don't leave but if you're from a city don't don't stay there get get out get out of the city see the countryside marry a farm girl or a farm guy it really get your fingers in some dirt and contribute to farming Because by the early '90s North Korean food shortages are getting severe
232:00 - 232:30 it's not a famine not yet but it's bad the North Korean government starts a mass mobilization campaign to send people from the city out to farms and remote areas to join in agriculture they even make movies about about it like Urban girl comes to get married this romantic comedy follows the chance meeting of a fashion designer in pangong and a duck farmer visiting the big city and if you don't know what a duck farmer is neither do I but one of his Ducks gets loose and tramples the fashion
232:30 - 233:00 designer's workups she angrily knocks the duck off a bridge and the duck farmer Dives in after it the next day the fashion designer and her co-workers head to the countryside as part of one of those Mass mobilized farming teams and surprise it's the same Farm the duck farmer lives in over the film The Two develop feelings for one another and this romantic comedy doesn't shy away from showing some very light Intimacy in one scene the pair are caught in a rainstorm forced to dash up and hide in a little tree fort they hold hands and touch their foreheads that's like that's
233:00 - 233:30 like third base in North Korea in the big climax the fashion designer ultimately decides to stay in the countryside and marry the duck farmer I really like this movie it's got some sort of charm to it but even I have to admit some of the film's dialogue feels less like conversations and more like declarative statements shaming anybody in the audience who doesn't want to move to the countryside and walk torso deep in duck poop 12 hours a day another thing you're guaranteed to see in early '90s films are more stretched uncomfortable Smiles than in any point
233:30 - 234:00 so far maybe you already noticed but so many scenes from girls of my home Village and urban girl comes to get married and in films I haven't even talked about like Joy or family bright with songs people are constantly smiling no matter how difficult or horrible their conditions are in life that's not new in North Korean films but it feels more forced than ever whether they're working in a 100 degree Factory or being forced to go farm or whatever everyone is so goddamn fake happy North Korean
234:00 - 234:30 movies and really all their media is shoveling this idea to the audience that the world over it's still envious of the north it's still envious of how everyone lives maybe South Korea's got money but North Korea's got happiness if if you were a North Korean watching or listening to all this in 1993 you must have thought that everything was going to be just fine and that's the moment that North Korea
234:30 - 235:00 implodes for all of Kong's bloviating of being a self-reliant du State North Korea's economy had been on life support for years held together by the duct tape that was Soviet and Chinese financial aid Kim UNG had every opportunity to use that money to build a competitive economic state yet he wasted it on heavy industry an absurdly bloated military inep farming directives superflous
235:00 - 235:30 microphones giant statues and asinine movies to promote himself the entire economy was incredibly fragile and it was his fault in 1991 the Soviet Union which had once been one of the two great superpowers on the planet the front leader of the worldwide socialist cause the mighty red Empire collapses the causes of the Soviet Union's tumble are a whole thing yeah yeah it's a long one okay there we go but with the Soviets going
235:30 - 236:00 one of North Korea's two main sources of trade and security just pops out of existence that's bad but at least North Korea still got China except with the Soviets no longer baiting for influence in North Korea China severely Cuts its own Aid in trade deals to the country and now that North Korea is truly self-reliant for the first time it just shatters they can't afford to import oil so they can't Power Machinery they can't power factories they can't make fertilizer and so they can't make food
236:00 - 236:30 they can't do anything there are some floods that make things even worse but things were already pretty bad before that Farms State Services hospitals factories construction work everything shuts down and people begin to starve to death this is known as the North Korean arduous March or the march of suffering a period of economic ruin societal breakdown and a famine that will last for years we don't know how many lives are lost during this time but it's over
236:30 - 237:00 a million originally my plan here was to read you some accounts from survivors who lived through the martch of suffering I figured it would give an important human perspective on things then I started recording that and remembered how distressing those stories can be and maybe whoever you are when you sat down and clicked on this video you weren't signing up to hear stories like that so instead I'm putting a link in the description to some of those stories I highly highly recommend you choose to read them but fair warning they are heartbreaking but as the march
237:00 - 237:30 of suffering begins in this moment of tragedy the country looks for salvation from the only man who could provide it Kim ILS the supreme leader the great protector the hero that had saved North Korea so many times before the man nay the kind of God who had expertly maneuvered outmatched and outwit every enemy and problem he had ever faced all in Humble service of his people yes the country looks up up to the only man who
237:30 - 238:00 could steer this ship through the dark torrential storm of famine and suffering Kim ilung always onward to Victory always forward to Prosperity always to a bright future for Korea this Korea the only Korea and Kim msung steps to the plate and dies he dies from a heart attack right as the famine starts leaving the entire country to spin for itself what a [ __ ] [ __ ] there's a national 10day morning period which
238:00 - 238:30 looks like this if you're wondering about whether or not these reactions are real who knows some defectors describe it as competitive crying the performance of being seen being sad but most accounts I've read say that a lot of this it's very real even for people who didn't believe in the Kim Cult of Personality stuff and remember there were and are a lot of people like that they'd still been bombarded with this message that Kim UNG was the foundation of North Korea structurally integral to the
238:30 - 239:00 system when he dies and society around them is literally coming apart it really must have felt like the world was ending so in this uncertain time and on the precipice of Destruction I guess somebody decided it was time to wrestle Collision in Korea hello everybody and welcome to Collision in Korea this this look at me look at me this happened this is a thing that happened in North Korea during a famine Collision in Korea was a very
239:00 - 239:30 real pay-per-view wrestling event broadcast straight out of Pyongyang okay so does Collision in Korea represent some change in North Korea's entertainment values not really no the real change in entertainment was coming from Kim Jong-il technically he won't actually take over until 1997 but basically he's running the show as soon as his dad dies and Once In Charge starts scaling up his own Cult of Personality doing it the only way he knows how
239:30 - 240:00 movies oh my God Kim Kim he looks like he looks like a pervert whose main fetish is getting his mug shot taken he looks like he looks like he took this picture at a photo studio for dogs this is the this is the guy who's going to save North Korea why are his lips purple even after the government publicly acknowledges that the famine is
240:00 - 240:30 happening early film references to the march of suffering are pretty minimal instead you'll see farming movies and comedies where everybody's got full plates of food and and everyone's happier than ever learning the lessons of Kim Jung ill overall it seems that Kim Jong ill and the pad were consciously sidest stepping the topic of the march of suffering whenever possible one way they did that was by releasing more films set in the past usually Kim msung films the P being terrible at their jobs also releases new parts of nation and Destiny you know the film
240:30 - 241:00 series all about how life is so much better in North Korea yeah they're releasing films about how great life is in North Korea during a famine God uh early on they also try some of those classic Young hero in feudal Korea overthrowing an evil leader stories but uh those have a problem too don't they somebody notices that maybe a dictatorship showing an audience full of hungry people movies about a dictator getting killed by hungry people is not a Direction they want to go good call good
241:00 - 241:30 call good call good call uh speaking of the dictator what's Kim jongil actually doing to solve the Mars of suffering well he makes an official request for humanitarian relief in 1995 which is met with a substantial outpouring of food resources from the International Community including some of North Korea's most hated enemies out of the 15 million tons of food provided over half comes from the United States South Korea and Japan Japan would also pull some of its own Aid because while all of this is
241:30 - 242:00 happening North Korea begins firing some long range multi-stage missiles over Japan huh wonder what those are being tested for but despite all of that and the fact that the economy was in a freef fall Kim Jill continues to spend his country's money on new music about himself because in 1995 Kim Jung is about to introduce a fundamental military shift in North Korea's ideology a modification to juj called songun songun which is not to be confused with
242:00 - 242:30 songbun that class system we talked about earlier no songun translates as military first policy it elevates the North Korean military to the highest strata of importance in the country it's the Supreme priority Kim Jong ill knew that in periods of turmoil like say a famine a military coup might overthrow him but with this songood military first approach Kim was able to turn that around and build a Consolidated power base in the military the government takes what remaining resources food and
242:30 - 243:00 goods there were and redistributes them to the military leadership why would they want to overthrow Kim now they're living better than ever which is actually a pretty clever idea if your only goal is to stay in power you got to hand it to the Kim they are survivors but to rationalize this military first idea to the masses Kim and the pad have to start painting the military as not just critical for defense but also as the organization that will save the people from the march of suffering they'll farm for us they'll labor for us
243:00 - 243:30 they'll rebuild the country for us as part of this campaign military parades are expanded more Marchers more special effects more airtime on television more of everything after watching like 30 of these military parades I found that if you want to enjoy one don't look at whatever Kim happens to be leader at the time don't don't look directly at the Kim the Kim is going to be clapping or waving with his big Beer Gut hanging off the ledge no instead look at everything happening around the Kim like their
243:30 - 244:00 amazingly efficient system of getting flowers to and then away from the Kim there's another much later youth military parade where the next leader keeps trying to make the kids next to him sit down but they won't okay kids okay sit down Papa Kim is uh Papa Kim is tired see see I'm sitting so it's it's it's okay for you to sit down sit sit how how about you sit I'm the supreme leader I'm I'm the supreme leader of this goddamn country and I can't get these little two bastards to sit down
244:00 - 244:30 I'm not going to keep saying it sit down although it's not always funny stuff in the background of these parades um here's a clip of a young girl who was there to hand over flowers to a different top official not to Kim jung-il but then she sort of rushes up to talk to him right before somebody stops her and the camera Cuts away and when the camera Cuts back a few seconds later she's gone did she want to shake his hand did she want to say something to him there's something about this clip there's something about her face something's going on there and it it's
244:30 - 245:00 very unsettling right H well um let's get moving on back to films though um with songun now the official policy of the country we start seeing a massive surge in more military films now obviously the military has always been very important to North Korean Cinema we've seen that the entire video today but songon takes it to a new level these movies take old military film ideas of patriotism melodramatic camaraderie self-sacrifice and crank them all to s00
245:00 - 245:30 especially self-sacrifice it's really it's really not a sunun film unless a North Korean soldier gets blown up for the nation all followed by a ridiculous speech about how great Kim Jong-il is how about the soldier who just died why yes Kim Jong-il is amazing great comment I was going to recap a few of these movies give you a nice summary a basic understanding of what you see but the bottom line is sangun military first films are I think the worst films the country ever makes they're even worse than the DMZ conflict films remember
245:30 - 246:00 those even more boring a group of soldiers work together to protect or rebuild the country one or all of them die someone gives a speech about Kimo the end great you've now you've now effectively watched watched like 50 songun films Cong congratulations multiple films this is not a joke multiple songun films have seen where people find Kim Jong 's tire marks his car's tire marks and these characters break down and cry over them this sucks
246:00 - 246:30 this sucks also to take a step back from the content of these films their very existence is frustrating surely Kim Jung ill should be taking the money that went into this film about how great he is and instead using it to feed people right also aren't you guys broke how did you afford this pyrot Technics Battlefield scenes Naval battles it's not like these movies are making any money abroad since most of them are only domestic releases North Korea will try to get some cash by redistributing some of their older Works abroad through a shell company called
246:30 - 247:00 macron video but I don't think they're bringing in the big bucks here really the only North Korean medium that's turning a profit in the 1990s is 426 Animation Studios and if you want to know why it's because they're about to get a Little Help from cartoon Jesus in the late 1980s a few American and European companies begin Outsourcing their work to North Korea's 426 Animation Studios you know how cartoon Outsourcing works right animation is very expensive so some companies send their cartoons to be partially or fully
247:00 - 247:30 animated in other countries where the cost of Labor is cheaper and 426 Animation Studios was cheaper and as the march of suffering grows North Korea's government is desperate to expand on this flow of income so they re structure most of their domestic animation teams into Outsourcing teams they'll rename themselves s Studios or the scientific education films of Korea and since the 9s SDK Studios has worked on the animation of quite a few high-profile projects The Simpsons Movie Futurama
247:30 - 248:00 avatar the Last aab Bender a French cartoon called Le Petit Wang France you're the best and much more but sk's most lucrative partnership by far is the Italian media Studio Mondo TV together SK and mondo TV make hundreds of episodes of cartoons and films many of which wa wait hold on let's say many of which are heavily inspired from popular Disney franchises Cinderella Snow White Robin Hood Jungle
248:00 - 248:30 Book pah hontas Hercules Hunchback of notredam Simba the King Lion not a lion king but a king lion look I know Disney didn't invent most of those stories we all know that but Mondo TV knows what they're doing here they're taking a bite out of the mouse although as far as Simba the King Lion one goes uh hold on let's say that Disney's The Lion King may or may not have been inspired by a Japanese anime at the time called Kimba the White Lion this may very well be a huge coincidence like Disney claims but
248:30 - 249:00 either way Mond TV no harm no foul on Simba the King Lion but they're still very clearly following certain Trends and relying on S Studios to do it not that North Korea gives too jues about plagiarism these projects are bringing in cash at a time where they need cash so if Mondo TV wants them to animate a Sleeping Beauty cartoon with what looks suspiciously like Disney's Robin Hood characters and a bunch of Christ is that is that a is that a bipedal dragon with a horn and chicken feet who birthed this
249:00 - 249:30 but if Mondo TV wants that that's what s will do and they don't care what the subject matter is so when Mondo TV breaks into the Christian animated media industry skk is there for the ride but after a couple of false starts they eventually nail a strong and accurate depiction of Jesus Christ bringing us one of their most popular series ever Jesus a kingdom Without Frontiers I'm not going to poke fun at this series because one I just made a nail joke about Jesus and I'm hoping you didn't notice and two I watch the entire 26
249:30 - 250:00 episode series looking to pick out strange animation hiccups or dumb directing choices to laugh at and I couldn't find any Jesus a kingdom Without Frontiers is a remarkably competent religious animation I'm not personally Christian anymore but I always respect good work and this show was good work in fact while some authors I've read have suggested there's a dip in quality of SD Studios work during the march of suffering I don't know what the hell they're talking about I think it looks better than ever especially
250:00 - 250:30 considering it's being done by people without enough food to eat because by 1996 or 1997 virtually nobody is unaffected by this famine City or Countryside short of of course the absolute top leadership and a lot of North Korean people not the government the people are sick of it there's this really unfortunate perception some people have that all North Koreans are completely brainwashed by Propaganda that they're all slogan spewing robots that happily follow whatever rules the government sets but everything about the
250:30 - 251:00 march of suffering shows that's not the case when the food programs break down North Koreans don't blindly put their trust in the system they don't lay down and die no North Koreans do what they do to save themselves there are so many stories of North Korean Ingenuity and resourcefulness of working outside the system government be damned people Farm Small hidden private plots of land people ration people people are eating books remember how I said in the 1980s
251:00 - 251:30 North Korea was printing millions of comic books on rice paper and and most of those books are now gone that's because these very clever people found ways to rehydrate the paper remove the ink and eat those books these are people that have figured out how to eat books to survive they're amazing they fished they scavenged they hunted they adapted and wheny scavenged resources are brought back into communities hundreds of unregulated free marketplaces form all over the country where people can barter trade and sell what they find
251:30 - 252:00 these marketplaces become a Lifeline to people hit by famine and while they didn't stop the starvation they did help alleviate it but Scavenging for food or using these marketplaces was incredibly dangerous because they were both against the law and carried risks of jail time or public executions luckily the government's ability to exert social control was extremely weakened during the march of suffering and the regime understood these markets were often the only reason a lot of people were still alive but a number of North Koreans took
252:00 - 252:30 an even larger gamble sneaking out of the country the DMZ may be too dangerous and well guarded to pass through but in the 1990s the border with China was not particularly well protected so some nor Koreans sneak into China where higher quality food and supplies were more easily obtainable and then smuggled those supplies back into North Korea and they're all bringing in other stuff with them in addition to food and resources some Smugglers are carrying in things they can barter with like magazines
252:30 - 253:00 books Electronics VHS televisions and more they're seeing in large numbers what life looks like outside the country unfiltered but not everyone is crossing the border to sneak resources back into North Korea a lot of people are crossing the border just to leave tens of thousands of people or more are Crossing into the border with China and never coming back the term North Korean Defector is a little thorny because it suggests that all of these people are escaping over political differences with the country but during the march of
253:00 - 253:30 suffering most are motivated purely out of hunger and Desperation except even once defectors make it to South Korea life is hard defectors from the north arrive and find that South Korean schools are hyper competitive itive finding work is hard you're probably worried about the people you left behind and you can never ever go back but I guess they're alive and during the march of suffering that's a lot more than I can say about many people back in North Korea where the pad and leadership are struggling to handle the March Smugglers
253:30 - 254:00 and markets are completely ignored in North Korean entertainment total radio silence and defectors well the pad does breach that topic sometimes but they're never shown as desperate victims of circum an they never even show hungry people of course they're not going to show sympathetic defectors instead defectors are always spies traitors or victims of South Korean kidnappings like in the film Two Soldiers a pair of North Korean guards are captured by South Korea and they have to go through their
254:00 - 254:30 own personal labors of Hercules trials not to be corrupted by the evil Southerners they fight back against Temptations of money food South Korean music pretty girls and dirty magazines dude all you had to do was give it back you don't have to rip it you don't have to rip it in half and in the truest songun era fashion imaginable the pad has the soldiers drown out these trials
254:30 - 255:00 not by thinking of their families or friends or lovers no they do it by having them remember their military comrades and drowning everything out with very very loud marching music and it's very very funny but as we've established the pad is terrible at their jobs they are the worst so while Two Soldiers was meant to discourage defections it's basically a movie screen sized billboard depicting how great life is in South Korea being shown to a country of starving people
255:00 - 255:30 what are they thinking that that nobody would want to be offered rest as much food as they can eat boxes full of money gorgeous women they just made the world's best pro defection movie and I think they know they're bad at their jobs too because after this movie they stopped trying to put a spin on defections in films entirely they just dro the subject instead they promote more films and media just telling people yeah life is hard you know damn damn those Americans in the floods when Korea was on an Aros March because of the US
255:30 - 256:00 imperialist Maneuvers and because of the natural calamities yeah it's totally America's fault that a country literally unable to become self-sustaining has spent all of its money trying to be self-sustaining and I'm sure Kim Jung would bring up sanctions or something but modern sanctions on North Korea began in the 2000s a decade after this famine begins and there's a very reasonable argument to be had about whether or not those sanctions are ultimately harmful to the people of the country but they are not the reason for the March of suffering and also America sending your country millions of tons of
256:00 - 256:30 food during all of this what are you talking about anyway I think I had a point before this oh right so they're promoting films and media telling people life is hard Americans are bad and we've got to smile through the pain and everything will be okay but it's going to take a lot of work and nobody is exempt from that except for Kim like let's look at myself in the distant future so myself in the distant future is filmed in 1997 the worst year of the march of suffering it follows sinjun the
256:30 - 257:00 son of an important party member who in his youth struggled to protect the country but sinjun he doesn't want to go out and work hard and do great things he just wants to play Game Boy and listen to music living off the reputation and Great accomplishments of his father yeah there's nothing worse than somebody who lives off the Deeds of his father right Kim Kim Kim I think I already did this bit earlier but it's still really hypocritical One Day sjun falls in love with a girl who is going off to volunteer on a farm sjun chases after
257:00 - 257:30 her getting a big greeting from the village okay guys please stop please stop please help help me help I'm getting Kim Jung ill over here all throughout the movie we see Tiny references to the march of suffering like when a tractor runs out of oil and everyone is forced to go out with sickles so we're seeing hardship but it's the sanitized version of hardship no matter what happens everyone is happy to be farming for the country and they've got so much food if we look past those elements though as a film this is not a bad movie actually sjon undergos
257:30 - 258:00 personal growth to better himself and has a complex romantic relationship the girl doesn't immediately fall in love with him when he's like hey I saw you in the rain one time want to live with me and she's like no that's crazy and also you're a bad citizen but myself in the distant Future's background messaging is what interests me there's a lot of potatoes in this movie like if this was a capitalist film you would think that that big potato had spin a fortune on potato product placements considering
258:00 - 258:30 how often they appear that was actually the result of North Korea's let's grow more potatoes campaign made to encourage people to eat less rice and grow more potatoes one part of that program was to put potatoes in everything TV dramas cooking shows movies songs like the now famous potato Pride song yeah that's enough thanks or a few animations based entirely around showing how potatoes are just the best although there's um I don't I don't know how I feel about watching sentient potatoes
258:30 - 259:00 happily throwing themselves into a harvesting machine everybody loves us we're so popular let's keep this party rock oh my God there's a big let's expand goat breeding campaign so for a while you can see mountain goats just everywhere in North Korean entertainment even the ones that have absolutely nothing to do with farming like their comedies I guess I should say yeah they're making comedies during the march of suffering as a matter of fact as odd as it sounds some of the funniest
259:00 - 259:30 comedies out of North Korea come from this period Kim Jong ill was spending a fair chunk of change on new comedy shows comedy troops humorous circus performances TV comedies and more to boost public morale and keep people distracted so the quality of Comedy kind of swings upward H in point a family basketball team which is the funniest godamn movie North Korea ever makes okay
259:30 - 260:00 so there's this grandfather who converts his entire family into a basketball team and anybody who wants to marry into the family also has to play basketball and one of his sons brings home a girl to Mary and gasp she doesn't play basketball so the grandfather freaks out and prohibits the whole marriage y you can't play basketball you can't play basketball get the out of my family it's a it's a cult it's a fcking cult eventually the grandpa lets her into the family after she wrecks his old ass in a soccer game which is treated as this as
260:00 - 260:30 this happy moment but it's not because now sa Al's horrible life in this basketball religious movement begins also the grandpa has he has he has so he has so many children that's so many kids and grandchildren there are so many that when they play basketball games he makes them all wear name tags identifying what member of his family they are I love this they're all they're all they're in jumpsuits with name tags it's a [ __ ]
260:30 - 261:00 basketball cult and the movie is full of these really strange but kind of funny scenes like during a game where solog accidentally pulls a dude's pants off ah she pantsed him look she pantsed him freaking Classic this and this poor guy he has his basketballs revealed in front of the entire cult so his wife tries to make him feel better but she's so like ripped and fit that she can't help but emasculate him ripping a chicken into pieces with her bare hands and then making him stuck an egg I kept waiting
261:00 - 261:30 for somebody to ask the Grandpa about like food hey uh Grandpa we're really worried about feeding everybody here there's a lot of children and kids I'm sorry maybe I took the basketball thing too far how about this I got a nice orange for you grandpa is it is it another basketball I'm not going to lie to you champ it's a basketball it's so stupid Oh and if the idea of sending your own children to a collapsing North Korea undergoing severe famines in order to learn about sports sounds good to you
261:30 - 262:00 you can do that at song toan International summer children's camp campers can swim go boating enjoy trips to segregated beaches learn traditional Korean dances perform one of their country's cult performances enjoy a ride down a water slide she's coming in pretty hot there isn't she um uh kids can also play soccer do the North Korean hokey pokei see a show or just enjoy a quick game of basketball basketball basketball oh God Ivan he's climbed into reality he's here
262:00 - 262:30 help help basketball basketball basketball launching emergency evacuation we're getting closer to the end of the march of suffering but before that there's one last media development we need to look at North Korean 9s television KCTV begins airing some fullon televised dramas like this tinp part spy soap opera called even if the stars are far away the story generally follows this guy from his high school
262:30 - 263:00 years where Korea was ruled by Japan to the Korean War to the DMZ conflict to the Modern Age and this middle-aged lead actor deserves some sort of terrible admiration for portraying his character at every age there's so many there's so many scenes where he's a student in love with what is clearly a girl 40 years younger than him and it just feels weird the whole time hey there girl you want to come watch me play skateboard or you know maybe check out the fidget Spinners
263:00 - 263:30 and H sorry acid reflex you know YOLO Tide Pods Vine your kids your kids still like Vine right I don't I don't know what those are I I I don't okay later girl take it sleazy I'm going to marry that boy there's a bunch of other '90s dramas I watched oh oh there's this there's this really depressing show called love and hate which is said in the modern day but it has an ending flashback to the Korean War where and let me let me get my censorship bars ready here okay good to go a girl is
263:30 - 264:00 forced to play the violin for some US soldiers as they Gunn down her entire family including her and and she's got she's got blood all over and covered it up cover cover it cover it all up godamn North Korea but it's not only dramatic stuff during the march of suffering there's more of everything there's more news more competitions on TV and some official music videos for old Wang Jon and pambo songs some of the music videos
264:00 - 264:30 are just clear propaganda of pretending food is plentiful and everyone's happy and everyone's leaving the city to go work in the Farms cuz they want to um obligatory goat appearances and some sharp looking 90 3D graphics with Windows 98 screen savers I'm a little surprised at how physical the romance in these music videos can be shots of men and women in bathing suits grabbing each other and playing around back hugs side hugs front hugs what whatever the hell this is there's one scene where a dude is transparently trying to sneak a peek
264:30 - 265:00 of some girl's changing and succeeds and they notice him doing it and it's all like like a big joke like oh oh boys will be boys little pervert and more and more North Koreans are becoming familiar with a TV announcer named R chanhe you've probably seen her before right she might very well be the most famous non-im North Korean in world history notable for her ability to talk with every human emotion possible all at the same
265:00 - 265:30 time and the news she's giving to people in the 9s is becoming more positive because the march of suffering it's about to end due to a combination of international Aid new trade deals with China and they just being less mouths to feed the strains on the food supply are reduced enough for society to function factories are slowly opened up coal mines are restaff and the leadership officially declares the march of suffering over heavily promoting a return to normaly as they continue
265:30 - 266:00 upholding self-reliance while still receiving International Aid mind you so we get more du rhetoric songun policies human rights violations information control and and abuses of power however if there's anything even resembling a thin Silver Lining here it's that after the 1990s famine North Korea is a very different place the North Korean leadership never ever to this day fully regained the amount of social control it used to have over its citizens it still
266:00 - 266:30 has a lot of social control but not nearly as much as before the state class system is weaker generational punishments are less common the leadership even gives in to tolerating free marketplaces opening government-backed markets in stores things aren't good but things are better than before there's a light at the end of the march of suffering and this time it's not coming from Kims it's coming from South
266:30 - 267:00 [Music] Korea in 1998 South Korea elects a new president who wants to fundamentally change how South and North Korea engage with one another he argues in support of more peaceful open dialogue with North Korea and forging a constructive relationship with Kim Jong-il this was known as the sunshine policy and in the early 2000s Kim Jong ill accepts the offer which leads to a more positive period for North and South Korean relations the two countries hold
267:00 - 267:30 reunification events letting families divided all the way back in the 1940s meet again they enact joint economic deals there's more investment and dialogue even tourism between the two countries at least only South Koreans were allowed to go to North Korea and only in certain areas but hey baby steps there are even new forms of Pop Culture exchange a South Korean Entertainment Group iconics approaches SK Studios about collaborating to make an animated kid show together Pororo the little
267:30 - 268:00 penguin initially the group had requested that s do the series with handdrawn animation which they were pretty good at but SD came back with a different suggestion why not do CGI animation this was a big surprise because nobody thought North Korea had CGI animation but they did for example the North Korean cartoon second round it used a combination of stop motion and CGI work and although the although the transition between the two can be a little rough South Korea was still really impressed with the portfolio so
268:00 - 268:30 pororo's CGI cartoon was born soon after that another joint animated project was launched called impress Chung a fully animated featurelength film that was made by and released in both koreas Empress Chong was directed by Nelson Sheen who had an extensive history of Animation experience including the original lightsaber animations in the first Star Wars films under Nelson's guidance these South Korean creators would do the pre and post- production work while the North Korean artist did
268:30 - 269:00 the coloring music scoring and Main animation in 2004 Empress Chong is finished and was a huge huge flop just a just a giant flop 6 million do loss utter embarrassment yeah people did not care about this movie and neither did anybody in charge of the film reels because somehow Empress Chung is completely lost media nobody has a copy it's it's just gone all this footage I'm using I'm just looping an old movie trailer fortunately the sunshine policy
269:00 - 269:30 was having a big impact on all of Korea's entertainment not just animation in the South there's an explosion of media showing North Koreans in a much more sympathetic light for example double agent a love story about North Korean spies in the South or spy a love story about a North Korean Who falls in love with a South Korean girl or shiy a love story about okay hold on wait wait uh-huh uhhuh okay okay yeah it's pretty much all love stories it's a whole North South starcross Lovers thing but that's
269:30 - 270:00 cool okay but how about the reverse how's North Korean entertainment going to depict Southerners well not romantically that's for sure but they do take a softer approach when writing those characters and giving them more nuanced motivations South Korean characters in North Korean films especially on set during the Korean War are no longer greedy traitors no they're just highly misguided doing the wrong thing but thinking it's right believing that submitting to these bigger foreign powers like the United States will save
270:00 - 270:30 the country from even worse treatment North Korean films set before the division are doing this too in stories where the antagonists are also Koreans they're usually only villains because they've been coerced by Japanese Pirates or something just like we see in the movie The Blood Stain map set back in ancient Korea there's a governor who originally shows up to fight some Japanese soldiers but instead gets threatened into working for them in movies up to this point the governor wouldn't have been forced to betray his country he would have done it out of greed the governor does still get his
270:30 - 271:00 comeuppance at the end you you you got to have comeuppance but there's a slight tinge of sympathy the movie pushes of course the actual big Enemy at the end Japanese monk sure why not this movie also has some of the best North Korean fight scenes I've ever seen maybe even better than the fight scenes there's this one scene where the main character is like hunting and he sees a bear that he's chasing and it's and it's so clearly a dude in a bear suit this time it's actually a dude in a bear suit but most of all I think North Korean films liked concentrating on
271:00 - 271:30 unified experiences shared by all Koreans like 2000's Soul protest this movie is a dramatization of the real life sinking of a Japanese Naval transport ship as we talked about in the Chong Rong section Koreans living in Japan after World War II had been offered the chance to return to their Homeland via boat tragically one of those boats would suffer an explosion soon after its departure taking the lives of thousands of Korean returnees on board Japan maintains that the ship hit an American Naval mine but some in
271:30 - 272:00 Korea still believe that Japan intentionally destroyed the boat to stop Koreans on board from telling others about their hardships or mistreatments in Japan I have no idea if that's true but that's the story Soul's protest follows and credit to North Korea it's an impressive movie it's huge in scope it's got North korean's first use of CGI in movies big explosions over 10,000 extras to make the scenes look realistic and at a time where North Korea is trying to appeal to South Korean audiences it's a smart choice in subject matter downplaying differences in
272:00 - 272:30 Koreans while getting a couple of swings in on Japan but why Kim jungel chose the topic of a sinking boat may have had less to do with Fanning anti-japanese sentiment in South Korea and more about capitalizing on another big film success Titanic I say capitalizing but maybe a better description would be unapologetically plagiarizing here let's put them side by side shot of an elderly person remembering their time on a sunken boat check I'm on top of the world scene check although that one
272:30 - 273:00 might not be fair it's a boat there aren't that many places that don't have a railing and water but conflict arising from class differences check it off folksy dance scene check aoon tragic goodbye from love interest on icy water Checkers soundtrack that sounds suspiciously like Selen Dion's My Heart Will Go On the song from [Music] Titanic oh yeah that's a check the damn movie was directly marketed as North Korean Titanic in film festivals that's the thing they put on the box the only
273:00 - 273:30 real difference between Soul's protest and James Cameron's Titanic is that James Cameron's Titanic actually made money Soul's protest on the other hand crashed and burned at the box office in South Korea and it probably didn't help that actual survivors of the boat criticized the movie for its worship of kiml which come on that's never going to go well in South Korea either it doesn't matter how close the countries get there are people alive in 2000 who remember Kim ms's forces blowing their country apart they don't want to hear about how amazing he is but let me show you my
273:30 - 274:00 favorite thing from the sunshine policy era their musical performance exchanges as part of building up more cultural connections singers bands and genuine K-pop Idols would travel from South Korea up to pongyang to strut their stuff in front of a live North Korean audience than start strong nice big unified Korea in the background the South Korean artists are all on stage singing pambo reunification song glad to meet you all great all wonderful and things get even better from here with a
274:00 - 274:30 kickass performance by South Korean singer lison [Music] he I do think they kind of hurt the performance by sticking a bus load's worth of cheerleaders behind her for no discernable reason but still I think Lee did a solid job and it all comes crashing down when they bring out the K-pop Idols I don't think it's an exaggeration to say this is the sexiest performance that has ever been given in pangy Yang and maybe North Korea just
274:30 - 275:00 wasn't ready for it but don't judge the North Korean audience too harshly on this these people could be losing their minds internally thinking this is the best music they've ever heard but they can't react like like that you don't want to be the guy who's like yeah oh my God South Korean music is so good in a society where ownership of South Korean music is still a crime they're not really free to express things if they're enjoying them so the South Korean performance in North Korea could have been better although Le and he you're amazing never changed but how about the
275:00 - 275:30 North Koreans who then perform in South Korea who do they send pambo wangj son a military band I mean it's not like oh it's talented North Korean children remember how in the 1970s and 80s Kim Jong-il had been giving more funding to specialized performance schools those programs had slowed somewhat during the march of suffering like everything else did but by the 2000s they're back and more uncannily impressive than ever I mean there's the stuff you'd expect the
275:30 - 276:00 most awkward looking uncomfortable three-year-olds you'll ever see choruses sung in Flawless Harmony all with top-notch Showmanship and painted on Smiles but around the 2000s North Korean kid shows get kind of awesome you want astronaut roller skating sparkly realness you got it giant creepy heads that blink yeah they're there track and field music numbers a liveaction dance version of a hedgehog defeat to tiger with with a with a busted ass tiger that's a busted ass tiger um orphan
276:00 - 276:30 talent shows yeah I hadn't forgotten about those those existed and they're always followed by speeches about how they're not really orphans because they're the kids of Kim Jong ill h I mean for God's sake they're doing they're doing hoverboard magic tricks pretty recently North Korean kids performances are something else oh and these shows always transition between segments with a giant onstage treadmill which is technically very impressive but so slow it takes it takes forever that's
276:30 - 277:00 that's a really long slide that's a really that's a hey hey hey guys that's a really long slide it's still going and they can't like they can't turn around they can't look away they just have to look like statues it's that's the weirdest thing right and when it comes to the kids that are performing in South Korea they're going to get the best of the best of the best a group of about 30 North Korean children travel to South Korea and it's a major event South Koreans really trying to make this Sunshine policy thing work spare no expense in showing the kids you're
277:00 - 277:30 welcome here lining the streets with students cheering for them elaborate Banquets hoping for Hope and peace old politicians kissing the children in a way that I bet isn't as weird weird as it looks and even more there are some really annoying reporters who were specifically told not to harass the North Korean kids with a bunch of questions but they do it anyway some clearly using hidden cameras to do it I don't know what reporter was doing this but uh you're a huge [ __ ] like really you're a giant giant [ __ ] this really
277:30 - 278:00 pisses me off you were told not to harass the kids kids who are nervous who are probably worried about being in a country that they've been told kidnaps people who don't need random dudes coming up and asking them about politics credit to this kid though for instantly recognizing what was happening and being like uh nice try idiot I know what a camera is and this kid isn't just media Savvy he's one of the two most talented human beings on the planet let me introduce you to R jinok and Kim hangsun
278:00 - 278:30 two huge music [Music] nerds see see right there that's not fake that's not the artificial smile you see glued on most of these kids that is two music dorks on stage and loving [Music] it look at him go look at him go and then out of nowhere re goes ahead and throws a boomerang over the audience and catches it and as if as if to challenge the god of hubris to a boomerang pissing
278:30 - 279:00 contest he throws it again he throws it again and this time Kim catches it they're amazing and they're not even done after this the two kids go in the back and kick the other drummers out and then start drumming along how does anybody follow up on this act trick question they don't these kids follow up on themselves with a dramatic an emotional duet about reunification look at that look at that you cannot teach that you can't these kids got Star Quality baby Star Quality they eat Spotlight and poop Applause and
279:00 - 279:30 as they're singing this reunification song to a crowd of South Koreans many old enough to remember the hurt and pain of Korea's division some start standing up and hugging the kids shaking their hands it's a heart melting scene and look I'm not naive events like this aren't spontaneous showings of unified people coming together it's for photo ops and PR for the sunshine policy it's very tightly curated and controlled but even then I think there's a lot of Beauty in these moments [Music]
279:30 - 280:00 North Korea also attracts a lot more foreign tourism now even Americans were allowed to visit as long as you could get a visa and weren't a journalist you could go obviously visitors can't just travel anywhere in the country your entire trip must be organized through a third party tour company you've always got to be accompanied by a guide and you'll never ever ever see something the
280:00 - 280:30 regime doesn't want you to see but during the sunshine policy years this was one way to slowly open North Korea up to international relations and the other thing you definitely don't want to do is miss an opportunity to see the new mass games these aren't your hyper traditionalist Grandpa's mass games these are the aiong mass games with over a 100,000 participants performing gymnastics Musical shows flying symbolism kids on unicycles giant pigs
280:30 - 281:00 giving birth 4500 colorfully dressed children doing perfectly synced cartwheels into splits fireworks more goats trampolining River dances martial arts if it's a physical activity any human has ever done you can see it here uh and if you're thinking how did they make those giant TV screens in the background with text images and background sets look closer closer closer yep it's kids the system is really clever too each kid has a book full of about 170 colored cards all they
281:00 - 281:30 have to do is know when to flip to the next page and voila and with such an amazing spectacle you almost forget to ask the big question why is Kim Jong ill spending so much money on flashy gymnastics when the country is coming off the heels of economic collapse and famine it's certainly not just for the show remember North Korea doesn't do entertainment for the sake of entertainment so there has to be some Logic for all this Glitz and Glam can somebody tell this guy where to park his car who who looked at this gorgeous
281:30 - 282:00 beautiful performance and was like you know what this needs a goart driving around like like like my grandfather in a parking lot so what's the reason for all this some people will tell you it's for tourist money but that's more of a side benefit the majority of viewers are still North Koreans no there's a much more important goal of the renovated Mass Games reasserting Social Authority like we covered North Korea lost a lot of social control from the march of suffering so huge displays of uniformity
282:00 - 282:30 and loyalty to the Kim regime might help get a bit of that back which you're going to need for the younger generation born in or after the March of suffering although I do I feel like a stick in the mud with all these criticisms the irang mass games are a hell of a show and these performers both the kids and the adults deserve every round of applause they get there's a fantastic documentary called a state of mind which follows the nearly year-long training regime of two kids in these mass games the documentary was made by Coro tours a company
282:30 - 283:00 specializing in tourism to North Korea and it very very wisely takes a more neutral tone with all the dprk history and politics focusing more on the experiences of the two girls which makes it one of the most humanizing bits of media about North Koreans out there and reminds you how much sweat and tears every single one of these thousands of performers are throwing into their practice no matter what the leadership's goals are with these games I have to respect that while the kids and families
283:00 - 283:30 in the documentary are definitely curating their behavior it's still full of all these wonderful candid moments that remind you that North Koreans are people and while foreign influence is is still being discouraged in North Korea even the way it's discouraged comes across as cushioned in the 2003 film our fragrance we see pyong ho a man from a very traditional household they eat Korean food they eat sitting on Korean mats they drink Korean alcohol and they watch Korean Sports even the dude's job is traditional he works in kimchi
283:30 - 284:00 production and he's hoping to marry this girl chel a tour guide for foreigners visiting North Korea well North Koreans pretending to be foreigners visiting North Korea I really hate this guy this this notice me kimai dude who ends up taking like four plastic bags full of kimchi and he's going to eat them all on the plane cuz he loves them so much you know not that I care what happens to you but you can't eat four bags of kimchi on a plane your butt's going to explode anyway Pongo takes his very traditional grandfather to come meet ch's family but
284:00 - 284:30 the two of them are shocked to find ch's family greets them with a handshake they eat strange foreign food they drink champagne they wear modern clothes they like inter AAL pop music these bis goblins sit on sofas for God's sakes they're animals like 5 minutes into meeting ch's family the Grandpa's so sick of this house that he he fakes he fakes a heart attack to get out of the house this is the big one Pongo this is it I'm dying I'm dying pong get me the
284:30 - 285:00 hell out of here these people are freaks okay but I told you our fragrance was supposed to show how foreign influences are discouraged more softly in North Korea right so far the whole movie's been about condemning the encroaching evils of other cultures how is any of this softer well here's the twist the traditional Grandpa the Soju drinking kimchi loving heart attack faking Grandpa used to live and work outside of North Korea and he loved it he loved his time abroad the reason he's unhappy about this family's behavior is that
285:00 - 285:30 he's worried that Korean culture might get forgotten or lost or destroyed like he was almost destroyed under Imperial Japan which was not that long ago for him son Shiner media like this is implying that other cultures are valuable it's different but it's valuable again this is all you know baby steps long story short pyong Hong and table are finally able to get married while somewhere out there in the sky there's a dude on a plane who just ate four bags of kimchi in one sitting and
285:30 - 286:00 now his butt looks like a North Korean fireworks show gross hey let's talk about cartoons so we already discussed those International co-produced animations like pero and Empress Chong but how are things in sk's domestic work the last time we checked in on that was during the march of suffering back in the 1990s and while it looked pretty good only a few years later their animation for domestic audiences starts looking amazing really look at this stuff is this radically different from animation quality in the West in the
286:00 - 286:30 early 2000s where did this North Korean stuff even come from It's actually an unexpected benefit to their outsourced animation when a foreign company pays s to animate something SDK Studio artists aren't just send a box of storyboards and told to get to work no those foreign Studios also have to send a few of their own top artists to help guide the project so North Korea has a rotating staff of Highly specialized animators coming to their cartoon studio and essentially training their artist for free this leads to a very quick jump in
286:30 - 287:00 the overall quality of North Korea's domestic work there's also a big Improvement to cartoon subject matter it's becoming almost singularly focused on educational content on Social Development and on teaching kids to follow safety rules yeah you'll still occasionally spot historical Works based around fighting off Japanese Bandits folk tales about the dangers of greed animal allegories and farming stories about who cares but they're less common instead we see animations like let's follow the traffic regulation series
287:00 - 287:30 American metaphors long speeches dead Twitchy leg dogs screw that stuff this show has one message and that message is hey kids don't get smeared on the highway huh whoever wrote this show was trying to traumatize kids into never even coming within 30 ft of a car in every single episode there's at least one scene where a kid gets turned into a human Gogurt of course it always turns out that the kid is actually fine and just almost got killed but the way the scene plays out you legitimately think they're dead at first it's a bit like
287:30 - 288:00 clever raccoon dog though because pretty soon the animators obviously ran out of traffic laws to lecture kids on so they have to start getting creative between you and me I think the show really really jumped the shark once they got to hey don't practice your juggling on Snowy curb barriers or you might slip off and get hit by a bus is is that really a a problem North Korea is there a juggling based what am I trying to say is there like a juggling based snow related epidemic of kids getting hit by buses or are you just out of ideas this
288:00 - 288:30 sort of real life practical educational content goes Way Beyond traffic though there's cartoons on brushing your teeth not overfeeding animals how medicine is good for you the way electricity works yeah there's the accordion scene got to have that uh cartoons can now be about anything it's hard to say if this move away from violent allegories was a direct result of the sunshine policy but it seems really likely and one change that was definitely a result of the sunshine policy was more North Korean films being screened abroad like the
288:30 - 289:00 wonderful film Diary of a school girl the movie shows the life of a teenage girl named Kim sud Yun who lives with her sister and mother in a rundown house in the country Country Side while their father Spends months away from the family working on some unnamed research project for the country suun grows to despise her father for ignoring the family's needs even when the mom gets like deathly ill the movie is full of stale routine propaganda and songs about the great Kim jung-il and how amazing he is and the ending predictably sides with
289:00 - 289:30 the father for his dedication to the country but under all that hot old garbage there's an incredible movie here seizuring to get out all the daily life dialogue between the family members is organic and natural and often really funny and the film sometimes gets downright clever with how it delivers propaganda like suun doesn't say oh man foreign music is great I I sure do love ABA no instead it uses visual cues to show her negative feelings about patriotism there's a flashback where she's running around with a Mickey Mouse
289:30 - 290:00 backpack an American character and Sudan's not this one-dimensional cardboard cutout of a human she's complex she's confused about things she both misses and hates her father for not giving the family attention and I think that miong Pak the main actress of the film gives one of the best performances I've ever seen from North Korea sadly there have been some unverified rumors that miang Pak was imprisoned and passed away several years after this film premiered which I really hope isn't true and it might not be true because stories
290:00 - 290:30 of North Korean celebrity deaths are often greatly exaggerated which very neatly brings us to the infamous story of the musician hyang s wall by the mid 2000s the two Electronica bands pambo and Wang jenon were losing a lot of their popularity that's partly due to foreign music coming into the country and mostly due to people getting sick of the same two bands for 20 years but despite the band's slipping popularity one pambo member manages to stay in the public eye Hong song wall Hong here continues releasing successful solo
290:30 - 291:00 music like her 2005 industrial slapper excellent horike [Music] lady cuz every girl loves being compared to a horse but a few years later some South Korean newspapers report that hyong had been publicly executed by machine guns for the crime of producing um video content of ill repute this shocked a lot of people around the world but nobody was quite as shocked to hear about this as hyong was she was still
291:00 - 291:30 very much alive showing up on television to prove it soon after oops it's always good to check multiple sources for a news story to make sure you're not getting duped if only there was a place where you could do that and be grounded in your news your your grounded ground ground News ground. newspaper I'm sorry that that was pretty smooth right okay back to the sunshine policy stuff zooming out for a second all through the early 2000s it's surreal to see how optimistic the world is with North Korea at the time things weren't
291:30 - 292:00 perfect the north still had economic problems a fragile food system most of the same human rights violations as before but there were also all these little threads being connected the people in the dprk to the outside world for Global relations with North Korea the future looked bright really bright that's really bright that is so bright what the hell is
292:00 - 292:30 so hey remember this little gym from the 1960s Kim msung tells America hey you can't put nukes in South Korea you you promise not to do that and America's like uh what are you going to do about it spend Decades of your country's budget get a bunch of foreign loans uh smuggle in imported weapons technology and develop your own nukes yep that's exactly what they did it took them nearly 50 years and cost them who knows how much money resources and ultimately relationships with most
292:30 - 293:00 of the world but in 2006 North Korea successfully test their first nuclear bomb combined with the missile test they've been doing since the90s this terrifies the rest of the International Community and for good reason there's now a nuclear armed unstable dictatorship constantly on the edge of societal collapse that's actively telling its citizens to be prepared to go back to war at any moment and has a notable history of committing acts of terrorism purely out of spite there will be some attempts to persuade North Korea
293:00 - 293:30 into disarming often with Aid or resources but it never really sticks South Korea would ultimately re-evaluate their entire approach to the north ending the sunshine policy in 2008 so the world drops the carrot and moves on to the stick asset freezes trade restrictions and severe economic sanctions are put on North Korea with the goal of restricting or cutting off Revenue that funds their nuclear program those North Korean sanctions are a hotly debated issue though some think it's necessary to curb a dangerous country from continuing its weapons program
293:30 - 294:00 others think the sanctions have failed and ultimately only hurt North korean's food and medical instability I'm not really qualified to weigh in on any of this but I can tell you that with these sanctions there were immediate changes to North Korea's media North Korean films mostly go back to portraying South Koreans as cowardly and traitors cultural exchanges like with baby Vox and leisan he are done s Studio's Outsourcing almost entirely evaporates and international media trade deals hit the Rocks all the progress from the sunshine years Ends by 2009 and North
294:00 - 294:30 Korea returns to being as isolated as ever this takes us into an odd period of North Korean entertainment when Kim Jung ill is just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks hoping to replace pambo and Wang Json Kim tries to reboot the North Korean music scene with two new bands the unasa orchestra and the samjan band neither of which are Electronica bands thank God and unlike pambo and Wang Jon who seem to be getting a little desperate to stay popular what are you guys even doing
294:30 - 295:00 anymore these two new groups would serve very different purposes the sjon band is labeled as an early response to South korean's K-pop boom they aren't exactly Idols but you can see some similarities here on the other end of the spectrum the unasa orchestra is presented as a more refined cultivated sophisticated High art presence in their media a sign of prosperity and financial success real or fake but neither unhasu or Sam Deion achieved the level of success as
295:00 - 295:30 previous groups so this attempt at a musical reboot didn't really work out they try starting a cruise line with that same boat Chong Rong used to use but it's terrible and soon ended audience rates in movie theaters are also really low for a few reasons one is that average North Koreans are watching more foreign movies smuggled in on DVDs and USB sticks still very illegal but a lot of people are doing it another reason is all the North Korean movies are kind of cheap looking like there's a film called bomb disposal officer about soldiers who go around removing old
295:30 - 296:00 bombs from the Korean War but the movie has um let's see one two three oh no I'm sorry zero explosions not a not a single explosion in a movie about bombs instead all we get are sound effects and smoke machines the film studio also makes a fighter jet movie called wild flower girl but the plane scenes are all again stock footage and embarrassingly bad CGI it's gotten worse these movie budgetary problems are likely brought about by the economic sanctions on the country so that's not entirely North Korea's fault
296:00 - 296:30 but the quality of the writing absolutely is by 2011 it feels like North Korea's film industry is just dying and so is Kim Jong in December of 2011 Kim Jong ill passes away according to North Korea's news agency he suffered a fatal heart attack brought on from years of stress of working to improve the country with revolutionary Zeal giving essential guidance to the people and not taking enough care of himself as he took care of his millions of children I'm going to
296:30 - 297:00 toss an additional idea into the mix there and suggest maybe his death had more to do with being an overweight 70-year-old chain smoking cognant addict but either way he's dead so how do we judge Jud Kim Jong ill as a figure in North Korean history well a degree of credit has to be given to him for his impact on North Korean entertainment mainly the better funding and education for directors who cares the dude was still a monster he oversaw an objectively evil regime with torture kidnappings and public executions he cut off resources from the people who needed
297:00 - 297:30 it most and then imprisoned the people who were starving when they scavenged for food because of the policies of him and his father this dude the only small upside to him living until 201 was that he was around to see his biggest rival South Korea take the entertainment World by storm he died of failure in every sense of the word all of his lifelong attempts at International Acclaim relevancy and awards failed that said the guy could take a great picture still it was time to choose a new leader based
297:30 - 298:00 on their experience their skills their it's you know it's Kim jong-il's Son Kim Jong-un North Korea is basically a ju monarchy at this point so who is Kim J un and where was he this whole time well he was born in North Korea in 1982 or 1983 or 1984 there's some debate but he went to school at an international academy in Europe getting a fully westernized education Kim jongon was just a regular kid he got average grades he liked action movies he hung out with
298:00 - 298:30 friends and he played basketball after the March of suffering Kim Jong-un returns to North Korea as a young adult showing up in North Korean news events and propaganda Kim Jang yel dies and Kim Jong-un is quickly declared the new leader in some ways life in North Korea under Kim Jong-un continues much the same way as before JJ sunun nuke Ambitions anti-foreign diarrhea however although a lot of the previous evils of the government remain in place Kim Jong-un is generally considered a less
298:30 - 299:00 cartoonishly evil leader than his father or his grandfather it's you know it's a low bar admittedly but he's better Kim Jong-un also introduces some economic reforms that encouraged developing nuclear weapons and the economy equally not just nuclear weapons which has led to a slightly more robust consumer-based economy and more urban recreation centers water parks theme parks and shows there's also a m Cafe that serves hamburgers which you would think would be the strangest thing in this video and
299:00 - 299:30 I really I don't even care but how about that Zoo huh you like fish they got fish turtles so many turtles alligators snakes Birds Bears elephants even the more exotic animals like cats and so much more there's even According to some reviews from Trip Advisor there's a smoking chimpanzee I uh thought that was like a joke or something but no there's a smoking chimpanzee you throw cigarettes in and he smokes them but don't worry everyone officials at the Zoo have clarified that it's totally fine because
299:30 - 300:00 the chimp doesn't inhale how do you know that how are you checking that also the fact that it's a it's a it's a chimpanzee with cigarettes in his mouth that itself is not great because I'm pretty sure he's eating them that that can't that can't be good for a chimpanzee animal treatment isn't radically better over in the circus because yeah they're still doing Bear shows there's something wrong with Humanity where we see the Majestic bear in its natural forest habitat and we're like yeah that's cool but can it dance
300:00 - 300:30 but the circus has more acceptable stuff too there's flying acrobats more juggling there's that AK-47 pull dancer you know I'd laugh but this is like it's legitimately imp impress if he can do this but how about some of their magic shows back in the 1970s Kim jongil had tried to organize his own School of magic specifically for North Korea called ju magic what does that what does that mean what does ju magic mean Kim jongil you're going to make a sandwich disappear what but in the 2000s North Korea finally gets a nationwide magician
300:30 - 301:00 Society while some of the tricks can be somewhat dated like the divided woman trick does anybody in the world not know how this trick is done the those legs look like they're made out of cardboard but you know it doesn't really matter if a magic trick is boring when the performer on stage is engaging and light and I got to admit North Korean magicians are kind of engaging in light we all know what this dude is doing but it's kind of fun so who cares this guy's doing CD ROM magic you ever see CD raw magic I haven't and the audience loves these shows but to be clear despite
301:00 - 301:30 these recreational improvements and minor economic reforms when I say Kim Jong-un is a better leader than his dad I am in no way suggesting he's a good leader or a kind leader there are still forced labor camps you can be sent to for speaking out against the government or owning foreign media Defector Escape stories remain heartbreaking the government spends a lot of time talking about ending their enemies in nuclear fire and their food system to this day remains dangerously fragile but generally the quality of life for the
301:30 - 302:00 average North Korean is better than it was under previous leaders and so is their entertainment Kim Jong-un puts his sister Kim yo Jong in charge of the propaganda and AD ation department and together the two of them do a respectable job of taking the country's media keeping what's good fixing what's broken and dumping what's terrible for instance they mercifully stick a knife in North Korea's film industry which has been on its deathbed for years under Kim Jong-un and Kim yo Jong North Korea has only produced about seven new films in
302:00 - 302:30 the last decade which is crazy considering North Korea used to put out seven films a year but they do make two new international co-productions the North Korean Chinese co-production was meet in pongyang the movie is about a Beijing dancer trying to learn a traditional Korean dance in Pyongyang the film is very slow and meditative taking a lot of time and care to build the relationship shared by the dancer and the North Korean she meets a neat parallel to North Korea and China's own efforts to resume friendly relations while China had cut a lot of its Aid in
302:30 - 303:00 the 1990s they've since returned to being a major trade partner for North Korea although never quite as closely as it used to be on the absolute flip side of that movie is Coro tour's co-production comrade Kim goes flying it's a North Korean girl power comedy about a coal miner who wants to join the circus and be a trapeze artist but she has a fear of heights and it has these phenomenal beautiful socialist realism animated Transitions and the main character is infectiously charming and doesn't take crap from nobody but these
303:00 - 303:30 kinds of films are rare and I think Kim yo Jong is done using films to hit ideological messaging instead putting increased focus on big showy performances and celebrations and the oh my God look at him go U dozens of shows have been added during her tenure as the pad leader celebrating holidays and new years's and National anniversaries love her or hate her and I love her nobody can deny these shows are something else and these shows are no longer just seen by the pongyang elite they're also being
303:30 - 304:00 televised Nationwide because in the 2010s most families in North Korea have televisions which unlike films are still considered a viable path for North Korean propaganda one of the things Kim Jong-un has really focused on is building support from the next generation of North Koreans so in television there's been a big wave of lighter funnier dramas with more teenage protagonists not young protagonists declaring how they want to die for their country someday like we used to see no they're just kids they struggle with
304:00 - 304:30 school issues and navigating friendship it's all done in a really shallow way but it's being done the main plots are usually tied to something educational but you can still see some very very very light romantic elements in play for the even younger viewers you'll see things like storytime shows I really like this one hosted by a kindly old grandpa in leopard print he tells the kids Tales of old historical figures and fables and while a TV show about an old guy in leopard print might not sound super interesting leopard print Grandpa makes it all really mesmerizing although
304:30 - 305:00 every now and then you'll get some uh we'll call it minor anti-American sentiment but don't worry about that look mini leopard print Grandpa I don't know why it exists but it do it do I also used to like a TV series called our neighbors it follows some families living in pangy Yang most of which is so story focused and not propaganda that it would be indistinguishable from like a an early 2000s South Korean drama but there's an episode that kind of ruined it for me I think it was episode 8 or n
305:00 - 305:30 and a kid passes out and gets hospitalized and all the characters are really concerned and worried but then vom off the road the emotional weight goes because everybody get in here North Korean missile test look at it Go patriotic music go missile go yeah screw our sick kid it's time to dance I hope that missile drops right on the freaking house is your kid alive in addition to launching missiles like they're going out of style North Korea also launches a couple of different live streaming TV boxes now anybody can watch sexy scenes
305:30 - 306:00 from The Tale of Chung hung with their families or check out a live stream concert of unasa or S Dion or the newest North Korean music craze you know what let's do [Music] this and no you're not losing your mind you're watching a group of North Korean women perform the most American song ever the Rocky theme as Rocky plays in
306:00 - 306:30 the background which is then quickly followed by a rendition of Disney's It's a Small World and we haven't even gotten to the weird part yet bring them out bring them out yes yes it's all your favorite it's all your favorite Disney characters Mikey meanie Benny the Pooh tiger all the classics all dancing around on stage in a way that suggests that even the notion of choreography was never
306:30 - 307:00 considered there's a lot to unpack here so let me explain this all of this is the Premiere Performance of [ __ ] bang North Korea's all girls rock pop Fusion band built from the ground up to appeal to North Korean young audiences [ __ ] bong is all about taking old dogma of North Korea and giving them a whole new poppy spin to compete with South Korean K-pop a lot of people say that [ __ ] bong was Kim jong-un's direct response to the global super popularity of size Gangam Style video but actually Moran
307:00 - 307:30 bong's debut concert came out a week before that song dropped and under the tutelage of the excellent horike lady herself y sang wall morang bong becomes an unparalleled cultural hit a big part of that success is that morang bongs got some morang bangers like let us go to melt [Applause] [Music] piku this is great like you know I have a thing for power vocal Divas like this so it's wonderful they're finally
307:30 - 308:00 letting North Korean girls sing a few high notes they also give the instrument musicians times for things like like riffs and personal glory and and Spotlight time which is something you never saw in the more Collective music from before oo I'm about to hop the DMZ if you don't quit it girl them base beats too slick but as always the pad can't help but do something wrong because their best songs Moran's best songs are often interrupted halfway through by a Kim portrait appearing on screen the
308:00 - 308:30 girls have to stop singing turn around and point at it like a like a bunch of jackasses really that's a helpful reminder that no matter how catchy [ __ ] Bang music is the propaganda is baked right into the crust of every song Sometimes they'll straight up just put a plane on the stage or do winter concerts with inflatable snowmen holding missiles while they sing songs about eliminating the Yanks Kim Jong-un would also authorize another similar group called The Chong bong group in terms of sound the main difference between the two is
308:30 - 309:00 that Chong bong doesn't use as many electronic instruments uh like here's them singing a Korean version of Oh Susanna oh a little weird but also kind of charming however [ __ ] bang is still the far more famous group internationally especially thanks to the internet oh and speaking of the internet North Korea has it now kind of it's not really the internet It's actually an internet a closed wall web where users could only access a
309:00 - 309:30 small number of sites within the system it's mostly North Korean news sites weather reports cooking recipes and some basic Social Media stuff in fact the amount of Tech North Korea is developing itself can be really impressive even if a lot of it is just for show what what the hell is that and why does it have hair that's a really good question maybe giving it hair makes it more relatable does that look relatable to you paper maybe we should get back on topic huh but I don't understand what I'm beep cut wait what the propaganda and agitation
309:30 - 310:00 department has also set up its first foreign targeting website and they post media like like music and clips from North Korean TV and original content but they also post flash games from what I've been able to tell the website hosted somewhere between 9 to 14 flash games over the last 20 years seven of which remain playable and only two of which I can show you without some form of censorship a Korean geography quiz and a really fun and difficult train puzzle game which I played for like 3
310:00 - 310:30 hours it was actually I've it's I've gone back and played it again it's hard but it's fun and then I played the other games okay Da Vinci resolve let's uh let's get that Mosaic blur ready so there's a wack-a-mole game with South Korean politicians not so bad a SWAT the Flies game but the Flies are various world leaders poor taste but still fine I guess then we get a couple of games with really harsh racist Japanese caricatures which may have been more shocking to me in the past but by this point I'm just like yep it's it's North
310:30 - 311:00 Korea what are you going to do but the final game which I only got running while doing a research live stream with like 200 people watching when little something like this I don't know but it's working now okay um some text I'll send that to the Korean translation team cuz what the what the Jesus Christ Jesus Christ North Korea what the but North Korea's internet forign propaganda work doesn't stop at this one website remember Chong Rong the North Korean
311:00 - 311:30 Organization for zi Koreans living in Japan well that group's somehow still around and uploading as much Pro North Korean content as they can find launching a web service online called erua TV erua TV uploads North Korean news web Tunes cartoons original documentaries they even host a live stream of North Korean television they're also making a lot of content about those pro- North Korean schools they set up around 2010 Japan's government begins putting restrictions on Chong rang schools removing them from
311:30 - 312:00 tuition waiver programs some students from one of those schools even tried to drum up public support against these schools being targeted by making an original song and music video in [Music] protest and watching this video it's really conflicting right on the one hand yes North Korean Alliance zich Koreans deserve a way to preserve their community and Chong Rong schools provide a safe discrimination free place for kids while attitudes towards zichi Koreans and Korea in general have vastly
312:00 - 312:30 improved over the years zichi Koreans still face some challenges but to look at it from Japan's perspective what if there was a country that regularly declared its desire to destroy you and your country that sometimes fires Rockets over your population that's kidnapped your citizens sometimes kids and your tax money was going to fund that country's organization in your country for their schools how would you feel cuz that's what Japan's dealing with it's not it's not cut and dry here
312:30 - 313:00 so I don't know how I feel about all of this but I do know that it's unfair that innocent kids are being caught in the political Crossfire as for elepant TV I've heard they hosted some flash games but I wasn't able to confirm that and as for other less North Korean games here's a quick breakdown of the country's General gaming options here's some alleged footage from a 2005 online game based around the young General I I say alleged because there's some games out there that have been modded with North Korean characters so it's hard to verify what
313:00 - 313:30 actually was made by North Korea um but here's one Coro tours distributed a drive-in game to promote tourism to North Korea called pongyang racer in 2019 the country also announced it had a new health device called the [ __ ] bong which looks suspiciously like a Nintendo Wii but even more suspiciously like a Wii knockoff called The Sea Dragon Cassidy G80 but flash games Taurus games and console knockoffs don't fairly represent modern North Korean gaming North Koreans aren't playing games on websites and TV they're playing on their
313:30 - 314:00 phones in 2008 basic mobile phone services are introduced into North Korea which begins producing its own smartphones usually running on some modified version of Android as of 2023 it's estimated most North Korean families have at least one mobile device see this performance these aren't LED lights those are people recording on their phone although of course there's one buttthe head with his flash on turn off your flashlight y [ __ ] it probably goes without saying North Korean phones can't be used to contact outside the
314:00 - 314:30 country or access the full internet but they can play games there was even a young General game but footage of that game is hard to find so I knew the only way I could do a proper review of the game and of a North Korean phone is if I bought one so I did well let me clarify I paid for a North Korean phone uh through a now pretty recognizably shady website and the phone never showed up yeah thanks guy hope you hope you got something nice with my money so my dream of playing young General on a phone is
314:30 - 315:00 dead but consolation prize they made a second season of the show and it looks amazing and the action's great and while they CGI work can be a little Hit or Miss you'll also see gorgeous stuff like oako defeats a devil there's even a chance of more joint animated projects with South Korea in 2017 South Korea elected a new leader muo jayen who attempts a return to the sunshine era of inter Korean politics he wants to do Sunshine 2.0 that means
315:00 - 315:30 discussions of denuclearization reducing DMZ issues and maybe even a formal Declaration of Peace at some point in the future and that's all lovely but you know what I'm excited for right South Korean K-pop Idols are going back to Pyongyang and this time instead of super sexy K-pop the performers lean more on ballads ensembles and a pretty Kick-Ass performance by the group YB these guys deliver such a good show that they're able to get a call and response with the North Korean
315:30 - 316:00 audience even hyang song walls like look look she's like double clapping she's into it the show coordinators even brought back Lee sun he but as much as I love seeing Lee back my favorite moment is right here a singer from red velvet is talking to the North Korean crowd but she's so nervous that she has trouble talking and the crowd I think spontaneously applauds in support for her I've never seen that in a Korean Music Exchange I I've never seen that in
316:00 - 316:30 any North Korean show that's just that's just really nice whether or not these projects and attempts at a new Sunshine policy will work whatever that would even mean is is up in the air really we don't even know what people in North Korea think about it and there aren't that many new defectors to ask because under Kim jong-un's rule border security has been dramatically increased that means more North Koreans might be trying to leave the country and aren't able to so we can't hear their stories instead we're hearing the stories North Korea wants us to hear hi everyone I am Yumi
316:30 - 317:00 from P hello everyone I'm from P hello my dear friends hello everyone I know [Music] welcome to the new age of North Korean entertainment the pad has been using state sponsored social influencers who are there to promote the image of the country as a happy free and prosperous Place English Korean Russian and Mandarin Chinese speaking vloggers have been appearing all over the web claiming
317:00 - 317:30 to be everyday average North Koreans who support their infallible government and everyone is just fine this isn't meant to imply that the people in the videos are nefarious or evil they're just playing a part they're actors but the producers Behind these videos are getting better and better at mimicking real vlogger content what used to be awkward stage tours of factories are being replaced with videos of girls in their pajamas talking about cactuses or visiting the park or drawing a picture
317:30 - 318:00 or going fishing while subtly mentioning how generous the government is but mostly focusing on the fishing I can imagine a point not far way where these videos get so good that people will start believing that they're authentic believing that North Korean citizens are free to make content like this when they're very much not North Koreans can't access the internet easily they can't upload content to online platforms and they definitely can't speak their mind on issues publicly like this but how should online platforms handle this
318:00 - 318:30 kind of content do they just leave it up and hope people figure out they're watching propaganda do they have a responsibility to flag any video that's too Pro North Korean or what about the channels that the dprk creates that they use to upload their old movies or TV shows or news reports should those be up even if they spread propaganda personally I don't like the sound of removing video content just because it's disagreeable or propaganda and it doesn't seem like online platforms have a good solution either because whenever a pro- North Korean Link channel gets
318:30 - 319:00 noticed they're usually just wiped total scorched Earth deletion and look I've spent the last 18 months up to my forehead in North Korean entertainment and it sucked most of the time if there is anybody that would want to see all of North Korea's entertainment thrown into a giant fire pit and burned to a ju crisp it would be me but I don't despite its curated and filtered appearance North Korean entertainment humanizes North Koreans it does it really does it
319:00 - 319:30 allowed me to think of North Koreans not as statistics and numbers but as people who despite oppressive control over their media are often filled to the brim with artistic potential and only held back by that regime and if you don't believe me that North Koreans are incredibly creative well let me prove it 2 3 4 this fuzzy haired teddy bear Rock God is Japanese musician funky Su Yoshi longtime performer in the band bakufu
319:30 - 320:00 slump funky had spent a lot of time in the countercultural Chinese Rock World of the 1990s but in the mid 2000s he gets an interesting offer to go to North Korea and teach kids how to play music the person who invites funy is his also Japanese friend masayuki aramaki aramaki had for years and years traveled back and forth as a visitor of North Korea filming life there not for any particular project or goal he just enjoyed filming life there aramaki had developed a really positive reputation
320:00 - 320:30 with his guides earning him permission to do something most tourists could never dream of walking up to random North Koreans and talking to them he doesn't try to trip them up on hard questions or breach difficult political issues aaki will just walk up and be like hey what you doing so he's able to get his guides permission to bring funky to North Korea and do some music lessons at a local Pyongyang school one of the first events funky does is with a kindergarten and I think it's fair to say the kids look a little nervous with him there right after all funky is
320:30 - 321:00 Japanese these children have grown up on a steady diet of being told Japan is not to be trusted and yet after like 3 minutes of funky just being funky and friendly with the kids all that disappears look at look at the kids look at them but most of funky's visits aren't to kindergartens they're to a pyongyang's high school music Club officially the reason was to teach these kids how to play some instruments but funky doesn't do that because they already know how to play instruments
321:00 - 321:30 they they're North Korean children they're already professionals nah he's there to teach them something they don't know a form of music that if not outright band in North Korea is highly discouraged and never performed rock music arriving at the school funky finds that yeah the kids are still going to be a Teensy bit apprehensive about this Japanese guy coming in but just like with the kindergarten there's something about music that can tear those walls down keep your eye on this girl the drummer of the club as soon as funky
321:30 - 322:00 starts doing some free rock percussion she lights up funky asks the girl to try copying his Rock percussion and uh yeah she nails it this repeats over and over funky showing a student some rock music and then they perfectly emulate it like it's no big deal the best one might be the basis because he does some playing and he's like hey can you do this and she gives she she gives him that that face
322:00 - 322:30 of like oh oh I'm sorry were you talking to me were you asking me if I can play your little goofy finger slaps I don't know I don't know I can I can't look look at me funky look at me funky and over the course of these videos you see the kids really building a connection with funky joking with him and learning from him so funky gives the music Club a task he wants them to create their own original rock song with lyrics which he will record and you're going to love it [Music]
322:30 - 323:00 are you kidding me are you are you kidding me that's so good original North Korean teenage rock music right here and it's great oh and ignore the music for a second check out the lyrics lyrics the kids wrote they have this unexpectedly rebellious and heretical vibe to them all about loving questioning things in
323:00 - 323:30 the pursuit of knowledge and opening up secret doors with a key of doubting things in the entire video have we ever talked about a North Korean based on questioning reality and ideas that's amazing if you ever ever run into someone who thinks North Korean artist can only perform works that the government writes that they can only create media solely about criticizing their enemies or that North Koreans can't think for themselves show them that video show them the video about a time a bunch of North Korean kids developed a friendship with a Japanese
323:30 - 324:00 guy a guy from one of their most hated enemies and then wrote their own rock song about questioning reality and I'm not trying to wrap this video up on a positive note just for the sake of being positive I hate that things in North Korea are still bad it seems likely that human rights abuses resource scarcity dogmatic education widespread corruption will continue for the foreseeable future and entertainment made by North Korea even today is incredibly manipulative revisionist dictator mandated propaganda
324:00 - 324:30 that isolates their people but it's still nice to see that when North Koreans are free to make what they want to make they're just as creative as anybody else and I hope we get to see and hear more of that in the future thanks for watching everyone good [Music] night hi there thanks for watching the video um a few things first final thanks again to ground news for sponsoring this
324:30 - 325:00 video um I know I said this earlier but I'm really really happy to have them as a sponsor for this video it is such a good fit for my channel and I'm really hoping to continue working with them so that's ground. newspaper get 40% off your Vantage plan Link in the description further thanks to my patrons on patreon thank you thank you thank you thank you every time I sit down and I try to record this I feel like I can't actually Express how thankful I am because like thank you I was able to dramatically cut down on my bartending work and focus exclusively on this video
325:00 - 325:30 full-time and that would not have been possible without that support so thank you and I said Thank you weird thank you there we go go uh one special thank you to Paul for his consistent and generous support like really generous support and all the work he's done to help this channel grow in fact if you look hard enough you can find several Easter eggs in this video I put in just for Paul um there was going to be like a prize or something to the first person to find all of them but I've been editing this video for like 6 months and I I kind of forgot where I put a few of the Easter eggs there's more than five so if if you
325:30 - 326:00 find more than five that's probably all of them maybe and if you're in a financially stable place and would like to help donate to my patreon please do uh you can find behind the- scenes stuff and updates on the channel and even if you can't donate that's fine the the patreon content is all set to public so check it out okay let's do the project thank yous uh thank you to Carson for his work as the Ivan character some of you might remember Carson as my very good friend from the research streams uh to a dog 11 Wild Sage bang The Banger
326:00 - 326:30 Freer sweeper and Sir ad revenue for their research help to everybody on the volunteer team who helped quality check this video to Eric Jacob Julia and Noah and especially to Hassan for driving all the way up to a university to track down a single DVD from me that I could not find anywhere else on the planet uh it was very cool of him to do that it was very much appreciated thank you uh to in contrast films for their help in basically every aspect of this video especially listening to me vent when I got fed up and tried to quit uh to Askin
326:30 - 327:00 Arc studio for their help with the audio uh Lena for helping me fix my terrible audio balancing and doing a ton of audio work behind the scenes they did a tremendous job uh thank you very much big thanks to K song who helped fact check this script and uh it was a very long script and it was a lot of work and he contributed greatly so again kiding song uh here's his name on the screen bam there you go uh he's the only guy I know who finished his masters of Business Administration with a paper on the North Korean market uh he and I are even considering maybe possibly
327:00 - 327:30 potentially someday soon writing a book together which if it panned out that would be super super weird but exciting shout outs to a few channels uh Jesse and North Korea uncovered who helped me in the early stages of this video uh he really I think helped set it in a good direction uh there's also the Fantastic Channel dprk explained that's a really unique Channel that I recommend because they steer clear of political debate and controversies in the country and instead Focus entirely on being informative and covering topics that nobody else is
327:30 - 328:00 really covering on North Korea I appreciate work like that because I think it again helps us focus on the human element of North Korea which does not get enough Focus um also Streeter sweepers Channel which has a video that gives a superb overview of academic research on North Korea and why it's so easy to misunderstand the country I cannot recommend that video enough it's wonderful um he's also just like a really nice guy so you can see his channel link all these links all these channels down in the description check them out finally this video's ending
328:00 - 328:30 song is the entertainment made by North Korea a real song that I had commissioned written and performed by Charelle whose Instagram and Fiverr account are in the description she did she did an incredible job I I literally I I I I texted her and I was like hey I need to make a song about North Korean entertainment and she's like yeah I can do that and I'm like no no no it has to be like a uh in in Korean because it has to be like style eyes after K-pop and she's like yeah done and then she did it and it was wonderful thank you again Charelle so anyway thanks for watching
328:30 - 329:00 and I will see you all in the next video