Venue: BYU International Cinema
Release Year: 2004
Director: Daniel Gordon
Languages: English and Korean
Length: 93 Minutes
I think I saw this movie two years ago. The only parts I remembered were when the power goes out and they say ‘bloody Americans. It’s all their fault.” And when the filmmakers say that North Korea has never given this level of access to anyone from the west before.
It followed a year in the life of a 11 year old girl who participated in the Mass Games to celebrate communism and North Korea. It was really interesting to see how much the North Korean system follows the Christian system. Kim, Jong Il is the General or the Father, just as Christian’s believe in God the Father. The family is the most important unit of society, behind one’s love for the General. He inspires goodness, truth, and the best in everyone. He is leading them onward and without him they would be nothing. Intelligence, fluency in foreign languages, and physical strength are developed in everyone. They will receive eternal happiness though their great leader. They want to be self-reliant and independent from the world. There are also plenty of similarities to 1984, with a state installed radio that cannot be turned off in every kitchen. The work and diligence of the citizens of North Korea defeats any competition we could attempt to muster in the western world, especially among children.
Going back to the power outages. When they blamed it on the Americans, the audience laughed as if saying. Haha, we don’t cause power outages, that is just your stupidity and simple-mindness in communism. In reality there is a lot of truth to their belief. We isolated them from the rest of the world, driving them into famine and still causing them problems even in getting enough food. It’s the stupid Americans who are to closed-minded, to egotistical, to superficial to realize that they have a valid point. If Kim, Jong Il died and North Korea was invaded by South Korea and the Americans, the North Koreans would be much less happy, not overjoyous to see us. I don’t think most Americans realize that. They’re too busy Americanizing the world using Chinese products. In 1993 the Pentagon released a statistic saying that if war broke out between North Korea and South Korea (with 37,000 American troops), there would be over 1 million casualties in the first 24 hours. That is a lot of dead people due to one misunderstanding. If people would sit down and try to figure things out and understand each other, the world would be a much safer, happier place.
