It's Amazing How Isolated North Korea's Citizens Are

[NATO AIR]

absolutely amazing how isolated those poor people are... what a crime against humanity the north korean regime is.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6039137/site/newsweek/

Kim Puts on a Festival
Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Cannes anymoreBy Ron Gluckman

NewsweekSept. 27 issue - “Pyongyang is a festival like no other," began British documentary-maker Daniel Gordon. The audience could scarcely disagree—and not just because they were in North Korea, where dissenters get thrown in prison. Hardly anything there is the same as anyplace else. The rest of Gordon's words were drowned out by loudspeakers blaring a simultaneous Korean translation of his opening address to the nine-day Pyongyang International Film Festival. No matter: nothing could have prepared most North Koreans for some of this year's offerings.

For many of the foreign attendees, the most thrilling scenes weren't on the screen but in the audience. Among the festival's 90 or so movies from 40-odd countries, one of the biggest favorites was Tuesday's showing of the 2002 comedy "Bend It Like Beckham." North Koreans roared at the jokes and gasped at the love scenes—an eye-popping departure from the government-made propaganda flicks that are standard viewing fare in the Hermit Kingdom. "It was incredible," said a stunned filmgoer who has visited the country regularly for the last decade. "The entire crowd responded spontaneously and naturally. That was something I've never seen before."

Western films remain forbidden to the average North Korean. The country's supreme leader, Kim Jong Il, is a voracious movie addict, a huge fan of James Bond and Elizabeth Taylor, with a private library of some 15,000 titles. "Genius of the Cinema" is one of his honorifics. Even so, no more than a hundred or so privileged individuals were allowed to see any of this year's offerings from the West, and the Korean-language voiceover scripts were carefully edited by government censors. Their rewrites still couldn't fix everything. "There was definite shock at some sex scenes," says Eva Munz, a visiting German film worker. Perhaps even more shocking in some ways was the North Korean debut of Miramax's 1995 "Cry, the Beloved Country," a film that stresses the importance of speaking out against an evil system.

The world has changed since 1987, when the annual event began as the Pyongyang Film Festival of the Nonaligned and Other Developing Countries. Now something seems to be stirring in Pyongyang, as well. One of this year's most telling moments came during the opening scenes of "A State of Mind," Gordon's new documentary on life in the North. When the camera focused on a group of old men at a game of cards, the audience shrieked with delight. "We've just never seen anything like that in a film before," said an excited viewer. "We never see normal people, in normal life." It's a force that could transform the country, if it spreads: truth.

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

 

[supermarine]

pretty scary that something like that can happen.

 

[Avatar4321]

I think Kim may underestimate the effect these movies can have on a population. even edited if you give people a taste for freedom...they will yearn for it more.