Film number 1 Kimjongilia

 Film number:1
Film Title:Kimjongilia
Source:Netflix Instant Watch
Rating:7/10

My first venture into higher education via documentary movies, was Kimjongilia.  I picked this because it came to mind today when my latest issue of Time magazine arrived featuring a cover photo of the new leader with the caption Lil Kim.  Love it! So this kind of sparked my interest in North Korea today.

I think I did know more about North Korea than most Americans who only knew Kim from his "so ronery!" quotes in that puppet movie by the South Park guys.  But I was hardly an expert on the so called   "secret state" other than they appeared to me to be in some sort of time warp, driving 1970s cars at the Dear Leader's recent funeral and using fax machines.

Kimjongilia was made up of heart wrenching interviews of individuals lucky enough to escape from the Kim dynasty that has ruled for more than half a century.  I am sure the information in this move was reliable and very honest, and I really don't think being "fair" or balanced was an issue in making this movie at all.  How does one be "fair" when reporting facts about life under a modern day sadistic ruler?

The interviews described a wretched and repressed life under the Great Leader whom they were forced adore daily, even before their meals.  They endured starvation and total control.  There was no clue at all about any outside worlds where North Korean government did not tell you what to do every minute of the day.  One guy said if he had not made it out of there he would still be "worshiping" the Dear  Leader.  I found the lucidity of the survivors absolutely striking.  The fact that people were willing and even able to put into words how their parents and children were tortured to death or left handicapped and broken by the state was amazing to me.  How brave one must be to share any information with a world that they did not even know existed outside of the reign of their god.

It is hard to sit  through a movie that describes modern day concentration camps that also showed dancing, Mass Games, and a sweeping soundtrack of music that glorified the Kims as everything in their lives does, as well as interpretive dancing that breaks your heart.  But it was definitely worth listening to the brutality of a nation who locks up entire families because one starving person attempted to extend their lives by stealing food in a land where millions die of starvation.  Anyone can be arrested at anytime and forced into a government concentration camp, along with everyone they love. They can be beaten, starved or used as forced labor.  Stealing food or trying to escape can usually result in immediate execution.

But it was hopeful to see people with the desire to escape despite their lifetimes of brainwashing under an evil, all encompassing Cult of Personality.  The fact that people were brave enough just to try sailing through fog with the their babies to reach the 38th Parallel while evading the Navy is so remarkable.  People just exist when they escape to China, they don't have any life.  They live in storage units in secret or they fear peril everyday from traffickers that want to enslave them in the sex trade or agents that want to torture them.  This really needs to be looked at closely by the world. Why on Earth China was allowed to host the Olympics is a total affront.  We are lucky even one has managed to escape and share with the world of what goes on with in the most isolated nation in the world, but the fact is there were several and there are so many more that are not in the film.  Do I think an Arab spring is on it's way to North Korea? Not anytime soon sadly.  But I hope someday.  And like the Time magazine article I read today about that Lil' Kim, I question what he thinks and sees after learning he was sent abroad to be educated and found a hero in his favorite NBA star Dennis Rodman.


Can an educated but ill advised man who is younger than I am make any difference in this tragic nation that his family had a huge part in destroying?  I really hope so. 

But in the meantime, I was struck by the most helpful and hopeful part of the movie, the conclusion, where an elderly woman pleaded for help for the country she left and is now exposing.  "North Korea can't hear, or speak or eat or taste", so we have to and "let's speak of it" was the just of it.  I am all in.  Let's do it.