DPRK Forum

If any of you folks have not seen any documentaries on North Korea, they are a good start to get a basic understanding about the hermit kingdom. I am sure most North Korea watchers have seen these, but for those that do not know much about it (like me), it is worth watching.

They are not too expensive, and some look like to still be available for purchase.

Inside North Korea:

Join National Geographic’s Lisa Ling as she captures a rare look inside North Korea - something few Americans have ever been able to do. Posing as an undercover medical coordinator and closely guarded throughout her trip, Lisa moves inside the most isolated nation in the world, encountering a society completely dominated by government and dictatorship. Glimpse life inside North Korea as you’ve never seen before with personal accounts and powerful footage. Witness first-hand efforts by humanitarians and the challenges they face from the rogue regime.

A State Of Mind:

A British documentary that follows two young North Korean girls as they prepare for the Mass Games, the world’s largest choreographed gymnastics performance.

A Day In The Life:

In this rare look inside North Korea, director Pieter Fleury gained unprecedented access to a country generally cloaked in secrecy. Using “a day in the life” format, Fleury follows the daily routines of a typical North Korean family as they go to work, attend school, and participate in English classes. Though the country’s inhabitants sincerely put their best face forward, the relentless images and ritualized practices of government propaganda offer a telling portrait of this controversial country.

Crossing The Line:

In 1962, a U.S. soldier sent to guard the peace in South Korea deserted his unit, walked across the most heavily fortified area on earth and defected to the Cold War enemy, the communist state of North Korea. He then simply disappeared from the face of the known world. He became a coveted star of the North Korean propaganda machine, and found fame acting in films, typecast as an evil American. He uses Korean as his daily language. He has three sons from two wives. He has now lived in North Korea twice as long as he has in America. At one time, there were four Americans living in North Korea. Today, just one remains. Now, after 45 years, the story of Comrade Joe, the last American defector in North Korea, is told.

Based on our work on the two North Korean films over the last five years, VeryMuchSo Productions, in partnership with Koryo Tours, has gained the trust of the North Korean authorities. This has enabled clear and unrestricted access to James Joseph Dresnok and to the North Korean-based families of the other U.S. defectors.

Children Of The Secret State (purchase link here):

Children of the Secret State’ is an investigation into North Korea, considered by many as the last Stalinist dictatorship, a hidden and sealed country riddled with propaganda and saturated with hostility to democracy and the West.

Joe Layburn and the Hardcash team discovered a young North Korean, known by the pseudonym ‘Ahn Chol’, who has been filiming undercover so that the world can see what is going on in his native land: the country where his parents both starved to death.

His devastating footage shows some of the estimated 200,000 street children, mainly orphans, foraging for food in the mud and the gutters, ignored by the adults around them and ignored by the state which claims they are at its bosom.

Joe embarks on a state-run tourist visit of North Korea, revealing vast unoccupied hotels, empty boulevards and countless monuments of Kim Jong? II, the county’s leader.

Undercover in the Secret State:

“CNN Presents” follows Korean-American journalist Jung Eun Kim as she tracks down a new breed of dissident in North Korea. These dissidents are using small digital cameras and cell phones to show the world the brutal life inside North Korea.

(Note: I cannot find any link for purchase, so you might have to find another source. I have no idea where any are, so you may have to look around or see if any other official outlets sell this documentary.)

Welcome To North Korea:

This film, shot mostly covertly, shows the irony of a regime where 20 million people lived in poverty, some on the brink of starvation, while former dictator Kim II Sung built extravagant monuments to reflect his power. He fostered a grotesque personality cult, which his son and successor Kim Jong Il perpetuates. All around the capital, Pyongyang, an endless stream of propaganda glorifies the leaders. Monuments and museums pay homage to them, but they are strangely empty.

The contrast between capitalist South Korea and the impoverished North is dramatically shown. The founder of Hyundai, Tsjoen Joe Jung is held in great esteem in the south. He believes in uniting the two Koreas and has made significant donations to economic development in the north, trying to ease the way to reunion.

The film crew was not allowed to interview people at random. The ones “selected to speak to foreigners” gave an idealized image of the regime that was hardly credible. Footage shot secretly by a Chinese relief organization attests to a generation dying from starvation and disease, and suffering terrible human rights abuses. Welcome to North Korea captures in a vivid manner the tight grip the regime has on its people, with a power not used benevolently.

If you know of any others that are not listed here, please let me know in the comments.