"Enter Pyongyang" Hyperlapse Video Review

Enter Pyongyang on Vimeo.

A friend shared this video on Facebook, and I had to take a look. First impression: it's well-crafted and beautiful as a film. No surprise there, since Vimeo is the video sharing site to go to if you have something pretty to share! I'm a sucker for timelapse and hyperlapse (that is, timelapse + shifts in perspective) videos anyway, so simply watching this was a treat.

I'm a little concerned about the message it's sending, however. The pros are that the video will dispel myths that Pyongyang is completely destitute, crumbling to pieces, and cut off from the outside world. These are pretty much untrue, but that doesn't mean it's, like, a nice place to live. So the cons are that the video can easily give a false idea of what Pyongyang, or even all of North Korea, is like.

Here's what I thought as I watched the video: where is all that light coming from? There is so little electricity available in the city. The cityscape is not that bright at night. The computeres in the grand library are only on for a few hours each day. And where is all that color coming from? Maybe my camera is not as nice as the equipment used for this video, but the dominant color in every photo I took in North Korea is gray.

The subway is exactly how I remembered it, though. Like my tour group, the filmmakers were only allowed to see the few nicest and busiest stations of the two-line system. Even though the platform was grand and lit up, the train was dated and dark inside. I was caught by surprise by a tender moment when the sped-up footage slowed down to show an old man entering the station, and again when it paused to let a traffic cop stop and chat with a lady pushing a stroller, again when a little girl at the roller-skating rink spotted the camera. These brief moments that revealed ordinary human actions and interactions did make me smile.

But again, that does not mean North Korean society is harmonious or normal by any standard. The filmmakers worked closely with Koryo Tours, a North Korean tourism company, so it's not surprising that the footage shown was neat, aesthetic, and even attractive. It's the image a tourism company wants you to see. It's also the fabricated facade that the DPRK's totalitarian regime wants you to see. They don't want you to see that the inside of the gorgeous pyramidal Ryugyong Hotel is skeletal and unfinished, only that the lawns on the outside are green. They don't want you to see the dilapidated apartments in the western parts of the city that have no glass in their windows, only the newly-constructed ones (that, despite their appearances, have their electricity shut off at night just like every other building in the city besides the monuments). They don't want you to see anything outside of the capital city, either: none of the concentration camps, the starving gangs of orphan children in the northeast, the abandoned factories that have produced nothing for decades, the hills stripped completely bare of their forests, the desperate men and women who smuggle food, drugs, and people across the border to China. None of these things are supposed to exist in the Kim dynasty's sterilized image of the Victorious Fatherland. It's not that I expect them to show up in what is essentially a three-minute advertisement, but I'll be frank: the North Korea that you have just seen is not the North Korea that you need to see.

This video used awesome technology and uplifting music to reinforce the idealized image of Pyongyang. I wouldn't call it propaganda, and it's not like anything shown in the video is actually fake. But it's easy for pretty things to convince the world that pretty is all that exists, and I caution any viewer from drawing the conclusion that because a couple of professional filmmakers were allowed to tour the capital of North Korea with their cameras, the entire country is actually brimming with "dynamism and [a] sense of potential."

North Korea is a long way away from really opening up to the outside world, but when it does, I hope that someone with the same advanced equipment as well as a heart for millions of oppressed and suffering people can enter and show us more than this.

The War Memorial of Korea

Color guard rehearsal at the War Memorial of Korea

One of the last things on my Korea bucket list was a visit to the War Memorial of Korea, a museum dedicated to Korea's bellic history. It may not be as exciting as shark diving or bungee jumping, but I enjoy visiting museums on my own. When I go with a tour, there is never enough time scheduled to see everything at a properly slow pace, and when I go with friends, we always end up separated anyway because our interests differ. So, I first paid a visit to the museum with Monica on Monday, and although we caught the tail end of a really interesting color guard rehearsal taking place in front of the museum, we found out that the museum itself was closed, as is the case every Monday.

So, I went by myself a few days later, and the following photos are from this second visit. I'd heard that its exhibits are extensive and worth an entire afternoon's visit, and indeed, I spent a good four hours wandering its halls.

A South Korean flag carried by a member of the student soldiers' battalion during the Battle of Pohang (August 1950).

Memorial to the soldiers who sacrificed their lives at White Horse Hill

What surprised me straight off the bat was that it was not a museum about just the Korean War, fought from 1950-1953. True, the museum had more than two floors dedicated to this important and transformative period in Korean history, but it actually was meant to cover the entire war history of Korea. That being the case, the exhibits actually began with coverage of the wars fought between Korea's ancient kingdoms, as well as confrontations with Japanese invaders leading up to the twentieth century. I didn't find these very interesting, though, so I hurried on through.

The next thing that surprised me was -- for lack of a better way to describe it -- the entertainment value of the exhibits. Of course, I don't think a museum should be boring, but the way this museum chose to keep up interest for visitors, particularly children, was rather odd to me. Take for example the re-enactments of famous battles using animatronics and CGI bombs and explosions. It reminded me, unfortunately, of North Korea's war museum in Pyongyang, which I visited last February. Having been recently renovated, that museum made use of state-of-the-art technology to immerse visitors in as "realistic" a recreation of the war as possible. I use scare quotes because the information presented as fact in Pyongyang's museum is clearly distorted to present a DPRK-positive account.

Life-size diorama and multimedia display of one of the battles along the Han River during the Korean War.

"Shooting Area" for the kids to experience what it's like to use an assault rifle in a wartime situation. Classy.

In any case, I remain amused at the cornier aspects of the museum, but at the same time impressed by the depth and breadth of the exhibits. All the important information was provided in English and Korean, and many interactive screens provided additional facts in Japanese and Chinese. There were many tour groups visiting, as well as many people just wandering the halls on their own, children running from the prop guns to the model fighter planes. This was one drastic difference from my experience in Pyongyang: there, I had to stay with the tour guide at all times and listen obediently to her propagandistic explanations of history. There was only one other tour group in the museum, and otherwise all was silent and cold. In Seoul, I had the freedom to go anywhere in the museum that I wanted, and overall it was louder and felt more alive.

On that note, I also happened to visit on a "fourth Wednesday", which is the one day each month when soldiers from a local garrison give a free public concert in the main hall of the museum. The performances were extremely diverse, from traditional Korean instruments to classical opera to a guy who played "Fly Me to the Moon" on the harmonica. I like how a museum can be an active performance space that engages the community instead of just an inert building to walk through.

These tenors sang "Funiculì, Funiculà", and they were really good! This was the firs time I've seen opera performed live by Koreans.

These two soldiers performed the traditional Korean instruments 해금 (haegeum) and 장구 (janggu).

I think my favorite exhibit in the museum, or at least the one that touched me the most, was the hall on the third floor dedicated to the UN forces sent by sixteen countries to aid in the Korean War effort. Not only was it well designed, it was also extremely detailed. The exact statistics on how many soldiers each country sent, who led them, and what special things they did were all listed, and their uniforms were on display along with small things like soldiers' diaries. I think it was noble of South Korea to devote so much space to thank the international community that helped them.

In contrast, Pyongyang's war museum presents the conflict as one of Korea versus the evil United States and barely mentions Russia, China, or the UN. There is supposedly an exhibit that covers the Chinese troops' (invaluable) participation in the latter half of the war, but it certainly was not part of our tour.

A memorial for the UN soldiers who participated in the war effort. The words on the wall read, " With the US as main force, 21 countries dispatched combat froces and medical aid units for the freedom of the Republic of Korea.

The last part of the museum that I visited was its outdoor display of ships, plans, tanks, and rockets used in various modern war efforts. Again, I couldn't help but compare it to the display of military artifacts in Pyongyang's museum, which consists entirely of abandoned and captured enemy vehicles. American and British tanks, planes, and even the USS Pueblo. North Korea keeps all of these old hunks of iron as "war trophies" and uses the more-recently captured vehicles liberally in its propaganda. In Seoul, however, all the vehicles are replicas, just another exhibit.

A few tanks, including one that looks almost cute!

Ships and planes at the War Memorial of Korea. You can see Namsan Tower in the hills in the background.

Well, that's all for the War Memorial of Korea! I spent a good, long afternoon there and learned a lot. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about modern Korean history. It's especially important for people living in Korea to understand the Korean War and get the story as told by South Korea (while comparing it with other accounts for balance and perspective).

The museum is located in Yongsan, not far from Itaewon. To get there, you can take the subway (lines 4 or 6) to Samgakji Station (삼각지역). From Line 4, leave from exit 1 and turn right, then following the road for less than five minutes. From Line 6, leave from exit 12 and follow road until you reach the museum. It is open from 9am-6pm every day except Monday. More visitors' information can be found here.

War Memorial of Korea

News on North Korea

Just some links tonight. Some of these stories I've wanted to share for quite some time, so I might as well just lump them all into one post. Happy reading!

What It's Like to Meet a Brother You Haven't Seen in Six Decades (TIME) -- a moving piece about two brothers who participated in last month's North-South family reunions (남북 이산가족 상봉). A former Fulbrighter contributed to the article!

North Korean elections provide clues to reclusive Stalinist state (CNN) -- an analysis of the DPRK's rather pointless elections. Kim Jong Un, unsurprisingly, won 100% of the vote. More interestingly, the election is used by the ruling party as a kind of census: if someone fails to show up to the polls and they're not accounted for in a prison camp or something, it's a sure sign they've defected.

The Land Where the Lord Has No Work! (DailyNK) -- following the release of an Australian missionary who was detained in Pyongyang while I was there, a North Korean website ran some propaganda claiming that the nation's brand of socialism is so successful that Jesus himself "would have nothing to do even if he came." Bold statement.

Understanding Christian witnessing in N. Korea (NK News) -- also touching on Christianity, specifically the motivation protestant Christians have for evangelizing in the DPRK, even though it is strictly prohibited, and the pros and cons of their methods of engagement. There's a lot of good analysis in this article, as well as some quotes from one of the organizers of the Pyongyang Project, my DPRK tour group. Fun fact: one hundred years ago, Pyongyang was a center of religious revival in Asia; it was called the "Jerusalem of the East". Today, Christians are ruthlessly persecuted unless they belong to one of a few state-run churches in the capital.

Mixing with the Cleanest Race: My upbringing in North Korea (NK News) -- part of a highly unique series written by Monique Macias, a Guinean who was raised in Pyongyang under the care of Kim Il Sung. Her experience is truly like none other.

Pyongyang's Hunger Games (New York Times) -- an explanation of some appalling statistics on food aid, government/military spending, and the lavishness of the Kim regime, from the recent COI (Comission of Inquiry) released by the UN. In short: people are starving, and the government has the ability the help them but not the willingness.

North Korean Literature from Words Without Borders

Juche Tower in Pyongyang

Something pushed me to set aside my work for a minute and Google "Arduous March" this afternoon. I wanted to find out if "March" referred to the month or the movement. The first search result was Wikipedia's article on the North Korean famine of 1994-1998. As it turns out, that march lasted much longer than a month.

The second result was an excerpt from an autobiography written by one Ji Hyun-ah that described her family's experiences with "the shadow of hardship" and the lengths to which they had to go to feed themselves as hundreds of thousands of North Koreans starved to death.

The excerpt was from a literary magazine called Words Without Borders, and I had a look around its website. Before I knew it, my entire afternoon had been sucked into reading piece after piece of literature in translation from around the world. I couldn't believe that I hadn't known about Words Without Borders before now.

In particular, I wanted to read more works by North Korean defectors (keep in mind that the only literature to come out of North Korea is propaganda). To my surprise, an entire issue last year was devoted to this very group. In May 2013, seven defectors' prose and poetry were published, and I quickly read them all. Here are some standouts:

A Blackened Land by Kim Yeon-seul tells a story of anger heartbreak with hard drug use as its culprit and the despotic Kim regime as its architect. It is accusatory and starkly bitter, almost enough to taste. Last fall I criticized the media for its sensationalist coverage of North Korea's rampant drug use; reading this firsthand account has surely altered the lens through which I look at the issue. Also of note: Kim Yeon-seul is from Chongjin, the hometown of the six defectors profiled in Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy, which I am reading currently.

The Poet Who Asked for Forgiveness analyzes the poetry of Kim Chul, following its evolution as the government punished his failure to conform his art to party ideology with separation from his family and forced labor. The strict regulations over the substance of art reminds me of how Shostakovich composed magnificent symphonies during World War II but was creatively controlled by Stalin the whole time. But the communist prohibition of artistic freedom isn't just a smudge in the history of culture; it's still happening in North Korea, where every song on the radio and every movie in theaters grinds the gears of the juggernaut propaganda machine.

Another poem, "Pillow" by Jang Jin-sun, narrates a harrowing and heartbreaking scene in a Pyongyang marketplace. It reads very quickly, but it's easy to see the difference in theme in style -- even in translation -- between the work of a North Korean state poet and that of a North Korean state poet who has defected to South Korea, whose memories of life there are already ten years in the past.

I Want to Call Her Mother Again is tragic. It also offers a peek inside the hanawon where defectors go to adjust to life in South Korea. If you read only one thing to try to understand the experiences of North Korean refugees, this should be it.

Although North Korea was spotlit last year, literature from elsewhere on the peninsula has popped up more recently. The most recent "graphic lit" issue of Words Without Borders includes I Am a Communist, a translated excerpt from a graphic novel detailing a man's difficult life choices in the tumultuous years before the border between the Communist North and the not-so-Democratic South was sealed.

A few years earlier, there was a feature on a translated North Korean comic book (meaning that it was geared toward kids) titled "The Secret of Frequency A". In it, doe-eyed North Korean child geniuses help unravel a conspiracy theory that involves evil American and Japanese scientists killing all the animals in Africa with fatal acoustic signals.

And the final two pieces that I read which stayed with me powerfully were The Chef's Nail, a work of short fiction about a woman from Seoul who rode line 2 of the subway in circles all day -- powerful and mindbending -- and a short comic about mother tongues in Taiwan called Tongue-tied which resonated with me personally.

I'm thrilled to have stumbled upon something new, interesting, and of such high quality, but I'm vacillating over whether or not to subscribe to the magazine, because my Reader is already swamped with hundreds of articles, blog posts, and random junk that I'll never get around to... Nevertheless, I exhort you to check out Words Without Borders, especially if you're into literature in translation or literature of marginalized peoples, and especially especially check out the North Korea issue if you want a large and immediate dose of... tsuris? Litost? Pathos? Conviction.