10 Days in North Korea takes viewers through Pyongyang, the center of the North Korean regime, and talks to citizens about what the filmmakers believe is a very interesting “social experiment” that has been going on for some 70 years.
The film begins by showing the loyalty of Pyongyang’s workforce – interviews with an accomplished biologist and some factory workers convey a genuinely high opinion of “Grand Marshal” Kim Jong-un and his commitment to the regime’s collective productivity. enthusiasm. The term used to describe the government’s control over their daily lives is that they are “protected.”
Attention then turns to Jong-eun and the regime’s militaristic ways of governing, involving a harsh prison system and last year’s high-profile execution of Jong-eun’s uncle Jang Song-taek and his family for treason and an alleged attempted military coup that would have toppled Jong-eun.
Seen by outsiders as little more than pro-regime propaganda, annual demonstrations at some historical sites and military barracks have been put in place to reassure North Korean citizens of the government’s alleged military capabilities. The annual “Victory Parade” is held every year to celebrate North Korea’s military victory over the United States and the reunification of North and South Korea.
North and South Korea are still nominally linked, but have diverged on many fronts and even spoken language under their so-called single state. The filmmakers feature families whose members live on both sides of the border, chosen by lottery, and meet family members they were never allowed to see in just three days.
We spoke with Colonel Kim Chang Yun of the Korean People’s Army in a so-called demilitarized zone on the North Korean side of the border, which has a roughly 15-foot-tall wall that was completed in 1979. He claimed the wall was a symbol of efforts by the United States and the South to prevent the two sides from uniting. His views mirror those of protected citizens who accept a false, self-aware utopia undercut by a controlling government willing to deceive and exploit a man who was brainwashed from birth rather than challenge authority .
