Welcome to North Korea, winner of the 2001 International Emmy Award for Best Documentary Feature, offers an eerie and surreal look at the all-too-real conditions in North Korea today.
Dutch filmmaker Peter Tetruu and his collaborator Raymond Federma spent a week in and around the North Korean capital Pyongyang – enough time to paint a picture of the hunger and deprivation suffered by large sections of the population as well as cars and Amenities that compensate for the conspicuous omission of such amenities from “contemporary” images such as the public.
As the filmmakers reveal, North Koreans cannot compare their existence to that of the outside world due to the almost complete disruption of communications and free transportation. A defining feature of the oppressed nation is reflected in the numerous statues, sculptures and iconic paintings of North Korea’s communist dictator, Kim Jong Il, who went to great lengths, sometimes ruthlessly, to convince his people that he inherited God — like the power from his “holy” father, the late Kim Il-sung (whose mummified body is still in state, à la Lenin).
If that wasn’t all the harrowing truth, Welcome to North Korea could easily be dismissed as a grotesque fairy tale in which everything in the Grimm’s is a Grimm. The film debuted on US television on March 18, 2003, via the Cinemax cable network.
