Former Great Leader of North Korea,
Kim Jong Il was a
noted cinephile with a personal video library of over 20,000 movies. In 1970, he said
"The motion picture industry, when dealing with the socialist reality, has not yet reached the standard set by our Party." To help it reach the standard, the Dear Leader wrote a treatise
On the Art of the Cinema (PDF), took an interest in minute details of film production (as recounted by
film stars), revamped the
Taedongmun Cinema House, and kidnapped a director (previously
1,
2.)
But did this lead to better movies?....
[more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet
on May 10, 2013 -
11 comments
The Pirate Bay has announced via a
blog post that they will be using North Korea as a haven to serve pages without facing prosecution from copyright authorities.
[more inside]
posted by 23
on Mar 4, 2013 -
77 comments
As this research report will show, North Koreans today are learning more about the outside world than at any time since the founding of the country. North Korea is consistently ranked by Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders as the country with the least free media in the world. This ranking reflects the country's complete lack of an independent domestic media, its legal restrictions against accessing foreign media and the harsh punishments it metes out against citizens who violate those restrictions. Yet, since the late 1990s the information environment in North Korea has undergone significant changes. Although the media environment remains extremely restricted by international standards, North Koreans' access to outside media has grown considerably over the past two decades. Many inside the country continue to develop new ways to access information while avoiding the ever-present risk of detection and punishment.
posted by DiesIrae
on Dec 11, 2012 -
13 comments
Kim Han Sol is the son of Kim Jong Nam, who is the eldest son of Kim Jong Il, the recently deceased North Korean dictator. In this English interview for Finnish TV with former United Nations Under-Secretary General Elisabeth Rehn, he talks about his life, refers to his uncle and current DPRK Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Eun, as a 'dictator,' and says he never met his grandfather. [
Part 1 (interview begins at 1:35)] [
Part 2]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken
on Oct 18, 2012 -
22 comments
Extracts from Escape From Camp 14 -
How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp. There was torture, starvation, betrayals and executions, but to Shin In Geun, Camp 14 – a prison for the political enemies of North Korea – was home. Then one day came the chance to flee…
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Mar 17, 2012 -
25 comments
1. Find 5 very cute children.
2. Teach them how to play the guitar, and play it well.
3. Find a catchy little song for them to play.
5.
Profit Nightmare.
posted by HuronBob
on Feb 24, 2012 -
66 comments
Current TV
previously & previously, the media company founded by Al Gore after the 2000 election, has picked up the kinds of in depth long form journalism being rapidly dropped by major networks, but has been tantalizingly unavailable for those without cable; until now. They have been putting their Vanguard episodes up on their website and on YouTube.
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posted by Blasdelb
on Apr 30, 2011 -
24 comments
Filming in North Korea is a bit of an iffy task, and you never know when a minder may decide to confiscate your memory cards or camera. That was a risk I didn’t want to take, so I decided not to reveal to them the fact that my 5D was capable of shooting video. I taped up the back screen with black electrical tape. Pyongyang Style – North Korean Haircut
posted by finite
on Mar 14, 2011 -
57 comments
Flipping Off the North Koreans, 1968. The crew deduced that the North Koreans didn’t know what the finger meant. In the subsequent propaganda photos of the crew, their middle fingers were firmly extended to the cameraman. When the North Koreans questioned, the crew described it as the “Hawaiian good luck sign.”
(via
Andrew Sullivan.)
posted by LarryC
on Oct 4, 2010 -
33 comments
Shin Sang-ok (1926 - 2006) was a Korean movie writer, director and producer, who studied film in Japan and returned to South Korea, where he gained fame and became the
uncontested leader of the film industry in the 1960s, in a time when regulations on the industry limited other studios. In the 1970s under the
Fourth Republic of South Korea, the film industry was even further limited, which lead to Shin's studio being closed. Things went from bad to worse, when
"the Orson Welles of South Korea" was kidnapped by request of Kim Jong Il, the son of North Korea's dictator, Kim Il Sung. The reason? Kim Jong Il wanted the nation's film industry to promote the virtues of the Korea Workers' Party to a world-wide audience. After being imprisoned for four years, Shin was reunited with his ex-wife (who was also a captive of North Korea) and the given relative freedom, producing seven films in North Korea. While setting up a distribution deal to share Kim Jong Il's vision with a broader audience for a Godzilla-like monster movie, Shin and his wife escaped and sought political asylum in the United States. Their freedom was possible because of that last film for Kim, entitled
Pulgasari. But Shin's life in movies was not over yet.
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posted by filthy light thief
on Aug 5, 2010 -
14 comments
On March 26, 2010, the ROKS Cheonan, a South Korean navy ship,
exploded and sunk, killing at least forty sailors. On May 19, an international investigation team concluded that a North Korean torpedo sunk the Cheonan.
What does this mean for the Koreas and the world? It's not clear, but
Ask a Korean provides a brief, yet historically contextualized
dossier on this issue.
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posted by ignignokt
on May 25, 2010 -
86 comments
Hitch reads up on North Korea: "I have recently donned the bifocals provided by
B.R. Myers in his electrifying new book
The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, and I understand now that I got the picture either upside down or inside out. The whole idea of communism is dead in North Korea, and its most recent "Constitution," "ratified" last April, has dropped all mention of the word. The analogies to Confucianism are glib, and such parallels with it as can be drawn are intended by the regime only for the consumption of outsiders. Myers makes a persuasive case that we should instead regard the Kim Jong-il system as a phenomenon of the very extreme and pathological right. It is based on totalitarian "military first" mobilization, is maintained by slave labor, and instills an ideology of the most unapologetic racism and xenophobia."
Read the first chapter here.
posted by ocherdraco
on Feb 2, 2010 -
59 comments
