Kimjongilia

"Kimjongilia: The Flower of Kim Jong-Il" is a documentary, based primarily on interviews with some who escaped to South Korea, primarily between 1996 and 2006. Largely through the narratives of interviewees, but with occasional historical asides (brief synopsis of the Kim family's rise to power and the creation of North Korea) or cultural asides (various North Korean propagandas used to brainwash the society) to establish some context, the film describes the repressive political atmosphere in North Korea, and its heavy tolls on both human life and the human condition.



The producer was available for a few questions afterward. ( I was caught off-guard and didn't immediately have many good questions, but ) she did say that the person who filmed it was inspired to make the film after meeting a man in South Korea who had escaped from North Korea in 1992 and was one of the first to expose the fact that North Korea uses concentration camps extensively to purge (up to the third generation) anyone who could be considered a political dissident (Listening to South Korean radio could be, and was, considered such a crime).

That man was Kang Chol-Hwan, author of The Aquariums of Pyongyang (Ten Years in a North Korean Gulag)

When she met this man and heard his story, she decided to make a film so that others would know. She writes more about her production of the film here: http://www.kimjongiliathemovie.com/learnmore.html





From the film's info page：

"For sixty years, North Koreans have been governed by a totalitarian regime that controls all information entering and leaving the country. A cult of personality surrounds its two recent leaders: first, Kim Il Sung, and now his son, Kim Jong Il. For Kim Jong Il’s 46th birthday, a hybrid red begonia named kimjongilia was created, symbolizing wisdom, love, justice, and peace. The film draws its name from the rarefied flower and reveals the extraordinary stories told by survivors of North Korea’s vast prison camps, of devastating famine, and of every kind of repression."

The documentary is composed of interviews with some who have escaped North Korea, interspersed with information about North Korea's history and development of its leaders and present state.

The interviewees, having made it to South Korea, can speak in ways that no one living in North Korea is able to, and their voices are strong. Many of them speak of their story in a calm, controlled, and concise manner - underscoring the extent to which they must have been forced to adapt in order to survive and come to some reasonable terms with the atrocities they suffered.

One was an officer in the military, one was completely stripped of her family, one was sold into sexual slavery while searching for her sister, one was carried comatose on the backs of his brothers over the border, some suffered for unknown reasons in concentration camps, and one was born there, knowing nothing else until a newcomer brought stories of hope from an outside world.

Several escaped by bribing border guards to buy a pass to get near the boarder between North Korea and China. As one woman said, "If you didn't buy the pass, you got caught. If you got caught, you were shot to death." Crossing directly from North Korea to South Korea is nigh-impossible due to the DMZ that lies between, unless one is willing to go by sea.




The citizens of North Korea are subject to a complete program of brainwashing. They are isolated from the rest of the world and prevented from learning the deplorable state of their own condition. The reigning Kim is viewed as a deity.

As one man says in the film, comparing the way many Christians say grace to God before meals, "... we said grace to Kim Il-Sung." And adds, of the opinion formed in his mind of Kim Il-Sung, ".. we thought he didn't even pee."

One woman recalled her reactions to Kim Il-Sung's death in 1994 while she was still living in North Korea, subject to North Korean propaganda, "When Kim Il-Sung died, I thought the world was ending ... what would we do?" It was unthinkable that not only could the Great Leader and Father Kim Il-Sung be mortal, but that he might actually die and cease to rule North Korea.

A woman who danced as a youth in North Korea recalled how, while starving, she and her troupe were led to sing songs with lyrics like 'how shall we spread this bountiful rice?'. "Even now I don't understand," she says.

"I thought of the Great Leader as a father," said one man, of his realization of the true nature of conditions in North Korea: "So how could he let us live like this?"

Since leaving those oppressive conditions, the escapees have further recognized what was really going on and how they were being deceived, but the previously quoted man adds, "If I were still there, I would still worship him", presumably more as a matter of consequence than a matter of choice.


A woman identified as Ms. Kim asks,
"How could anyone praise Kim Jong-Il? ... I am filled with hatred for North Korea. They killed my family. How can I live without tears? He left me alone ... cursed Kim Jong-Il."
Ms. Kim was arrested because her best friend had become Kim Jong-Il's lover and she knew 'too much' about the lives of important men (she met others who had been arrested for crimes such as spreading a newspaper picture of the Leader on the floor, and for listening to South Korean radio). Her mother and father starved to death in a camp. She lost one son to drowning, one to being shot while trying to cross the border, and one to being tortured until his lungs filled with blood. He is still alive, but hospitalized and cannot breathe on his own. She gave up her daughter for adoption to save her from the stigma of being associated with a family that was imprisoned, so that her daughter would have a chance to marry one day. After 35 years, she doesn't know what her husband was arrested for or if he is alive. If I remember right, she escaped by selling everything she owned in order to bribe the guards to let her pass.



One man interviewed was taken with his family to a concentration camp at the age of 9 years old. Someone in his family had been considered to have committed a political crime, and North Korean practice is to purge 3 generations. He screamed so much that the guards let him bring his pet fish with him. For a time, he dried bugs to feed his fish, but when the concentration camp work began he said, "I had no time to cry. We worked so hard and I was so cold. You don't care about your pet fish when you are dying." He was eventually inspired to escape after reading The Count of Monte Cristo, one of the smuggled books circulating among prisoners. He swore that he, too, would take revenge.

The coal mining was the worst. The best job was tending the official beehives. The North Korean economy actually depends partly on the large quantity of labor demanded from prisoners. The camps manufacture military uniforms, bricks, and leather shoes. Some of North Korea's exports, notably doilies to Poland, paper flowers to France, and bras to Russia, are crafted by forced camp labor.

One young man was born in camp, never knowing why his parents were there. He describes how at camp, school was simple. They taught you how to dig coal and how to transport it. Korean reading and writing, as well as addition and subtraction were also taught. At roll call, they recited the camp rules, the first of which was "Any prisoner who does not complete his assignment will be presumed to have an attitude ... and will be executed by firing squad immediately." The other rules begin with things like hiding food, not obeying diligently, trying to escape or failing to report an escape attempt, ... all ending with immediate execution.

This young man was inspired to escape by a newcomer to camp who told of his former, outside life. "The best stories were about eating," said the young man. After hearing such stories, life in camp became unbearable. Together, he and his new friend tried to escape through the fences around the camp near the mountains. The young man made it, squeezing through the fence and descending on the other side of the mountain, but his friend never made it, and he realizes that probably his friend was electrocuted by trying to pass through the fence first.

One interviewee comments: It is a disgrace to the human race that such camps exist.




Not all the interviewees were arrested or escaped from camps. One concert pianist, a man whose story proves he truly lived to play the piano, learned of his country's oppression after traveling to study in Russia and then being reported for playing a piece by a French composer after returning to North Korea. This restriction over his ability to play was intolerable, so he bribed the border guards for an escape to China. Before making it to South Korea, he was captured and tortured by Chinese police. Hung upside-down, he tucked his fingers into his armpits, thinking only that he must not let them harm his hands.

In North Korea, an artist is an instrument of the Party, the film explains, children of the upper class - those loyal to Kim Jong-Il - are the only ones admitted to conservatory. Family background (loyalty to the Party) is everything. One woman explained that although she was a singer, her voice was unacceptable in North Korea because it sounded like the voice of a South Korean pop singer, a capitalist.



Although in the 1950's, North Korea proclaimed the great Worker's Paradise, in the 1980's, there were food shortages which became widespread in the 1990's. After the Great Famine in 1994, the biggest problem for the state in 1995 was how to take care of the corpses. A system was imposed by which circulating military trucks arrived to be loaded with, and haul away, the dead.

One boy from a rural area describes how his family went to the mountain forests to collect roots. They ate grass and bark. One day, while foraging, he was soaked by the rain and became ill. Having no money for food or medicine, at first they laid him aside and waited for him to die. He entered a coma. When he awoke weeks later, he was in a room with an old woman who informed him that he was in China. His brothers and sister had carried him on their backs over the mountains and across the border. But, their parents remained in North Korea and there were penalties in China for harboring North Koreans. His oldest brother felt responsibility to care for the family and would make trips back and forth to bring his parents food. One one of these trips, he was captured. He turned himself in, hoping to receive a lighter sentence. He was publicly executed.

"The fact that they killed a guy like him," says his surviving youngest brother, "It's really hard to deal with." The youngest brother still feels guilty, as if his brother's death is somehow his fault for his sickness causing their first crossing to China.



The military also suffered from food shortages. The State provided them only with salt and rice, and they were left to supply everything else themselves. Further, even though the officers gave orders every day, it was impossible to get work done even if one wanted to because of missing supplies. One officer escaped after brooding for 10 years over how his 'so-called country' had become so tragic and horrific. He took his family by boat through a thick fog, dodging government ships (which actually had no fuel) until he saw the trees on the mountains and knew they had made it to South Korea.

The documentary shows briefly the efforts of some groups to locate escaped North Koreans in China and assist in smuggling them to safety in South Korea. Neither China nor Mongolia are safe for refugees.





Considering the godlike status of Kim Jong Il, there is speculation that North Korea will be wash into chaos at his eventual death. For 20 years the entire NK population has stopped working, says a man in the film of the effects on North Korea's industry and economy. If that becomes 30, then I think it will be over.

Others state: If foreign countries stop aiding Kim Jong Il, North Koreans will end it with their bare hands. Of this, I am certain.

and, If the person who created such a place isn't a criminal, I don't know who is.

However, despite the cruelties they suffered at the hands of their nations leaders, many North Korean refugees separate the hand of power from the land of their home.

"If [ Kim Jong Il's regime ] collapsed today, I'd be in North Korea tomorrow."


The film closes showing the hope that North Korean refugees maintain for their own lives and for the future of their family, friends, and home in Korea.

Ms. Kim speaks again at the end,
I am grateful for South Korea and the world and peace -
for the people who love peace and freedom -
since I have tasted freedom, I have to return to save my North Korean people

I wonder if anyone's listening to our pleas?
North Koreans can't speak


(Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program)
(one of 10 films chosen by the IDA to be considered for an academy award)
Kimjongilia.pdf

The message left by the Documentary is that the world has to save North Korea
My own brief thoughts on this is that (although some actions must take place on the diplomatic level) on a more basic level, it is the people of the world - not the countries - and not the United States - who must be aware of and consider the kind of work this will take, on behalf of their fellow people.

( images used are downloadable from the film's website )
( only phrases shown in quotation marks are direct quotes. Others are paraphrased. )