Monthly Archives: September 2018

Movie about North Korea defector to open Asia’s top film festival

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A film about the plight of a defector who leaves her family behind in North Korea will open Asia’s biggest film festival next month, Busan International Film Festival organizers said Tuesday.

This year’s festival will open with South Korean filmmaker Jero Yun’s “Beautiful Days”, which tells the story of a woman who abandons her husband and young son to flee North Korea for a better life and later reconnects with them.

“The unique story line of the restoration of a family through initial dissolution was appealing, and the subject of a North Korean defector was also very timely,” said festival director Jay Jeon.

[AFP]

Ongoing North Korean repression and disillusionment

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It is impossible to overstate the pervasiveness of the personality cult surrounding the Kims’ in North Korea. Founding President Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il and his grandson, the current leader, Kim Jong Un form a kind of “holy trinity” in North Korea. There is no criticizing them or questioning the system — at least not without risking both personal freedom and the freedom of your entire family. Following are excerpts of testimonies of defectors from North Korea (with year of their defection noted in parenthesis):

“The preschooler” (2017): “We got gifts on Kim Jong Un’s birthday: candy and cookies and gum and puffed rice. I was so grateful to him for giving me all these sweets. We would stand up in class and say, ‘Thank you, General Kim Jong Un.’”

“The university student” (2013): “We had ideological education for 90 minutes every day. There was revolutionary history, lessons about Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un. …They taught us about why we needed nuclear weapons, and they would tell us that we needed to make sacrifices in our daily lives so they could build these weapons and protect our country, keep the nation safe. I was so sick and tired of hearing about all this revolutionary history, I was so sick of calling everyone ‘comrade.’ I didn’t care about any of that stuff.”

“The doctor” (2014): “It’s like a religion. From birth, you learn about the Kim family, learn that they are gods, that you must be absolutely obedient to the Kim family. The elites are treated nicely, and because of that they make sure that the system stays stable. But for everyone else, it’s a reign of terror. The Kim family uses terror to keep people scared, and that makes it impossible to stage any kind of social gathering, let alone an uprising.”

“The money man” (2015): “Every month there was special instruction about Kim Jong Un. …We were told that Kim Jong Un wanted to know everything so that he could take proper care of everyone, help everyone. Nobody believed this because if Kim Jong Un knew we had no electricity and were eating corn rice [imitation rice made from ground corn], why wasn’t he doing anything about it?”

“The young mother” (2014): “Everybody knew that Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un were both liars, that everything is their fault, but it’s impossible to voice any opposition because we are under such tight surveillance. If someone is drunk and says ‘Kim Jong Un is a son of a bitch’, you’ll never see them again.”

[Source of quotations:The Washington Post]

Ex-defense secretary calls Trump’s North Korea summit a failure

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Former US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said President Donald Trump’s summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong-un in June about the country’s nuclear threat was “doomed to failure” because of a lack of preparation beforehand.

This past month, Trump called off a planned trip to North Korea by Secretary of State Michael Pompeo after concluding there hasn’t been enough progress in talks aimed at denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

Panetta, who served as defence secretary and CIA director under Democratic President Barack Obama, said the summit “was all about show, it was about shaking hands, exchanging words.”

But looking at North Korea’s nuclear weapon sites and how other needed underlying work before such a major meeting wasn’t done, basic diplomatic work is still needed, he said.

While Trump inherited a difficult situation with North Korea, it’s not enough for the president to emphasize the good relationship he has with Kim, Panetta said. “This isn’t about the dominance of personalities,” he said. “This is about the hard work of negotiating the solution to the differences between North Korea and the United States and South Korea. And there a lot of issues at stake here. But none of that work has been done.”

[Sydney Morning Herald]