Last week, I watched several video clips on North Korea on youtube. I never thought that there would be videos about the country since I know North Korea to be a very closed country, to the point that they even filter news coming out of their country. At first, the videos seems surreal for me. I thought they were re-enactments of the “real” North Korea but seeing the flags and the enormous space which probably isn’t possible for a re-enactment stage, I was finally convinced.
Initially, travel to North Korea interested me through this blog. In this blog, the author depicts the story of their North Korea adventure. They went on a very unusual path going to North Korea through rail from Vienna, to Russia, then finally to North Korea. I was surprised that he was able to come out alive after 4 days of stay in Pyongyang, and had to be thankful for his safe escape else this blog would not be alive.
North Korea, if you will have a simple mind picture of this country, what would you see? I imagine ghostly roads, depleted buildings, military men everywhere, and full of dampened air. Apparently the video clips that I watched last week confirmed to me exactly that image, except that they have nice architectural structures that look like they are housed in a big museum. The people looked like a facade. They walk as if they are told to do so. Everything to me looked fabricated. Even their clothes almost looked the same. There are no kanbans, no commercial stores, no riot, not a single loud noise. Everything was overly perfect, even the movements of their human stop light (which was performed by women).
If I were to live in that country, I don’t think I can survive, having no internet connection available to the public. I can’t even imagine how these people enjoy themselves, or if they know enjoyment for that matter. Their TV screens only flashes whenever the government wants them to watch something. They are forced to project fake smiles in front of the foreigners. They cannot own phones, or anything that is used for communications, nor they are allowed to travel outside the country. Everything seemed to be restricted for them.
If there comes the time that these citizens are allowed to speak for themselves, to be heard by the entire world, I wonder what things they are going to say. Koreans are known to be “prideful” people. This personality of them was brought by numerous attempt to colonize their country centuries before. They developed this as a barrier, their protection to perservation. Having said that, it might be possible that these people are trying to live by that principle so hard that they try to be very patient. Call them stubborn, but that is just how Koreans are molded by history. But, being in the era of globalizationalism, I think that that attitude might be a little outdated for a country.
Personally, I pity those people.. but on the backside of the coin, I understand them (having read a book about Koreans). I just hope that the time comes when they will be ready to welcome the world and discover that there are better things than what they actually see.
Here is a video about a group of journalists who traveled to North Korea –> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSMQrMV5vcM (the video was disabled to be embedded by request)
