North Korea Exposed!!

I chanced upon The Vice Guide to North Korea and was immediately hooked on to it after the first episode! The documentary, hosted by Shane Smith, showed their entire 10 day trip in the communist country, from the beginning when they had problems getting into North Korea till their last day in the country. Just reading the brief note from Shane excites me:

"The first leg of the trip was a flight into northern China. At the airport the North Korean consulate took our passports and all of our money, then brought us to a restaurant. We were sitting there with our tour group, and suddenly all the other diners left and these women came out and started singing North Korean nationalist songs. We were thinking, “Look, we were just on a plane for 20 hours. We’re jet-lagged. Can we just go to bed?” but this guy with our group who was from the LA Times told us, “Everyone in here besides us is secret police. If you don’t act excited then you’re not going to get your visa.” So we got drunk and jumped up onstage and sang songs with the girls. The next day we got our visas. A lot of people we had gone with didn’t get theirs. That was our first hint at just what a freaky, freaky trip we were embarking on.."

Im sure most of us have heard of the country's propaganda system. In fact, during my exchange last year, Nai Yan told me about his uncle's experience in North Korea as a tourist. Basically everything was surreal. There were neither cars nor people on the streets and in the restaurants. Its like a ghost town, or rather, a pseudo setting specially done up for tourists to have the false impressions of North Korea. I didn't quite understand how was it possible to have a fake city for real tourists, till I watched this documentary!




Watch the rest of the episodes here. There are a total of 14 episodes, each last for only about 5min.

Interesting finds from this documentary:
1. the many huge landmarks that we all knew in North Korea actually contains dynamites!
2. there is no electricity in the day??!
3. the people are ignorant of the world outside. They know nothing about rock'n'roll, jazz and blues! They doesnt have anything like that!
4. their food is inedible.
5. its a crazy land! they lay out the food for nobody and then keep them again to use the next day lol!!! You gotta check out episode 3 for this!

Enjoy your tour in the 1950s-soviet-union-alike communist country!