The Planet Doc Review festival is being held in Warsaw right now. My dad took me out on Monday to see Andrzej Fidyk's Yodok Stories, which is a documentary about North Korean concentration camps. What many people don't realize (or at least I didn't) is that North Korea is running several concentration camps today (I believe the film spoke of the existence of 15) to hold political prisoners and their families. In North Korea, if you are guilty of a crime against the state (which can mean a lot of things - for example putting a newspaper with the photograph of Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, on the floor would be considered such a crime) three generations of your family will be put in a concentration camp.
Andrzej Fidyk is a Polish documentary director (though apparently his next project will be a feature film, so I'll be really excited about that!) who makes very particular sort of films. I first came across him in film school (for those who don't know me that well - I did a two year film course where I specialized in editing and then didn't follow it up with anything much). My history of film teacher showed us Andrzej Fidyk's 1989 film - Defilada. He told us (or at least that's what I remember - I hope I remember right!) that in the late 80s the North Korean government decided to invite eight foreign documentary directors to make a film about their country (they wanted to improve their image abroad), but of course reserving the right to censor the films. Of the 8 films made, only Fidyk's passed the censors and made its way out into the world. Poland of course has a very strong tradition of making films which pass censors, but which say everything that needs to be said anyway and Defilada is a classic example of this (in fact that's why it was shown to us!).
Almost 20 years later a Norwegian human rights body asked Fidyk whether he would be interested in making a film about North Korean concentration camps. So he started to wonder how such a thing could even be done. Naturally, you can't just waltz into a concentration camp and film it and then there's the other issue of how do you make a film on this topic without making it so depressing that nobody would want to watch it.
Finally, he had an idea... You see, North Korea does probably the most spectacular stadium performances in the world. In fact Fidyk's first film about North Korea references this with its title - Defilada means The Parade. You can see a fragment of Defilada which shows a stadium performance below (it's in Polish, if you want to go straight to the bit that shows the performance then it's about half way through the clip):
To see more of Fidyk's Defilada, go here or to see another North Korean parade go here (there are way more on youtube and all of them are just as spectacular!).
So Fidyk decided that he had to find a North Korean spectacle/theatre director amongst the many North Korean refugees in South Korea and talk him into directing a play about North Korean concentration camps. The documentary would focus on the making of the play. Eventually he found a man suitable for the job and after a lot of talks the play evolved into a stage musical (apparently these are very popular in South Korea). The musical is called Yoduk Story - Yodok being the name of one of the concentration camps. It was a huge success in South Korea and has toured the USA too. You can see the trailer for the stage musical below:
What struck me most in what I learnt from the film was how totally isolated North Korea is. The people living by the border may have some idea about what's going on in the outside world, but everybody else is totally cut off from outside information. And anyone who *would* have such information would not share it because their whole family would end up in one of the concentration camps. Furthermore North Korea has NO internet. That was the first thing I checked on-line after seeing the film because I just couldn't believe it. The North Korean domain is .kp and there are exactly two known websites in that domain and both of them are on servers outside of North Korea. In North Korea internet just doesn't exist. So the only way people (mainly the many North Korean refugees living in South Korea) have been trying to give people in North Korea information about the outside world is by sending brochures via helium balloons.
I really recommend the documentary - it's a very important topic and a very well made film too. It will still be showing this Saturday and Sunday at the festival.
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i've actually heard about these concentration camps. It was a big story somewhere aroud 2003 i think. One of middle rank government officialran had ran away from there and confessed about what was going on. They are often researching biological and chemical wepons on the prisoners :(
those parades are so creepy. i really can't see the beauty in them. :/
i've seen one american docomentary about north korea and he showed a city in korea, but he was allowed to film only some streets and on others he had to cover the camera - the walk through the city was a part of this movie
i also read this strange article about a ghost city on the notrh-south korea border. the south korea sodiers who guard the borded and sometimes help the refugese if they manage to get on the other side. there is a ghost town on the north side, a city with quite a few builinds but the houses are hollow shells, they don't even have glass in the windows. but everyday north korean soldiers run around it to turn on and off the light to pretend that someone lives there. and nobody knows why. they can't really understand the purpose of this show, maybe the north korean think the south koreans don't have an equipment that allaws to see that far. or maybe thay don't even know such equipment exists...
i think that north korea is in the top five if not the worse regime on earth at the moment.
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