A recent North Korea related documentary I watched on my Netflix que was Kimjongilia.  If you are wondering where the title of the movie comes from, it is named after a flower dedicated to Kim Jong-Il.   This flower was developed by a Japanese botanist to celebrate Korean- Japanese friendship.  Ironically the flower is supposed to represent wisdom, love, justice, and peace which obviously Kim Jong-il represents nothing of.

Anyway this documentary has a number of interviews with North Koreans that defected from the country between 1994 and 2006.  It also has a number of interviews with the most famous defector Kang Chol-hwan who wrote the book the “Aquariums of Pyongyang“.  This book was really the first written account of life in the North Korean gulags that received widespread attention.  It was even read by former President George Bush who invited Kang to the White House.  In the interviews Kang was very critical about countries giving aid to Kim Jong-Il, but that is unfortunately just what Bush would do during his 2^nd term as President.

Besides interviewing Kang the movie also has an interview with another defector Shin Dong-hyuk who was born in Camp 14 and tells the stories of his hardships at this maximum security camp.  Most people like Shin’s parents die at the camp, but he was able to survive long enough to eventually escape.  You can learn more about Shin at this prior ROK Drop posting.

ROK Drop readers may also remember my prior book review of “The Long Road Home” written by Kim Yong who was also once imprisoned in the notorious Camp 14.

The documentary features plenty of more heartbreaking tales from North Korean refugees such as highlighting the sexual slavery of North Korean refugees that continues to occur in China.  One inspiring story I thought was how a former North Korean Army captain sulked for 10 years wanting to escape North Korea because of what he saw the Kim regime doing to his country.  He finally escaped by sailing a small boat 200 miles to Incheon while avoiding North Korean patrol boats.  He brought his entire family with him due to his concern of them being separated if they try to defect through China.  His gamble worked out and he is a very outspoken critic of the Kim regime.  He says that when the Kim regime collapses he would be ready to go back to North Korea the next day to help rebuild his country.  I have always felt that the North Korean refugee community needs to be organized by the South Korean government to do just that, be used to help rebuild North Korea after the regime collapses.  Any post-regime collapse rebuilding effort needs to have as much of a North Korean face as possible and the refugee community is a good place to start.

Overall the documentary provides plenty of good general information for people unfamiliar with the North Korean refugee issue.  For those that follow the issue closely there isn’t really much new presented in the documentary you wouldn’t already be familiar with.  Something that I think may turn off viewers watching the movie is the awful music and the cut scenes of a Korean woman doing provocative dancing in a Pyongyang Traffic Girl outfit.  I guess the director must have thought the dancing had some kind of artistic merit to it; I just found it annoying.  The music and the strange dancing I thought really took away from an otherwise informative documentary for those unfamiliar with the North Korean refugee issue.  Like I said before if you are already closely following the North Korean refugee issue you probably won’t get much from this movie but if you subscribe to Netflix it is worth checking out and recommending to others unfamiliar with the issue to view.