Kimjongilia, the Flower of Kim Jong Il

"Kimjonilia" is a documentary about life in North Korea during the last couple decades. It has no narration but instead consists of interviews with various folks who have escaped the country and are now telling their stories. The stories involve mass prison camps, torture, executions, starvation and total repression. Their eyewitness accounts are very compelling and sad---and they can't help but break your hearts. In between, you also have various clips of North Korean propaganda TV shows and massive highly choreographed dances all designed to sign the praises of their 'glorious leader'--Kim Jong-Il.

This was an odd documentary. Although the content was fantastically compelling, the artistic style was just awful. I just don't get it and all the 'artsy' stuff distracted from the very powerful message. You see, throughout the film, there are many scenes of a woman dressed in a North Korean uniform doing bizarre interpretive dances! So, you have heart-wrenching story after heart-wrenching story of privation and murder...and then this weird dancing! Additionally, several times during the film, characters were shown in the weirdest sort of close-ups--a person's left eye or nose or any other part of the face was shown up very, very close. Perhaps this was an odd way to show a person without showing the whole face in order to protect their identity but surely there must have been a better way to do this! Overall, a very compelling message and a film well worth seeing--despite some silly artistic decisions.

I have been fascinated with North Korea for several years. What we see on TV, and in news broadcasts, typically isn't how it really is. We see the best of the worst. But there is so much more to this country. If you look at maps of the world lit up at night, there is a very noticeable black hole, that is North Korea.

I've always wondered how these people live in a country where control is so absolute. Why don't they just escape, or revolt? Other countries have this, escapes and revolts, yet we don't hear of it in North Korea.

Then I stumbled upon this documentary, Kimjongilia, the flower named after Kim Jong-Il. It's a very well put together documentary, with the story told by those who were fortunate enough to have left. You hear the stories from their mouths (the version I saw had subtitles for us English language speakers). You got to hear (read) their stories. The woman whose children are gone. The young woman who miraculously survived a coma. The men who served in the military.

The video footage is very stark, and real. The photographs, well some are hard to view. My teenage son and I watched this together, stopping constantly to discuss various things, and compare them to our life in the United States. The fact that on a Thursday, on a day we give thanks, we are able to sit/lay on my bed, watching this documentary while it's 20 degrees outside, and we're toasty warm inside eating a hamburger, we both commented on how there are so many people in that country who can't even imagine doing something like that, because it's not something they're allowed to dream about.

I do hope, though, as one man does, that one day North Korea reunites with South Korea, and it happens sooner rather than later. I hope that North Koreans are able to learn the joys of reading something without worry of being turned in by your neighbors. Or listening to music that is free to choose from, not government sanctioned. Free from famine, from the gulags. Just free.

As for age recommendation for this documentary, I would certainly say teenage is a perfect age to start watching, perhaps a little younger depending on the maturity level. It does show pictures of younger children that are starving, and they may be difficult for younger children to watch (and some adults). There is no graphic violence shown however. And it would be a wonderful documentary to watch with teenagers though who feel life is unfair. You walk away from this one feeling you have it pretty darn good.

I have seen 2 or 3 documentaries about North Korea they were all compelling--it is a fascinating live brain washing horror show. The show they put on is impressive.

This was the worst one not because of the stories far from it they ring completely true. But the use of interpretive modern mime like dancers in a split screen mode and other artistic gimmicks just distracts from these really horrific sad and tragic stories.

For some reason the story that stood out for me was the girl whose brother carried her on his back when she had typhoid fever to China...he was later shot for turning himself in taking food to his parents.

You have to wonder at these dear leaders--who need to be torn apart on the streets--and what humans are capable of living with and doing to each.

There's absolutely no doubt that North Korea is one of the most mysterious, most secretive and most repressive regimes in the world today. For those reasons, I suppose it holds a certain fascination for a lot of people - myself included. It makes no sense. The very concept of a family dynasty in a Communist country is completely contradictory, and yet North Korea seems poised in the near future to move on to the third generation of the Kim Dynasty. This movie takes its name from the second of the Kim Dynasty - the Dear Leader himself, Kim Jong-Il. In fact, the name "Kimjongilia" is actually the name of a flower named after Kim Jong-Il that was developed by a Japanese botanist to celebrate Korean- Japanese friendship. The flower - a point this documentary makes repeatedly - is supposed to represent wisdom, love, justice and peace. Go figure.

This film centres on the brutality of the North Korean dictatorship and on the desperate situation of the North Korean people, who face hunger and repression every moment of every day. Their lives are completely choreographed from birth on - a point brilliantly made by the scenes of brilliantly choreographed and very beautiful demonstrations and military parades. It's told through the eyes of several people who have escaped the country and its system of prison camps, and it mixes in some snippets of North Korean history and some fascinating examples of North Korean film-making, whose sole purpose seems to be to virtually deify the Kims. The point is made several times that Kim Il-Sung - the founder of the dynasty - is regarded as a virtual god, while Kim Jong-Il, his son, is also revered in a manner fit for a deity. The stories are heart-breaking, and the film clearly leads up to its last few scenes, which are a thinly veiled appeal for the world's help in ridding North Korea of this evil system, so the film is hardly unbiased - nor should it be. The Kim Dynasty is an evil dynasty that has happily kept its people brutally under its thumb for 60 years. There's no reason to sugar-coat that, and this film doesn't do that even for a second. Also coming in for some harsh words near the end of this is the People's Republic of China, a nation hardly loved by North Korean dissidents because it returns to North Korea those escapees it catches who have made it into China.

Overall this is a very good film. I wasn't entirely clear on the purpose of the dancing girl who kept popping up or on the point her dance moves were making. It almost seemed as if this was a sort of "narration by dance." The film paints a very believable picture of what life is like north of the 38th parallel on the Korean Peninsula, although it doesn't really tackle the question of why people living in such desperate circumstances don't revolt - when people who were less desperate than this revolted against vicious Communist dictators in Eastern Europe (especially Romania.) So many questions remain when this is over, but it gives perhaps the clearest picture of life in North Korea that I've come across.

With the recent Oscar win by "Parasite", it seemed like a good time to focus on Korea. Korea, like most cultures in the region, has thousands of years of history. The origin of modern events there is Japan's colonization and brutal occupation of the peninsula (the Japanese troops not only committed horrific atrocities but also used Korean women as "comfort women", meaning sex slaves). But the widely known stage of Korea's history started with Japan's defeat and the occupation by the US and USSR. The division of the peninsula created North Korea (a Stalinist state) and South Korea (whose government for decades was like a Latin American junta government; full democracy there only got established in the 1980s). During the Korean War, the US used napalm in North Korea, practically leveling the country.

N. C. Heiken's "Kimjongilia" features interviews with people who fled North Korea. Basically, North Korea deifies the Kim dynasty, with the late Kim Il-sung called Eternal Leader (North Korea even starts its official calendar with his birth year, just as Christianity does with Jesus). Kim Jong-il was still alive when the documentary came out; from what I've heard, the deification continues with Kim Jong-un.

It's not a great documentary, but worth seeing.