National Geographic Explorer (TV Series) Inside North Korea (2007) User Reviews

ruled by fear

[filmalamosa · 8/10 · 27 December 2011]

Although a lot has been written about North Korea seeing it in action engraves itself on your mind.

This is apparently a country where if you even look wrong at someone you are courting with life imprisonment of your whole family and death.

Of particular interest were the "minders" who were hostile bullies for the dumbest things...lying on the ground to take a picture (disrespectful!).

The scenes of the starving children were the most horrible... imagine what great meals those in the prison camps get.

This country is a psychotic nightmare in living color.

The Dear Leaders will hopefully get exactly what they deserve.

A must-see

[planktonrules · 10/10 · 20 August 2008]

This is a rarity--one of the very few documentary films that gives access to North Korea and its totalitarian state. Even when the North Koreans tried to put on their very best face, the country comes off as a giant gulag where all thought is controlled by the state and the people live in total slavery.

So why would North Korea, the most closed society on Earth allow a documentary crew to come to their land since they have steadfastly refused to allow others in the past? Well, Lisa Ling and her National Geographic crew weren't entirely honest about why they were there. It seems that an international group of eye surgeons were going to North Korea to do thousands of free surgeries and the crew claimed they were there to document this. While they did do this, they also added material to put the entire situation in context--with shots of the Demilitarized Zone and interviews with those who had escaped this mad house.

What really struck me about all this is that although the North Koreans laid out the red carpet, so to speak, they couldn't help but continually remind us how sick and depraved their government was--and they had no idea how cult-like and brain-washed everything seemed. Here are a few of the oddities in the film. First, when a cameraman tried laying on the ground to take a statue of their "god" (Kim Il-Song--the first dictator of North Korea) in order to make the statue look more imposing and regal, he was nearly deported because "you cannot lay on the ground to do this--this is a great dishonor". Second, nearby was a park bench that no one was allowed to sit on--ever. Why? Because "the great leader once sat there". And, oddly, no one was in the park! It was as if the people were not allowed to go there. Third, when they went on a visit to a "typical family", it was anything but typical, as almost every sentence the family uttered were praised of their leader. When Lisa Ling noticed several portraits of Kim Jong-Il (the current leader) on the wall (and no family pictures of any kind), she asked "which one is your favorite"--at which point that said EVERY ONE is their favorite. Fourth, when the bandages from the once-blind patients were removed, not one thanked the doctors who had restored their sight for free but all went into raptures thanking their "great leader" for this!! It was all very, very surreal as they cried and showed more fervor than the most devout Muslim or Christian at extolling their love of their god.

In most ways, the film was exceptionally disturbing. Even most cults (including the suicide type) aren't THIS brain-washed and thought-controlled! As a result of all this hysteria, this is a very sobering and rather scary film--not to be missed. I strongly recommend this film to everyone and especially to teens--as they've got to know what it is that the civilized world is up against when it comes to dealing with this nation.

By the way, a great film to complement this is SEOUL TRAIN, which is about the exodus of North Korean refugees into China and China's efforts to deport them back even though they probably will be executed.

Good information, excellent photography and production, awful narration

[daniel-navarra · 2/10 · 13 February 2014]

I was really excited to watch this documentary, as NK is always an interesting topic. Unfortunately, Lisa Ling's narration was amateurish and distracting. This woman is not qualified to narrate a documentary, particularly at this level. Her mannerism, bizarre speaking style, flip attitude, and interview questions seem like something out of a low-budget high school or junior college production. To make matters worse, she obviously wasn't prepared for this assignment, and continually demonstrated her profound ignorance of NK customs and laws, many of which could have been easily picked up by glancing at a Wikipedia article. In one section, she asked whether a group of NK citizens believed Kim Il Sung "uses magic." This asinine question was the final straw for me, and I turned off the program. I'm really disappointed that she approached this topic so foolishly. In fact, I have seen her work in other documentaries, such as one profiling California prisons, and her work was no better; I find myself continually amazed that she was appointed to this job. She may be a "diversity hire," but NatGeo could have done much, much better. So overall, the topic and general concept behind this documentary was excellent, but the narrator / interviewer did such a poor job that all NatGeo's production money and hard work was wasted. The program is essentially unwatchable, unless you turn down the volume and just watch the pictures.

Some Cataracts Remain

[ThurstonHunger · 4/10 · 30 May 2010]

I was looking forward to this documentary, but left quite dissatisfied by it. It seems the filmmakers are more than content to turn on the fog machine of malevolent mystery. Now granted getting access to North Korea is a feat in itself, but the self-congratulatory attitude at their mission's outset and the titillation of a cameraman being told to leave the country the next day, these to me indicate people who are happier with the myths, rather than trying to see through the haze.

Some lip-service is paid to the notion that Koreans may have felt run over by foreign nations so severely in the past, that thus they might invite a strong protector. In this day and age of instant communication and the internet's tentacles slipping and sliding over the world and under fences, the very notion of a Hermit Kingdom is astounding. And yet there, across the DMZ, we see it.

Attaching this documentary to the noble efforts of Dr. Sanduk Ruit to bring sight to the poor, cataract struck citizens of the world, begs for an overriding theme of illumination. Instead we get a propped up interview with a chosen Korean family, and while I know that was going to be PR poisoned I thought the filmmaker/interviewer's handling was clumsy and "fake tough." And that was before the "dramatic reenactment" of the soldier escaping after some sort of accidental broadcast. Even that felt like we were getting 1/10th of the story, and that there was a real story there.

Anyways, after the recent sinking of the Cheonan, I can only feel more mysterious malevolence will be exploited, if not manufactured. Again, don't get me wrong, I don't think that Kim Jong Il is some kind of hero. He is clearly an anachronism, and an astounding one...but the people of North Korea deserve better than he can offer, and better than this film provides.

One other note, the IMDb listing does not even include Dr. Ruit. I wonder if he did not want to be attached to this film in its final form as well. Truly his work is inspirational from what I could tell here, and as for the reactions of the 1000 or so recipients, well clearly desperate people under a desperate regime might not exactly have the most honest of reactions, while at the same time being honestly overjoyed at their rare good luck.