Channel Four's lies about the DPRK exposed

After having endured 1 hour of the channel 4 propaganda documentary titled ‘North Korea: Life inside the Secret State’, I shall list the many errors made by the program below:-
• If the DPRK is such a repressive state as this documentary has claimed, then the Korean state TV would not show the many triumphs and achievements of the Korean people. If the ordinary Korean citizens were starving and they saw images of wealth and prosperity on Television, the masses would rebel and over throw the Government. This has not happened because the DPRK has a people based system that provides for the needs of every citizen.
• One part of the program shows a child who has had his arm cut off by a train. This is extremely unlikely as if an eight year old child had been hit by a train, as the program claims, the child would not just suffer a detached arm but would be a fatality.
• A video which the narrator says has been secretly recorded in the DPRK shows two teenage girls apparently watching a smuggled DVD. One of the girls said that the people featured in the DVD may be Soviets and she appears to think that the Soviet Union hasn’t clapsed, even though the DPRK education system educates on current affairs and history, so the girls would know that the USSR collapsed in 1991. The other teenage girl uses the word “cool”, which a DPRK citizen would not use as this is a vile Americanism.
• Another video purporting to have been smuggled out of the DPRK shows what the narrator claims to be department store number 1 in Pyongyang. The video is fuzzy and you can’t make out the people speaking.
• In one of the so called defectors videos people are gathered around a mural of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. All the people are healthy and full in the face. This propaganda piece is self contradictory as it earlier claimed that all North Koreans are starving.
• The film claims to show satellite photographs of concentration camps but provides no evidence, just random buildings are shown.
• A low quality video shows a woman apparently running an illegal bus service, swearing at a KPA officer. This would not happen in the DPRK as the military are held in very high esteem. All North Koreans hold Songun politics very highly, so a military officer would not be sworn at.
• Lots of the program is filled with gaps of the reactionary Japanese journalist driving around the countryside near the DPRK border, this is clearly just to fill gaps in the program. Maybe a mistake as the DPRK country side looks very presentable and green!
• The film suggests that most North Koreans are poor but a so called defectors video shows of a child buying smuggled DVD from another Korean. So either the child’s family have enough money to buy a DVD player or this scene was filmed in a south Korean NIS studio. This is more contradictory information in the documentary.
• At the end of the documentary there are ridiculous and infantile lies stating that women in the DPRK were not allowed to wear trousers until last year. The truth is that in the DPRK men and women have equal status so a woman can wear trousers if she so wishes.

I wonder whether a documentary showing the true culture and beauty of the DPRK will ever be produced in a western country?

 

(contributed by a member of the JISGE )