Propaganda, a film allegedly by North Korea

[justdrew]

Well, here's something new, a 'wake up' style documentary from DPRK. Or is it? I wonder if they assembled the video themselves or if perhaps it's reusing existing video from other docs.

I haven't seen much of it yet, so far it seems fairly 'standard'

Published on Jul 13, 2012 by sabineprogram

Here is the formal statement I gave to Federal Police on 16 June 2012:

On a trip to visit family in Seoul in April, I was approached by a man and a woman who claimed to be North Korean defectors. They presented me with a DVD that recently came into their possession and asked me to translate it. They also asked me to post the completed film on the Internet so that it could reach a worldwide audience. I believed what I was told and an agreement was made to protect their identities (and mine).

Despite my concerns about what I was viewing when I returned home, I proceeded to translate and post the film on You Tube because of the film's extraordinary content. I have now made public my belief that this film was never intended for a domestic audience in the DPRK. Instead, I believe that these people, who presented themselves as 'defectors' specifically targeted me because of my reputation as a translator and interpreter.

Furthermore, I now believe these people work for the DPRK. The fact that I have continued to translate and post the film in spite of this belief does not make me complicit in their intention to spread their ideology. I chose to keep posting this film because - regardless of who made it - I believe people should see it because of the issues it raises and I stand by my right to post it for people to share and discuss freely with each other.

Sabine

I have translated this film, laid in the English voice over and subtitles, and on legal advice have blurred the identity of the presenter and/or blacked out certain elements.

0:00 Introduction
6:54 Creating Ideas & Illusions
16:48 Fear
19:35 Religion
25:00 Beware the 1%
28:10 Emulating Psychosis
31:21 Rewriting History
41:15 The Birth of Propaganda
45:49 Cover Ups and Omissions
54:10 Complicity
58:05 Censorship
1:01:50 International Diplomacy
1:06:14 Television
1:08:11 Advertising
1:14:36 The Cult of Celebrity
1:22:34 Distraction
1:28:01 Terrorism
1:35:00 The Revolution Starts Now

[justdrew]

well, I suspect some folks in the US made this and jacketed it to seem to have come from North Korea.

Maybe, but most of the content is fairly common knowledge. Most anyone here could have put these examples and points together given time. 30 mins in and I see nothing out of the ordinary. No special "north Korea" angle, seems to be a repackage of standard critique.

[Luther Blissett]

attn: exojuridik, does this film bear any stylistic or representative hallmarks of DRPK provenance? Is there any word on the street about it?

[justdrew]

ok there are a few spots in it which seem like North Korea talking to it's own people.

It's a fairly well focused stroll though, the take down on Reality TV and "celeb culture" is very nice

lot of consequences of war imagery, but I can't say it's used unfairly, people should see what their fears buy them overseas.

[exojuridik]

My impression is that this was not intended for a North Korean audience. I believe this for 2 main reasons. First, the critique of consumer capitalism is based on a post-enlightenment humanism. The narrative is sort of a cut-rate Adam Curtis, appealing to a disaffected bourgeouis ennui that comes from having indulged in The Feast for too long. North Koreans are marching into a starker battle whose drum beat is the perservation of the Korean people, syncopated with the rattling menance of foreign imperial powers threatening to invade through military conquest. The audience would have little use for the sentiments expressed in the film or would be familiar with the blunt critical theory analysis it uses to expose the machinations of corporate marketing. For instance, from my understanding of Korean culture, the idea of narcissism is completely alien. In the South they unwittingly embrace it (plastic surgery is derigeur here for both men and women - its part of a phenomenon is called "lookism") in the North it has no means of expression. Quite frankly, the film asks the viewer to look back on a value-world that has never existed for North Koreans.

This leads to the 2nd reason why I think this film is a fraud. In many ways corporate marketing and government propaganda serve the same function - to have the audience sublimate their individual desires to the interests of those creating the spectacle. The Western world shown would tantalize the North Korean viewer with a shiny, exotic world of plenty. Sex, consumerism and pop-music are pretty seductive forces and this might crack the seamless bubble of Koreanness that the North has spent over a half of century creating. The thrall of cheap western entertainment might weaken the spell of enchantment that the DPRK governemnt seems so intent on preserving. If nothing else, the sophisticated, well-financed advertising shown in this film makes the government's spectacle seem cheap and crude in comparison.

Personally, I haven't heard anything about this down here. this is probably because North Korean propoganda is illegal to watch in South Korea. Also, South Koreans these days are studiously ignoring the North in their own pursuit of consumer affluence. What I can't figure out is who this video is intended for. If it is US cointelpro is it aimed at discrediting the Occupy Movement by hijacking their critique and associating it with the North Korean government? But even still that critique is pretty universal these days outside Western media. If it were from the North aimed at Western disaffected youth they really strike a false note with the military propaganda at the end. Perhaps, this was some kind of loyalty test for the translator? I dunno . . .

[Philos]

I don't get the NK angle at all. The narrator even inflects words in a derogatory manner like "brand", almost the same way that narrator for "The Story of Your Enslavement" used the words cattle and farm.

Still enjoyed it; made me laugh a few times- and its critique of narcissistic society was brilliant IMO.

[exojuridik]

This film perplexes me because it doesn't seem to work as propaganda for either a North or South Korean audience. It doesn't push the right buttons. Both North and South Korean propaganda follows a certain nationalistic template that has little variation. It goes like this 1) emphasis on the purity and/or indomitable spirit of the Korean race; 2) luridly show the Japanese depredations against the Korean people; 3) somehow link current foreign influences to the weakening of the nation thus allowing another colonization by the Japanese and/or the debasement of the women by non-Koreans (no joke). That's pretty much it.

However, the message does make sense if the South Korean government was worried an Occupy movement might gain credence here. Currently, the country is facing the same social and economic crises North America and Europe. If the government could somehow link protests over the economy with North Korean subversion than their security forces would legally have a stronger basis to prosecute the resistance. This isn't so farfetched if you consider the fact that the president is a corporate born-again christian puppet who mimics GWB in both policy and practice.

There were only several hundred people joining in the occupy Seoul movement last year. Yet the job-market is continuing to worsen and so is the stratification of wealth. It is only time before the people here begin to awaken from the Korean dream en masse. The elites maybe now sensing that video games and social media addiction only delays the inevitable. Tying an Occupy movement to the North would be the best way to bring back an 80's style military repression of dissent.

[Wombaticus Rex]

^^^ #ZING I think you've got something there

[exojuridik]

Park-Jong-woo-008.jpg

"DOKDO IS OUR LAND"

Waved after beating the Japanese at soccer - now this is what Korean propaganda looks like.

[exojuridik]

_62237917_015715108-1.jpg

Actually,these days the dokdo island dispute is now becoming a major issue with the South Korean presidential election coming up this year. The current president made the first such official visit to the disputed island and the Japanese responded by recalling their ambassador from Seoul. Additionally, four relay swimmers are now making their way to island over a couple hundred km of cold, choppy water.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19240600

This all seems very choreographed.

I would actually like to submit some examples of North Korean propaganda, however that would likely get me deported. The NYT time printed a piece arguing that internet surveillance by South Korean authorities has increased three-fold under the current president.

"Park Kyung-sin — one of the few members of the government’s Internet regulatory board appointed by opposition parties, and an ardent critic of its policies — says members of the political elite feel especially threatened because they see themselves as “fatherlike figures.”

One of the first decisions the board made after Mr. Lee came to power was to “purify the language” used against Mr. Lee because, as one commissioner later said, he should be treated like the father of the state, “an extended form of a family.' "


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/world ... anted=2&hp

I'm probably already screwed for writing this from here. oh well fuck it

[justdrew]

apparently this thing is still going

The New Zealand Film Being Passed Off As North Korean Propaganda
December 2nd, 2012

Really quick, to let people know to please stop submitting this:

Propaganda is a pisstake by New Zealand filmmaker Slavko Martinov. The artifice of the hoax was what grabbed the attention of mainstream media with this thing.

Here are some films that cover similar topics (and aren’t hoaxes): The Power Principle and Human Resources.