SHANE SMITH: The next stop on
our tour of North Korean boredom and propaganda was the
Great People's Library, which is this massive library
that they're very, very excited about. And they make you walk the
whole god damn thing. And the first thing you learn
is that Kim Jong Il invented the best, most perfect reading
desk because you can alter the level of the desk. SHANE SMITH: Kim Jong
Il invented it. And it's the best desk ever. And you're like, OK. It's a table with-- You can move a level. It's like a simple table. Then they take you to the
philosopher hotline, which I found pretty interesting,
which is if you have a philosophical, Marxist,
dialectic problem, then you can come to the library and
ask the philosopher god. SHANE SMITH: And that's it. Thank you. The other thing I found amazing
is they're very proud of their modern music library. They've got the Beatles. And they've got Bob
Dylan and stuff. But the music room was
completely empty. And I started thinking
about why they have this kind of place. It seemed to me that it was used
for maybe upper echelons, or party officials, or guides,
or wannabe guards to learn idiomatic speech so that they'll
understand what we say when we talk in vernacular. And so you can picture them with
headphones on listening, going, "Abbey Road. I understand those
bastards now." SHANE SMITH: They made us get
up at 6:00 in the morning. We get put in the truck. And we just drive. We drove for four hours. And when we get out,
we're at the sea. And there's this huge thing,
which is called a barrage. I didn't know what
a barrage was. But it's basically a huge dam. And they've dammed up
the Taedong River. And it's just a triumph
of the will. And oh my god, it's the
biggest, greatest thing we ever did. And now it's being blamed for
the huge floods that they have and the famine, because
of the floods. And it's destroyed all their
rice growing crops, which they don't have much of because it's
a mountainous country. They ended up destroying
all the arable land that they had left. JAMIE: You don't want him
to stand in front of the Great Leader? SHANE SMITH: Don't
block the shot. OK. JAMIE: OK. SHANE SMITH: I'm going
to stand to the side. JAMIE: Shane, don't stand in
front of the Dear Leader because you're blocking him. SHANE SMITH: OK. But they're so freaked out about
the barrage, that we were filming it, which
is why he brought us out there, I thought. And they're like, film
it anything more, you're going to jail. Don't stand in front
of the Dear Leader. Our political guard-- who we had
nicknamed Speedy Gonzales because he looked like a little
zippy guy, and he was always everywhere-- started to really
get mad at us. We've just been told not to
stand in front of the picture of Kim Jong Il. Actually, Speedy Gonzales, our
guard who hates us shooting, just saw us. And he's not letting us shoot. So I'm just going to talk
about the barrage. It's beautiful. It's nice. And he's looking at
us right now. It's freaking me out. He's threatened Jamie, who's
shooting this, with criminal action, which means to go
to jail here, which would not be enjoyable. He's looking at me now, so we're
going to walk over here, check out the thing
and pretend like we're shooting something. They had had enough of
us by this point. At this point, we started
to get really scared. They're like, you know what? Stop filming, stop shooting
anything. It's totally insane. One more day. I keep telling myself,
one more day. SHANE SMITH: One of the fun/sad
times is they took us to a school. And it's a school for the best
and brightest, the prodigies. And you go there, and you see
how great the students are. And here it's just kids in
uniforms being incredibly amazing and much better than
we are, of course, at everything. So the best needlepointers
are needlepointing away. And the best guitar players
are playing. Accordion players, pianists,
the best at computer graphics, whatever. They have people for
enunciation. There's one kid playing
guitar. Amazing. The guitar was bigger
than him. And again you're like, oh
these great kids and everything. But it's so sad and so scary
because they've been picked out and like, you will
learn for the state. And they're learning
and learning and learning for the state. And then there's a show. We're going to an art
performance now with the kids. And then we give the flower
after the performance. After the performance, we
give it to the kids. FEMALE SPEAKER 1:
[SPEAKING KOREAN] [MUSIC PLAYING] [APPLAUSE] SHANE SMITH: You realize
everything in this country is for Kim Jong Il. Kim Jong Il likes shows. He likes Broadway. He likes musicals. These kids are just press-ganged
into service for the state to provide shows for
the two tourists who are there at any given time. And this times a billion is what
we were about to see with Arirang Games. SHANE SMITH: Got my ticket. This is the waiting
room before we go upstairs to the games. But it's, as you can see, a
very busy, bustling place. The only reason why any tourists
are allowed into North Korea is because of what
you're about to see. The Arirang Games, or the famous
mass gymnastics, are 120,000 people who work for
about two years to do this incredibly elaborate
choreographed Andrew Lloyd Webber extravaganza,
but on acid. You're sitting on a dais
reserved for Kim Jong Il. And you see the most insane
thing you've ever seen in your life. It's a history of the Korean
Revolution as portrayed by 120,000 people doing a
simultaneous pantomime. Kim Jong Il likes a
spectacle, man. And this is the biggest
spectacle in the world. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [CHANTING IN UNISON] SHANE SMITH: We just go back
from the Mass Games. And now we're at
the restaurant. And they have seasoned dog,
smothered ox rib, which I guess wouldn't be bad. And then that's about it. But as you can see, it's
not bustling here. It was nuts at the games,
because I was sitting there. We were sitting right where
Madeleine Albright was at and right where Kim Jong
Il sits and Ike. We're sitting here
just for us. Everyone's clapping. Everyone's doing everything
for us. You just sit there, and
you feel like God. Or you'd feel like God
if you'd slept. We haven't slept in about three
days, so I have a beer. It was our last night. So we went out for our last
night karaoke fest, as you do. [KOREAN]. FEMALE SINGERS:
[SINGING KOREAN SONG] SHANE SMITH: Well what was
interesting was it was a South Korean machine. And it had some programmed songs
it it, Western songs. [SINGING "ANARCHY IN THE UK"] At first they thought, oh he's
just drunk, making a mockery of a military song. And they didn't know how
to deal with it. The women didn't know
how to deal with it. They have no cultural references
whatsoever. [SINGING "ANARCHY IN THE UK"] So when I finished singing,
they're all looking at me like I'm crazy. And I realize, they don't
know what punk rock is. Not only do they not
have rock and roll, they didn't have jazz. They didn't have
fucking blues. They never had any
of this shit. There are no cultural
similarities whatsoever. FEMALE SINGERS:
[SINGING KOREAN SONG] SHANE SMITH: Sometimes I imagine
if someone coming from the cowboy times-- like someone
who comes in a time machine or frozen in
ice or something-- and you have to explain to
them what an airplane is. Or you have to explain what
supermarkets are. And this is as close
as you get to that. This is a time machine. This is 1930s Russia or
1950s Soviet Union. So they see me as the Yankee
imperialist aggressor. And I see them as the land
that time forgot. FEMALE SPEAKER 2: --by the Great
Leader Kim Jong Il for the course modeling the entire
army on the [INAUDIBLE] idea were displayed at the Korean
Revolution Museum. Leader Kim Jong Il put forward
as the general task of army building to turn the People's
Army into the army of the leader and the party by
modelling the entire army--
