The Secret Life under Kim Jong-il's North Korea

foreign [Music] [Applause] versus The Starving masses of North Korea 1993-2011 on the day of Kim jong-il's birth on North Korea's cherished pakdu mountain in 1942 a double rainbow appeared along with a bright new star in the heavens the birthday of the now deceased leader known as the day of The Shining Star is celebrated as a national holiday all over the world where people rejoice and pay their respects for as many as five days or so the North Korean propaganda would have us believe in reality Kim Jong-il was born in 1941 in the Siberian Village of viaskoi he would follow his father Kim il's song as the second leader of North Korea living an extravagant and eccentric lifestyle while oppressing and starving The Ordinary People his son Kim Jong-un rules today and the population continued to live in abject poverty and Terror in a Strange Land isolated and cut off from the world around it the Kim Dynasty has managed to build a very prevalent Cult of Personality in North Korea heavily restricting or censoring any information that comes into or leaves the country this is made possible by the support the regime has managed to sustain from the considerable strength of the nation's armed forces ranked as one of the world's largest standing armies at nursery school children learn that while flowers need the sun to grow children need the love of the great leader to grow the system of indoctrination control and self-criticism seems both frightening and astonishing on arrival to Pyongyang the capital of North Korea all visitors to the Country Must first lay offerings and flowers at the foot of two giant statues of Kim Jong-il and his father Kim il-sung independent travel for foreigners in the country is impossible and even for a citizen of Pyongyang a permit is required to travel outside of the capital while citizens of the nation lived under the constant threat of famine Kim Jong-il ate extravagantly his favorite meals included Sushi and shark spin soup a controversial delicacy as well as roast donkey and fresh lobsters he ate with silver Chopsticks and then washed it all down with French wine and champagne the supreme leader even kept a Regal Wine Cellar of over ten thousand bottles and was known to have spent up to 720 thousand dollars a year on Hennessy cognac the average North Korean on the other hand took home less than two thousand dollars a year for them the food choices were and still are highly restricted breakfast usually consisted of corn or Maize porridge with powdered milk for children at local Grocers white cabbage cucumber and tomato were the most common items to be found eggs and meat were considered rare the main staple of the North Korean diet was rice though bread was sometimes available and was often accompanied by a form of butter that was regularly rancid in fact the people of North Korea ate worse than even Kim jong-il's dogs whom during the life of the Curious dictator would fit a rich diet of expensive beef beef that an average North Korean would very rarely have seen if ever indeed one day Kim's kennel master was caught stealing the dog food and was sentenced to hard labor for two years on the matter of beef in the year 2000 Kim Jong-il decided that he wanted to try McDonald's as the Western restaurant was forbidden in North Korea he sent his Chef to Beijing to buy hamburgers of course by the time his Chef returned the hamburgers were cold so Kim ate cold hamburgers shortly afterwards he began a campaign to feed his University students gojigo Pang which is Korean for double bread with meat this new delicacy that Kim was credited with inventing bore a remarkable similarity to your common hamburger however another of Kim's ideas to feed the population included breeding Giant rabbits a German farmer famous for breeding rabbits the size of dogs was apparently asked to help set up a farm in North Korea to alleviate food shortages to begin with he sent a batch of 12 rabbits to North Korea but was shocked to hear that they were eaten at Kim's birthday banquet that gear according to the North Korean media Kim was a man of many talents official records show that Kim was a prolific writer with 1500 books published in his name as well as six full operas that are better than any in the history of music his sporting prowess was also Beyond Compare the media reported that the first time Kim picked up a golf club he shot 11 holes in one on North Korea's only Golf Course his 17 bodyguards all verified the record-breaking feat Kim then decided to retire from the sport forever Kim Jong-il was also an avid movie fan and director with a library of as many as fifteen thousand movies the James Bond series and Rambo were among his favorites as a passionate director Kim saw that his movies were stiff and lifeless compared to the other films being released globally however he believed that this failure was down to the Actors and The Crew as a result in January 1978 Kim sent a pair of Agents posing as a movie producer and an influential businesswoman to meet Choi yoon-hee a South Korean Marilyn Monroe the movie producer offered to start a new film company with Choi in Hong Kong however after Choi arrived seemingly to be escorted to one of the company's film studios she was forced onto a boat sedated when she attempted to escape and abducted to nambo Harbor North Korea the actress found herself being given a brief private tour of Pyongyang in Kim's Mercedes before being brought to an extravagant single-story Villa called building number one soon Choi would be invited to attend parties with Kim's officials and friends as well as family dinners and events even to his 37th Birthday Kim Jong-il spent a lot of time with Choi and respected her opinions on the film industry her ex-husband Shing sang OK a renowned South Korean film director was kidnapped to North Korea six months later he was given lavish accommodations like Choi however he attempted to escape twice and was consequently detained at a prison labor camp for disobedience he or Shin would have been accompanied by thousands of people considered by Kim's government to be criminals or political radicals offenses included singing South Korean pop songs at home leaving the state's borders without permission or being in any way related to someone who had been arrested three years later the pair were reunited and ordered to help the supreme leader make films Kim understood that the propaganda of his films was not appealing to International audiences and so he allowed Shin to broaden the subject material their most expensive film made in the late 1980s was pugasari a monster feature that starred a giant creature heavily inspired by Godzilla who sides with a feudal peasant Rebellion against a corrupt monarchy after eight years of making many films for Kim Choi and shin ultimately escaped to a U.S embassy while abroad in Vienna in contrast to Kim's lavish lifestyle entertainment options for the people of North Korea were far fewer the capital Pyongyang had around eight Cinemas but the films on show were heavily propagandist and the plot often revolved around the North Koreans emerging victorious in a war against the South Koreans Japanese or Americans phones were only installed for high-ranking officials and citizens had to report purchases of radios and TVs which were checked by the authorities to ensure each set was tuned to official programming possession of foreign books magazines and newspapers was forbidden the power supply in Pyongyang and across the entirety of North Korea for that matter was highly unstable under Kim Jong-il and continuing today the arms industry was prioritized on the national power grid therefore drawing much of the country's generated electricity away from the average citizen power outages were very common as a result with recent studies suggesting that only one in four citizens had access to electricity in North Korea to make matters worse most citizens in Pyongyang lived in high-rise tower blocks and due to Chronic power Cuts were forced to rely on the stairs over the untrustworthy elevators many families tried to relocate older relatives to lower floors but this was very difficult and often required a bribe Apartments were also very cold and if the electricity was suspended no heat was available residents were then forced to cover the windows in plastic sheeting or newspapers in an effort to keep in the warmth for almost 20 years Kim Jong-il led the country as Eternal leader generalissimo living less as a world leader than he did a caricature of a despotic dictator when he died the people took to the streets weeping and pounding the pavement with their hands in uncontrollable grief this was far from an outburst of authentic emotion however according to one young student in Pyongyang his entire future depended on his ability to cry mourning for the deceased supreme leader was in itself a matter of life and death the sock Cho submarine incident 1998. in the 1990s the life of a sea fisherman in South Korea where its fishing industry had been booming since the 1950s was a relatively simple one one of its most popular catches at the time was the eel-like belt fish and seemingly the only threat to the fisherman's peaceful existence was the constant ongoing disputes with the Chinese authorities over fishing rights in the region a recently developed scheme implemented by the South Korean government was beginning to worry many of the local fishing boat owners this scheme was aimed at streamlining the fishing industry and making it more efficient and had already led to 618 fishing vessels being scrapped then one day in the summer of 1998 near the South Korean Port of soccer a commercial fishing trawler crew had the biggest catch of their lives a 110 ton submarine it was in fact a North Korean Hugo class submarine that had snuck over the maritime border between North and South Korea and had now become entangled in the trawler's fishing nets forcing the submarine to surface the fishermen watched as the submarine crew managed to cut away the netting and began to sail North but before long it came to a standstill and just floated helplessly on the surface as its engine had stalled and stopped running they reported the incident over their radio to the authorities who dispatched some anti-submarine helicopters to the area who confirmed its location South Korean Navy surface ship soon surrounded the stricken vessel and at first tried to communicate with it by radio and when that failed to get a response they used wild speakers even tried tapping on the outside of the hull as it was practically impossible to board the submarine at Sea they fastened it with a long rope to one of the pohang class combat Corvettes at the scene roks gunsan which towed it to the port of Tong hey the South Korean Navy had only two years before captured a North Korean shark sang oh class submarine that had run aground in South Korean territorial Waters while on a spying mission captured submarine is now on public display in the South Korean unification Park in Gangnam where visitors can go on board the vessel through special hatches that have been cut into the side of the hull as for the capture Hugo class submarine while it was being towed into the harbor at the Naval Base at the Port of Tong hey it mysteriously sank in 100 feet or 30 meters of water taking all of it screwed down with it it wasn't known if it sank because of mechanical failure or the crew had deliberately scuttled their own vessel the next day on June 23 the North Korean authorities issued an official press release saying that the submarine had been lost at sea in a tragic training accident two days later on June 25th the South Korean Navy managed to salvage the 66-foot or 20 meter long submarine out of the water after cutting a hole into the hull they were horrified to find nine dead bodies inside four of which were North Korean Special Forces operatives and the other five were submariners of the North Korean people's Navy all of the Special Forces team had apparently committed suicide but before they did they had executed the sailors presumably to stop them from being interrogated and revealing any important Secrets North Korean military edict dictates that any Personnel should kill themselves rather than be captured by the anime so this order would have been carried out without any hesitation by the Special Forces men who would have also made sure that the submariners were also dispatched with them a log book found on board the vessel showed that the submarine had infiltrated into South Korean territorial Waters many times before and there was evidence that when it got entangled in the fisherman's Nets it was returning from yet another Espionage mission in the south also found inside were a number of AK-47s machine guns grenades pistols a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and some South Korean drinks as well as a 1995 issue of Life magazine the bodies of the submarine crew were buried in a cemetery in paju that was reserved for North Korean and Chinese soldiers and referred to as the enemy Cemetery North Korea refused to accept the bodies of those killed in the South as they claim sovereignty over the whole of Korea therefore the Fallen were already buried on Korean soil over the next decade there were several further incidents at sea between the two koreas by far the most serious and deadly one occurred on the evening of the 26th of March 2010 when the small Corvette warship roks chelnon was hit and sunk by a torpedo when sailing near the maritime border between North and South Korea in the loc this explosion resulted in the death of 46 and the wounding of 58 of the Chairman's crew of 104 meaning the ship suffered a horrific 100 casualty rate also one of the team's divers died while searching for survivors in the rescue mission during the adverse weather conditions remains of the torpedo were found at the scene by rescue divers and identified as belonging to a type cht-02d torpedo which were manufactured by the North Koreans this type of torpedo doesn't actually hit its Target but detonates a short distance from it which in this case was just below the ship's gas turbine room causing a bubble and Jet explosion which effectively forces a pillar of water up to 100 meters in the air the high pressure shock wave can smash a one meter hole into a ship and can physically break a small craft in half the subsequent South Korean inquiry concluded that the jail not was sunk by an unidentified North Korean submarine this view was supported by experts from the United States the United Kingdom Canada Australia and Sweden but this report was firmly rejected by the North Korean and Chinese governments the Russian Navy also carried out their own separate investigation but declined to ever make its findings public currently it's estimated that the North Korean people's Navy has around 70 to 80 diesel submarines including quite a few Soviet designs from the 1960s and 70s most of these can only fire Torpedoes or lay mines in that Fleet are around 20 submarines half of which are of the Yono class and these first started to enter North Korean Service as far back as 1965.wariantly over the last few years they've been developing submarine-launched nuclear missiles as well as larger and more capable attack submarines to carry them in one of these is the simple classicalistic submarine which is much larger than a submarine at around 223 feet or 65 meters long with a crew of between 70 and 80 but it only carries one missile which launches vertically out of its conning Tower this submarine is Tiny compared to the U.S Navy's Ohio class submarines which are 560 feet or 170 meters long will carry a payload of 24 Trident II missiles in response to all of this South Korea has recently invested heavily in upgrading and expanding its anti-submarine Warfare ability one of these countermeasures is the new Daegu class guided missile frigate of which eight ships were initially planned with a final goal of 20 to 22 in the future crew of 140 they're equipped with the latest electronic warfare technology which includes Advanced sonar equipment for detecting submarines and torpedoes kijong dong a North Korean potemkin Village 1950s to present the temkin village is a term used to describe a fake propaganda Village that Nations build to impress foreigners although it could have been used throughout history it was first recorded to have been employed by Gregory potemkin in 1787 in a bid to impress his former lover Queen Catherine II Gregory potemkin was made the governor of Crimea after the Russian annexation of the region he was tasked to rebuild and develop the land after some time the queen decided to visit the newly conquered territories to familiarize herself with those lands and to impress the Ambassador she took with her Grigori was put in a difficult position as the land was heavily ravaged by War the queen and her company were expecting something Majestic while Crimea at the time was the opposite to solve that problem it was long believed that Gregory created phony structures along the banks of the NEPA River while the queen was traveling on a barge down the neeper it was said that Grigori would hastily build temporary fake structures complete with fake peasants to inhabit them just before visitors would arrive at a particular location when they would pass on from that area Gregory's men would disassemble the village and facades and rebuild them Downstream during the night while more recent historians doubt the accuracy of this particular story there's little doubt that it speaks to a deeper truth that governments often want to project more power than they really have attemptkin Villages have often been created specifically when a government wanted to show something off that wasn't available anywhere in its territories or to any of its population the idea was to make people believe that the country was doing better than it actually was North Korea has always struggled to maintain its image to the world the nation was divided into two after the Korean war ended in 1953 the populations of both South and North Korea were never divided by heart though as they still considered each other as brothers and sisters they were just forcibly divided just like East and West Germany finally United in 1990 these Korean populations looked forward to their own unification this posed a significant threat to the North Korean regime particularly after its economic growth began to lag significantly behind that of the south in the early 1970s While most people in North Korea lived with only basic amenities many South Koreans had Lifestyles that surpassed even some Western countries in luxury North Korea also went through a fair number of famines in most of the country's population was severely malnourished all of these challenges along with the fact that many Koreans did not mind being united to become one nation posed a serious threat to the authoritarian North Korean regime as the North Korean government continued to struggle through the 1980s and particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 increasing numbers of North Koreans attempted to defect to the South even though North Korea called for Korean unification under its regime people from both the North and South of Korea seem to be more willing to unify under the protection and government system of the South rather than the oppressive North Korean leadership North Korea as a highly censored Nation tried to hide the true extent of its problems so no one knew what was truly happening inside the country this is what set the stage for the North Korean potemkin Village kijongdong The Village was built within sighting range of the Korean demilitarized zone when the Korean Peninsula divided into two in 1953 it was one of the two Villages that were permitted to remain within the four kilometer wide DMZ due to its proximity to the border and the fact that it could be seen from the South Korean side of the DMZ it became a display of North Korean propaganda this potemkin fake Village was built by the North Korean founder the first Eternal leader Camille song who ruled the nation until his death in 1994. The Village was maintained by his successor Kim Jong-il until his death in 2011 and today by Kim Jong-un it was given facilities that most villages in North Korea lacked renovated extensively to make it look like North Koreans were living in luxury of comfort according to the North Korean official statement The Village had a collective farm that the local population maintained another statement which was released in 1991 said that there were 200 families living there at the time there were no official statements after 1991 so we don't know if the number is increased or decreased there was a child care center a kindergarten a primary and secondary school and a hospital The Village was made to look like a true communist heaven with people working together on the state resources while they received every facility from the North Korean regime in return there are still multi-story buildings in the village that at least for a Time appeared to be in excellent condition they were painted in bright colors that were easy on the eyes and provided with electricity and other modern amenities the most striking feature of the village was a tall 160 meter flagpole that hoisted the North Korean flag it was built in the 1980s and was the tallest flagpole in the world until 2010. it was constructed in response to the South Korean flagpole across the border in this flagpole War North Korea constructed an even bigger flagpole than the one built by South Korea while it looked all shiny and beautiful with casual observation everything was artificial when observed with Advanced telescopes and cameras the houses did not have any window glass they were simply empty shells of concrete most buildings didn't seem to even have interior rooms or floors the lights were simply turned on in the buildings to make them seem inhabited artificial activities were performed in the streets of the village to give an illusion of busy life called the peace Village by the North Koreans it earned the nickname propaganda Village by the south Koreans The Village was meant to show the North Korean Utopia state to both South Koreans and visitors from throughout the world and also to the North Korean visitors to the DMZ hongdong was also a hot spot for loudspeaker Warfare both Nations broadcasted propaganda on loudspeakers to induce defections from the other side North Korean loudspeakers used to ask South Korean soldiers and civilians alike to defect to North Korea after broadcasting how blessed life really was in North Korea very few defected from the south compared to those from the north National marching music and anti-western speeches form the loudspeaker propaganda of North Korea despite all these efforts people from North and South Korea alike knew that just 20 years after kijong Dong's construction that North Korea was rapidly falling behind in its competition against the South is just one example of the facade that North Korea employed to maintain a little bit of self-image this facade continues to this day even though now the visitors to the DMZ can see right through it with their Advanced cameras and telescopes the actress kidnapped by Kim Jong-il to make movies for North Korea the year was 1978 and a freighter was secretly heading from Hong Kong across the East China Sea to Pyongyang the North Korean capital onboard was a most precious and unusual cargo the iconic South Korean actress 52 year old choyun Chi who had just been kidnapped by the North Korean Secret Service throughout the 1950s and 60s Choi had been immensely popular in South Korea she founded a film company with her husband and director shinsang and made over 130 movies winning numerous Awards including the prestigious Grand Bell award which is regarded as the South Korean version of the Oscars choi's career suffered after her divorce from Shin in 1978 in an attempt to revive her now failing acting career she flew to Hong Kong to meet with what she thought was a businessman who wanted her involvement in a new Film Production Company he was setting up when she arrived in Hong Kong she met the businessman who was named wangdong IL and was treated well eating at luxurious restaurants but strangely there was very little business talk Joy also noticed that there were only strange men following her from a distance taking photos a few days later she was greeted by a business associate of Wang named Lee sung Chi who was accompanied by her daughter they were to keep Choi entertained while Wang was occupied with a business matter after some sightseeing and shopping choyon Chi was lured by Lee to repulse Bay for another potential opportunity to meet a businessman who would help her run a performing Academy but it was a trap and all of a sudden two men grabbed Choi sedated her and bundled her into a speedboat choyan Chi had been kidnapped by the North Korean Secret Service so why had this celebrity been kidnapped by the North Korean communist regime well it was on the instruction of the son of the North Korean dictator at the time Kim Jong-il it was said he was mad about movies and not only saw their potential for spreading internal propaganda but also to help promote North Korea and its values overseas Kim Jong-il is said to have owned over 15 000 films he particularly liked the James Bond movies and was a big fan of Sean Connery he wanted to improve the North Korean movie industry which he saw as full of ideology and dogma and he was impressed by the movies of capitalist countries even praising them because of the work ethic behind the industry to do this he felt he needed fresh established Talent from the capitalist South which could transform the stagnant North Korean movie industry and this became his reasoning for kidnapping Choi once Troy had arrived in North Korea after her abduction Kim Jong-il imprisoned her in isolated luxurious guarded accommodation then he spent the next five years trying to impress and spoil her by taking her to Lavish parties Grand government ceremonies giving her expensive gifts she was given a tutor to teacher of the virtues of the North Korean State and much emphasis was put on showing her the cultural wonders of the regime over the next few years Choi was taken regularly to Opera's musical pageants museums and historical landmarks in the meantime choi's ex-husband Shin Sango a renowned film director with whom she had made some of her best movies with became worried that he had not heard from his ex-wife for six months so he decided to fly to Hong Kong to find her once there he too was kidnapped by the North Korean Secret Service who took him to Pyongyang but he was treated more harshly and resisted being indoctrinated after two failed Escape attempts he was put in prison for two years as punishment and tortured it was not until 1983 during a banquet that came through that Choi and shin were reunited by the North Korean regime and became aware they had both been in the same situation kidnapped five years before Kim Jong-il insisted they both started making movies together for his regime and demanded they both remarry each other to give the project an air of respectability its claim that he wrote the first movie that Shin was to direct for in 1984 called an emissary of no return it was a period drama set in 1907 about a Korean Emissary who tries to win Western support against the Japanese Occupation of Korea at the time the movie's Choy and shin made were surprisingly varied the most had an anti-japanese or anti-capitalist undertone to them such as 1985's moralizing fantasy musical the tale of shim Chong in the same year Shin made his last and most expensive North Korean movie this was called hugasari it did not star Choi and was about a Godzilla type creature running amok a Japanese crew who had worked on Godzilla created the special effects after being tricked into thinking they were working on a Chinese movie overall the movies the pair produced for the North Korean regime were cheap and poorly made though one of the films the 1985's salt did receive some Acclaim Choi won the best actress award for it at the 14th Moscow International Film Festival and it also got surprisingly good reviews by International critics then after nearly 10 years of being in North Korea the couple managed to give their bodyguards the slip on their way back from attending the 1986 Berlin Film Festival they stopped in Vienna Austria where they escaped to the U.S embassy to request political Asylum for decades the U.S government was aware of the problem with North Korea abducting people it's estimated that at least several hundred people have been kidnapped since 1953 though some sources claim the true figure is as high as 3 800 people it's theorized that North Korea did this for a number of reasons but chiefly to steal people's identities and get them to teach North Korean Intelligence Officers the customs and languages of their native countries Choi and shin were both granted Asylum and lived quietly in America until 1999. Choi never made any films ever again afterwards but in 1992 Shin did make the low budget American martial arts comedy Three Ninjas Knuckle up under the name of Simon Sheen although it was a commercial flop eventually they felt it was safe enough to return to South Korea on their return Choi was treated with much reverence and Nostalgia that in 2014 she was awarded by the order of cultural Merit

Channel: Simple History

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Keywords: simple history, animated history, educational, education, mukbang, Kim Jong-Il, Starving, North Korea, Pyongyang, Baekdu Mountain, 1942, 1941, Siberia, Vyatskoye, cult, shining, Star, armies, leader, capital, famine, poverty, supreme, hennessy, cognac, diet, beef, McDonalds, kennel, master, Beijing, hamburgers, giant, rabbit, 12, German, golf, Choi Eun-hee, Nambo Harbour, Mercedes, Shin Sang-ok, criminals, political, prisoners, South, Korea, Pulgasari, Godzilla, Vienna, US, America, Japanese, Americans, Eternal, Leader, 김정일, Mukbang

Id: MRMTGLND6HA

Length: 31min 42sec (1902 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2022