Hacker Cinema
Children of the Secret State
2001 · Film · documentary · 50 min
Directed by Carla Garapedian
Children of the Secret State follows Ahn Chol, a 29-year-old North Korean man who escaped from the country in 1997 by swimming across a river to China after his parents died of starvation. Chol has slipped back into North Korea several times since 1997 with a hidden camera to reveal a side of the communist nation that its government tries to hide from the outside world. In the documentary, viewers are exposed to many gruesome realities, including a food supply only available on the black market and small children fending for themselves to survive, scooping up spilled rice and corn.
4 positivefrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
This is not documentary on North Korea. Its a documentary on ' the north korea show', there isn't even a glimpse of 'real' real korea in those documentaries. Youtube is filled with these tourist documentaries, everyone from bbc to your next door tourist neighbor seems to have one about it. Almost all of them with identical content. All of them present NK in a very sterotypical way, brainwashed population, cult of kims, hatred for america, starving children, deserted roads, total govt grip on people ect ect.
I recommend the watching the follwing media instead
1. Children of the Secret State https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csI1EoMOXXk
2. Loves and the Despot
3. Under the Sun
If North Korea really is involved in this (and the traceroutes seem to indicate it is), let's turn the irony up a notch and turn the spotlight on a few North-Korea-critical torrents - now served through the very censor-happy country that is getting criticized:
Children of the Secret State - North Korea https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6441601/
Inside - Undercover in North Korea https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6136295/
Comrades and Strangers: Behind the Closed Doors of North Korea https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6899842/
The Vice Guide to North Korea https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/5378291/
National Geographic Explorer ~ Inside North Korea https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6110419/
It will be interesting to see how serious their new overlord is about that "freedom of speech thing". My guess is that sooner or later, some of those films will suddenly vanish from the site.
Personally I found the movie "Children of the secret state"
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b50_1188117332
extremely moving. It is video shot inside N. Korea illegally and exported to China.
Be warned though, it is extremely horrific and shocking! I'm a grown adult and it reduced me to tears.
There was a very interesting discussion about North Korea a couple of months back that had great links to undercover videos and photos from within Korea:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152223
The most notable video was Children of the Secret State (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657) - I recommend everyone watch this...