Hacker Cinema
The VICE Guide to North Korea
2008 · Film · documentary · 58 min
"Getting into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VBS has ever dealt with. They finally said, “OK, OK, you can come. But only as tourists.” At the airport, the North Korean consulate brought us to a restaurant and these women came out and started singing North Korean nationalist songs. We were thinking, “Look, we were just on a plane for 20 hours. Can we just go to bed?” but this guy with our group who was from the LA Times told us, “Everyone in here besides us is secret police. If you don’t act excited then you’re not going to get your visa. So we got drunk and jumped up onstage and sang songs with the girls. The next day we got our visas. A lot of people we had gone with didn’t get theirs. That was our first hint at just what a freaky, freaky trip we were embarking on…" -VICE Founder Shane Smith
3 positive1 negativefrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
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.
I would recommend not watching the Vice Guide to North Korea. That series is more about Vice (which I've read and enjoyed for over a decade and otherwise recommend), using North Korea and their preconceptions to show themselves off, than about North Korea (though North Korea does show through). Yes, the place is weird, but Vice sensationalizes it out of proportion and shows themselves off. Great for Vice, but at the expense of understanding.
My bibliography -- http://joshuaspodek.com/north-korea-bibliography -- has many sources more valuable for learning about North Korea. I found the New Yorker pieces particularly valuable, as well as the work by Barbara Demick.
I blogged extensively on North Korea since my visit there -- http://joshuaspodek.com/category/northkorea. My goal is to promote understanding, not to sensationalize. I've gotten good reviews on
- My series on North Korean strategy --http://joshuaspodek.com/north-korea-strategy-preview
- My series on playing in the first ever Ultimate Frisbee tournament and about sport in creating bonds -- http://joshuaspodek.com/ultimate-frisbee-north-korea-part-1
To Vice's credit, their recent series on exploring the North Korean logging camps in Siberia is more mature, though is outside North Korea.
If you found this at all interesting, I would highly recommend watching the Vice Guide to North Korea - http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3
I watched this documentary some time ago, http://www.vbs.tv/watch/the-vice-guide-to-travel/vice-guide-to-north-korea-1-of-3. Pretty cool, strange country.