Downloaded from YTS.MX
[music]
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
[music]
CITY NOISES
After escaping the difficult conditions of North Korea,
Mr. Lee and more than 20,000 other North Korean refugees
find themselves grossly unprepared for their new lives.
TRAFFIC NOISE
The stark cultural and economic differences
make it difficult to integrate into the fast paced
and modern South Korean society.
TRAFFIC NOISE
Koreans have been victimized in the 20th century.
They were taken over by the Japanese,
divided by the United Nations, and then the Korean War
and they still haven't recovered from the national division.
And this is termed, this is expressed in the term "han".
"Han" means this regret or this angst, this anxiety that...
many times Koreans say you can't translate "han",
but it's this feeling of being victimized and it's expressed
very well in the Korean National folk song "Arirang".
Arirang is a mythical place, it doesn't exist,
and the line goes, Arirang
SPEAKING KOREAN
They've gone over the Arirang pass.
Who has gone over the mountain pass?
SPEAKING KOREAN
"My lover who has cast me aside
has crossed over the Arirang pass".
And it has a rather whimsical final line that says,
"may you have blisters on your feet
before you've gone ten lee".
The conditions that drove Mr. Lee to leave his home
in North Korea have been over a century in the making.
Occupied by Japan for much of the first half
of the 20th century, Korea was then divided up
by the victorious allies at the conclusion of World War II.
Five years later tensions on the peninsula between the South
and North Korean governments boiled over
leading the North to invade the South.
Full-scale war resulted involving the U.S.
and it's allies aiding the South Korean government,
while the Soviet Union and communist China
supported the North Korean regime.
The result was a devastating three-year war
ending in stalemate and then an uneasy armistice
that left Korea divided.
Today, Seoul bares little resemblance to the impoverished,
war torn city it once was.
Rather it stands as a symbol
of the vast economic and cultural divide
reinforcing the division between the two Koreas.
After the end of the Korean war,
South Korea was really struggling economically.
It was South Korea that was considered to be
the economic basket case, and it was only through
beginning to industrialize and pursue export led growth
that they began to grow,
and it wasn't until the late 70s, early 80s, that South Korea
finally overtook North Korea in terms of per capita GNP.
Having lived in Korea in the 1950s and '60s,
after the war, when South Korea was that poor,
it's possible to compare conditions in the North today
with what South Korea was like then.
And then you say, well I think I know how this could unfold
if the North Koreans could have the advantages
that the South Koreans acquired in rebuilding their country.
The story of South Korea's economic success began humbly;
small companies run by ordinary Koreans, many like Mr. Lee,
refugees from North Korea.
When I first moved to Korea in 1965, I met a friend, Mr. Chung,
who at that time was working in a tailor shop,
and tailor shops were the hot business in those days.
It was something that people could do, labour intensive,
they measure you and fit you and cut the, the cloth,
you had a tailor-made suit for very little money.
When I returned to Korea in 1973,
he was supervising a wig factory.
Wigs don't sound like a major industry,
but this was huge in Korea because it was a great way
to capitalize on a natural resource Koreans had,
good Korean hair.
It doesn't sound like a major step
in the economic development,
but the wig industry was a huge step forward for Korea
in terms of capitalization, in terms of learning to...
export and learning how the international market worked.
If you look at South Korea you see what
with far fewer resources than the North,
you see the extraordinary, stunning
economic growth of the South,
and you realize it's the same people with even better
economic resource base in terms of natural resources
and other sorts of things, and it's just an utter disaster.
[music]
North Korean state television delivers
a tightly controlled message,
displaying only the purported successes of the regime.
This is in stark contrast to the stories of deprivation
and oppression from defectors like Mr. Lee.
Well, everywhere you go, the country reveals itself
as a very poor place.
North Korea has never been able to feed itself.
That the plantations, the broad plains,
the big rice fields have always been in South Korea.
it has always been the bread basket
of the Korean people.
Besides that, there have been some colossal
bad decisions on the North Korean part about agriculture,
about fertilizer, about soil and crop use.
If you look at the last decade and a half,
you know by most estimates,
one if not two million North Koreans have died by famine.
And no one else in the region died of famine,
So there's no other reason than the nature of the regime.
That's not to say that we should invade North Korea,
that we ought to destabilize it
and pursue unification now, but that said,
whenever we weigh these issues,
that we need to be very cognizant
that it is not a value free equation.
There are costs here,
and they're very real costs in terms of North Korean people.
The dramatic disparity between the two Koreas
is so great that one of the primary concerns of South Korea
is how to stem the tide of North Korean refugees they expect
to spill over the border should there be an abrupt unification.
Early on, a lot of researchers
tried to figure out what level of...
standard of living would you have to have in North Korea
where North Koreans wouldn't feel the desire
as mass floods of refugees go into South Korea.
And to do that back in 2000, that would have cost you
something about four trillion dollars.
How do you take two remarkably disparate economies,
keep people in place, and improve the one
without everybody getting on their bicycles
and riding south.
That is not a laughable idea, but an offensive idea,
I think it would throw them back rather seriously on their heels
if you said,
well, when unification comes you'll have to adjust to
what the South wants you to do.
I don't think they have that in mind.
[music]
It was just a year ago
that authorities in communist Germany,
appalled at the numbers who are fleeing to the west
throughout the wall.
[music]
I served in the state department
during the first Bush administration
and in that capacity, immediately got asked to
work as the legal advisor to the U.S. delegation
on German unification.
When I left the government I was asked to lead
a large-scale study, seeing if there were
any insights from the German experience
that might be relevant in terms of planning for,
and thinking about potential Korean unification
and it was really an interesting exercise because there are many
there are many differences that are important.
[music]
The gulf between the East and West German economy
was far less than the gulf
between the North and South Korean economies,
and yet that was incredibly expensive for the Germans,
so you can just imagine the expense
that's going to be involved in the case of Korea.
The simple fact is that Koreans could never even begin to dream
of a unification scenario as relatively inexpensive,
as smooth, as peaceful as you had in the German scenario.
So the costs in the Korean case are going to be much higher,
and the Koreans know that and as a result,
that's why you've seen some real reticence
on the part of Korean policy-makers.
There were also differences in terms of flow of information.
I mean, most of the East Germans knew a lot about West Germany.
They knew product brands, they saw West German television,
that doesn't exist in North Korea.
You've got virtually no information that
has crossed the border.
No sense of what democratic institutions look like
or what the debates or the political parties are like,
very little experience now after all these years with a...
market oriented economy,and all that that means in terms of
personal initiative and personal sacrifice.
To visit North Korea is to...
encounter a very human situation,
to see people trying to get to work, kids getting to school,
being friends, laughing, holding hands,
walking down the street,
it's a real environment.
I mean that the North Koreans are regular folks,
that they, they have, they think they're normal.
[music]
Getting permission to film
in the Hanowan Resettlement Center is extremely difficult.
It is not allowed under any circumstances
to show images of refugees.
There is a justified fear of North Korean reprisals
against defectors and the Hanowan staff
takes great care to make sure
defectors identities are not exposed.
[music]
While Mr. Lee and his wife, also a defector,
have struggled to adapt to South Korean life,
his children are fully integrated.
Yet despite his hopes that his kids will see a united Korea,
they are part of a growing younger generation
that does not necessarily share
their parents' desire for unification.
It's a generation gap that could hold
profound consequences for both Koreas.
South Korea is becoming a dominant cultural force,
not just in Asia, but internationally as well.
Its growing young population has created a vibrant youth culture
that is vastly different than the traditions
of their parent's generation.
These days, I think kids, they're exposed to like,
everything and they can access to every kind of culture
and cultural phenomenon.
So that makes it a whole lot different from the past.
After the Korean war, Korea, Korea's main concern was
economic development.
Korean society became more open.
So youngsters had more freedom to create
the kind of films they wanted, the kind of [music] they wanted,
and since then it was just a major change
in culture in general.
KOREAN HIP HOP MUSIC
Something that is really interesting
to watch pop culture in Korea
is to watch the thing called the "hanyu".
The "hanyu" is the Korean wave, this wave of culture
that is sweeping across all of China and Japan and Asia.
There is a very interesting cultural mix
between the kind of western, the arts, popular culture
and traditional Korean arts and popular culture.
Young Japanese think young Koreans are cool,
and they are cool because they have these wonderful pop music
videos and songs and great high energy performances,
great TV actors, and great stories that young
that young Japanese just really enjoy.
So we've had a sea change in Japan in attitudes toward Korea,
and this is a measure of how different the younger generation
in Korea is from the older generation in Korea.
The younger generation is more focused
on the United States, on Europe, on the world writ large,
they're very wired in, they're very
international in nature.
If you look at club scenes in big cities of Korea,
then you tend to think that this the gap between the South
and North bigger and bigger, and you wonder if this
generation really wants reunification of the country.
Only few people have had the experience
of the Korean war and post war, it's a whole different matter
for this generation.
Anybody who is under 50 years of age is
is very unlikely to have an immediate brother or sister,
father or mother, or even grandparent
living in North Korea.
So the personal level ties that would make this
a personal issue, not a broader cultural one
aren't going to be there.
So understandably, there is going to be a gap between
those with direct experience, the older generation
and the younger generation.
The contrast, people say stark contrast,
but I'll just say contrast, between North
and South Korea is huge, and you don't really see
how they could ever get back together again.
The people of those two countries
have been educated since birth
in two different national stories.
Who are their heroes?
Who were the winners and losers, the good and bad guys?
Aspirationally, on an emotional level, of course.
Every class,
every family narrative is a narrative of the tragedy
of the division of this nation.
They are one people.
One language, one history, and they are artificially
divided by the Cold War.
And so clearly every South Korean wants unification.
but, if you then dial that down to much more
specific questions like, do you support unification now?
Those numbers drop dramatically.
[music]
Mr. Lee does not let the generation gap
or South Korea's reluctance to pay for unification,
should it ever come, deter his efforts.
He devotes all his working time
to help his brothers in the North.
Several times a year, he launches balloons
that carry humanitarian items and messages of hope
across the heavily guarded border.
[music]
Mr. Lee's cross-boarder humanitarian operation,
decried by North Korea and tolerated by the South,
faces a sizeable, almost impenetrable physical roadblock.
The southern boundary fence-line running around here
is the defendable territory of the DMZ.
It was originally intended to be two km south, two km north.
Due to the fact that we can't support some of the area
as defendable Republic of Korea, they built a fence-line
along the defendable area.
The DMZ, the demilitarized zone, is an oxymoron,
it's not demilitarized.
It's the most heavily militarized
place on the planet these days.
It's a two and a half mile strip that goes across
the whole peninsula, cutting right across its waist,
separating North Korea from South Korea.
Since the armistice agreement was signed in 1953,
the 38th parallel has been a bloody barrier
between two nations still technically at war.
After 60 years of tension, security still remains high
with the constant threat of renewed conflict.
Since 1953, North Korea has violated the armistice agreement
over 200 times, creating a cycle of provocation and retaliation
between the two Koreas.
In recent years the North has tested nuclear devices,
long range missiles, launched artillery attacks
against South Korean islands
and sunk the South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan.
The North Korean perspective is that the provocations
come from the other side.
When they sank the Cheonan, nobody much
nobody much mentions the joint manoeuvres
that were going on in those waters
with U.S. and South Korean naval forces at the time.
The North Korean side would be totally, well, we were trying
to make a statement, you can't just bring a corvette
into our territorial waters and roam around at will.
We're going to control that.
Of all the North Korean provocations,
there are some that stand out for their audacity.
One of the most remarkable is simply known as
the Blue House raid.
In January of 1968 I was in Korea living in a place called
Cheongun-Dong which is very close to the Blue House,
the presidential mansion.
And that night we were just folding up getting ready
to go to bed when we heard this pop, pop, pop stuff going on.
And we thought oh, there's some kind of exercise.
And then we saw machine gun fire.
MACHINE GUN FIRE
We could see the tracers, and if you can see the tracers
you know those aren't blanks.
It was a James Bond style squad of highly trained
North Korean commandos who had come down and had run,
marathon runners, so they, the South Koreans
and the Americans knew they had come through the DMZ,
but they didn't realize they had come down so quickly.
To show you how dangerous it was,
there was an older gentleman
two doors down from our gate
who stepped out to see what was going on
and one of the squads came by and shot him right there.
Of the 31 commandos that came down 29 were killed.
They refused to surrender.
They shot their way till they died.
Finally he realized everything they were telling him
in the North was false, and that he was misled
and he could go through South Korea, see the markets,
see the houses and realize that South Korea had a better
way of living and thus he converted and changed.
Kim Shin Jo paid a steep price for his betrayal of the North.
Upon receiving citizenship in 1970, his parents were executed
and the remaining members of his family were purged.
SHOUTING ORDERS IN KOREAN
The North Koreans have this wonderful pattern of basically
doing something quite terrible and then there's a negotiation
and they exact some price to promise
not to do the terrible thing again.
There's not a lot of evidence conciliation has worked much,
and there's not a lot of evidence
that a hard-line has worked very much.
And I think it's also fair to say that if you've reached
your hand out and tried and it kind of gets bitten
or slapped every time, why continue with that policy,
at least try something else.
It's important when there's an eruption of trouble
on the Korean peninsula to remember that
there's a logic to both sides behaviour.
The North Koreans have some reason
for doing what they're doing.
It may be an internal reason and maybe inscrutably local
and hard for us to divine with the information that
we have from the outside, but they are doing it for a reason.
The secret to what's going on in North Korea
is to understand,
that whatever they're doing, it's for domestic consumption.
They don't really care that much about their relations
with South Korea or with the United States,
they're primary concern is maintaining their control
on society.
The passing of Kim Jong Il and the succession of his son
Kim Jong Un has ushered in a new era
of North Korean sabre rattling.
[music]
Two of the biggest obstacles to reunification right now
are North Korean arms developments, in two ways:
one is launching missiles,
the second is developing a nuclear bomb.
And of course, they've done both.
Then when you look at broader regional and global issues,
and you start asking questions about
denuclearization, that's where the problem becomes,
you know, more difficult.
We have this problem that North Korea now
has tested a nuclear weapon
and they've declared themselves a nuclear power.
So how do you engage North Korea
without recognizing them as a nuclear power.
For the North, this is a huge step forward.
This is a validation that the socialist system is working,
that they have scientists and technologists that
are joining the advanced countries of the world
that can launch a satellite and can develop a nuclear bomb.
For a country that sees itself surrounded
by enemies on all sides, being picked on, being isolated,
this is tremendous benefit for them domestically
and it's a huge barrier to unification.
SPEAKING KOREAN
Missile launches and threats to continue testing nuclear weapons
are suspected to be the result of the new leader
out to prove himself and further consolidate power.
Imagine the situation that Kim Jong-Un is in.
A young man, raised for this job, pruned for this job,
and yet surrounded by some men that are old enough
to be his grandfather, in uniform
with stars on their epaulette,
and he is their commander.
It was almost impossible to imagine this scenario
while Kim Jong-Il was alive,
where North Korea would begin to open,
or even have real instability
at that level of power,
but now with the transition,
there's an opportunity for change.
We've got a rogue regime that has the capacity for
developing nuclear weapons and selling fissionable material,
While it may not use it itself, selling it to people who are
less reticent to use it.
If we were in the effort of trying to solve
the Korean peninsula problem, ignore that,
ignore everything they've done, we would de facto recognize them
as a nuclear power,
SHUTTER SOUND
and the question then becomes, if a country that is poor,
starving, backwards, a pariah regime that abuses human rights,
you know, smuggles drugs, counterfeits currencies,
has never met a weapons system that
it wasn't willing to export to the worst people in the world,
if that kind of country can be recognized as a nuclear power
and as a negotiating counterpart as a nuclear power,
who can't?
[music]
Despite continuing threats and provocations
by the North Korean regime, Mr Lee remains dedicated
to his mission of providing humanitarian aid
to his former countrymen, and retains hope
there will someday be a peaceful
and diplomatic path towards unification.
[music]
There is a concern on the part of China
that if you have a unified Korea that's very heavily armed,
it's got West-leaning orientation to be sure,
and at the end of the day you might find that
the political dynamic to keep U.S. troops kind of goes away
in which case you have a heavily armed Korea
staring at a heavily armed China,
[music]
That concern is diminished dramatically,
given the deeper integration of their economies now.
And ultimately it's going to have to result
in some serious reassessment on the part of China
of its relationships to North Korea.
But nevertheless I think there's a little bit of concern there.
[music]
The prevailing narrative for the last 30, 40 years
has been that the Chinese want North Korea as a buffer state.
I'm not convinced that it's entirely because they are afraid
of having a South Korean regime on their borders,
and that they want a buffer,
but they're afraid of the process instability.
I think that the Chinese are rather annoyed
by the North Koreans.
I think they see the North Koreans as a giant step
backward on the socialist progression that the communists
in China have achieved, the refugee case
is a huge thorn in China's side
because you've got all these refugees
that are sneaking over the border into China,
not into South Korea,
they can't get there directly through the DMZ,
not to Japan by the ocean, but by land into China.
[music]
China's shared border with North Korea and its large
ethnic Korean population along the border have facilitated
escape for thousands of North Koreans over
the past six decades.
China's large ethnic Korean population
closely follows relations between the two Koreas.
Many sympathize with the plight of North Korean defectors
and help them once they arrive in China.
However, while many defectors like Mr Lee successfully escape,
others are not so fortunate.
Alright gentlemen, welcome to Conference Row,
the official meeting place for the UN Command
Command and the UNZ for the North Koreans and KPA.
All the blue buildings here belong to the UN Command
while the grey/tan buildings belong to the KPA.
The large grey building on Conference Row
is the North Korean's visitors centre or the Panuon dock.
There is one soldier out on the stairs,
the other soldier sits inside with a camera
taking our pictures today...
The U.S. genuinely supports reunification,
our hope obviously,
is that we can handle the process of unification
well enough that we would still have an alliance
with a unified Korea,
that it would be a unified Korea under an open democratic regime
that is a market economy and is an ally of the United States.
I think that North Korea will change.
But is there a scenario
for the Korean peninsula that doesn't involve
millions of people getting killed?
That's what I really care about,
because there are lots of scenarios,
and most of them,
including some pretty likely ones, are very violent.
You look at Seoul, they would never risk this.
You know what, they're risking it.
and the North Koreans as well.
[music]
While security concerns and regional rivalries dominate
thinking at a national level, and younger generations
of South Koreans feel and know less
about their northern neighbour, Mr Lee's activism has drawn
hundreds to his cause and seeks to keep the suffering
of North Koreans on the public agenda.
The truth is, the greatest obstacle
to unification is Koreans.
South Korean doesn't want to pay the price of unification
and who can blame them?
It's an astronomical cost in that process.
The North Koreans don't want unification
because they don't want to be absorbed like East Germany was.
They are the weak system, they will lose everything.
The privileged elite in N. Korea
will not be the same in S. Korea,
in a unified Korean peninsula.
In terms of the broader question of unification.
China, Russia, Japan, the United States, South Korea
all decided that we did not want a precipitous unification,
we did not want a collapse of North Korea,
because it was too risky,
and we didn't want to pay the price of unification.
That's still our position today.
That makes sense, and I still support that position,
but we need to be very cognizant with ourselves,
or very honest with ourselves
that there is a price that is being paid in terms of
the horrific human rights situation in North Korea.
[music]
There are significant challenges facing Korean reunification.
For now Mr Lee continues his mission to help the people
of North Korea and keep the hope of unification alive
in a South Korea that is growing further apart
from its North Korean brethren every day.
[music]
Mr Lee's balloon launches are meticulously planned
and executed.
However, despite careful preparation,
launches are often aborted or delayed due to weather,
security concerns or other circumstances
beyond his control.
The prospects for Korean unification
balance on similar unpredictable events.
South Korean opinions, change in North Korean leadership
and Chinese support of the regime
are all factors that could push the peninsula closer
or further from being unified.
Ultimately, Koreans and the world will have to wait
for what most see as a difficult but inevitable reunification
of a people long divided.
CHEERING
You know the question of unification,
it could happen any time.
It could happen by the time this film is aired.
Something could happen in the north,
an adventuresome military commander
could decide to take over and sue for peace
with the South and say, Hey, we want to be part of this,
not part of this failed economic system in the north.
That could happen tomorrow...
and it could take another 30 or 50 years.
It's really hard to say.
[music]