We’ve all heard the stories about North Korea’s Dear leader Kim Jung Il. There’s the one about how he shot a 38 under par the first time he ever picked up a golf club -and this included 4 holes in one. We’re told that he invented the microwave oven, the radial tire, the hologram and, more recently, the hamburger. During this year’s World Cup in South Africa, the North Korean coach revealed that Kim was calling most of the plays via an invisible cell phone that was invented by the Dear Leader himself. But he is not only an inventor – apparently he is an artist extraordinaire. It is reported that, while in college, he wrote 1500 books and six operas, all far better than any of the European classics.
But to his people, he is much more than a mere inventor or artistic genius.
North Korean schoolchildren are taught that on the day of his birth, rainbows filled the sky throughout the land. He can walk on water, travel long distances sitting down, and doesn’t urinate or defecate like regular humans ( though he apparently has human appetites for expensive liquor and foods.) To his people, Kim Jul Il is nothing less than a god, like his father before him and the son who has recently been selected to follow him.
The stories may be funny, but the harsh realities of the North Korean people are not. A recent documentary entitled Kimjongilia, tugs at the veil covering this mysterious people , exposing those realities in this isolated nation Vaclav Havel calls “one of the most staggering human-rights and humanitarian disasters in the world. A 2009 official selection at the Sundance Film Festival, Kimjongilia weaves together creative storytelling and North Korean propaganda film with the stark and candid testimonies of North Korean defectors.
Kimjongilia is informative and disturbing, illuminating and provoking – and well worth the 71 minutes it takes to watch it.
For those of you who subscribe to Netflix, Kimjongilia is available to watch instantly. The DVD and plenty of related information is also available on the documentary’s website at http://www.kimjongiliathemovie.com/