Film Review: Under the Sun
Spoiler alert: The North Korean government suffers from a severe transparency deficit.
How do you reveal the reality of a society where government representatives script each scene you're allowed to shoot?
Simple: leave cameras rolling at all times, and show your audience the scripting and retakes of "real life" in all their glory.
You end up not with a documentary about a family going about their lives, but a behind-the-scenes reveal of a family whose dinner-table conversations, workplace interactions, and even expressed emotions are curated by government propagandists for external consumption.
No North Koreans question this process out loud--except to check their lines.In this system everyone knows the role expected of them, especially with government officials overseeing everything. So before our very eyes, we observe the theatrical production of an ideal 'Kimilsungist socialist society', played out by real citizen-actors. And when citizens know the risks of not playing the part they’re asked to play, they become good actors.
This is of course a very real aspect of life in North Korea, even when no cameras are rolling. The everyday ritualised theatrical production of 'obedient citizens willingly striving as one for the socialist cause' is one of the key means by which the state perpetuates itself. Everyone knows what to say, how to say it, and that you have to say it. Whatever your innermost thoughts may be, it's hard to break role publicly when everyone else is sticking so closely to a ‘script’.
Revealing the nature of this production, warts-and-all, is one of the key contributions of Under the Sun.But as with any behind-the-scenes look, cracks in the facade, tired actors and cock-ups are apparent.'Off stage', strategically placed cameras record poor Pyongyang kids scavenging from a trash can. We see commuters disembarking to push a tram. A government 'set manager' shoos away two women approaching the back door of a milk processing plant with a big jug; we can only guess they were looking for an off-the-books top up, unaware there were foreign filmmakers present that day.
We see a forgetful factory worker reporting they have exceeded production targets by 150%, and in the next take 200%. It doesn't matter to any of her coworkers which fiction is used, and no one bats an eyelid.
And of course, children being less practiced in their roles within the system than adults, the best scenes feature North Korean kids. A small girl struggles to keep her eyes open while an aging war veteran wearing far too many medals bumbles through an anti-American propaganda lecture, punctuating tales of shooting down planes with praise for Kim Il-sung.
Jinmi, the star of the film, breaks down in tears when the pressure of performance becomes too much. Elsewhere, on-screen text tells us that she unwittingly revealed her parents' true occupations of journalist and restaurant worker before the government co-producers scripted them as the more socialist-appropriate textile factory technician and soy milk plant worker.
It's hard to not recall The Truman Show, and it boggles the mind to think there are 25 million people living out their lives in this theater state.
But unlike a Hollywood Movie, the enemy here is not represented by a snarling on-screen character. The propagandists are unnamed and we rarely even see their faces properly. The enemy is in fact the system itself, whose quiet tyranny forces every citizen - including the propagandists - to become complicit in its perpetuation by allowing the expression of only a singular narrative of what it is to be a North Korean.
Humans of North Korea: YuSung
The North Korean government made my entire senior class work in the fields during the planting season.
For 40 days straight, we didn’t go to school. We just planted rice in the countryside from dawn to dusk. Even though I hated the work, some of my fondest memories are from that time. I hung out with my friends a lot because we all lived and worked together. We’d sing songs and sneak out to steal corn and potatoes when we were hungry. Then we’d roast them and share them with each other. I loved the feeling of disobeying the rules together.
We’d also hang out with the girls. I had the biggest crush on this one classmate. She had the palest skin and long black hair. In school, it was her job to clean the portraits of the leaders. Every morning she’d take her shoes off and stand on the desk while she wiped the frame with a special cloth. She looked like this beautiful statue standing over the class. It was the highlight of my day watching her do that and I looked forward to seeing her every morning.
She was my first love and while working in the fields I told her how much I liked her. After that, I started stealing corn just for her and we would laugh and talk together. 40 days seemed to go on forever. But the planting season ended and I stopped going to school soon after that because there were rumors my father had defected. I never got to say goodbye and I still think about her and wonder how she’s doing.
"If I saw her today I would walk up to her with a piece of roasted and corn and just say “remember me?”
After my father left for South Korea, the police came to question me and mom nearly everyday. We had to pretend that we had no idea where my dad was even though we knew exactly where he was. The police would sometimes interrogate us for hours waiting for us to slip up. I was still a teenager but I knew that I had to fake my emotions. I would beg the police to find my father and tell them how worried I was that he was missing.
"If I had told them the truth, they would have arrested us immediately.
”We left North Korea a year after my dad made it to South Korea. The police wouldn’t leave us alone so we first went to stay with my grandma. One of our neighbors agreed to let us know when it was safe enough to leave for good. The police bugged our phone so she had to speak in code. One day she called and said “The price of beans has been steadily going down” which meant it was time. When we got that message we left North Korea a few days later. All we had was a small bag and some money with us.
My father is a great photographer and he took a lot of photos in North Korea. We couldn’t bring even a single one with us.
It saddens me to think about all the family photos that are probably gone forever. I wish we just had one.
The first time I saw my father again was in Hanawon (South Korean resettlement center for newly arrived North Koreans). I couldn’t say anything and just started crying because he was crying. He brought me strawberries and the first thing he said to me was “eat this strawberry”.
I had never seen a strawberry that big and my first words to him in years were “Are these real strawberries?!”.
— Yusung Park, escaped North Korea in 2008
