Re: Watch Black Friday English Subtitles Online
Berry Hootsell
BEN ANDERSON, BBC Television, Reporter: [voice-over] This is the last and oldest cold war frontline in the world. It's the absurdly named Demilitarized Zone, one of the most heavily armed places on earth.
BEN ANDERSON: We took a tour from the south. We had an American GI as our guide. This is the line that's divided Korea since the end of World War II, when Russia occupied the north, America the south. Both countries then put puppet regimes in power. In 1950, after numerous incursions by both sides, North Korea invaded the South. The ensuing Korean war lasted three years and cost two million lives.
AMERICAN GI: OK, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to United Nations command checkpoint 3. On this ridgeline, that's the northern boundary of the DMZ, which is approximately 2,000 meters from where we're standing at right now. Over here on the lefthand side of the treeline, you'll see what looks like some large white letters. OK, that's actually a North Korean propaganda sign. Once translated from Han-gul to English, it roughly states, "Our general is the best general."
AMERICAN GI: That's the city of Kaesong. And those radio towers - you can see three more over there - they're actually jammers to block all of our transmissions, our radio and our television transmissions, so that they have no idea of what actually goes on in the outside world. So I'm sure when you get there, you're going to see a big difference [unintelligible] going on. Kind of like Hitler burning the books.
BEN ANDERSON: [voice-over] There have been plenty of skirmishes along this line. The most famous was in 1976, when American soldiers used an axe to chop down a tree that was obscuring their vision. North Korean soldiers approached, a fight broke out, and two Americans were killed by the very same axe they were using to chop the tree.
My journey into North Korea was going to be controlled by government-appointed minders who would not allow me to meet any ordinary North Koreans. So I traveled to Seoul to meet defectors who had completed the long and hazardous journey to the south. At least a quarter of a million have fled across the Chinese border. Only the lucky few make it to the south, where they are finally given refugee status.
[on camera] There's a couple of North Korean refugees here who'll talk to us but don't want to appear in front of a camera. I don't know if they're worried about their own safety or the safety of their families back in North Korea.
FEMALE REFUGEE: [subtitles] They educate you from the moment you are born. The moment a child utters a word, they start him on ideological training, making him say, "Thank you, Dear Leader" and "Thank you, Great Leader" all the time. So they can't think for themselves.
MALE REFUGEE: [subtitles] North Korea is a country where people die of starvation. Can you imagine that? People say, "May the Great Leader live 10,000 years." Even those dying of starvation say it. When you go to North Korea, you'll only get to meet those saying "Long live the Great Leader, Father General."
BEN ANDERSON: I was traveling with Will, my producer, armed only with a small camera. We had been told to expect heavy questioning and possibly even a strip search upon arrival in North Korea. I left the bustling and prosperous streets of South Korea expecting a grim-faced and hostile reception.
In just one line of his "axis of evil" speech, George Bush condemned North Korea as a regime arming itself with missiles and weapons of mass destruction while starving its citizens. Last year, only 150 Western tourists came here. With no Internet, mobile phones and only state-run media, North Korea has rightly been described as "the hermit kingdom."
[on camera] Well, the first thing you notice is just how quiet it is everywhere. I mean, there's literally, I don't know, 10- I mean, I'm looking over half the city, and I can probably see 10 cars.
[voice-over] North Korea is desperate to engage with the outside world, and it soon became clear that our tour was going to be one long advert for North Korea and its heroic soldiers, factory workers, farmers and intellectuals. I was taken to the statue of North Korea's president, officially called "Great Leader, Comrade Kim Il Sung," and for a few U.S. dollars was told to lay flowers at his feet.
BEN ANDERSON: The Great Leader ruled from 1948 until his death in 1994, and over $2.5 billion was spent on ceremonies and monuments in his memory. He holds the office of president eternally, making North Korea the only country in the world with a dead president.
BEN ANDERSON: [voice-over] And the people are still working hard for him. An army of volunteers keeps his statue spotlessly clean, and when a bird threatens to blemish the Great Leader, there is panic down below until the bird is finally chased away. After three years of official mourning for the Great Leader, his son, Kim Jong Il, was declared the country's Dear Leader, creating communism's only-ever dynasty.
BEN ANDERSON: [voice-over] The Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum was the first of many I would be taken to. Here I would learn that the Great Leader single-handedly defeated Japanese imperialism in 1945, with no mention of World War II.
[voice-over] The showpiece of the museum is a huge revolving panoramic painting of a famous battle. The unshaven alcoholics are the U.S. imperialist aggressors, the sun-tanned heroes with white teeth the North Korean army.
[on camera] "The government of the United States of America shoulders full responsibility and solemnly apologizes for the grave acts of espionage committed by the U.S. ship against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."
NORTH KOREAN VETERAN: [subtitles] Our seven men boarded the Pueblo and captured 83 of the armed villains. If the American imperialists infiltrate this land again, we'll chase them to the end of the world and bomb their bases. We'll crush them mercilessly under our feet.
When I kind of came here, I'd read all the articles. I'd read all the books, and I was coming here, really, to sort of laugh at the personality cult here and, you know, the ridiculousness of it all. And I came here, actually, thinking that by the end of the week, I'd- I'd confront our guides and say that "What you're showing me is a sham." But I don't know. They're breaking my heart.
[voice-over] The next day, we were driven for three hours to visit what we were told was a typical cooperative farm. This vision of agricultural perfection did not tally with what I had read about the great famine.
BEN ANDERSON: [voice-over] Propaganda, the response I got every time I suggested there might be a few cracks in the Great Leader's "sunshine state." It seemed pointless to mention the fact that many aid agencies think the number of deaths from famine could be as high as three million.
GIRL: [singing] [subtitles] Sun, sun, if there's sun, it's the morning. Sun, sun, if there's sun, the birds fly. The Great Leader's picture is the sun, to whom I am grateful. I can't live without him. I am thankful to him.
BEN ANDERSON: Everywhere you go in North Korea, you see evidence of a country constantly prepared for war. One in ten North Koreans wears military uniform, and you often see army trucks carrying soldiers and weapons.
NORTH KOREAN SOLDIER: [subtitles] This place is very volatile. In other places, you need a big incident to start a war. But here, even the smallest mistake made by one soldier could lead to a war. During the Korean war, my whole family - 11 in total - were massacred. My father was the only survivor. Because of my family history, my father has been in uniform all his life, and his five sons are all serving on the front line. American soldier.
NORTH KOREAN SOLDIER: [subtitles] The Americans, in their desire to dominate the world, didn't want to leave South Korea. So in order to have an excuse to stay, they provoked this incident.
BEN ANDERSON: [voice-over] I had expected a hermetically sealed communist state to be cold, gray and heavily industrialized, so I was surprised to find an afternoon on the beach as part of our itinerary.
[on camera] We're on the beach, but there's a kind of wooden fence, and there's an electric fence to stop American espionage scuba divers from swimming in from ships and becoming spies in North Korea somewhere. He told me the fence is electric, but I'm not sure I believe him.
Mr. PAK: Yeah. We think like that. If we have not enough the arms, then maybe it will be attacked by the Americans because, anyhow, maybe it's happened in Iraq and then here. Iraq, and then the here. The Afghanistan and the like. If we are not ready, of course, you see, for the attack, then maybe they can easily, of course, occupy this land.
[voice-over] The most excessive display of nationalism is the Arirang Festival, where 100,000 performers praise the Great and Dear Leaders and mourn the division of their country. The South are shown as long-lost family members, with reunification blocked by the American military presence. While all the people of North and South live for reunification, I wondered if the Dear Leader felt the same way. He had to realize an open border and the information it would reveal would surely mean an end to his reign.
ALEXIS BLOOM, Reporter: [voice-over] We were driving north, towards a city called Kaduna, on our way to find a Muslim woman at the center of a controversy. Amina Lawal has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. The trial of this woman has deepened the growing split in Nigeria between the Christian south and the Muslim north.
ALEXIS BLOOM: [voice-over] We followed a procession of cars covered in leaves, all fleeing the city, heading further north. Fires burned in the distance, but nobody stopped to find out why. Only later that night did we realize how bad the violence had been.
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