Manse! Manse!*

National Geography's Inside Undercover in North Korea is neither the most comprehensive nor the most sensational documentary on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Or to most of the outside world, North Korea) but it serves as a good enough introduction to the country that's the equivalent of the weird family on the 3rd storey who never seemed to step out of their house other than the one time you saw the son rush for his short bus to special school with his light blue school pants worn tits-high. This is coming from someone who went through a phase of total fascination with how totalitarian societies work a couple of years ago so I have read more than a thousand pages on how the reclusive nation is like, so you probably won't find the documentary as shallow as I did if you weren't as nerdy.

However, it wasn't a waste of 45 minutes for me as the ending was something I'll remember for life. I'm not spoiling it for you but I'm assuming that you have total faith in my awesome taste in music, films and all things media so the video should already be loading on your computer.

Heart-breaking as the ending was, it's nothing compared to this other North Korean documentary that I watched which had the infamous hidden-cam shots of kids with hollow cheeks, sunken eye sockets and bones threatening to pierce through forearms picking up stray grains of rice from the muddy ground at a black market selling UN food aid. There were some other such scenes in that documentary that really poked at whatever that's left of my heart and if I remember correctly, I shed a few tears during my watching. I can't really remember but you know, I might have, or I might not and even if I have, it's not a big deal right? It's really not a big deal, if I've actually had done so.

If you like the Inside Undercover at North Korea, click around and you can find other documentaries on the country, including the one I talked about. Then maybe, you'll move onto borrowing related books from the library and then halfway through it, you shudder, realising that all governments around the world, including ours (especially ours), do the same thing to gain and maintain control over the people and then you'll eventually become a cynical, apathetic and selfish bastard who is wondering why he's even bothering to blog about it on the Internet.

* Manse: Translates to "Long live", as in "Long live our great leader, Kim Jong Ill". Probably derived from the Chinese's use of the phrase "万岁", which has the same meaning.

Okay, I found the link to the better documentary two days after posting the original entry. Watch it, it's worth your time.