All language subtitles for Beyond.Utopia.2023.720p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-FLUX

There is no freedom of religion.

There is no freedom of thought,
there is no freedom of press.

There is only one paper,
one radio station,

there is one TV station.

North Korea may be
the only country in the world

that completely bans
outside broadcasts.

And spying on one another

is very much a part of life
in North Korea.

You cannot move
from a place to place
without getting a permit.

I would call the entire country
of North Korea really a prison.

And it's strangest country
in the world.

It is the only communist, Confucian,

hereditary dynasty
in the world.

And Kim Jong-Un
has been very busy

getting rid of any
potential threat.

Within one year, he got rid

of his number-two man
in North Korea,

his uncle who helped him
garner power.

He dragged him out
and publicly killed him.

Then he assassinated
his half-brother

in a major international
airport using banned WMD.

Then he got rid
of about 400 top officials.

We're now onto maybe 90th
Defense Minister, I lost count.

Senior officials
have been executed

by the use
of anti-aircraft guns.

If you shoot a human
using artillery

which is designed
to take down planes,

you can imagine
the effect on the body.

The only reason to do that
is for the fear

that that will put
into the people

that are gathered
and made to watch.

Do you remember
how old you were

when you first saw
a public execution?

Victims saw intimidation,

murder, enslavement,
and torture,

people whose loved ones disappeared

without trace.

People who have been
deliberately starved.

Forced abortions,
sterilization, rape,

I mean, torture of the defectors
who get caught and returned.

The Chinese government
has a hard-line policy of,

if they find
North Korean refugees,

arresting them
and, uh, detaining them

and then forcibly sending them
back to North Korea

where they will face
investigation, torture,

and a range
of harsh punishments.

Sometimes people will die
through torture

and there's no recourse
for North Korean citizens,

for their families
to complain about that.

United Nations came out

with a 400-page report
couple of years ago that says

"North Korea's
Human Rights violations

is unparalleled
in contemporary history."

The only parallel they could
come up with is Nazi Germany.

Ah...

In 1910,
the expanding Japanese empire

colonized what was then
a unified Korea.

It was a very brutal colonization.

Over the next 35 years,

the Korean culture
and the Korean language

were nearly eradicated.

At the end of World War II,
when Japan surrendered,

they lost the empire
that they had been building.

Let us pray that peace
be now restored to the world.

Part of the settlement deal
was that Korea was split.

The 38th parallel

divided the United States
Army's area

from that of the Soviet forces.

The idea was that Korea

would shortly
come back together

and then have control
over their own country.

In the meanwhile, the South
held a public election,

and U.S.-educated Syngman Rhee
became the first president

of what would become
South Korea.

But in the North,
Stalin decided to look

for a Soviet sympathizer

as a temporary leader

in what would become
North Korea.

And this is where
Kim Il-Sung comes in.

Kim Il-Sung had been born
in Korea in 1912,

two years after the Japanese
occupied the country.

His parents were very involved
in anti-Japanese activities,

and when he was
just eight years old,

his family moved to Manchuria.

Kim Il-Sung joined
the Communist Party in China,

and he eventually actually
fought with the Soviet Union

throughout World War II.

Stalin heard about Kim Il-Sung
because of his reputation

as a leader of several
anti-Japanese guerrilla groups.

When Stalin brought him
to Pyongyang,

Kim Il-Sung didn't even speak
good Korean.

In fact, his speeches
had to be translated
into Korean

and then rehearsed by him

because he had basically
spoken Chinese

since he was eight years old.

Kim Il-Sung had the dream

of re-unifying the Koreas
under Communism.

Expanding upon
his guerilla contacts,

he put together an army
and eventually got the support

of both Stalin and Mao.

On Sunday, June 25th,

Communist forces attacked

the Republic of Korea.

The attack
was so sudden and forceful

that, very quickly, almost
all of South Korea was taken.

In fact, there was only
a tiny pocket

at the bottom of the country

that had not been claimed
by the North.

An act of aggression
such as this

must be met
with a worldwide defense.

And a UN force
containing soldiers

from 21 different countries
entered the war.

What ensued was a brutal
three-year war.

Nearly five million
people died,

half of whom were civilians.

South Korea lost
a million civilians

just on their own.

The United States
dropped a third

as many bombs
on North Korea

as it did
in all of World War II.

And in the end,
nothing was achieved.

In July of 1953,
an armistice was signed

and a ceasefire
was put in place.

But technically speaking,
the war never ended,

and the ramifications of that
are still with us today.

For a while, the
North Korean economy

was more successful
than China's,

maybe even better
than South Korea.

And people pointed,
saying, "Oh, look,

Communism really works."

But everything
was artificially propped up

by the Soviet Union
and the Eastern Bloc,

and when that collapsed,

North Korea went
into a free fall.

In 1994,
after Kim Il-Sung died,

Kim Jong-Il made weapons
of mass destruction
his priority.

This policy prioritized
nuclear weapons
over everything else,

including the people
of North Korea.

Kim Jong-Un needs
something to protect himself

from being overthrown.

You know, they saw Iraq,
they saw Libya,

they saw that Gaddafi
gave up his weapons

and was very ignominiously
murdered by his own people

with the support of the West.

Those scenes
have to be terrifying

to the North Koreans.

I see these nuclear weapons
and missiles

as a symptom of how isolated
and threatening

and threatened the North Korean
government feels.

The North Korean people
are really the pawns

in this political game
that their regime is playing.

- Mm.

Ah...

Mm.

In a way, the scariest parts
of North Korea

are some of what they wanna
show you at these mass games.

And there's 100,000 people

wearing the same
kind of clothes
and marching in unison.

And you see these children
who are five, six years old

with their mass games,
cards spelling out

propaganda messages
in perfect unison.

You've gotta think, you know,
"How do you get
your five-year-old to do that?"

You see how much
repression there is.

- Oh...

North Korea
has basically plagiarized

the Christian Bible
and you can see

a lot of parallels
to the Old Testament.

Kim Il-Sung is God,

and Kim Jong-Il
is the Son of God.

They claim that he was born
not in a manger

but in a log cabin
on Mount Paektu,

which is at the Chinese-North
Korean border.

It's said his birth
was heralded

by a beautiful star,
and a double rainbow.

They wanted to keep
this powerful imagery
for themselves,

so the Bible is banned.

Mm.

[tense music playing

- Yeah.

- Mm...

- Mm.

Ooh!