Dictatorship, Paranoia, Famine: Welcome to North Korea!

Why would anyone risk a trip to North Korea where one wrong move could get you in prison and tortured for years.

That woman directing imaginary traffic with precision as if any crashes were about to happen is one of the bizarre scenes of North Korean life I've ever seen.

The woman directing nonexistent traffic was so intensely fascinating

I love how the tourists came to a dictatorship and were shocked when they had to follow the same strict laws as the general populous.

When you're having a bad time in life simply watch this kind of documentary to make yourself remember how good of a life you have still compared to this.

Im gonna just say it: these tourist had me on edge the whole time. Be flippant, an asshole or careless with your words when you aren't visiting a totalatarian government. Trying to trick the guy at the end to go for a solitary walk would've gotten him in trouble. You may get to go home but the Korean people you encounter may face repercussions for your actions

Imagine knowing how strict the laws are. And the first thing you do is try to get a guide possibly a death penalty trying to leave a hotel when you know it’s illegal.

This is a prison not a country 😢

That entire school segment filled me with sadness more than anything else. The best thing about kids is that they are genuine, and to see them forced to keep up appearances at such a young age is very hard to see.

“You can have fun with the slot machines, but there’s never any jackpot” Sooo incredibly dystopian.

13:47 "She was spoiling the scenery by being poor." That was both extremely amusing to hear and extremely depressing as well...

They took a crazy risk getting that footage out. The man that was like "if you go there i'm dead" legit shocked me. One of the best NK documentary i've seen.

"The traffic lady in an empty intersection signaling like a puppet gone mad" i felt kind of sad for her.

I am a doctor and was sent to NK for a year with Doctors Without Borders The worst country and experience ever. I was afraid all the time because i feared doing something “ wrong “ I stuck it out but NEVER again…

Its absolutely mind boggling these French tourist think they're having a tour of a cute, quaint little country almost the whole time... the gal of it all is incredible. "They're annoying me cus they keep deleting all my pictures! If they keep this up i won't tour this region again!" YOU'RE IN NORTH FUCKING KOREA, MY GUY

It's like a movie - "The Truman Show", cameras, extras, scenery for foreigners, just a show. We created an experiment, divided the country into 2 parts, in one there is a totalitarian regime and everything is prohibited, in the other part there is everything: goods, infrastructure, Internet, television, in a word, civilization and those in power have been watching this experiment for decades, how people develop and adapt in two ways of life development...

Three things saddened me in this video: the children, the woman who regulates traffic, and the people locked inside the village

Am I the only one to have seen and heard all of the North Korean documentaries and use them for sleep?

Heard from former citizens of the USSR (Vee, Vladimir Jaffe, Oleg Atbashian, all of them speak english and have an internet presence). The official narrative spread by the regime was that as bad as the soviet citizens had it, they're conditioned to believe it's heaven compared to what westerners had. This view started changing when western products and media were smuggled into the USSR. Even Nikita Kruschev himself was baffled to visit a western convenience store and see there wasn't a shortage of anything during an official trip to the US. This episode, some scholars believe, was the beggining of the end for the USSR. That simple trip to a random convenience store Kruschev picked himself on a whim chipped the bellief in socialism on the very highest echelon of soviet government. Because back then socialism wasn't a gimmick to rule over people like a feudal lord. Kruschev really was a sincere, honest and just man. He used to visit random stores and factories all the time back in the USSR. He really did believe in socialism making peole's lives better, he just had never been shown an undistorted alternative. Them came Gorbachev with his Perestroika and Glasnost. They no longer would punish people for complaining about the government, which snowballed into the collapse of the USSR because it turned out people had A LOT to complain about. The evil versions of Taiwan and Korea learned the most out of the collapse of the USSR. While we're still discussing what really happened, they took action to guarantee it wouldn't hapen to their castle of cards, at least not so soon. That is why those regimes are so opressive and censorious. They really must mantain this façade that they have it better and the outside is a barren wasteland, somehow. China has opted for racial superiority of the Han chinese in lieu of their global reach that allows peole to see the truth about communism with their own eyes, but that's beside the point. For the Juche ideology, going to another country for leisure is literally unthinkable. They don't think of the tourists as some curious middle class people able to take a trip most french people could. They either think you're some very rich capitalists or someone a rich capitalist favors so much you have money to blow on the trip. I'm seeing the revolution brewing in the chinese people with their economy showing cracks, the government induced rally of the chinese stock market, the collapse of Evergrande, the Let it Rot movement, youth unemployment and their increased hostility towards western companies. North Korea will still be North Korea when the CCP finally collapses, they will certainly outlast the regime that supports them to use north koreans as cannon fodder in a war exactly because the Kim regime keeps a much tighter grip on its people. Socialism was predicted to be impossible in the 1930s already by L. v. Mises. But the giant bronze statues make the problem clear (there's a Kim-Jong-Ill statue too now. This doc is kinda old). It's an ego problem. Endemic to modern leftists in general, not just the leaders or people with any kind of power. They would literally let millions starve to death before admitting they might have been wrong. North Korea has recently given up on the whole "reunification" thing. Though the current Kim has said it in a way he would start a war for that given the oportunity, it was just a way to save face while admitting NK can't compete with the South militarily. This could pave a way to peace. South korean media has been penetrating the northern people and shattering the regime's illusions little by little through baloons and airwaves just as western smuggled media did with the USSR back in the day. But let's not ignore the prime directive of the Kim's regime. The same of the Castros, Mugabes, Pots, Husseins, Assads and etc around the world: Keep themselves in power.

Holy Moly great documentary... it is really scary. How did he manage to make the video and not having it deleted?