With the recent Oscar win by "Parasite", it seemed like a good time to focus on Korea. Korea, like most cultures in the region, has thousands of years of history. The origin of modern events there is Japan's colonization and brutal occupation of the peninsula (the Japanese troops not only committed horrific atrocities but also used Korean women as "comfort women", meaning sex slaves). But the widely known stage of Korea's history started with Japan's defeat and the occupation by the US and USSR. The division of the peninsula created North Korea (a Stalinist state) and South Korea (whose government for decades was like a Latin American junta government; full democracy there only got established in the 1980s). During the Korean War, the US used napalm in North Korea, practically leveling the country.
N. C. Heiken's "Kimjongilia" features interviews with people who fled North Korea. Basically, North Korea deifies the Kim dynasty, with the late Kim Il-sung called Eternal Leader (North Korea even starts its official calendar with his birth year, just as Christianity does with Jesus). Kim Jong-il was still alive when the documentary came out; from what I've heard, the deification continues with Kim Jong-un.
It's not a great documentary, but worth seeing.
