Park Yeon-Mi fled North Korea in 2007 at the age of 13 and told the Guardian in 2014 that secretly watching films, particularly Titanic, was a rare and healing glimpse into the world. A scary story.
Can a movie save your life? While some are still pondering the question, Park Yeon-mi decided a long time ago: yes, a thousand yes. In 2007, when she fled her native North Korea at the age of 13, she told The Guardian newspaper in 2014 about her life in the hell of the unrelenting and paranoid dictatorship of the Kim dynasty. Terrifying statement.
Secretly nurtured by foreign films, like a rare and salutary window on the world, it was one film in particular that made her flee to her country: James Cameron’s Titanic.
The death penalty for an American film
The beginning of his story is frightening. Barely 9 years old, she was forced with her whole school to attend the execution of the mother of one of her classmates. The crowd gathered in a stadium to watch this murder. The reason ? The victim was unlucky enough to lend a friend a South Korean film… She was denounced and shot.
In the most closed country on earth, where the doctrine of juche, i.e. economic self-sufficiency, is even enshrined in the constitution and is largely supported by intensive propaganda, the black or parallel markets are considerably developed. In fact, in a country where almost everything is scarce, this black market is vital.
ITAR TASS / BESTIMAGE Kim Jong Un at a parade in Vladivostok.
The country is thus flooded with legal or illegal products from China, such as DVD players. Also involved in this thriving informal economy are the pirate copies of films, which are exchanged under cover. They are even the subject of bartering: According to Park Yeon-mi, one DVD is exchanged for almost 2 kg of rice.
Enough to help a family – and a population more generally – stricken by the terrible famine that ravaged the country in the mid-1990s, killing up to a million people. “Everyone was hungry, so we couldn’t afford to buy a lot of DVDs. So if I had Snow White and my boyfriend had James Bond, we’d trade movies,” she recalls.
But woe to anyone caught in possession of a regime-unapproved film. She also recalls that there are different verdicts depending on the origin of the film: “If you were caught with a Bollywood or Russian film, you were sent to prison for three years, but if it was a South Korean or American film, you were one executed.” .
“I didn’t understand why this man gave his life for this woman”
Despite the risk of getting caught, she didn’t want to stop secretly watching these films “because they were an opening to the world for us.” My favorite films were Titanic, James Bond and Pretty Woman. People got pirated copies from China.”
In doing so, she reminds the Guardian journalist of the influence that the stories of Hollywood cinema have had on her. “North Korea is all about the supreme leader: all the books, the music or the television. What pissed me off about Titanic was that man.” [Leonardo diCaprio] He gave his life for this woman, not for his country.
I couldn’t understand this state of mind. In North Korean culture, love is a shameful thing and nobody talks about it publicly. The regime was not interested in human desires and romance was forbidden.
KCNA via Bestimage Kim Jong-un releases propaganda footage showing him riding a horse through the snowy plains of Mount Paektu.
She adds, “The other shocking thing about this film is that it’s set 100 years ago and I realized that our country is in the 21st century and we haven’t reached that stage yet.” […] I understood that something was wrong. Everyone but us, regardless of race, culture, or language, seemed to care about love. Why didn’t the regime allow us to express it?”
Park Yeon-mi is now 30 years old, married with a baby boy and living in the United States. She became a journalist and lecturer. But also a passionate activist for the cause of the North Korean refugees.