El diario de Corea del Norte | DW Documental

My name is Luca Facho, I am a photographer and I have lived in Vienna since 2005. I have already had the opportunity to visit North Korea seven times - and get an image of the people and their vision of the world while I have been able to observe more than what is known. It allowed us to show who visits the country as a journalist is accompanied all day by security guards. I have known mine for several years. Here I am taking photos with them. They control what you film. Who you talk to and about what. Meanwhile, you observe old familiar images but also again and again new images you realize that there are some new thoughts in these people trapped in that collective mind a paranoid system to which here I also have to submit the visit to the monuments of the two great leaders is always at the beginning of the mandatory program On every trip, I already know that they are part of the great Manzur monuments that remember the fight of the North Koreans against the Japanese occupation.

Here in the capital Pyongyang, there are more than 3 million people and a middle class that is increasingly economically independent of the state that for a long time term could become a problem for the regime since 2008 around 2 million mobile phones have been registered here I am being monitored with precisely one but they are also used to call only within the country of course and are for selected citizens such as my caregiver this is the first time that I am allowed to travel by taxi of course accompanied we visit a supermarket where I even discover typical Western products and I see that the people are strikingly well dressed there are casinos and here I can even find coffee in the style of goods of course I am the only customer the State television shows, to my surprise, Western propaganda figures and during my visit the controversial Slovenian rock bands Live were the first Western band allowed to perform here.

They continue to dream of the reunification of North and South Korea, however. They are frustrated again and again by new constant provocations and threatening gestures daily on what is known as the most dangerous border in the world. Try to discover what North Koreans are really like because for me there are also completely normal people behind the system. Appearances can't be deceiving here. I'm in a usual souvenir shop but it is located in communion in the demilitarized zone here there is plenty of coffee smiles and cartridges this time the highway from pyongyang to seoul and this is the railway line that has been interrupted for more than 50 years here there are manuscripts by kim il-sung the great leader kim jong-il has visited this place four times my companions and I, three in total, traveled through the demilitarized zone with an unpleasant tense and even surreal atmosphere the day before my visit there were shootings here today they take away carrying out military exercises it smells like gunpowder the war my companion tells me that his army will protect me this is not reassuring the area extends along the entire peninsula at latitude 38 here the country was arbitrarily divided by the victorious powers after the Second World War The border is 248 kilometers long and 4 kilometers wide and is considered the most dangerous border in the world.

Here I meet a colonel whom I have known for 10 years and we often have a few drinks together after our meetings. For me there is obviously the person in the uniform and the one behind here the end of the war and the ceasefire were agreed upon for you the most important thing is to photograph for that you don't need any explanation the colonel always takes me from one barrack to another It is important to mention how many times some of the leaders have been there. He has to tell me although he is obviously interested in something completely different than what is reported in Austria about the current situation on the Korean peninsula.

This is the most important and most sublime place with respect to the truce Two days after the completion of this building, the truce was agreed upon and signed here on July 27, 1953. On the day of the signing, the Americans wanted to move the building to the north, but they were unable to do so because journalists observed it and avoided it on March 3, 1953. 2012 Supreme Commander Kim Jong-un said during a visit, if we are at war with the Americans again, we will not sign a truce but rather annihilate them until they surrender. For Americans who want to move a building, it sounds more like a fairy tale to me.

Here they talk so calmly about the war that it sounds to me like when we talk about football at home in Italy my journey continues we are on our way to the infamous blue barracks where the meetings between the delegates of North Korea and South Korea take place. South is the exact border between the two countries drawn by the victorious powers of the Second World War. I must say that he has made a great effort in photographing here are the blue cabins the beginning of the drama for the Korean people in the middle of a border so impenetrable that As they say here, the Berlin Wall was a garden fence compared to a few meters away there is South Korea.

Anyone who wants to cross will be shot. I have heard from some foreigners that here they are nice to us but then they come back and make money with what they talked about. with us as I realized later the interpreter translates something else maybe to save his head maybe also intentionally I don't know critical questions are dangerous here in North Korea there are 13 newspapers but only one opinion when entering hunger focused back on pyongyang I want to find out what people think about the reunification of the two Koreas am I allowed to talk about it with a young student I want to tell you something about the reunification all Koreans should advocate for the reunification of our country the next mandatory visit is the birthplace of kim il sung the founder of the state is really a place of pilgrimage that everyone should visit his father his mother the whole family fought against the japanese in this atmosphere in which president kim il-sung was born he received a patriotic education from childhood and revolutionary of his parents, our great great leader kim jong-un is not only loved by young people but all Koreans love him very much everyone loves the great leader but that is true what is real and what is staged there comes a time when You can't tell the difference anymore, by the way, these flowers are sold several times the same day, once they are placed, they are collected by a caretaker who is far back there and they are practically recycled.

An eternal tribute to the eternal president. My next stop is the memorial to the founding of the party. of the Korean workers, built of granite and with a height of 50 meters, it shows the communist symbols, the hammer and the sickle, complemented by a brush that would represent the intellectuals. The reliefs also show the struggle of the workers against the imperialist threat here in the so-called church of the holy trinity i was surprised by the arrest of the russian punk band pussy riot documenting an artistic action in a russian orthodox church in vienna and for that reason i was interrogated by the federal office for the protection of the constitution here in this church Russian Orthodox in North Korea used this topic to be able to speak indirectly about human rights according to the Christian NGO Open Doors.

North Korea is last in the ranking of persecution of Christians. The Pussy Riot sang and danced in the Moscow Cathedral in bikini to demonstrate against the Putin regime at the time of the Russian election campaign I think those musicians they played offended Santamaría by answering workers to drink I don't want to imagine what would happen here if the sacred who was offended to be a North Korean priest this man in my opinion is quite well informed from somewhere information must come from outside if I ask direct questions about human rights this is immediately taken as a provocation and could significantly hinder my stay on the other hand what they do not want to talk about is denied concentration camps Burgas shootings all that would not exist here officially it is paradise on earth from their childhood North Koreans are taught to subordinate themselves to the state ideology sacrificing their individual existence for the collective one and even the little ones are encouraged to denounce adults who were not there satisfied with the leader and the party I want to know how and where the brainwashing begins I tried to find answers in a school a school for more than 1000 students during my visit however the hallways are deserted the principal takes me through the classrooms everything seems very new very organized the schools I know look different this is our cloning laboratory here you can see a microscope and there on the screen you can see a cell magnified 1500 times here are the technical processes for cloning animals she also tells me that kim jong he would have declared nanotechnology and biotechnology as the core of science in North Korea, it seems that so that I don't see only empty classrooms, the director takes me to a classroom where mathematics classes are being taught, this again seems like a really staging to me.

I don't know what they teach the students here when I start to say they start doing calculations like crazy with the calculators but the calculations seem to make no sense I think the students are simulating something omnipresent of course the images of the great leaders of states are found In all the classrooms, when I ask a student if he knows the discoverer of America, Christopher Columbus, silence reigns at first, then the principal asks me to leave the classroom because apparently I am disturbing the class, but the visit still had a surprise in store for me. I was invited to play.

At football with 30 young people, I had never experienced anything like this in North Korea. For me, here with the Genoa shirt, it was a special moment. They didn't care about winning. I think the students even played poorly deliberately to make me look better. Around the field, they sat in two groups 200 or 300 students I felt it practically like a stadium for me due to the latest UN sanctions North Korea is really forced to a self-sufficient existence the export of any raw materials or products is not allowed it is expected that with The current economic situation is only a matter of time before North Korea abandons its obstinate nuclear policy.

I am allowed to visit a textile factory. I have been here four times, but the manager is new. Let's see inside. I am presented with a model spinning mill. The workers here above all. women are the pride of the nation officially these people earn five euros a month it is very likely that the real salary is even lower here people can only survive on ration tickets distributed by the government malnutrition is so common in north korea that It has been proven that people have become smaller. I must say that the factory is strikingly clean. The employees smile and joke.

It is evident that the country needs economic reforms. Exports to China have decreased by around 50 percent. In addition, due to environmental disasters such as Due to drought and floods, the country loses large areas of agricultural land annually and therefore, like many poor countries, it is powerless in the face of climate change. Added to this, North Korea, due to the new sanctions, is even more isolated than before. Ah me. I am glad to have been able to photograph some of the women. All of this is not taken for granted. Here, my companions are responsible for my correct behavior.

If I do not respect certain rules, it would also eventually put them in a difficult situation. For some years now, the growing private traffic has shaped it. The face of the city shows, at least in the capital, that something is happening in the private sector, new buildings emerge and the silhouette of the city reminds me at times of the financial districts of well-known Asian cities. In reality, the leaders live in these buildings. from the workers' party I was lucky enough to be able to visit one of these private apartments again after many years in the elevator the supervision of the system is once again visible here there are people who record who entered the home when and where they go for me this is unimaginable the apartment they show me is not an ordinary one it is a kind of involuntary pilgrimage place for western journalists again and again it is emphasized that kim jong-un himself would have visited the apartment but someone actually living here does not smell like anything everything is It is meticulously arranged like a catalog.

I find it difficult to believe it. You feel like you are in a movie in which Kim Jong-un is the all-powerful director. It was the man. On September 4, we went to work. Suddenly, someone came in a car. They looked for me and found me. They informed me that the commander in chief would visit me. I didn't expect this and of course I'm happy. To me this sounds more like if Kim Jong-un, in addition to executions, also committed housebreaking, at least it's not clear to me what a dictator does. in a foreign apartment but here of course everything is different from although most North Koreans barely have money to buy anything besides their food rations there are also supermarkets with Western products, they are not always open and often many shelves are empty but it is a a sign that they employ jiang, there is a growing middle class that demands openness or at least certain luxury items, as a workergana already reported.officially five euros a month in a supermarket can barely buy anything with it who buys here and belongs to a middle class the better the longer I am in North Korea the more certain I am that the women will force a cultural transformation of the country their clothes this is evident It no longer conforms to the standards of propaganda but is oriented more towards the West.

The desire for luxury goods has also reached Pyongyang, at least among the privileged. The women who here perform military exercises in front of me shout long live the victory of the Songo. They are not a translation that means the army first and is the name of that state ideology that places as a priority the defense capacity of North Korea against imperialist threats from the United States and Japan. In North Korea, mandatory military service is in force for men and lasts 10 years the beloved leader has been here six times the revered general four times the current leader has been here twice who has been where and how often this is always told in north korea now i am visiting a state vegetable plantation 423 families live here, new houses have also been built to extend the agricultural cooperative.

I hope that I will be allowed to speak here with the workers. They have promised to bring me to a factory but I see only a few people where in reality 423 families would live on a small hill overlooking the feeling of an observation deck I can also film the workers at a safe distance is really not what I imagined and once again something typical of North Korea but giving up is not one of my qualities and so I vehemently demand to be able to actually meet the workers I don't want to see only what I should be shown I am here because I want to get to know the Korean people a little more this requires contact I finally convince my caretaker and after having spoken on the phone several times a troop is quickly organized to help me take to the greenhouses observation on my part in north korea there is nothing that is not meticulously organized the word improvisation I think it does not even exist here no by the way on the red sign on each building it says vegetables for the population of the capital my life Regardless of all the propaganda and what I think we could call brainwashing, the Koreans always also manage to surprise me positively in these human encounters, which of course are always organized and controlled, you have to pay attention to the details of the people in these encounters, of course. that leave traces and only then do I think we can separate people from propaganda ah pyongyang the capital with more than three million inhabitants is currently in a construction boom new skyscrapers shoot like mushrooms from the earth and shape the panorama urban pyongyang if we look in detail we realize that south korean brands were covered here with north korea banners as I said you have to pay attention to the details of course I wonder where north korea has suddenly gotten so much money for these gigantic construction projects by the way pyongyang was destroyed by almost 80 percent during the korean war the usa dropped about 30 tons of napalm bombs on different cities over the course of three years however north korea due to the support of the soviet union until the 70s it was even economically superior to south korea later north korea fell into increasing isolation no no no no every day it is possible to film a live concert for workers on the streets of pyongyang in recent years I have tried again and again to capture these images unfortunately in vain these footages are from the year 2013 at that time they allowed me to record this everyday scene in North Korea during a walk point for me they allow me to take a taxi for the first time for this my companion had I even have to call the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of course I'm not alone one of my caregivers is sitting on my left and the other on my right of course as a tourist as well as in Rome or New York I finally had to pay three times the regular price something new catches my attention it may seem insignificant but this small image of a plane from a North Korean airline an advertisement is a surprise in a country where the published images in reality only always show the divine leaders a novelty and perhaps a first delicate attempt to open the country to a globalized world the taxi driver who is missing his left thumb takes me to a place I would never guess and it is one of the most popular amusement places in pyongyang an ice skating rink is correctly called a popular rink of ice skating in 2007 was even one of the several venues for the women's ice hockey world championship even the Austrian team played here in pyongyang it is significant that during the games in north korea there was the largest attendance of spectators and surely not because there here so many fans on sunday afternoons the middle class of pyongyang gathers here to ice skate eat ice cream and drink beer unfortunately i didn't get a martini instead there is ping pong and the enemy in this case i am allowed to play and exceptionally win the scenery Pyongyang's urban area not only changes architecturally, the teenagers have discovered rollers and now they fill more and more places where tanks normally or at least used to circulate arrivederci I'm not sure if Italian is taught here but it's a start regarding the so-called festival above right Arirang has always held a special fascination for me as well as for anyone who has ever seen it.

It is named after an old Korean folk song and attempts to represent the history of North Korea in a heroic way through mass dances and gymnastics. In an event like this, more than 100 thousand people participate, this makes it the largest dance event of this type in the world. The choreography is always impressive. The propaganda madness was ignored for a moment. The festival will open. By the way, it is carried out irregularly. usually in spring and autumn but sometimes it is not even held I was told that whoever participates in the event receives compensation in the form of a television or a refrigerator the mass event should convince people through the corresponding figurative language about the political objectives of the state leaders I have already attended the Iranian Ar festival four times but this time I saw something strange the people suddenly left the stadium while the guards tried to stop them around the stage there was also a lot of military presence that's why I couldn't filming for a long time my caretakers also wanted me to concentrate on the show was this a kind of resistance maybe in north korea really if there are people who do not want to accept a third successor of the kim family as leader during my last visit there was another event historic the controversial slovenian rock band live was the first western group to give a music concert in pyongyang i think what our concert here in pyongyang shows is that both parties have really pushed themselves both sides reached their limits to realize this project and That is what I call a true cultural exchange when both parties come together and sacrifice something for a common result.

After Mickey Mouse, Western music also arrived in North Korea. Even the texts visible above have been translated into Korean. The concert you have Seen, I think it would not have been possible without the three or four cultural exchange programs that we previously carried out. Music is a language that works without words and that can be understood in many different ways and that is the magic of music. There is no such thing as a instruction manual 6 I had the feeling of really understanding for the first time the text of this song and the part of the text in which it says nothing will change my world when Mina the singer sang that part before the 1,500 spectators in Pyongyang s was a moment for me magical nothing's gonna change my world this is the perfect phrase for a country that until now kept its people away from all types of western music if someone was found with movies or cds from south korea they often ended up in concentration camps until now western music was only available in a few karaoke bars for foreigners, it will be that the ibaf goes down in history with this concert as bruce springsteen did with his in the gdr time will tell for me the north koreans are happy people full of hope at least this is what the people I met showed me I think the North Koreans know that not everything lasts forever they are a people who naturally also want to live in peace but due to mistakes made during the cold war they are forced to live in a permanent state of war on my part there is something that I cannot stop repeating I feel very good with the North Koreans over time I have also been able to make friends the trips of the last few years were for me a lesson that general prejudice and generalization do not They take me nowhere, neither in Europe nor in North Korea, a country about which I still know too little there.