North Korea

I enjoy learning about history, especially when it comes to war.  I enjoy Band of Brothers and the Pacific as well as documentaries.  With all of the recent news about Kim Jong Il dying and his son taking over as the leader of North Korea, another documentary caught my attention.

I believe it was a special produced by National Geographic but it has investigative reporter Lisa Lang in North Korea.  She was there with an eye doctor that was performing thousands of eye surgeries in 10 days. They were supposed to  be documenting this humanitarian trip but they were actually trying to get as close of a look inside North Korea as possible.

I've never learned or studied much about North Korea.  So it was extremely interesting to see how divided and secluded the country is.  I don't support communism but to me, this was an extreme level of communism.  It really seemed to be on the edge of one giant cult.  Thousands of people had come for eye surgery, most were blind because of a lack of normal healthcare in most countries.  The problem was a simple fix and this doctor would be training other people to also perform the surgery after he left.

North Korea actually had some medical equipment which had been donated by other countries. But the leadership had never done anything with it.  After each person was taken care of, they would get up and praise the Great Leader. They are oppressed by their leader and have been for decades, yet they treat him and think of him as a God.  It was terrible to see how brainwashed these people are.

Now you can only show so much in a documentary and you obviously are trying to make a statement, so they can be skewed.  But much of the information was factual and I felt sorry for the people of North Korea.  It seemed like there were many of people that would love to escape but have no way of doing so.

It will be very interesting to me to see how North Korea continues to exist while the world grows into a global environment.  It also made me fear what crazy things they might do.  I support war when war is necessary, but to be honest, I don't know why war should ever be necessary.  If we could remove the crazy from the world, we could all just get a long and treat each other with respect.  I know that won't happen!