Het échte Noord-Korea

De laatste tijd horen we niet heel veel nieuws meer over de situatie rondom Noord-Korea, maar we weten in ieder geval dat ze nooit vriendjes met de hele wereld (met name de VS) gaan worden. National Geographic biedt ons een uniek kijkje binnen de afgebakende grenzen van de totalitaire staat.

Reporter Tim Sullivan en fotograaf David Guttenfelder mochten onder zeer strenge begeleiding het land in. Sullivan schrijft in National Geographic hetvolgende:

“The North Korean government, of course, works relentlessly to present a view of life in which schools are filled with happy, well-fed children, stores are filled with goods, and loyalty to the Kim family is universal. People know to speak to reporters in surreal, mechanical hyperbole, spouting praise for their leaders. “Thanks to the warm love of the ‘Respected General,’ Kim Jong Un, even rural people like us can come here and enjoy mini-golf,” Kim Jong Hui, a 51-year-old housewife from the country’s remote northeast, tells me one day at the country’s first putt-putt golf course, in Pyongyang. Overwhelmed by this benevolence, she says, “I have made up my mind to do my duty to help build a prosperous, powerful state.”

It is easy, after many such encounters, to believe in the caricature of North Koreans as Stalinist robots. The challenge is to find the far more elusive—and more prosaic—reality. Sometimes that takes stumbling onto a subject that gets North Koreans to open up a bit.”