24 million people, all brainwashed. There will be a long time before this country sees a popular uprising like Tunisia and Egypt have.
My mother was born to parents who were living in what is now North Korea. My grandfather was a doctor and a successful entrepreneur. Needless to say, the communists didn't have a very sunny view of him, and the family had to be quickly moved south.
Both my mother and my father had some inclinations towards the performing arts and were actively discouraged from this. In the case of females, yes, a fear of "dishonor" was involved. Since many men of power in the North Korean regime are effectively above the law, such fear is perhaps not unwarranted. (Is it really much different than our society?)
For example, I thought it was really cute to see the male and female protaganist quite close to one another. Could they be dating? Or is it all just acting?
The varied emotions seen in this documentary is a refreshing break from all the straight-face, cautious, camera-shy interviewees from the other films by foreign crews in NKorea.
You'd always hear stories about this guy who said X in front of person A, and the next day he was taken "down there", and the idea is: be careful of A, he's an agent. But also: be careful of any stranger, you never know who's gonna report you to the authorities if you say the wrong thing.
Basically, under a dictatorship, the safe thing to do is pretend you're ok with the regime, as long as you don't know who you're talking to.
The North Korean regime doesn't rely on such ideology. Rather, the idea is that Koreans are the world's "true" people, and that only the North Korean regime keeps this faith and keeps their culture away from willing economic and political servitude to the west.
The North Korean regime sees itself as the last bastion of resistance for "the good guys." As far as they're concerned, they're like the rebel alliance in Star Wars. As in Star Wars, their weapons are worn and inferior and their industrial power is dwarfed by that of the evil empire that they fight. Yet they somehow heroically fight on, defying the odds because they are "the good guys."
2. The ideology in USSR was exactly the same - the war against evil west. There were a lot of propaganda about decaying western society and how in 10 years we will build communism and win the Cold War.
3. The economic situation in North Korea is very bad. People would starve there if China would cease it's economic help.
4. Don't think that people there have no understanding of the situation inside their country. In USSR there was an Iron Curtain and totally controlled media but still many people understood the situation and discussed it in their kitchens. People feel the situation very well when they see the dramatic difference between the idealistic picture in government controlled media and in real life.
2. I don't think the North Korean regime preaches that the West is decaying and will fall in X years. That's another way the USSR got egg on it's face that the North Korean regime does now.
3. Not disputing this. The "heroic struggle" stance takes care of this. The thing is that it only works if it resonates with the people. It got to the point where no one in the USSR believed it. I think huge numbers of North Koreans do believe it.
4. The USSR failed to maintain a believable alternate reality for enough of their people and they lost the emotional support of virtually all of their populace. From what I've seen of North Korea, I think they do have a viable "reality distortion field" in place and large numbers of people are emotionally involved in it.