North Korea discovers an NGO. And is highly confused. | PIIE

North Korea discovers an NGO. And is highly confused. | PIIE




North Korea discovers an NGO. And is highly confused.
Marcus Noland (PIIE)
October 6, 2012 6:15 AM


This one comes from Gordon Flake at the Mansfield Foundation. (Keep those cards and letters coming folks—you think we have time to make up all this stuff ourselves?) He writes, “I found this article fascinating and perhaps worthy of your analysis.....striking in that I think this is probably genuine.....the North Koreans simply cannot conceive of the non-profit organizations. They get business and government, but not much beyond. Gordon” Worthy of your analysis!? Sort of reminds me of Ian Anderson’s description of the music of Jethro Tull: “We make it faster and louder!”

Anyway, said article “Film Festival the “Fabricated Scheming of Rodents!” is by Kang Mi Jin and Daily NK. It reads in its entirety:

‘Uriminzokkiri’, North Korea’s main online propaganda outpost targeting the South, has heavily criticized the upcoming North Korean Human Rights International Film Festival, calling it “fabricated scheming” and “a provocative farce made by rodents.”

Writing on the 14th, the website run by the North Korean Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland declared that the films to be screened at next week’s festival are “blasphemous and defame our great socialist way with the masses at its center.”

It went on, “The South Chosun media is frenziedly advertising these films that can be watched for free at the ‘North Korean Human Rights Film Festival’, but it would be unthinkable for movie makers in competitive South Chosun to screen films for free that required the mobilization of vast human and material resources.”

Concluding therefore that the entire festival is a confrontational conservative plot, it went on, “If funding hadn’t come from the government then it would have been impossible for this to happen."

Meanwhile, the 2nd annual North Korean Human Rights International Film Festival is to be held at Film Forum in Shinchon on September 20th and 21st. As correctly noted in the critical Uriminzokkiri article, all films and the opening ceremony in Seoul Station Plaza on the night of the 20th are free and open to the public.”

And your wise men don’t know how it feels to be thick as a brick.
COMMENTS
Fred
October 7, 2012 5:18 PM


I read something similar on a book about one of the famine relief projects. The NK government was suspicious of the whole concept of an NGO. They should have gotten used to it by now, since some faith-based groups have been quietly operating there for years.
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NK
October 8, 2012 12:45 AM


It's true that Uriminzokkiri belies their ignorance about NGOs and the way they operate in capitalist economies (and how cheap it is to make some of these films), and of course not intending to support those fools at all, but in the interests of full information, the ROKG (MOU to be exact) did provide funding for the first North Korean Human Rights International Film Festival, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that the MOU provided at least partial funding for the second one either.
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Dan Bielefeld
October 8, 2012 2:00 AM


I suppose a link to the film festival in question might be in order. http://en.nknet.org/events-programs/film-festival/2012/2nd-north-korean-...
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Karin
October 8, 2012 1:39 PM


It's difficult to make a profit on a documentary, and somebody/some entity does need to pay for it. And how financially successful are mainstream fiction movies about serious topics? Many documentaries are funded by foundations or personal grants or crowd-sourced through websites like Kickstarter. Many human rights organization are at least partially funded by government funds, both US and ROK, addressing human rights concerns all over the world. This is true regardless of whether or not this festival is funded, in whole or in part by government grants. The DPRK is familiar with NGOs by now, but it is not necessarily familiar with foundations and other entities that fund documentaries.