Can we save North Korea?

Intellectual stimulants can come in the strangest ways, especially when it’s from a concert video uploaded on youtube. I’m a huge fan of Korean music, and one of my favourite Korean artists is Shinhwa (Myth), a 6-member boy band. Out of the hundreds of videos I watched of them, there was one that really sent my mind reeling.

Shinhwa is a South Korean band, and in 2003 they were invited to perform at a friendship concert in North Korea. They sang, rapped, and danced their heart out, just like in all their concerts. Usually, the audience screamed, shouted, and applauded, but this crowd was eerily quiet. Occasionally, cameras shifted to the audience and their faces were blank with absolutely no expression. When the boys started rapping near the end, the audience’s faces became distorted with disgust! It was an absolute shock for me to see.

North American media has published an exorbitant amount on the oppression of the North Korean regime. We are presented the image of the innocent citizens suffering against their will. For the longest time, I truly felt sorry for North Koreans. I wanted the dictatorship to topple over so that the people will be set free. But after watching this video, it made me wonder what would happen if the people are in fact, set free. Would they embrace the ‘new world’ that they’ve been prohibited from seeing?

The audience’s haughty expressions as they watched Shinhwa left me frustrated. I know it’s not because they’re arrogant; it’s because they don’t understand how to appreciate something different. They seem to be absorbed in their own fantasy land, where they think they’re the best. They’re frogs in a well, where they can only see a tiny patch of the sky. They’re capable of so much more, yet their potential is locked within this political system. This is invisible oppression, and it’s made all the more lethal because in this case the people are not oppressed against their will. I feel sorry for Shinhwa for working so hard and receiving no response, but I feel worse for the audience because they’ve been brainwashed, and even if we try to open their eyes, they probably will not accept it.