Children of the Secret State is a film made by a UK journalist Joe Layburn, and a North Korean fugitive Ahn Chol. It shows an insight into the lives of orphans. The documentary setting is modern time North Korea. The issue presented in the film is primarily the starving children living on the streets of North Korea. There are multiple other underlying issues such as which crops are being grown, who really receives western aid, and what is really going on in North Korea. We think the main purpose of the filming in North Korea is to expose the terrible actions of the dictator, Kim Jong Il, and try to remove him from power.
Major themes in the movie are suffering, corruption, lack of freedom, and fear.
Joe Layburn poses as a tourist to get into a group for an exclusive tour of North Korea. The group is assigned a tour guide who is meant to censor what they see and hear. They are told Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, is a busy city of commerce, however walking through the city they see very few people. later in their visit to North Korea they go, without their tour guide, to a smaller town outside of the capital. This is where they see the true horrors in North Korea. There are thousands of children on the streets without homes, or families. They are begging for food from the vendors but only receive the scraps that fall into the mud. In North Korea there are over 200,000 street children, and they make up the make up the majority of the starving population in North Korea. There is a lot of farmland in North Korea that should be able to produce plenty of food for their population, but why are there still hundreds of thousands starving people? The reason is the governments greed for wealth. They force the farmers to grow opium instead of food crops. This opium is turned into heroin and sold illegally for profit to the government. The illegal heroin brings in 500 million to 1 billion dollars. This is what the farmers are growing so then North Korea so the government still applies for western aid to receive food to help the starving population, but is that really what's happening? Or course not! North Korea instead gives the food to the military, or it goes to the black market and sold to the people who can afford it and not the starving children who really need it.
The purpose of the film is to educate the public about the corruption in North Korea, but that's not the only reason. With this evidence against Kim Jong Il the UN would have a motive to remove Kim Jong Il as dictator.
We would really recommend this documentary to others who are curious about what is really going on in N. Korea because it shows a censored tour of the capital, Pyongyang, which is insightful to how the North Koreans want the outside world to see them. As well as some secret footage in smaller villages showing the lives of the less fortunate and the children who live on the streets.
The purpose of the film is to educate the public about the corruption in North Korea, but that's not the only reason. With this evidence against Kim Jong Il the UN would have a motive to remove Kim Jong Il as dictator.
We would really recommend this documentary to others who are curious about what is really going on in N. Korea because it shows a censored tour of the capital, Pyongyang, which is insightful to how the North Koreans want the outside world to see them. As well as some secret footage in smaller villages showing the lives of the less fortunate and the children who live on the streets.
