Unfortunate Brothers

On Screen

Narration/Interview/Story

Time Code

hour:min:sec:frames

Scene I

Introduction of Mr. Lee

Open on close up of Mr. Lee

Mr. Lee.  The poison I carried with me was opium.

North Korea encourages growing opium at the government level to make dollars.  They asked me to sell it in China. 

01:00:10;24

Mr. Lee Q ??.  I felt that I had been deceived all my life, when I saw China for myself.

The Lees prepare breakfast

Mr. Lee prays with family at the breakfast table

Mr. Lee.  Heavenly Father, we thank thee for this delicious food today. / I thank thee for allowing me the opportunity to come to South Korea / so that I can help our North Korean brethren. / Please allow me to do a lot of good deeds / and please let the day of reunification come quickly. / In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Family eating breakfast

Mr. Lee Q??.  I found out that in China there were no food problems at all.  What on earth was this?  Some countries don’t worry about food and many people are dying from hunger in North Korea!  What on earth was this?

Mr. Lee Q ??. I saw no hope living in North Korea so I risked everything to escape.

Opening Title: UNFORTUNATE BROTHERS

Korea’s Reunification Dilemma

01:01:40;06

Zoom in from title gfx to rooftops in Seoul

Narration: After escaping the difficult conditions of North Korea, Mr. Lee and more than 20,000 other North Korean refugees find themselves grossly unprepared for their new lives. The stark cultural and economic differences make it difficult to integrate into the fast paced and modern South Korean society.

01:02:10;03

Peterson Q19: Koreans have been victimized in the 20^th century, and they were taken over by the Japanese, divided by the United Nations, and then the Korean War and they still haven’t recovered from the national division. And this is termed, this is expressed in the term Han. Han means this regret or this angst, this anxiety that many times Koreans say you can’t translate Han, but it’s this feeling of being victimized and it’s expressed very well in the Korean national folk song, // Arirang. Arirang is a mythical place, it doesn’t exist, and the line goes, Arirang, (Speaks Korean), they’ve gone over the Arirang pass. Who has gone over the mountain pass?  (Speaks Korean), “my lover who has cast me aside has crossed over the Arirang pass”, and it has a rather whimsical final line it’s says, “may you have blisters on your feet before you’ve gone ten lee,”

01:02:42;19

World War II footage

War footage

Narration:  The conditions that drove Mr. Lee to leave his home in North Korea have been over a century in the making.  Occupied by Japan for much of the first half of the 20^th century, Korea was then divided up by the victorious allies at the conclusion of World War II. 

Five years later tensions on the peninsula between the South and North Korean governments boiled over leading the North to invade the South. 

Full-scale war resulted involving the US and it’s allies aiding the South Korean government, while The Soviet Union and Communist China supported the North Korean regime.  The result was a devastating three-year war ending in stalemate and then an uneasy armistice that left Korea divided.

01:03:42;23lll

B roll of Seoul, South Korea

Narration: Today, Seoul bears little resemblance to the impoverished, war torn city it once was, rather it stands as a symbol of the vast economic and cultural divide reinforcing the division between the two Koreas.

01:04:34;19

Mr Lee Q20/11: When I came here, I thought, why should the North Koreans live like animals / and the people living in this free world are concerned about diets and how to lose weight. / The North Koreans only think about how to sustain their lives.

01:04:49;23

Flake Q6:  After, the end of the Korean War, South Korea was really struggling economically, it was South Korea that was considered to be the economic basket case, and it was only through, you know, beginning to industrialize and pursue export led growth that they began to grow, and by most economists accounts it wasn’t until the late 70s, early 80s that South Korea finally overtook North Korea in terms of per capita GNP.

 01:05:20;09

Don Clark Q1:  Well, having lived in Korea in the 1950s and ‘60s, after the war, when South Korea was that poor, it’s possible to compare conditions in the North today with what South Korea was like then.  And then you say, well I think I know how this could unfold if the North Koreans could have the advantages that the South Koreans acquired in rebuilding their country.

 01:05:42;03

Narration:  The story of South Korea’s economic success began humbly; small companies run by ordinary Koreans, many like Mr. Lee, refugees from North Korea.

 01:06:10;12

Peterson Q5:  When I first moved to Korea in 1965, I met a friend, Mr. Chung, who at that time was working in a tailor shop, and tailor shops were the hot business in those days. It was one of the things that people could do, labor intensive, they measure you and fit you and cut the, the cloth, you had a tailor-made suit for very little money.

01:06:21;00

Peterson Q5: When I returned to Korea in 1973, He was supervising a wig factory, and wigs don’t sound like a major industry, but this was huge in Korea because it was a great way to capitalize on a natural resource Koreans had, good Korean hair.

01:06:40;24

Peterson Q7:  It doesn’t sound like a major step in the economic development, but the wig industry was a huge step forward for Korea in terms of capitalization, in terms of learning to export and learning how the international market worked.

01:06:57;03

Michael Young Q5:  If you look at South Korea you see what with far fewer resources than the north, you see the extraordinary, stunning economic growth of the south, and you realize it's the same people with even better economic resource base in terms of natural resources and other sorts of things, and it's just an utter disaster.

01:07:10;04

NK State TV

Narration: North Korean state television, delivers a tightly controlled message, displaying only the purported successes of the regime.  This is in stark contrast to the stories of deprivation and oppression from defectors like Mr. Lee. 

01:07:50;00

Mr Lee Int 1 Q4:  I lived for about ten years in Wonsan, Gangwon Province until Kim Il Sung died, / when chaos broke out due to lack of food. / There was no more food. / Humans, like animals, must eat to survive.

01:08:04;29

Don Clark Q1: Well, everywhere you go the country reveals itself as a very poor place.

Don Clark Q2: North Korea has never been able to feed itself.  That the plantations, the broad plains, the big rice fields have always been in South Korea.  South Korea has always been the bread basket of the Korean people. // Besides that, there have been some colossal bad decisions on the North Korean part about agriculture, about fertilizer, about soil and crop use.

01:08:29;06

Flake Q26:  If you look at the last decade, last decade and a half, you know by most, you know estimates, one if not two million North Koreans have died by famine. And no one else in the region died in that period of time of famine. So there’s no other reason than the nature of the regime.

01:08:55;18

Flake Q26 cont.:  That’s not to say that we should invade North Korea right now, that we ought to try to destabilize it and precipitously pursue unification now, but that said, whenever we weigh these issues, that we need to be very cognizant that it is not a value free equation. There are costs here, and they’re very real costs in terms of North Korean people.

01:09:11;27

Mr. Lee Int 2 Q4:  I felt bad; we are the same people and we share the same blood, / but on one side there are so many airplanes taking off every minute / and so many cars bumper to bumper on the highway, / while on the other side there is barely a car and many unpaved roads. / The reality was the difference between heaven and earth.

01:09:31;10

Time-lapse of Seoul

Narration:  The dramatic disparity between the two Koreas is so great that one of the primary concerns of South Korea is how to stem the tide of North Korean refugees they expect to spill over the border should there be an abrupt unification.

01:10:06;14

Flake Q3: Early on, a lot of researchers tried to figure out what level of, you know, standard of living would you have to have in North Korea where North Koreans wouldn’t feel the desire as mass floods of refugees, go into South Korea. And to do that, say back in 2000, the assumption was that would have cost you something about four trillion dollars.

01:10:23;21

Michael Young Q18:  How do you take two remarkably disparate economies, keep people in place, and improve the one without everybody getting in there you on their bicycles and riding south. 

01:10:41;17

Don Clark Q4:  That is kind of a, not a laughable idea, but an offensive idea, //   I think it would throw them back rather seriously on their heels if you say, well you know when unification comes you’ll have to adjust to what the south wants you to do.  I don’t think, I don’t think they have that in mind.

01:10:55;21

Berlin Wall movie reel

It was just a year ago that authorities in Communist Germany, appalled by the number of …

01:11:19;16

Michael Young Q18:  I had the opportunity to serve in the state department during the first Bush administration and in that capacity, immediately got asked to work as the legal advisor to U.S. delegation on German unification. When I left the government I was asked to lead a large scale study, seeing as there were any insights from the German experience that might be relevant in terms of planning for, and thinking about potential Korean unification and it was really an interesting exercise because there are many differences that are important.

01:11:39;10

Michael Young Q18: The gulf between the east and west German economy was far less than the gulf between the North and South Korean economies, and yet that was incredibly expensive for the Germans, so you can just imagine the expense that’s going to be involved in the case of Korea.

01:12:14;08

Flake Q4: The simple fact is that Koreans could never even begin to dream of a unification scenario as relatively inexpensive, as smooth, as peaceful as you had in the German scenario. So the costs in the Korean case are going to be much higher, and the Koreans have known that and as a result, that’s why you’ve seen some real reticence on the part of Korean policymakers.

01:12:33;17

Michael Young Q18:  There were also differences in terms of flow of information. I mean, most of the East Germans knew a lot about West Germany. They knew product brands, they saw West German television, that doesn’t exist in North Korea.

01:12:58;09

Michael Young Q18:  I mean, you’ve got virtually no information that has crossed the border. No sense of what democratic institutions look like or what the debates or the political parties are like, very little experience now after all these years with a market oriented economy and all that that means in terms of personal initiative and personal sacrifice.

01:13:11;00

Don Q3: To visit North Korea is to encounter a very human situation, to see people trying to get to work, kids getting to school, being friends, laughing, holding hands, walking down the street, //  it’s a real

environment I mean that the North Koreans are regular folks, that they, they have, they Don Q13 cont.: think they’re normal.

01:13:32;21

Q11/I4-Mr. Lee: Right now, North Korea and South Korea have different political systems. / We had better leave the North Korean system as is, but revive its economy gradually to bring balanced development and improve people's welfare. / Otherwise, there will only be chaos when unification happens.

01:14:00;16

Mr Lee Int 2 Q3:  We thought we had come to our brother country, but we were disappointed to be treated like the military.  We were commaded to “stand up,” “sit down,” “don’t talk,” or “go to bed.”  So we thought what on earth was this?”

Mr Lee Int 2 Q5:  After having been investigated by the NIS for one month, we were transferred to Hanawon.

 01:14:39;07

Lee Seo Q1:  In 1970, President Park Jung Hee organized the Board of National Unification / to systematize the unification issues. /

01:15:18;22

Lee Seo Q9:  The personnel at Hanawon re-educate the defectors in the facility for three to five months / so they can adapt to South Korean society.

01:15:29;14

Exterior and then interior shots of Hanawan

Youn Q3:  At first we thought that North Koreans are still Koreans, / we speak the same Korean language, / so we didn’t expect they could face any difficulty / in settling down in South Korean society. /  But in reality, the six and a half decades of separation / made South Korea and North Korea quite different. /

01:15:42;17

Lee Seo Q9:  One problem is their accent. / They try to avoid letting people know they are defectors, / but because of the North Korean accent, people can recognize them easily. / So they worry about that because they cannot change their accent quickly.

01:16:07;16

Need to re-read as per underlined

Narration:  Getting permission to film in the Hanawan resettlement center is extremely difficult.  It is not allowed under any circumstances to show images of refugees.  There is a justified fear of North Korean reprisals against defectors and the Hanawan staff takes great care to make sure defectors identities are not exposed.

01:16:26;16

Mr. Lee Int 2 Q6: We had about three thousand defectors come to Korea last year alone, / which is a little less than three hundred a month. / In my group there were about a hundred and fifty people with about 40 males and the rest females. / I noticed that the fence was very high like a prison, which was another nonsensical matter to us.

01:16:48;20

Lee Seo Q9:  The education program lasts three to six months. / They separate the single males and females, but they keep the families together. / The defectors learn about capitalism and Korean society as part of the program.

01:17:15;19

Youn Q5:  In daily life, what they need to know we teach them. / For example, open a bank account, / taking subways and taking the bus, / and go shopping. / It may sound strange, / why teach going shopping. / Because North Korean people / have lived in an economy of shortage. / They didn’t have a lot of commodities around them. / So whenever they see some good things / they try to buy it / regardless of whether it is necessary for them / and whether they could afford them. 

01:17:46;29

Lee Int 2 Q5:  We had classes on South Korean society. What kind of country it was, what system it had; / along with the politics, the economy, the culture, and the welfare system. / We were also taught how to live and succeed here.

01:18:27;05

Youn Q12:  Through the experience of Hanawon’s operation, / we realize what we should teach North Korean people. / What kind of things they need to learn, / what kind of thing they need to take care of / like health care and education. / By running Hanawan we have learned a lot about that kind of thing. / It could be very useful for social integration after unification.

01:18:44;29

Previous Narration:  Despite government efforts, many defectors that go through Hanawon still find it difficult to adjust to life in South Korea.  For many, Hanawon is simply not enough.

Mr Lee Int 2 Q6: I got to know the system in Seoul. / Now I had to find a job. / The government doesn't assist in that. / I got hired at a restaurant and worked part time. / When I was in North Korea I was a trader and manager of many employees. / And now I wash dishes. / I was stressed out thinking, "Did I come here to live like this?" / But it was the way I chose. / I had to start from the bottom. / That's what the Koreans do.

01:19:25;21

B-Roll Hanawan

Zeong Kuk Young Q5: First of all, the education period is too short, so it cannot provide any vocational training.  / Once you complete the course and you are placed in South Korea, / you feel the language and the culture are totally different.

01:20:26;26

Lunch B-Roll Hanawan

Zeong Kuk Young Q13: I think Hanawon must exist / even though the training period is too short and there are so many defectors. / I learned a lot during the short three month training period and it became a good memory in my life.

01:21:07;04

REWRITE AND REREAD

Narration:  While Mr. Lee and his wife, also a defector, have struggled to adapt to South Korean life, his children are fully integrated. Yet despite his hopes that his kids will see a united Korea, they are part of a growing younger generation that does not necessarily share their parents desire for unification. It’s a generation gap that could hold profound consequences for both Koreas. 

01:21:49;03

Scene III

Dance Club and

Youth Culture

R16 Party B-Roll

DJsoulscape Q1E: My name is Min Joon Park. / I am a DJ and producer working in Seoul, Korea.

01:22:16;07

Narration:  South Korea is becoming a dominant cultural force not just in Asia, but internationally as well.  Its growing young population has created a vibrant youth culture that is vastly different than the traditions of their parent’s generation.

01:22:27;16

DJsoulscape Q1E: These days, I think kids, they’re exposed to like, everything and they can access to every kind of culture and cultural phenomenon. So it makes a whole lot different from the past.

01:22:43;06

City B-Roll

Yi Q5: After the Korean War, Korea, Korea’s main concern was economic development. Korean society became more open.  So youngsters had more freedom to create the kind of films they wanted, the kind of music they wanted and since then it was just a major change in culture in general.

01:23:09;01

VJ Kwon Music Video

01:23:30;04

Peterson Q8: One of the things that is really interesting to me to watch pop culture in Korea is to watch the thing called the Hanyu. The Hanyu is the Korean wave, this wave of culture that is sweeping across all of China and Japan and Asia.

01:23:41;14

Yi Q7:  There is a very interesting cultural mix between the kind of western, the arts, popular culture and traditional Korean arts and popular culture.

01:23:55;28

VJ Kwon Music Video

Peterson Q8:  Young Japanese think young Koreans are cool, and they are cool because they have these wonderful pop music videos and songs and great high energy performances, great tv actors, and great stories that young Japanese just really enjoy. So we’ve had a seat change in Japan in attitudes toward Korea, and this is a measure of how different the younger generation in Korea is from the older generation in Korea.

01:24:10;16

Flake Q10: The younger generation is much more focused on the United States, on Europe, on the world writ large, again they’re very wired in, they’re very international in nature.

01:24:37;16

Club B-Roll

Yi Q11: If you look at club scenes in big cities of Korea, then you tend to think that this the gap between the south and north bigger and bigger, and you wonder if this generation really wants reunification of the country.

01:24:50;29

DJsoulscape Q10E:  Only, only few people have, had the experience of the Korean War and post war, it’s a whole different matter for this generation.

01:25:08;01

Park B-Roll

Flake Q10 cont:  Anybody who is under fifty years of age is very unlikely to have an immediate brother or sister, father or mother, or even grandparent living in North Korea. And so the personal level ties that would kind of make this a personal issue for the broader culture are not going to be there. So understandably, there is going to be a gap between those with direct experience, the older generation and the younger generation.

01:25:25;23

Girls school B-roll

DJsoulscape Q10K:  The unification concept has changed greatly compared to the past. / In the past, we thought that there had to be unification / because we are one people. / It may be true that the sense of cultural unity / has diminished after fifty or sixty years of separation.

01:25:51;25

Don Q3: The contrast, people say stark contrast, but I mean I’ll just say contrast, between North and South Korea is, is huge, and you don’t really see how they could ever get back together again. / The people of those two countries have been educated since birth in two completely different national stories.  Who are their heroes?  What were the, who were the winners? Who were the losers? Who were the good guys?  Who were the bad guys?

01:26:15;24

Girls school B-roll

Flake Q9: Aspirationally, on an emotional level, of course. Every class every South Korean has ever taken, every family narrative is a narrative of the tragedy of the division of this nation. They are one people. One language, one history, and they are artificially divided by the Cold War. And so clearly every South Korean wants unification. But, if you then dial that down to much more specific questions like, do you support unification now? Those numbers drop dramatically.

01:26:40;16

Scene IV

Mr. Lee unpacking socks

Narration:  Mr. Lee does not let the generation gap or South Korea’s reluctance to pay for unification, should it ever come, deter his efforts.  He devotes all his working time to help his brothers from the North. Several times a year, he launches balloons that carry humanitarian items and messages of hope across the heavily guarded border.

01:27:17;04

Mr. Lee Int 3 Q4:  I thought a lot about the legal, reasonable, simple and most needful item that we could send and concluded that it was socks.  / First of all, socks are small and light so we are able to send a lot. / In North Korea, socks are an even more important necessity than other items. / One pair is used, and extras are sold or traded. / So socks can become both food and money. / Socks are the same as money falling from the sky.

01:27:37;22

Mr. Lee loading truck

Cut out underlined “well” in the sub-title

Mr. Lee Int 2 Q7:  I told my wife that I was sorry that others work for a company and make several thousand dollars a month / and save to prepare for old age or help their family in North Korea, / but I am not like them. / So I told my children, “your destiny is yours, do not expect anything from your parents. / I brought you to a country where you can eat and live well. / You should make an effort to develop your future. / Dad has something to do for North Korea.”

01:28:36;20

Mr. Lee on-cam

Narration: Mr. Lee’s cross-boarder humanitarian operation, decried by North Korea and tolerated by the South, faces a sizeable, almost impenetrable physical roadblock.

01:29:28;11

SGT Juarez at Terrain map: The southern boundary fence-line that you notice around here is it defendable territory of the DMZ. It was originally intended to be two km south, two km north. Due to the fact that we can’t support some of the area, as defendable Republic of Korea, they built a fence-line along the defendable area.  Originally it was intended to wrap around…

01:29:38;29

Peterson Q1: The DMZ, the demilitarized zone, is an, is an oxymoron, it’s not demilitarized. It’s the most heavily militarized place on the planet these days. It’s a two and a half mile strip that goes across the whole peninsula, cutting right across its waist, separating North Korea from South Korea.

01:29:54;12

Narration: Since the armistice agreement was signed in 1953, the 38^th Parallel has been a bloody barrier between two nations still technically at war. // After 60 years of tension, security still remains high with the constant threat of renewed conflict.

01:30:20;23

General Kim Q21: I think the North-South relationship has been unilateral in the past. / The South Korean people have worked very hard for over sixty years beginning with labor-intensive industries to the current era of technology. / In the meantime North Korea has continuously provoked us. 

01:30:42;29

ROK Marines on DMZ

Narration:  Since 1953, North Korea has violated the armistice agreement over 200 times.  Creating a cycle of provocation and retaliation between the two Koreas. In recent years the North has tested nuclear devices, long range missiles, launched artillery attacks against South Korean islands and sunk the south Korean naval vessel the Cheonan. 

01:31:31;00

Don Q11: The North Korean perspective is that the provocations come from the other side.  When they sank the Cheonan, nobody much mentions the maneuvers, the joint maneuvers that were going on in those waters with US and South Korean naval forces at the time. The North Korean side would be totally, well, we were trying to make a statement, you can’t just bring a Corvette into our territorial waters and roam around at will. We’re going to control that.

01:31:57;09

Kim Shin Jo Insert for long version of program - begin

Narration to set up Kim Shin Jo story (NOT CURRENTLY IN PROGRAM

Narration:  Of all the North Korean provocations, there are some that stand out for their audacity.  One of the most remarkable is simply known as the Blue House Raid.

01:32:28;22

Kim Shin Jo:  I was 27 years old when I came to South Korea to kill President Park in 1968.

01:32:38;24

Peterson Q24:  In January of 1968 I was in Korea living in a place called (inaudible), which is very close to the Blue-House, the Presidential mansion. And that night we were just folding up getting ready to go to bed when we heard this pop, pop, pop stuff going on. And we thought oh, there’s some kind of exercise. // And then we saw machine gun fire. We could see the tracers, and if you can see the tracers you know those aren’t blanks.

01:32:44;12

Kim Shin Jo Q1:  On January 21, 1968, we communist guerrilla arrived at the gate / of Chungwadae (The Blue House) and confronted the South Korean police. / At the back gate of Chungwoon Middle School, the chief of the Jongro Police Station / confronted us so we killed him along with the other policemen.

01:33:14;12

Peterson Q24:  it was a James Bond style squad of highly trained North Korean commandos who had come down and had run, marathon runners, so they, the South Koreans and the Americans knew they had come through the DMZ, but they didn’t realize they had come down so quickly. // To show you how dangerous it was. There was a older gentleman two doors down from our gate who stepped out to see what was going on and one of the squads came by and shot him right there.  Of the 31 commandos that came down 29 were killed.  They refused to surrender.  They shot their way till they died.

01:33:51;20

Kim Shin Jo Q2:  I was going to escape to the North alone, / but I was discovered hiding at the hills. // I had been on the run for days and was desperate. / I had not slept or eaten at all in three nights and four days. // I was so exhausted that I did not think about I Kim Il Sung or my mission. / So I dropped my weapons, raised my hands and surrendered. 

01:34:33;10

Need to work on “Finally”

Peterson Q24: Finally // he realized that everything they were telling him in the north was false, and that he was misled and he could go through South Korea, see the markets, see the houses and realize that South Korea had a better way of living and thus he, he converted and changed.

01:35:16;29

Kim Shin Jo Q5:  They told me it was Kim Il Sung’s faut, he gave the order and it was not my doing. /  The police detectives did not beat me nor swear at me, but showed me love and acknowledged that it was not my fault. / That was why I had a change of heart and cooperated with the investigation.

01:35:35;03

Narration:  Kim Shin Jo paid a steep price for his betrayal of the North.  Upon receiving citizenship in 1970, his parents were executed and the remaining members of his family were purged. 

01:36:11;07

Kim Shin Jo Insert for long version of program - end

ROK Marine B roll

Gen Kim Q21:  South Korea will not begin a war.  / But if North Korea begins a war, then there will be war.  / Also, we cannot overlook these local provocations any more. / We have had so many of them in the past.

01:36:38;18

Young Q10:  The North Koreans have this wonderful pattern of basically doing something quite terrible and then there's a negotiation and they exact some price to promise not to do the terrible thing again,

01:37:05;18

M. Young Q15:  There’s not a lot of evidence conciliation has worked much, and there’s not a lot of evidence that you know that a hard-line has worked very much. // and I think it’s also fair to say that if you’ve reached your hand out and tried and it kind of gets bitten or slapped every time, why continue with that policy at least try something else.

01:37:15;15

North Korean military demonstration

Don Q12:  It’s important when the North, when there’s an eruption of trouble on the Korean peninsula to remember that there is a logic to both side’s behavior.  The North Koreans have some reason for doing what they’re doing.  It may be an internal reason and maybe inscrutably local and hard for us to divine with the information that we have from the outside, but they are doing it for a reason.

01:37:44;04

Peterson Q12: The secret to understanding what’s going on in North Korea is to understand, that what ever they’re doing, it’s for domestic consumption. They don’t really care that much about they’re relations with South Korea or with North United States, they’re primary concern is maintaining their control and their hold on society.

01:38:09;06

Mr. Lee Int 2 Q9: Recently the two sides are hostile. / The North Koreans are a very proud people. / Even if they are beaten to death they will never say it is painful. / They don’t apologize. / Their history is a series of battles.

01:38:24;05

The New Leader

Narration:  The passing of Kim Jong Il and the succession of his son Kim Jong Un has ushered in a new era of North Korean saber rattling.

01:38:45;14

Peterson Q14:  Two of the biggest obstacles to reunification right now are North Korean arms developments, in two ways, one is launching missiles, the second is developing a nuclear bomb. And of course, they’ve done both.

01:38:58;01

Flake Q24: Then when you step back and look at broader regional and global issues, and you start asking questions about denuclearization, that’s where the problem becomes, you know, more difficult.

01:39:11;13

Flake Q24: We have this problem that North Korea now has tested a nuclear weapon // and they’ve declared themselves a nuclear power. So how do you engage North Korea without recognizing them as a nuclear power.

01:39:26;19

Missile launch B-roll

Peterson Q14:  For the north, this is a huge step forward. This is a validation that the socialist system is working, that they have scientists and technologists that are joining the advanced countries of the world that can launch a satellite and can develop a nuclear bomb. // For a country that sees itself as surrounded by enemies on all sides, being picked on, being isolated, this is tremendous benefit for them domestically and it’s a huge barrier to unification.

01:39:41;28

Kim Jung Un speaks at the pulpit

Narration:  Missile launches and threats to continue testing nuclear weapons are suspected to be the result of the new leader out to prove himself and further consolidate power.

01:40:25;13

Peterson Q12: Imagine the situation that Kim Jong-un is facing. A young man, raised for this job, pruned for this job, and yet surrounded by some men that are old enough to be his grandfather, in uniform with stars on their epaulette, and he is their commander.

01:40:36;25

Q16-Flake: It was almost impossible to imagine this scenario while Kim Jong-il was alive, where North Korea would begin to reform or open, or even that you’d have real instability at that level of power, but now with the transition, there’s an opportunity for change.

01:40:53;08

Gen Kim Q6: As long as they have nuclear weapons, they would not want unification. / We predict that they may provoke us with many other attacks. / There will be no progress until there is an abolition of nuclear weapons and a change in their strategic idea.

01:41:06;10

NK B roll

Young Q19:  We’ve got a rogue regime that has the capacity for developing nuclear weapons and selling fissionable material, while it may not use it itself, selling it to people who are less reticent to use it.

01:41:42;19

Flake Q24: If we were to in the effort of trying to solve the Korean peninsula problem, ignore that, ignore everything they’ve done, we would defacto recognize them as a nuclear power, // and the question then becomes, if a country that is poor, starving, backwards, a pariah regime that abuses human rights, you know, smuggles drugs, counterfeits currencies, has never met a weapons system that it wasn’t willing to export to the worst people in the world, if that kind of country can be recognized as a nuclear power and as a negotiating counterpart as a nuclear power, who can’t?

01:41:55;14

Mr. Lee at truck B-roll

Narration:  Despite continuing threats and provocations by the North Korean regime, Mr. Lee remains dedicated to his mission of providing humanitarian aid to his former countrymen, and retains hope that there will someday be a peaceful and diplomatic path towards unification.

01:42:38;02

Mr. Lee int 4 Q10: Recently, the U.S. only seems to be interested in North Korea's nuclear weapons and not in human rights and economic development. / If they are interested, they should work together with the UN and other world organizations. / China aligns itself with North Korea. / We have to talk China out of this so that the world can help North Korea become a free and normal country.

01:42:55;20

Young Q19: There is a concern on the part of China that if you have a unified Korea that's very heavily armed, it's got west leaning orientation to be sure, and at the end of the day you might find that the political dynamic to keep US troops kind of goes away in which case you have a heavily armed Korea staring at a heavily armed China,

01:42:55;20

Young Q12:  That concern is diminished dramatically think given the deeper integration of their economies now.  And I think that ultimately it’s going to have to result in some serious reassessment on the part of China of its relationships to North Korea.

01:44:07;03

Young Q19: But nevertheless I think there's a little bit of concern there.

01:44:21;06

Flake Q12:  The prevailing narrative for the last thirty, forty years has been that the Chinese want North Korea as a buffer state. // I’m not convinced that it’s entirely because they are afraid of having a South Korean regime on their borders, and that they want a buffer, but more than anything else I think they’re afraid of the process instability.

01:44:30;27

Peterson Q17: I think that the Chinese are rather annoyed by the North Koreans. I think they see the North Koreans as a giant step backward on the socialist progression that the communists in China have achieved,

01:44:46;24

Peterson Q17: The refugee case is a huge thorn in China’s side because you’ve got all these refugees that are sneaking over the border into China, not into South Korea, they can’t get their directly through the DMZ, not to Japan by the ocean, but by land into China.

01:44:59;20

Map Graphic

Narration: China’s shared border with North Korea and its large ethnic Korean population along the border have facilitated escape for thousands of North Koreans over the past six decades.

01:45:21;02 

Chinese Village B-Roll

Mr. Lee Int 1 Q7:  If it were known that I would be going to South Korea, my family would have been killed.  So I did not say a word to my family. / I made my own decision.  One evening I approached the guards I knew to let them know I was going to China. / In order to get to South Korea, I would need to go through China, but I did not know the route.  / So I stayed in China for a month to collect information.  I found people who knew how to get to South Korea. / I always carried poison with me so that I could kill myself in case I was arrested. / That is better than being killed like a dog.  

01:45:33;28

Narration: China’s large ethnic Korean population closely follows relations between the two Koreas.  Many sympathize with the plight of North Korean defectors and help them once they arrive in China. However, while many defectors like Mr. Lee successfully escape, others are not so fortunate. 

01:45:33;28

Mr. Lee Int 1 Q15:  As you know in North Korea, if a member of your family escapes to South Korea you will be treated differently by the government. / Such was the case of my brother. / I told my brother, "Come to the South. / You do not have any future in the North and because I am in the South, you will be persecuted anyway."

01:46:39;13

Mr. Lee Int 1/Q15:  I told my brother to bring poison with him in case he should get caught. It is better to kill yourself than being beaten to death.

01:47:02;01

Change underlined to on her lap

in my mother's

Mr. Lee Int 1/Q15:  As they was crossing the river, my brother was caught by the guards who were hiding. / It was obvious that he had attempted to cross the border. / My brother took the poison when he was caught by the Tumen River. / The doctor said that he would live only a few hours. / So my mother took him home and he died on her lap. / I should say it was me who killed him.

01:47:09;19

SGT Jaurez at Conference Row:  Alright Gentlemen, welcome to Conference Row, the official meeting place for the United Nation command and the UNZ for the North Koreans and KPA. All the blue buildings here belong to the United Nations command, while the grey/tan buildings belong to the KPA. The large grey building on the other side of Conference Row is the //  the North Korean’s visitor’s center or the Panuon Dock. You can see there is one soldier stairs today, the other soldiers sits inside with a large camera taking our pictures today…

01:47:57;01

Flake Q13:  The U.S. does genuinely support reunification, our hope obviously, is that we can handle the process of unification well enough that we would still have an alliance with a unified Korea, that it would be a unified Korea under an open democratic regime that is a market economy and is an ally of the United States.

01:48:22;26

Gen Kim Q15:  The interest on the Korean Peninsula is not only for the Korean Peninsula / but also for the balance of Northeast Asia. // I see the importance of the U.S-Korea alliance here. / In any case, the Korea-US alliance will help keep the balance of security / on the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia.

01:48:41;20

Don Clark Q6:  I think that North Korea will change. // But // is there a scenario for, for the Korean peninsula that doesn’t involve millions of people getting killed? That’s what I really care about, because there are lots of scenarios, and most of them, including some pretty likely ones, are very violent. You know, you look at Seoul, well they would never risk this. Well you know what, they’re risking it. And the North Koreans as well.

01:49:06;25

Mr. Lee Balloon Launch Prep

Narration:  While security concerns and regional rivalries dominate thinking at a national level, and younger generations of South Koreans feel and know less about their northern neighbor, Mr. Lee’s activism has drawn hundreds to his cause and seeks to keep the suffering of North Koreans on the public agenda. 

01:49:40;00

Flake Q14:  The truth is, the greatest obstacle between unification is Koreans. The South Koreans doesn’t want to pay the price of reunification and again, who can blame them? It’s an astronomical cost in that process. The North Koreans don’t want unification because they don’t want to be absorbed like East Germany was. You know they are the weak system, they will lose everything. The privileged elite in North Korea will not be the privileged elite in South Korea, right, in a unified Korean peninsula.

01:50:03;01

Gen Kim Q21:  We have to avoid unconditional support, / but we also need to consider whether we will support, collaborate, and exchange / for the sake of the North Korean people or not; / is it for the 20 million people out of 23 million, or for the remaining 3 million elites?

01:50:27;06

Q26-Flake:  In terms of the broader question of unification. China, Russia, Japan, the United States, South Korea all decided that we did not want a precipitous unification, we did not want a collapse of North Korea, because it was too risky, and we didn’t want to pay the price of unification. That’s still our position today essentially. That makes sense, and I actually still basically support that position, but we need to be very cognizant with ourselves, or very honest with ourselves that there is a price that is being paid // in terms of the horrific human rights situation in North Korea.

01:50:49;20

Mr. Lee Int 1 Q16:  You need to actually see it instead of hearing about it.

01:51:22;20

Mr. Lee Int 4 Q13:  It is any ruler's basic obligation to feed and clothe his people. / This is inhumane.

01:51:29;29

Narration:  There are significant challenges facing Korean reunification.  For now Mr. Lee continues his mission to help the people of North Korea and keep the hope of unification alive in a South Korea that is growing further apart from it’s North Korean brethren everyday.

01:51:51;03

Mr. Lee Int 3 – Q1: Frankly, even if I live in South Korea, my heart is in North Korea. / They are not strangers, but my brethren. / I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to improve the life of the North Koreans and assist in the process of unification

01:52:07;02

Mr. Lee Int 4 – Q11: I see unification in many different ways and forms. / Two nations can become one, having one regime, / but this kind of unification is impossible for now. Maybe in a few decades.

01:52:28;07

Narration:  Mr. Lee’s balloon launches are meticulously planned and executed.  However, despite careful preparation, launches are often aborted or delayed due to weather, security concerns or other circumstances beyond his control. The prospects for Korean unification balance on similar unpredictable events. South Korean opinions, change in North Korean leadership and Chinese support of the regime are all factors that could push the peninsula closer or further from being unified. Ultimately, Koreans and the world will have to wait for what most see as a difficult but inevitable reunification of a people long divided.

01:52:55;19

Sending Balloons

Peterson Q22:  You know the question of unification, it could happen any time. It could happen by the time this film is aired. Something could happen in the North, a adventuresome military commander could decide to take over and sue for peace with the south and say, hey we want to be part of this, not this part of this failed economic system in the North. That could happen tomorrow and it could take another thirty or fifty years. It’s really hard to say.

01:53:40;26

Closing Credits

Co-Written and Directed by Dodge Billingsley

Co-Written and Edited by Scott Thornton

Producers: Cory Leonard, Jeff Ringer

Associate Producer and Graphics: Kenneth Hoffman

Camera: Dodge Billingsley, Scott Thornton

Narration: Michael Havey

Additional Camera: Josh Lewis, Todd Sansom, Cameron Trejo

Translation and Transcription: K.C. Lee, Morgan Metcalf, Shawn Mun

Korea Production Team: Hubert Huh, Jinhoon Kang

Additional Footage Provided by: Ken Ramage, Eric Ferguson, National Archives, DVIDS, Uriminzokkiri

Satellite Imagery Provided by: NASA, GeoEye

Music by Incompetech: www.incompetech.com

Gnarled Situation by: Kevin MacLeod

Lightless Dawn by: Kevin MacLeod

Unanswered Questions by: Kevin MacLeod

Time Passes by: Kevin MacLeod

Face Off by: Kevin MacLeod

Terminal by: Kevin MacLeod

Dark times by: Kevin MacLeod

Long Note 1 by: Kevin MacLeod

Mourning Song by: Kevin MacLeod

Long Note 2 by: Kevin MacLeod

Night Break by: Kevin MacLeod

“Step Up” Performed by Supreme Team, Directed by Theoreticallyimpossible, Kwon+dizi

Special Thanks to: Wynn Hougaard, Eric Hyer, R.O.K. Marince Corps, R.O.K. Ministry of Unification

Post Audio: Joseph Belliston, Todd Bowen, Steven Roper

Funding Provided by: Kennedy Center

Additional Funding Provided by: Utah Humanities Council

Copyright Combat Films and Research 2013