Inside North Korea
This is a documentary starring Lisa Ling, which follows her and an eye doctor/ humanitarian on a trip into the hermit kingdom, North Korea. I use this film for several classes. I show part of the film to my World History and U.S. History class to show the current state of North Korea before we go back in time to the Cold War and the Korean War. In economics, I show the documentary as part of the differences between capitalism and command economies. The students are usually very engaged and want to see more. I usually assign watching the rest of the documentary for homework as the video is on YouTube. This is one homework assignment that usually has 100% participation. The film can have the tendency to show communism in a bad light so it is important for the teacher to point this out and fill in any holes in their understanding. As our students live in capitalism everyday it is easier to understand but also easier to think that the U.S.’s economic system is better. The documentary does show the Korean idea of Juche pretty well which is very well understood by our students because many of them feel similarly, the idea that it is them against the world with no one to help them but themselves.
.
