My point of DPKR 3-The Truman Show?

The Truman Show is a 1998 movie that chronicles the life of a man who is initially unaware that he is living in a constructed reality television show being broadcast around the clock to billions of people around the globe. Truman becomes suspicious of his perceived reality and embarks on a quest to discover the truth about his life.

Before I went to North Korea, I thought their government was totally vicious and people were pitiful. However, I got confused after traveling there. People there seem very content about their life. Sometimes I even thought we tourists were all like Truman. When we arrived at every scenic spot, locals became excellent extras. Just like the two girls I mentioned before. They went to bow to their former leader’s statue at least twice as we were visiting “萬壽台”. After bowing, they still kept wandering around there. Everyone pretended to behave like a normal person that foreigner got use to, or did what like the two girls did to give us a strong message that they really worship their leader because their leader really concern for people.

“Is it necessary for them to do these?” I asked myself.

Before I went to North Korea, I traveled to the northeast china. I stay in Harbin, Shenyang, and Inner Mongolia. I had really bad impression on their sanitation and living habit. For example, I couldn’t use any toilet in outdoors. Even in the main subway station of Harbin and Shenyang, toilet is so dirty that I couldn’t go inside. They don’t flush after using toilets. The vomit smell would keep me 20 meters away. Besides the problem of horrible toilet, cutting into the line or helping other order to food were two things made me angry. One day, I was queuing to buy breakfast. There were five people in front of me. I had waited almost 10 minute, and there were still 5 people in front of me. I gave up queuing after I found out the first person was helping others order.

We always talk about the speedy progress speed of Chinese GDP growth rate. How about promoting the quality of mental wellbeing? I think North Korean is much more well educated in the etiquette. Under the repressive rule of Kim’s dynasty, I think people follow every rule including manner. They lined up, smiling to foreigners and keep everything in good order.

One evening, my tourist bus was going back to the hotel. Everyone except me on the bus was so tired that they all took a nap. When our bus passing by a school’s swimming pool and temporarily stopped waiting for the only red light in Pyongyang, a group of pupil saw us, some of them were shy, but some of them ran toward us, leaned on the school fence with big smiles and curious eyes. They waved their hands, then ran back to swimming pool shyly. At that moment, I did not believe the government ask them to do this.

The media in the west world and our country always depict North Korea as a horrible country. After traveling there, I would like to take things more objectively. North Korean government always does something that is hard to understand for us. Media see Kim as a clumsy leader, while I think they did those things because he has to do it. North Korea is a poor and backward country, or we can say that they have potential but still have a long way to go. Kim must have noticed sticking in the mud would not be a the long-term plan. However, is the development of Chinese modernization a good example to follow? I think they are thinking about it.