You Tube Find: ‘Truth of the Border Area Between China and North Korea’

This Japanese documentary (with English subs) follows a camera crew that motored halfway across the Tumen River to a tiny, remote, impoverished North Korean island where the entire population has been mobilized for an irrigation project, yet lives hand-to-mouth on gleaning the fields and the river of things that the Chinese would not eat. We also learn what can happen to Chinese who cross the river.

This is the only time I ever recall seeing film of foreigners entering North Korean and talking to North Koreans without minders … indeed, without the government’s apparent knowledge that the crew had entered North Korea at all. One can only hope that the people who appear in the film weren’t put in danger by its broadcast in Japan, which is full of North Korean agents.

See the rest here.