The Truman Show in North Korea

An insurance company worker, 30, believes his life is far from being special except for developing a severe fear of water after seeing his father drown. He is also seen as having a happy married life. This life is shattered, however, after a broadcast light falls to the ground out of the blue. The man`s father, who was believed to be dead, appears before him. Looking like a homeless person, the father tries to tell his son something but is taken away by strangers before he can. Later, the man`s first love comes to him and tells him a shocking truth, saying, “You’re the main character of ‘The Truman Show,’ which has been broadcast live over the past 30 years to 1.7 billion viewers across the globe through 5,000 cameras installed in a huge artificial city.”

The 1998 movie “The Truman Show” challenged audiences by implying that all things in the world might be manipulated. How ironic that the name of the movie`s main character was Truman. Rapper Psy, whose hit "Gangnam Style" swept the world last year, once said in an interview, “I feel like I’m living on the movie set of ‘The Truman Show.’ I often ask myself whether I’m being fooled by Candid Camera.” His words well describe how he feels about the global popularity of his horse-riding dance and how much he wants to keep living in that dreamlike moment.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and his 19-year-old daughter have written a journal on their recent visit to North Korea. He went to Pyongyang despite opposition from the U.S. government, but achieved no notable result. His trip to the Stalinist country left him with the nickname “Useful Idiot." Schmidt`s daughter Sophie wrote that North Korea was like "The Truman Show" on a bigger scale, describing the reality of the communist country. “While in Pyongyang, we were not allowed to talk to anyone but those authorized by the regime. As I tried to ponder on the things I saw and heard, I became less sure about what they really meant,” she said. Though this was her first visit to the North, she could tell that everything that she experienced there was staged.

The Electronic Library at Kim Il Sung University, which Pyongyang brags about, was just a Potemkin village in the eyes of Sophie. Russian minister Grigory Potemkin posted beautiful paintings along the banks of the Dnieper River to impress Russian Empress Catherine Ⅱ during her visit to Crimea in 1787. Sophie wrote, “Though all computers were occupied by people, no one moved. Everybody was watching computer screens and stayed still no matter what happened around them, such as camera movements or our loud voices. Maybe they were dummies, not humans.” Her story depicts the reality of North Korea so well. Based on her strong criticism, she is highly unlikely to visit the country again.

Editorial Writer Ha Tae-won (triplets@donga.com)