Being that the subject of North Korea continues to come up in the news, I figured it worthwhile to provide some info on what daily life is like there. Seriously, when we hear about North Korea, we invariably hear about their nuclear weapons program and network of concentration camps, but we never really seem to hear about how regular people there live! The following BBC documentary is the best one on THAT subject I can find. Woefully, it's a full decade old now, but still the single most fair portrayal I've seen yet. They actually shut up every once in a while and just let you observe and make your own judgments rather than making them for you. In this documentary (which is about 21 minutes between the two parts), you'll get a glimpse of the every day lives of a working class family, some peasants, and intellectuals: the three classes into which the society is divided (all of which are officially considered equal).
Once again, the BBC documentary above is really the best primer overall on the topic of what every day life is like for regular North Koreans. Nevertheless I wanted to go and post an additional documentary below as well because while the BBC's 2003 documentary covers several different groups of people, this one follows a full day in the life of one family that lives in Pyongyang (the capitol of North Korea). Thus it makes great supplementary material. Context clues make it clear that this material was recorded in late 2006, but like the BBC's 2003 documentary, this one is also a good representation of life in North Korea. There is no filmmaker commentary at all to this one. It's just life: black-outs, monarch worship, propaganda, lies, and all. You're the judge, not the filmmaker. Personally, my favorite part is the English class. It's the funniest and most human part, IMO. The close runner-up is the whatever-it-is combat-with-the-United-States board game. I totally wanna play that game!
In all seriousness though, while (obviously) I enjoy poking fun at the ridiculously propagandish and state-controlled nature of North Korean existence as much as the next person, if I may be so honest, I actually find North Korea to be something of a more human society than my own. Obviously they go way, way, WAY too far with this social engineering stuff, but buried somewhere beneath all that militarism, repression, and dynasty cult politics, I think North Korea is onto something we're missing here in the 'more advanced' First World: the importance of human community. North Korea feels warmer than America to me when I watch these documentaries, perhaps because of the people's shared hardships that they work through together as a society rather than as individuals. I'm not a big fan of this Soviet-styled top-down socialism and cultural repression, but I think there's something to be said for socialism in the generic and maybe even for a certain degree of mono-culturalism in terms of providing people with a sense of being part of something larger than themselves; in terms of providing people with a sense of purpose for living. I think that's something we're missing here in the richer, individualistic 'civilized West'.