«Yodok Stories»
Teacher’s manual
About the movie
Yodok Stories follows a 36 year old North Korean defector, Jung Sung San. He managed to escape via China to South Korea.
In South-Korea he creates, in collaboration with other refugees, a controversial play about their experiences as prisoners in the concentration camp Yodok in North Korea.
These educational activities are meant for 14-19 year olds. The questions and exercises vary in complexity and as a teacher you should choose the questions best suited for your class.
In preparation for the screening
Before screening the movie have a plenary session or work in small groups. Ask the pupils: What do you think when you hear North Korea? Write keywords on the billboard/whiteboard.
Reactions to watching the movie
After screening the movie work in a plenary session
· What do you think about the movie?
· Which scenes or people made an impression on you? Why?
After a short dialogue, divide the class into groups of 3-5. They should work with the attached assignments, either all of the questions or part of the questions. After the groups are done, gather the class for dialogue.
Dialogue after group work
Return to a plenary session and have the pupils share their answers, then discuss the questions which the groups found most interesting.
Finally, ask everyone:
· Why do you think that the concentration camps in North Korea receive little attention in the media?
· Why do some disasters get a lot of attention (for instance Hurricane Katrina), while others receive very little attention even though they are bigger or equally big (for instance the flood in Pakistan in 2010)?
· Who is responsible for advocating change in North Korea?
· What COULD be done? Write on the billboard/whiteboard.
· When do you think it is ok for a country or alliance of countries to get involved in the conditions of another country?
On the next two pages you will find “The pupils manual”. They should be printed and used in the group session.
Yodok Stories
The pupil’s manual
Group exercises
Group work, two topics – one main topic – A) Concentration camps and B) Religion. Ask the teacher if you are to do all or some of the exercises.
About concentration camps
· What is a concentration camp? Find a definition, when was the first concentration camp implemented, who had the idea?
Tips:
ü One group searches Wikipedia
ü One group googles
ü One group searches the school library
ü One group could interview other teachers and students and examine their conceptions about concentration camps
· Which prerequisites are important when building a concentration camp? Keywords – industrialization, transport, ideology, hierarchy, bureaucracy, economy and technology. What does the government need to be able to operate a concentration camp?
Read aloud:
The former prison guard tells a story about a situation where child prisoners are on their way home from school in the prison camp and were attacked and killed by watch dogs. The guard’s first thought was: “well trained dogs!”. He also says that he beat and abused the prisoners on several occasions, but did not feel that doing so was wrong.
· How is it possible for a person to treat other people in such a way, and how do you think the guards formed such an attitude towards the prisoners?
First: What are your thoughts about this?
· Then: Several psychologists and scientists have attempted to understand how this can happen. To learn what the researchers think you can run a search on Zimbardo and the Stanford prison experiment, as well as the Milgram experiment. What did you find?
· How does this research relate to everyday life? Keywords: Bullying, harassment, peer pressure, group dynamics. How can we improve our ability to react when faced with violations, as individuals and as a community?
Read aloud:
At the start of the movie we see a closely directly show, almost free of errors. North Korea is a strictly monitored society. All communications and (business) is controlled and there are no oppositional groups or people working towards changing society. Because of the situation in North Korea the Rafto Prize of 2000 was awarded to President Kim Dae-Jung in South Korea, in recognition of his attempts to improve conditions in North Korea. Had the prize been awarded to someone living in North Korea, they would likely have been sentenced to death or a life long sentence in a brutal concentration camp like Yodok.
The Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has been researching Holocaust and the Jewish genocide. In his book “Modernity and the Holocaust” he says: “Find English quote”
· What does he mean by his statement? According to Bauman, how have some of the worst incidents in history been facilitated?
· Are Bauman’s thoughts applicable in North Korea? Why/why not?
· How do you think an extremely disciplinary society is formed?
· What freedoms in the Declaration of Human Rights have to give way for discipline?
· Humans feel a need to trust each other. What happens when you remove trust? In a society subjected to total government surveillance, what happens to interpersonal trust? Imagine what it would be like to live in such a society and think about how it would affect friendship, dreams, mental health, school and education.
Bauman further explains, in his book about the Holocaust, that the Jews “were stripped of their human uniform(sjekk engelsk versjon av boken!)”. He’s talking about how their personal belongings were taken from them, how their heads were shaven, how they were given prison uniforms, had their names taken away – were given a number in stead and finally became dangerously skinny and malnourished.
· “To be stripped of one’s human uniform” is called dehumanization. Can you find examples of dehumanization in Yodok?
About religion
In the movie we’re told that the church is an important meeting place for North Korean refugees in South Korea. In North Korea everyone is indoctrinated to disregard religion, and all forms of religious activity is limited and controlled. At the same time the narrator of the movie says that the propaganda in North Korea is very much like a mandatory religion.
· Can you find aspects of North Korean society to substantiate the narrator’s claims? Or can you find aspects of the North Korean state ideology that separates it from religion?
· Why do you think refugees from North Korea use the Church as a meeting ground?
· Why is Freedom of Religion and Belief important enough to be in the UN Declaration of Human Rights? (Article 18)
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