Asia Current Events
In this article, Hyeonseo Lee describes the difficult challenges while trying to get herself, and her family, out of North Korea. When she was a little girl, she was taught that America, South Korea, and Japan were her enemies, and that she lived in the best country on the planet. But when she was 7, she saw her first public execution, and didn't think anything was wrong because that's what's normal in North Korea. After that, she slowly started to realize what hardships her people were facing, and how poor her country actually was. Lee escaped North Korea alone, and went to stay with relatives in China for awhile. Here she lived in constant fear of being discovered, and shipped back to North Korea where she could be tortured, jailed, or publicly executed. After hiding for 10 years, and almost being caught once, this brave woman went to China in order to settle down and get a job. While in China, she had been sending money to her family in North Korea. But the government had intercepted some of the money, and said that they were going to send her family away to a desolate countryside. That was when she decided that she had to get her family out of North Korea. On her journey back to South Korea with her family, they were arrested again and again, and when Lee had no more money to bail them out of jail, she sat down and cried. She was overcome with distress. While she was upset, a man came up to her and asked her what was wrong. She then explained the situation in her broken English, and with a dictionary, and the man immediately went to the ATM and gave her money to get her family out of jail. When Lee asked why he was helping her, he told her that he was simply helping the North Korean people. This is when Hyeonseo Lee learned the kindness that some strangers have the ability to possess, and it symbolized a new hope for not only her, but for all North Koreans in need.
A connection from our units to this woman's story, would be that the North Korean children think that they live in the best country, and that their leader is amazing. This is similar to Japan's view of Mao, their former leader who's "Great Leap Forward" was actually a great leap backward. Mao had managed to brainwash the younger generation into thinking that he was a kind of god, and that they lived in a place with peace all around. Like North Korea, Japan was not as well off as Mao tried to make it seem. However, to this day the Japanese still believe that Mao was a great and influential leader to their people, when really he just made their nation worse. But a difference between the younger generation in North Korea and the former young generation in Japan, is that North Koreans grow up and realize what their people are suffering through because of their country's leader. The Japanese still accepted their former leader in spite of everything he did that ended up crippling their economy.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/14/opinion/lee-north-korea-refugee/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
A connection from our units to this woman's story, would be that the North Korean children think that they live in the best country, and that their leader is amazing. This is similar to Japan's view of Mao, their former leader who's "Great Leap Forward" was actually a great leap backward. Mao had managed to brainwash the younger generation into thinking that he was a kind of god, and that they lived in a place with peace all around. Like North Korea, Japan was not as well off as Mao tried to make it seem. However, to this day the Japanese still believe that Mao was a great and influential leader to their people, when really he just made their nation worse. But a difference between the younger generation in North Korea and the former young generation in Japan, is that North Koreans grow up and realize what their people are suffering through because of their country's leader. The Japanese still accepted their former leader in spite of everything he did that ended up crippling their economy.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/14/opinion/lee-north-korea-refugee/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
Crossing the Pop Culture Universe
The video on the bottom represents a popular game show in Japan called Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, or MXC for short. MXC is just a re-edited version of an old Japanese show called "Takeshi's Castle". In this re-edited version, game show hosts narrated the runs that contestants did on the obstacle courses, and this is how the show was reintroduced. This show is all about how contestants are brought in to complete difficult obstacle courses, and they must compete against each other in order to advance to further stages. The last person left at the end of the game wins money. The American equivalent to this show is ABC's Wipeout. This is also a game show that has contestants complete obstacle courses while competing against others' best times. The last person left at the end of this show also gets a money prize. The differences between these two shows are: Takeshi's Castle, (MXC), has better commentators, MXC is a re-edited version of another show, the contestants participating in Wipeout have to finish the challenge, and some of the obstacle courses are different. Almost everything else about the two game shows are very similar if not identical. In fact, the shows are so closely related that the creators of MXC are very angry with the producers of Wipeout, and when they tried to point out that ABC ripped off their show, legal matters got involved.
Wipeout
MXC (Takeshi's castle)