Thread by @BonicMichael

Inside North Korea: What happens when a group of international artists travels to North Korea to create art, the like of which the regime has never seen before?

2/"While the world is on the verge of nuclear war, a group of Western contemporary artists are invited into the eye of the storm - North Korea. The aim is to collaborate with North Korean artists in an art-exchange project displaying new and challenging art in a country where

3/"abstract art is forbidden."
What's amazing is that the dialogue and exchanges b/t the team of international artists and North Korean artists in the video bring expressly to light Western and North Korean attitudes toward one another as well as different perspectives on art.

4/Incredibly North Korea detonated its first hydrogen bomb underground just north of Pyongyang while the team was there. We hear applause and North Korean views on their country now having a nuclear weapon:
“We have to defend our sovereignty, our identity.” - Yun So Hyun

5/Ham Chol Hak, Coordinator: “So the choice depends on him [Trump]. If he hits the button, he is to blame, not us.”
Cathie Boyd, Director: “But we’ll all be gone.
HCH: “But it’s because of him, not because of us…We’ve been living under these sanctions & everything for so many

6/"years. We have nothing more to fear.”
CB: “Do you know initially who divided your country? Who divided North and South Korea?
HCH: “It’s the US.”…

On the Juche Tower:
CB: “What was your view of the [H-bomb] test?”
Juche Tower guide: “I’m feeling very proud of that because

7/"because I’m a citizen of a very powerful nation. Yeah. That’s my opinion. No more weak country we are.”

While some of the artist's perspectives -
“You cannot convert the North Koreans."
"It’s a totalitarian fascist regime. I’ve experienced it."
- are shared by the majority

8/Westerners, I see where Ham Chol Hak is coming from. In fact I can relate to his & the North Korean's view of their nuclear weapons:
HCH: “So the choice depends on him [Trump]. If he hits the button, he is to blame, not us.”
Cathie Boyd: “But we’ll all be gone.
HCH: “But it’s

9/"because of him, not because of us…We’ve been living under these sanctions & everything for so many years. We have nothing more to fear.”
getyarn.io/yarn-clip/f086…
If you were North Korean that's exactly how you'd think and feel. I know this b/c of a simple principle:

10/The way to understand another people or culture is see things thru their eyes and from their perspective. Setting aside your own cultural programming w/ all its ideological accoutrements is a prerequisite to "cultural exchange & mutual understanding".

11/"It’s a good thing. Because you came here not as a tourist but you came here as a cultural exchange and mutual understanding b/t the countries. So I should appreciate your visit, but you…should be the introducer, introducing the Korean culture to the others…
…step by step,

12/I was intrigued by Chinese photographer Quentin Shih who was/is able to relate to North Koreans (more than his teammates), professional & personable enough that North Koreans posed for a photographic session.
“I think China and North Korea…We are very culturally close

13/"countr[ies] because we used to have the same political system. Our cultures were both influenced by Soviet culture.”
This incredible experience shared by everyone involved in this cultural and arts exchange b/t international and North Korean artists preserved in video DPRK

14/approved (presumably all video footage was previewed by DPRK officials before its release was authorized) is part of a cultural bridge building process that, amazingly, the DPRK initiated by inviting the team of international artists over. Bridges are two-way. In the high

15/culture of fine art DPRK sought "cultural exchange and mutual understanding" b/t itself and Western countries in keeping w/ Kim Jong Il's maxim that was used to explain Moranbong Band's debut performance:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moranbong…
“As South Korean media raised questions about a

16/"fundamental opening up of North Korea's culture being foreshadowed by the concert,

Moranbong Band - Medley of Disney Songs

Moranbong Band - My Way

Rocky Theme performed in North Korea - Moranbong Band

17/"North Korea responded that "there would be no such policy shift as expected by enemy countries", and that the performance followed Kim Jong-il's maxim to "plant feet in our land, and lift eyes to see the world.””
The comment of Yun So Hyun really captures the North Korean

18/sentiment: “We have to defend our sovereignty, our identity.” The North Korean people have an identity, a socialist identity, that the West fails to comprehend. The people of DPRK are the Koreans who opposed the US & UN dividing

https://twitter.com/BonicMichael/status/1477747854810632193?s=20

https://twitter.com/BonicMichael/status/1477750522450898946?s=20

19/Korea. The USSR was instrumental in forming DPRK in 1948 after the ROK was formed by the UN. So Soviet ideology is the ideological bloodline of North Korea, which has since moved away from Lenin and communism yet abides in socialism. The Western countries are capitalist, DPRK

20/socialist. What is not to understand? Apparently lost on the entire Western bloc is the fact that after North Korea signed the Armistice in 1953 it has been awaiting the peace treaty it promised. It's still waiting. If the US refuses to sign it and threatens DPRK, DPRK will

21/defend itself. That's why Yun So Hyun's statement:
“We have to defend our sovereignty, our identity.”
reflects the pulse of North Korea's heart, mind and soul. The people of DPRK feel safer now that they have nuclear weapons, which puts the lie to many a Western narrative.

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