We see North Koreans as automatons, goose-steeping at parades, doing mass gymnastics with fixed smiles on their faces - but beneath all that, real life goes on with the same complexity of human emotion as anywhere else.
The North Koreans will sell anything to anybody for hard currency. If Al Queda came up with enough dollars to buy a nuclear weapon from North Korea I don't have any doubt that the North Koreans would sell it to them.
North Koreans are tragically oppressed. Despite the risks to my personal safety, I feel a strong obligation to tell the world about the Orwellian nightmare that North Koreans face.
Brian Myers takes a fresh approach. He largely ignores what the regime tells the outside world about itself, but concentrates instead on what North Koreans themselves are supposed to believe, paying special attention to the North Korean narratives and mass culture, including movies and television shows. (...) There are few books that can give the world a peek into the Hermit Kingdom. The Cleanest Race provides a reason to care about how those in North Korea see themselves and the West. It is possibly the best addition to that small library.
Painted faces, sun burnt skin, fixed expressions, smiles worn thin.
The fact is that one significant way the Iranians have a posture different from the North Koreans, the North Koreans basically are saying we have a nuclear program. We are seeking weapons. We have produced weapons. We're proud of the fact that we have weapons.
The North Korean Communists are implacably pursuing their military buildup in defiance of the international trend toward rapprochement and of the stark reality of the Korean situation, as well as of the long-cherished aspiration of the 50 million Koreans. The North Koreans have already constructed a number of underground invasion tunnels across the Demilitarized Zone.
There is reason to say that negotiations with the North Koreans are not easy, they may not succeed, but they may be a way of getting to where we want to get to, limiting the capability of the North Koreans to do harm to us and our allies without the use of military force and without the risk of a major war in Northeast Asia.
People tend to overlook the fact that North Korea's economy collapsed at about the same time as South Koreans lost faith in their own state. The late 1980s and early 1990s were a time when South Koreans were questioning the very legitimacy of their republic.
If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.
When I write, I speak with ghosts for years, and I see images that are a little bit out of focus. I see faces, but the faces change. At the moment that it's a real human being that's flesh and bone, it changes a character. It's much more precise and complex.
If defectors say they had high-level connections in Pyongyang or came from an esteemed institution in the North, they can gain better employment in the South, where life can be very difficult for North Koreans.
Again, I think we have much greater diplomatic weight by having all of us sit on the same side of the table wanting the same thing, and putting it to the North Koreans.
I think really good drama comes down to real human emotion. That's what makes us all tick, and that's what I've always been drawn to when it comes to scripts is real human emotion and dealing with that.
Because up to sixteen years old you feel gymnastics more. You can show your emotion, grace, like woman gymnastics, not kid's gymnastics. I feel I have good shape, and I can do it elements everything, but, it's not competition for me.
As an actor, it's all about whether you can sell the emotion on your face... that desperation, the panic and rage that comes with combat. The emotion of combat is important to me. I mean, you feel almost sick if you see a real fight where someone is getting badly beaten up. You can get emotionally involved in combat that has nothing to do with you in real-life, let alone if you are actually in it... or it's someone you know, and so you should have those same feelings on film.
The first time people come to see me, it's usually because they're curious. Then maybe some of them return. I look out in the audience and see the same faces, the same wonderful, loyal faces.