♪
SHANE: This week on "Vice," we go to North Korea.
[Loud cheering]
[Marching band playing]
The world is changing.
Now, no one knows where it's going,
but we'll be there uncovering the news...
culture...
and politics
that expose the absurdity of the modern condition.
So we're about to play a quick pick-up game.
Super casual, really relaxed.
This is the world through our eyes.
This is the world of "Vice."
Sync & corrections by honeybunny www.addic7ed.com
SHANE: We here at "Vice" have been fascinated
by North Korea for a long time.
In fact, we've done 3 documentaries
about the Hermit Kingdom, all of which have been
harshly critical of the regime.
You have to go to the house of the people,
the library of the people.
You have to see the soccer team of the people.
But the one thing that we didn't do
was meet any of the actual people of North Korea.
It's not very busy here.
SHANE, VOICE-OVER: For that reason,
I am personally never allowed to go back to the DPRK.
But we wanted to get inside the country again
to see firsthand how it's faring under its new, very young,
and very mysterious leader, Kim Jong Un.
One of the biggest challenges in dealing with North Korea
on any level is that we have
virtually no diplomatic relations with them.
In fact, over the past 65-plus years,
only a handful of Americans
have ever met the country's leaders,
the most prominent of which
was Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
during a visit to the country when she brought Kim Jong Il
a basketball signed by Michael Jordan.
Now, she did this because despite his public disdain
for America, Kim Jong Il privately loved
the Chicago Bulls.
His passion for the nineties-era Bulls was passed on to his son,
Kim Jong Un, and banking on
the dynasty's inherent love for basketball,
we worked through official and back channels
to propose a good-will game of basketball
with North Korea's national team.
If they accepted, we would bring
3 members of the Harlem Globetrotters,
who are the most natural ambassadors of good will
in the game,
and a real live Chicago Bull.
Much to our surprise, it worked.
The DPRK actually invited our delegates to come to North Korea
and participate in a very, very rare quote-unquote
"foreign sports exchange program."
The timing, however, turned out to be very tricky
because in December of 2012, North Korea launched
the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite into the Earth's orbit,
stirring fears that the country's missile program
could soon be advanced enough to carry a nuclear weapon
as far as the United States.
And just so we didn't forget exactly what these missiles
would be carrying, they conducted a third nuclear test
to make sure we got the message.
[Explosion]
This, of course, set the international community on edge.
So in the midst of heightened tensions and heated rhetoric,
we headed to Pyongyang to see if we could actually engage
with the North Koreans through the cultural vehicle
of basketball.
♪
_
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: The second you land in North Korea,
you realize you're no longer in control of anything.
_
The motorcade is waiting?
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: Government minders direct your every step.
You're told where to go, what to do,
and most importantly, what to film.
And as other Westerners have found out the hard way,
if you flaunt these restrictions,
you could wind up in North Korean jail,
one of the worst places on earth.
♪
Since our instincts are usually to shoot the exact opposite
of what people want us to, I was more than a bit freaked out.
♪
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: Having the Harlem Globetrotters
along with us on this trip was extremely comforting
because they were some of the most positive guys
we've ever met.
Hey, buddy!
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: And I needed that comfort
pretty much right away because as soon as we entered
the hotel lobby, we were welcomed by a banner
celebrating the recent nuclear test.
RYAN: Oh, God.
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: At first we thought the banner
might have been put there for us,
but when I opened up the curtains for my first look
at Pyongyang, I saw a long line of buses leaving the hotel,
and then I turned on the TV.
_
RYAN, QUIETLY: A bunch of the nuclear scientists
from the February 12 test are staying at this hotel right now.
They were brought here by way of kind of a reward,
or some sort of celebration, by the leader.
So they're staying here at the same hotel with us.
Unsettling.
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: So we weren't even there for a few hours,
and this international nuclear controversy
with huge geopolitical ramifications
was playing out in our hotel lobby.
_
RYAN: No, he just always has to hold that out
for practice.
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: From the start,
we were under very close supervision.
_
They were watching us and what we were shooting at all times.
RYAN: Every day has a schedule,
and we have a lot of minders whose full-time job it is
to make sure--there's one of them. Hi--
to make sure that we stay on the schedule,
so an army of people there waiting for you
to usher you onto the bus.
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: We were always surrounded by guides,
translators, and officials,
many of whom, we'd been warned, were actually secret police.
♪
We'd agreed that along with the exhibition game,
we'd host a basketball camp with what we thought would be
a bunch of kids in a high-school gym somewhere.
Instead, we were ushered into a massive 10,000-seat stadium.
RYAN: Oh, this is nice.
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: We'd also be working with the best
under-18 players in the country.
My name is Anthony Blakes,
also known as Buckets.
I'm number 15 with the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters.
We're gonna show you guys some great things today,
and hopefully give you an opportunity
to learn something new, as well as make some new friends with us.
BUCKETS: On my whistle, the first guy goes.
[Whistle blows]
MOOSE: Go. Full speed, full speed.
Hands up. Hands up. Good. Go.
DENNIS: So they have to compete for the rebound.
All right. Ready?
DENNIS: There you go. There you go.
This is what rebounding is all about.
You have to fight for it.
DENNIS: Go, go, go, go, go! Oh.
BUCKETS: Friendship, on 3.
_
Chin-gu.
1, 2, 3. Chin-gu!
Good job.
[Clapping]
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: As we were leaving,
we spotted North Korea's most famous basketball player,
Ri Myong-Hun, who had come out to watch the drills.
Ri was at one time the tallest man in basketball.
He was super-excited about our visit,
and he gathered us together for a chat.
_
[Laughter]
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: In a country that's known to suffer
from malnutrition and the stunted growth
that goes along with it, Ri is truly an exception.
In fact, his height actually attracted the interest
of American scouts, but due to trade sanctions,
he was unable to pursue his dreams of playing in the NBA.
And although loyal to North Korea,
when he was once asked about how he felt
about not being able to play in the NBA,
he replied, "I'm not interested in money or politics.
As a sportsman, I just want to try."
_
[Woman speaks Korean]
Cheese!
[Train bell rings]
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: As one of the tradeoffs for allowing us
to visit through this sports exchange,
we agreed to go on their state-sanctioned tour,
and like the beginning of any tour of North Korea,
our first stop was an obligatory visit to the Sun Palace,
where the country's last two leaders lie in state.
♪
North Korea is the last of the Socialist/Communist
cult of personality Utopian states,
and much like Stalin in the Soviet Union
or Mao in China, their leaders are not only revered
as political figures but flat-out worshipped as gods.
♪
Kim Il-Sung was installed by the Soviets
as the first Supreme Leader in 1948,
and in fact, he's still President of the DPRK today,
even though he's been dead since 1994.
[Crowd murmuring]
_
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: Kim Il-Sung was succeeded by his son,
Kim Jong Il, who inherited his father's godlike excellence,
and he was perfect at everything.
Not only was he the greatest at military strategy
and city planning, but also at filmmaking, furniture design,
and even animal husbandry.
When Kim Jong Il died in 2011,
leadership was passed to his son, Kim Jong Un,
about whom the world knows very, very little.
♪
These state-sanctioned tours of North Korea
tend to be exactly the same year in, year out.
But because of our basketball mission and our documentary,
they'd created a new, hand-tailored propaganda tour.
They were going to show us how great
the quality of life in North Korea really was.
So instead of taking us to places
like the most militarized border on earth, the DMZ,
they took us to the North Korean version of Sea World.
Immediately we knew we were stepping into something
completely different.
A huge crowd was already seated and waiting patiently
for us to arrive.
Front row seats.
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: Even here we were reminded
of North Korea's nuclear prowess.
_
[Applause]
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: And interestingly,
Kim Jong Un was not just credited as the mastermind
behind all the missiles and bombs,
he was also the choreographer of the dolphin show.
_
[Applause]
Not only is Kim Jong Un great with dolphins,
he's now personally responsible for inspecting, advising,
and directing all aspects of North Korean life.
♪
_
Right.
Any machine we see with a red placard like that?
Yes. Wow. Cool.
Are there ever arguments
over who gets to use the Marshall's equipment?
_
Of course.
I don't even know what this is called,
but I'm loving it.
♪
_
RYAN: Did you say they did breast enlargement
in here as well?
_
Oh, wow.
RYAN: Table tennis is the most popular sport
in DPRK?
_
RYAN: What do you think is the most popular sport?
_
Oh, basketball. Yes.
Well, we came on the right mission, then.
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: At the end of the day,
we were invited to indulge ourselves
in a North Korean shopping spree.
The mall was clearly a showpiece,
designed to project an abundance of delicacies
in a country that doesn't even have enough food
to feed its people.
The store was rammed with Western products
and a very, very attentive sales staff.
Coca-Cola, Doritos, Ruffles.
Anything you want, you can find.
I'm personally gonna go with Coke.
I love Coke. Do you like Coke?
_
Pay with a credit card?
_
No?
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: It would have felt just like a store at home
if it weren't for the fact
that A, we were the only customers there,
and B, I couldn't actually buy anything.
♪
As we drove back to the hotel,
I noticed that in spite of the country's well-documented
chronic power shortages, this city was extremely well-lit,
which made me think,
were even the lights part of the tour as well?
That might sound crazy, but when you look
at satellite photos of the region,
North Korea is completely dark.
The next morning, we were driven
to the International Friendship Exhibition,
and the only cars that we saw on the long 3-hour drive there
were our own.
The International Friendship Exhibition
is basically this castle vault
built into the side of a mountain that holds
every gift ever given to the leadership of North Korea.
They had gifts from the likes of Muammar Gaddafi,
Leonid Brezhnev,
the Sandinistas,
and of course Madeleine Albright,
whose gift of a Michael Jordan signed basketball
was the inspiration for this trip--
a trip, by the way, that was getting progressively weirder,
as we saw at our next stops, the Kim Il-Sung University
and Grand People's Study House.
After the prerequisite display
of nuclear and missile technology,
they gave us a tour demonstrating
North Korea's openness to the outside world.
_
WOMAN: OK.
I have been playing basketball
since I was a small child.
_
I have been playing basketball
for about 5 days now.
[Laughter]
_
Bye.
_
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: Next, they took us to a computer lab,
where students were using the Internet,
and your first thought is, OK, this looks like any lab
at a university back home.
But then it dawns on you that it's completely silent.
No one is doing anything.
There was no typing, no mouse-clicking--nothing.
We saw one guy looking at the Google home page,
but he wasn't searching for anything.
He was just staring blankly at the screen.
The one person we saw there who actually looked like
he knew how to use a computer was, of course, the one person
they wanted us to meet.
_
RYAN: Hello. How are you doing?
_
RYAN: Very nice to meet you as well.
Sorry to disturb you while you're working.
_
RYAN: Oh, wow.
_
RYAN: Oh, wow.
Yeah. That's great.
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: Considering North Korea's reputation
for complete and total suppression of information,
this stop was clearly designed to convince us
that they had access to the Internet,
just like the rest of the world, which we knew wasn't true.
And that left us wondering, was anything we were seeing real?
It felt like we were walking
through a real live "Truman Show,"
created just for us.
Everywhere we went and everything we saw
was constructed to convey the exact opposite
of what we know about North Korea.
♪
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: I honestly felt like I was losing my mind.
♪
But nothing could have prepared us
for what was about to happen next.
♪
[Loud cheering]
[Cheering continues]
[Cheering stops]
[Exhales]
RYAN: So we're here just about to play
a quick pick-up game-- super casual, really relaxed,
uh, with a few Harlem Globetrotters
and a bunch of North Koreans and myself,
uh, as Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un watch.
[Speaking English]
Oh, I take these?
_
I hand out--I'm the equipment manager.
[Laughs]
OK.
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: We picked teams playground-style,
so each team had both Americans and North Koreans.
[Applause]
Let's do it.
All right. OK.
Team on 3. 1, 2, 3.
[Team cheers]
So I'm starting.
GLOBETROTTER: You about to get dumped now, player.
Here we go.
_
♪
[Crowd cheering]
_
[Crowd cheering]
[Whistle blows]
See this?
♪
[Cheering and applause]
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: After the halftime show,
the Globetrotters went out and did what they do best.
♪
_
You take it. No, you take it.
You take it.
_
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: Then, in the fourth quarter,
the game got really intense
and actually started to get exciting.
♪
Go, go, go!
_
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: With no overtime allowed,
the game actually ended in a tie.
BUCKETS: That was beautiful right there.
Way to make it dramatic for our first visit here!
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: Before we even knew what was going on,
Dennis was standing and giving a speech.
DENNIS: First of all, I would like to say thank you.
_
You guys have been very, very kind to me
and to my compadres from America,
and the one thing I want to say--
I'm gonna cut this really short--
I'm very, very privileged to be here,
and for you guys to accept us as one of you
is an honor.
[Applause]
I'm sorry that my country and your country
are not on good terms,
but for me
and the country,
you have a friend for life.
Sir, thank you.
You have a friend for life.
_
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: We were in a complete and total daze.
The two hours of screaming and emotion,
the tie game at the final buzzer,
and of course the surprise visit by Kim Jong Un--
it was truly a surreal experience.
All of a sudden, we were ushered off the court
and into the locker room and told to change right away.
_
OK.
_
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: We were bused across the city,
but no one knew where we were going--
no one, not even our minders.
We were told to leave our cameras behind
and brought into this large marble building
and escorted through a ton of security.
And then we turned a corner to see Kim Jong Un.
♪
_
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: There we were
face to face with Kim Jong Un for a dinner celebration.
And with that, we were somehow the first Americans
to meet North Korea's new leader.
Having him on the sidelines for the game was one thing,
but standing right beside him
was completely and totally insane.
It was like being in an alternate universe.
So here's what happened.
At first, introductory speeches were given,
the theme of which was pretty much drink.
Then the curtains went up, and out came this all-girl band
dressed in white, with electric violins,
and they're inexplicably playing the theme from "Rocky."
♪
And then things started to get really crazy.
At one point, Dennis took the mike
and sang "My Way" while our interpreter played the sax.
Then they pointed at me, and it was my turn to toast.
So I thanked Kim Jong Un for his hospitality
and said that we'd like to return the favor
if he ever wanted to come to America and have dinner with us,
which, thankfully, got a big laugh.
Clearly the booze loosened everyone up.
What we kept hearing from these ministers,
party officials, and nuclear negotiators
and then even from Kim Jong Un himself
was that they hoped our visit would be able to reduce
some of the psychological barriers
between the U.S. and North Korea.
They even went on to claim that we'd made history.
Now, that's a pretty bold statement,
but it is in fact historic.
In the years since the Korean War,
North Korean and American athletes have competed
against each other on a handful of occasions,
but they'd never played on the same team,
and that sentiment of collaboration
was echoed by Kim Jong Un
when he gave the final toast of the night.
_
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: So you've got the average North Korean,
people who are taught from birth
that America is this evil imperial power
hell-bent on their destruction, waking up the next day
to see their dear leader, aka God,
hanging out with a bunch of Americans,
saying he hopes that we can all get along.
Now, of course it's possible that's just more propaganda.
But we did start to think that maybe, just maybe,
we may have had at least some impact.
We've realized that bringing a crew of basketball players
to North Korea isn't going to lead to the country
dismantling its nuclear program, shutting down its labor camps,
or even toning down its anti-American rhetoric.
But during our time there, we did accomplish something.
We just stopped the buses-- the first time we've been able to do that.
This way. This way.
RYAN: We just found a court on the side of the street,
and we were actually able to stop at it,
so the Globetrotters are gonna see if they can get involved,
and it's actually really awesome to see.
_
All right?
So you got to do it sometime.
RYAN, VOICE-OVER: Through basketball,
we managed to bridge the divide between our countries,
open a dialogue, and make a connection with real people...
[Cheering]
if only for a moment.
BUCKETS: Would you like to try a spin?
CROWD: Oh!
BUCKETS: Yeah!
Yay!
CROWD: Oh!
Oh. Yay!
RYAN: Everything else aside, this is cool.
BUCKETS: Yeah!
Great.
Ha ha!
_
[Chatter]
Thank you! Thank you!
BULL: Amazing.
_
Bye bye! Bye!
Sync & corrections by honeybunny www.addic7ed.com