Beep

Although North Korea might be the champ of demagogy, its neighbor South Korea is a worthy opponent. This collage of astonishing anti-communist propaganda from South Korea exposes the collective fear of its northern counterpart; their roles appear to be reversed. In voice-over we hear the narrator from an educational government film, while the beeps punctuating the sections create a sense of urgency and evoke associations with censorship. What would South Korea be, wonders filmmaker Kyungman Kim, without its hatred for its neighbors? He demonstrates the potency of hate propaganda through the story of Seungbok Lee as told in official propaganda films, news reports, and archive footage from the 1960s to the 1980s. This 10-year-old boy was supposedly killed in the late 1960s by North Korean soldiers because he was anti-communist. In a series of highly improbable scenes, the South Korean government seizes upon this event to unleash an unprecedented campaign that feeds glorification of this “martyr” and hatred of North Korea. In a surreal wave of mass hysteria, statues of the child appear, museums and scale models are erected, and schools and TV programs are dominated by the words of Seungbok Lee. A fascinating overview of the influence of propaganda and media on political perceptions.