Lee Hyeon-seo Quotes

In the city of Pyongyang, you don't have to look very far to see an image of the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung. They love the guy. He is responsible for the wonder that is North Korea.

When I was growing up, we were taught in school that North Koreans, and especially the North Korean leadership, were all devils.

… the unfortunate but inevitable connection between the word “socialism” and the unmitigated crucifixion of Civil Liberties in the East [Eastern Europe dominated by the Russian Communist Party.

Romania, which had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West. The United States and Britain loved him. He was supported until the last minute.

When I was little, I thought my country was the best on the planet. And I grew up singing a song called 'Nothing To Envy.' And I was very proud. In school, we spent a lot of time studying the history of Kim Il-Sung, but we never learned much about the outside world, except that America, South Korea, Japan are the enemies.

Let's be clear: There is no doubt that the citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea both fear and loathe the United States. Paranoia, resentment, and a crude anti-Americanism have been nurtured inside the Hermit Kingdom for decades.

From the moment I was born, I was fed propaganda. I viewed the Kim dynasty not only as our fearless protectors from the imperialist forces, but also as gods.

We all know that Kim Jong-il is 'buy-yourself-a-handgun' crazy. It's pretty much a given.

What if the Soviet intervention was a blessing in disguise? It saved the myth that if the Soviets were not to intervene, there would have been some flowering authentic democratic socialism and so on. I'm a little bit more of a pessimist there. I think that the Soviets - it's a very sad lesson - by their intervention, saved the myth.

The cadence of life is slower in North Korea.

The reader feels as if he is in Chongjin, where starving people ate the bark off trees; or atop Mount Taesong with the elite of Pyongyang, whose existence is a mix of sadism and whimsy; or with the masses who are bombarded day and night with the propaganda of North Korea's alternate reality.

You know, North Korea situation is far worse than East Germany, and South Korea is weaker than West Germany.

If you look at satellite photographs of the Far East by night, you'll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. This area of darkness is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

But, in North Korea, it's just the opposite. There's one story. It's written by the Kim regime. And 23 million people are conscripted to be secondary characters. There, as a youth, your aptitude towards certain jobs is measured, and the rest of your life is dictated, whether you'll be a fisherman or a farmer or an opera singer.

I wanted to analyse and understand how the Chinese people could have their lives so crushed by fear.

In 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only colour to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea. Images of Kim Il-sung are depicted in vivid colours. Rays of yellow and orange emanate from his face: he is the sun.

In Asia, the 2 Vietnams will be united under a Communist regime, as will North and South Korea.

We do not recognize the Communist regime on the mainland. We consider them bandits.

Castro doesn’t need spies. All he has to do is read the newspapers.

… the inhuman communist police state tyranny

Putin has demonstrated his fondness for the Cold War…. Once a KBG agent, always a KGB agent.

To a certain extent, all dictatorships are alike. From Stalin's Soviet Union to Mao's China, from Ceauşescu's Romania to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, all these regimes had the same trappings ... But Kim Il-sung took the cult of personality to a new level. What distinguished him in the rogues' gallery of twentieth-century dictators was his ability to harness the power of faith. Kim Il-sung understood the power of religion.

The Russian Leadership Came to the conclusian that Western Expansion could only be reversed with an "iron fist".

Saddam Hussein admired, studied, and copied Stalin, the paragon of modern dictators.

When I entered the film school at the Prague Academy in the '50s, it was the hardest time in the Communist countries. The ideological control of the society was almost absolute.