Inside North Korea | Video #2 | The Arirang Mass Games
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO1-X3-gNP0[/youtube]
The above video is the second short-video by myself and the Globe & Mail’s Mark Mackinnon from our assignment in North Korea. The topic of this video is the Arirang Mass Games which are held in the May Day stadium in Pyongyang.
In case you don’t know, the Mass Games are a gymnastics, dance and song spectacular that showcase North Korean history and culture. Using hundreds of participants, mostly schoolchildren, the games are an imposing and impressive sight which symbolise the power of the masses working as one in North Korea.
Apart from the huge overtones of propaganda, the show is actually quite breathtaking. My personal favourite part of the event are the hundreds of schoolchildren who provide the backdrop to the whole spectacle. Holding up books containing pages with different colours, they all open and close the books in unison to create the unbelievable moving backdrop.
If you missed the first video, you can view it here.