The Country I Saw, Part 2

This film essentially revolves around a journalist named "Takahashi Minoru" (Pak Ki Ju) who traveled from Japan to North Korea and after returning home wrote a book praising the leadership of that country. His writings, however, weren't received in the manner that he thought they would be and instead of being honored for his in-depth journalism, he quickly made several high-ranking enemies-particularly those in government with policies antithetical to the establishment of normal relations with North Korea. To that extent, he soon found intense pressure to retract his positive support of the regime there or face the consequences of his actions. The story then shifts 40 years later with his daughter "Kayama Aiko" (Seo Gyeong-Seob) as a university professor researching his views and--after finding them to be credible-also advocating them. This results in severe harassment for her as well. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film had a much more sinister quality to it than its predecessor which diminished the overall effect to a certain degree. Additionally, the repeated suggestions that all of the nations in the world look to North Korea as an example were rather far-fetched--to say the least. Of course, the intention of this film was to serve as nothing more than propaganda and the target audience was the people of North Korea. So any realistic views were probably out of the question anyway. That said, while I didn't consider this to be a bad film by any means, the propaganda elements were just too noticeable and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.