A Medieval Yodok Gulag

[BungalowDweller]

DJY's sojourn in the mountain prison camp, or gulag, to use an appropriate moniker, provided a fascinating comparison with the imfamous modern day Yodok camp. It even sounds as though the writers had Yodok in mind when they described the geographic features of the place. High in the mountains, impossible to get out of, the mountains acting as a natural barrier to escape or survival. . .

I may be totally off on this, but I could have sworn that in an earlier episode the writers even had a special name for the road that led to DJY's prison camp.

In the book, "The Aquariums of Pyongyang", the author Kang Chol-Hwan recounts his childhood journey to the Yadok camp as follows:

"The dirt road continued to climb through twists and hair-pin turns. The old strategic route, originally built by the Japanese to connect the eastern and western parts of North Korea, was known to be extremely dangerous. With all the bumps and turns, I, too, lost my stomanch. Finally, toward midday we reached Wolwangnyong, the King's Pass, 3,000 feet above tree line. North Koreans also call it the Pass of Tears, because it's the last stretch of road on the way to Yodok."

Apparently work camps/gulags and the concept of working people to death was not a modern idea.

I had the feeling that this particular thread in the program was cut short. Was I the only one who felt that the prison camp interlude was rather abruptly ended. I got the feeling that we may have seen DJY and his brothers cause an uprising! The hired "assassin" gave such a sterling performance---I was certain that we'd see more of him and hear about his story.

It would have been interesting to watch the camp explode!!!

[zorro]

bungalowdweller said:

I had the feeling that this particular thread in the program was cut short. Was I the only one who felt that the prison camp interlude was rather abruptly ended. I got the feeling that we may have seen DJY and his brothers cause an uprising! The hired "assassin" gave such a sterling performance---I was certain that we'd see more of him and hear about his story.

It would have been interesting to watch the camp explode!!!

That's what it looked like they were building up to, and then Dj and his men get extradited and the whole concept fizzles out. Too bad, as there were a few interesting characters they could have pulled from the camp as new allies.

The only complaint I had was the establishing scenes of a million guards all whipping the prisoners into shape at every waking moment, opposed to not a single soul anywhere in sight during the prisoners' food fight/confrontation. That "discussion" seemed to go on way to long not to be noticed by any of the guards or Commander especially given the noise and commotion it must have caused.

Maybe the Warden and staff were running off somewhere and fighting over their own food?

[BungalowDweller]

Yeah, I thought so too. Throughout the speech I kept wondering when the guards were going to break things up. Artistic licence, I suppose.....

[pip]

I agree that the Mt Guifu storyline seemed to have an abrupt ending. It was almost as if the writers got themselves into something they couldn't get out of, so used a deus ex machina resolution. What a shame it was, because there was a lot to work with in that story!

I agree that the food fight speech was strange in that it was uninterrupted by guards. But it was also strange to imagine that all those starving, maltreated men would not just tear DJY and his cohorts to pieces in order to get to the food.

I suppose we were meant to see that DJY was a unifier in all circumstances, and that he opposed unfairness without thought to his own wellbeing.

[ajk]

I agree with both of you on both points. One day the guards and officers are standing there laughing at the prisoners for fighting for their food, and the next day the officers are gone and the guards are all looking the other way--literally! And that business about spoiling the food, that was just stupid. They could have written the whole angle in a much more interesting way. Maybe a "Stalag 17" kind of thing where the word gets spread quietly and things get worked out gradually instead of forcing some big scene.

And they sure did pull the plug on the whole setting very abruptly--especially after the scene in the mine where DJY proves his sincerity. But I have no doubt that we'll be seeing some of those prisoners again in later episodes, especially the guy who had the knife to DJY's throat. And we'll see a flashback of the mine scene. I think the reason they had no qualms about pulling the plug was that it's intended to be a setup for a future storyline and not so much just a storyline by itself. (Like the Baekje-town/Mimosa stuff in #15 and #16.)