I’m suffering terrible misgivings from some new North Korea programming I recently caught over at VBS.tv (14 parts).

Intrepid VBS presenter Shane Smith’s behavior as a tourist in North Korea (with cameraman/producer Eddy Moretti in tow) was disturbing, and I’ll use the remainder of this post to work out why I think he acted as foolishly as he did.

There is a certain built-in mystery to these clips, and I don’t want to steal the thunder for you so I’ll try to be as intentionally vague as I can be.

My Overall Impression:

Sure, I can indeed see things from Shane’s perspective.

He’s an American on a special tourist visa to the country and he’s been expressly forbidden from filing any journalism from North Korea. He seems genuinely miffed by the way the DPRK alternatively lambastes, then vilifies practically everything about America or things American in its national propaganda and across the various tourist sites around the country Smith and entourage are forced to visit as part of their trip north.

As becomes progressively clear over the course of the fourteen clips, Smith becomes increasingly disillusioned with the bizarreness of the Hermit Kingdom. He’s constantly poking fun at Bam-Bam (Kim Jong-il) or the portly “Parent Leader” (Kim Il-sung) and whenever he and Moretti are just beyond earshot or gaze of their various political minders, they whip out the camcorder as often as possible when suddenly the pratfalls cascade forth.

I’m hardly a fan of Bam-Bam’s, nor of the Kim Farm or its associated cult status. But perhaps life as an expatriate for this long has taught me it’s incumbent on a visitor to have a little bit of humility when dealing with the locals, especially ones as clearly belligerent as the North Koreans.

Smith, with his scraggly beard, unruly locks, and Jim Morrison rock-star-still-hung-over-at-three-in-the-afternoon lumbering gait, ambles around the organized tour in Pyongyang with a certain irreverence that’s deeply unsettling. He’s acts like the king toad among his subject tadpoles, flippantly stomping around the North Korean capital or countryside acting like a punch-drunk buffoon when it comes to Asian protocols, such deep waist bows (Smith’s fluffy middle continually interferes), initiating personal contact, eating habits, drinking protocols, or karaoke singing style (his rendition of Sid Vicious’ “Anarchy in the U.K.” came as a shock to Smith and Moretti’s spellbound Party and State Security Department minders).

Personally, I think he was hamming it up for his online audience because, well, he knew he could, and besides, he knew the North Koreans would have very little pop cultural reference for half the things he was saying or doing and he just knew he could get away with it because they wouldn’t understand anyways. It’s a brand of cowardice I’ve seen all too often over the course of my own foreign sojourns, like here in the Sketch Republic.

Frankly, I thought his daily brew of shenanigans were a bit over the top, still, though the gags kept coming like a tidal wave. Take, for example, the time when Smith was ascending the stairs of Pyongyang’s subway, waving madly to the descending travelers, who, awestruck at the truly rare site of a white foreigner in their capital, waved back (perhaps out of an overwhelming sense of fear, knowing that all foreigners were being tailed by State Security minders). Smith took the waving thing to a whole new level, which you can watch for yourself.

Then there was the filmmakers’ attitude during their trip to the West Sea Barrage (or the Nampho Dam), where they were requested several times to cease filming by their minder, the gangly, spider-like “Mr. Lee,” yet still found ways around these restrictions even when Smith and Moretti were threatened to be brought up on criminal charges if they continued.

Then there was their behavior at Myo-hyang-san, better known as Kim Il-sung’s International Friendship Exhibition, where they literally had to scramble around a corner to carry on with their dispatch for fear of having the rest of their gear confiscated. The rest because Smith had lied to one of their chaperones who demanded to know the size of his point-and-shoot camera’s memory card when he was discovered shooting video at the museum’s entrance, verboten, naturally. Smith thought he could outsmart the Korean with some cheap fib about it being only several hundred Mb, but when it was discovered that the card was a 5 Gb bad boy, the minder excoriated our big man with a “liar!” upbraiding, which Smith somehow thought was a laughing matter (I’ve seen Canadians acting like this in Cuba as well, rest assured that I’m an equal-opportunity critic). I can’t tell whether Smith and Moretti shot and edited the scene as being hairier than it actually was, but can you imagine an international incident like what Euna and Laura did late last year?

When it came down to the permanently docked Pueblo spy ship, though, they calmed down considerably, given the hostility level of the visiting North Koreans that day. Disembarking from the ship, visiting North Korean tourists would usually full of bile for the US, so in this scenario it was best for the dynamic duo to can it for a couple of hours, knowing that they’d get lynched if they kept up their baboon-like antics. This proved to me that the whole thing was a lark.

So Are Asians Supposed to be Funny?

Smith seems to find Asians amusing – and perhaps for someone of his stature it would be like the Jolly Green Giant prancing among the Lilliputians – whether in China (Shenyang) getting his North Korean visa, down in South Korea, or while already North Korea. This seems to be in keeping with the overall style of VBS.tv’s programming. Forgive me, but after steadily making my way through all fourteen segments, I can safely say it had that whole inter-war Shanghai reek to it which the Chinese find so (rightfully so?) repugnant.

For a further example of this station’s particular flavor of chutzpah, have a look at the following citation from VBS’ newsletter registration page. Naturally, I didn’t sign up after reading this thoroughly knuckleheaded call to action (bolding the jejune parts):

Registered VBS members have access to so much awesome crap, you don’t even know.

Stuff like show subscriptions and email updates and personalized playlists and, fuggin’, user pics and email notifications and exclusive videos and mp3s (probably).

Oh man. You would have to be one world-class asshole not to sign up for this thing.

Look, I’m the first guy to let loose now and again with my art, so I’m not being intentionally puritan about this. But when you’re actually on the ground your comportment requires a certain dose of humility. You don’t go into the lion’s den, so to speak, and act like a schnook or go into DPRK with a deathwish or otherwise seek to get your keyster tossed into a North Korean clink (or even the political doghouse) just because you’re trying to create some viral video Oreo cookies for your fans back Stateside.

I’m torn about this whole series because the editing, despite all the slapstick nonsense, was smooth and educational, especially the “stolen” 1970’s North Korean documentary  footage.

Smith’s presentation skills, while otherwise professional – watch as he shares reflections during a more sanguine moment, likely when he was already back in the US – are just out-and-out daft when prancing about in Asia.

I don’t suspect he’ll be returning to North Korea anytime soon, and I gather after this present series of disparaging clips, he won’t be welcome either. Perhaps that’s why he let loose, knowing this was to be his one and only chance at taking a few cheap potshots at Bam-Bam’s “Paradise On Earth.”

Am I Yongbyon Hugger?

No, I’m not. North Korea has clearly proven itself over the decades to be, in no particular order:

• one of the planet’s most unreliable debtor nations, having stiffed nations for purchased goods more times than one can count. Worse than a crack addict in the Bowery.
• a personality cult dictatorship, the likes of which there are no modern substitutes outside of perhaps Castro’s Bearded Cuba.
• a gross human rights violator to its own citizenry. The Klingons are better than North Koreans.
• an unstable and potentially looming nuclear threat. We can’t see it, so we don’t know.
• a belligerent force for instability in the world, on a par with what we see happening presently in the Middle East.

But there is government, and there is a citizenry. Left to its own devices, we’d likely see happening in North Korea what has miraculously occurred down in ROK over its explosive period of economic development during the past several decades.

Shane Smith probably justifies his acting like an occasional sphincter muscle because of North Korea’s shoddy political record. They’re evil so I’ll act like a moron, just because.

Still, having said all of the above, I encourage you to watch VBS’ footage, because despite the VBS buffoonery, there are indeed several captivating bits in the footage. And hey, at the end of the day, they got in and did the number. Kudos to them just for having the spherical sack of venom (= balls) just to do that.

And now a question for you: Like Dan-san always says, what do you think?

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