BUSAN - The grainy, sometimes out-of-focus
film opens with a warning: "This program is
something you've never seen before. It is about
brutal animal fights and it is all real and
intensely interesting."
The 52-minute
video, which the opening describes as "made in
North Korea as a documentary", goes on to show a
variety of
animals, many endangered
species, either tearing one another apart or
posturing for an attack.
This is not your
National Geographic documentary about animals in
the wild kingdom battling over territorial rights,
dominance or a sex partner. It's not about
predators and their prey. Hanjoon Productions'
animals are mostly caged, their battles initiated.
Rumors about North Korean films
of savage, staged fights involving endangered animals have been around
for years. Now, the films are available. The
video can be found at some video rental shops in
South Korea, but hunting around is required. A handful
of Korean online video retailers carry copies,
which can be purchased for about 5,000 won (US$5).
[1]
In the late 1990s, the North's
Joseon Science Film Studio videotaped animals
attacking each other under the guise of the
production being a nature documentary. The films
were brought into South Korea and the Ministry of
Unification holds them in its library of North
Korean materials. Fighting Animals volumes
2-4 are available for public rental, though they
are only in Korean. Virtually nothing has been
written about them in English.
The June
1997 edition of the Ministry of Unification's
monthly Joseon had an article about the
animal-fight film and a videotape was included
with the issue. Then in 1999, Hanjoon Productions
released Fighting Animals for general
distribution to the South Korean public. But even
today, the film's existence is not widely known.
Many of the scenes, some of which are out
of focus, are cut, spliced and hyper-edited as if
to portray each scene as one seamless violent
episode. Further scrutiny reveals this is far from
the case.
In all probability, North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il sanctioned the filming of
Fighting Animals, or at least gave it his
curious approval - though there is no evidence he
was directly involved despite his well-documented
interest in filmmaking. The film's producers would
have needed access to rare and valuable animals
and the only place in the country that holds them
is the Central Zoo in Pyongyang. Also, they would
need the cooperation of the zookeepers to match up
the different animals in shared cages and goad
them enough to maul one another.
The first
scene is of two caged black foxes in a highly
agitated state, rubbing against a tree and pawing
the earth. The narrator says they are fighting
over a piece of fish. They attack each other with
bites to the neck in an enclosure with vertical
steel bars. Then the film is spliced and the
viewer sees two foxes with wet fur in a different
cage built of fine-mesh chicken wire. After a few
violent seconds, the scene instantly cuts back to
the cage of vertical bars and the scene ends when
one fox locks into the other with a death bite.
In another scene, a lioness and a tiger
are trapped in what appears to be a zoo cage. The
background is of iron bars and fake rocks made of
poured concrete. The animals growl. Though there
is no explanation of why the two are poised to
fight, it is assumed the battle is between two
territorial animals being forced to share a small
cage. The two tear into each other, with the
lioness often fighting from her back.
From
this brief scene, the narrator posits that the
lioness is cowardly and the tiger is the more
powerful of these alpha-predators, hinting at
animistic nationalism, in the sense that "our
native beast is stronger than the foreign beast".
The North Korean army chose the tiger as its
symbolic mascot, named Hokuk-i, the
"nation-defending tiger". Similarly, the tiger is
used in numerous symbols in South Korea. Yet in
the past neither country has protected the
cherished icon.
Korea's Siberian tiger is
is one of the most endangered large animals in the
world. In pre-industrial Korea the tiger ranged
throughout the peninsula, but the last confirmed
sighting in South Korea was in 1946 in the Sorak
mountain range. A few are thought to exist in the
Baekdu Mountain region, but the lack of field
evidence puts this in doubt.
South Korea
banned trade in tiger bones for use in Han-yak
medicine in 1994 because of international
condemnation and signed on to the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild
Flora and Fauna. However, 1993 was a record year
for importing tiger bones into South Korea,
possibly because pharmacists wanted to stock up on
the goods before they became inaccessible. Import
records from customs reveal that between 1975 and
1992 more than 6 tons of tiger bone was brought
into the country. Ironically, in 1988 there was a
large boost in tiger imports and that year South
Korea hosted the Olympic Games - the symbol a
tiger cub named Hodori.
But the tigers are
not the only endangered species from the peninsula
featured in the film. A lioness is matched with an
Asiatic black bear, called by Koreans a half-moon
bear because of the white crescent on its chest.
The destruction of the native population of
half-moon bears is a dark chapter in Korea.
Traditional medicine believes the bear's
gall-bladder bile imbues vitality and good health.
The bears have been hunted for centuries to the
point of near extinction, with only 10-20 left in
South Korea. The number of bears in North Korea is
unknown but considered low. Currently, South Korea
ranks as the world's largest market for imported
bear parts.
Another scene shows a clash
that ends with a cinereous vulture's talon
slashing through the eye of a red fox. The current
world population of cinereous vultures is thought
to be about 4,000, and they are on the IUCN
(International Union for Conservation of Nature)
"red list of threatened species". The Korean red
fox is thought to survive in small numbers in
North Korea but were extinct in the South by the
1960s from poisoning and poaching. However, a
South Korean hiker found one dead in a poacher's
snare in the Gangwon province in March 2004, and
the Ministry of Environment estimates there might
be about 100 in existence.
Increasing
numbers of cinereous vultures have been wintering
on the Southern side of the Demilitarized Zone
(DMZ) in Paju, Cheorwon, Yanggu and Hwacheon
counties.
Other animals in the film
include yellow-throated martins, shown in a cage
with a house cat, though it appears feral. The
yellow-throated martin is rare, found in
high-forested mountain elevations, and also
endangered.
There are also confrontations
between a brown bear, apparently in a zoo, and a
wild boar; a Eurasian eagle owl and an Amur rat
snake (a staged scene and completely fake); two
German shepherds, referred to by the narrator as
seoyang-gye, or "western dog"; a poongsan
(one of North Korea's national treasures and an
excellent hunting dog) and a German shepherd; and
four mongrel hunting dogs and a Eurasian badger.
Other scenes involve eagles, weasels,
marmots, rams and ewes, and domestic farm animals.
As well, there is a cockfight.
North Korea
is a black hole of news and events and leaves much
of the world speculating on what happens in the
isolationist country. Very few foreign wildlife
researchers have gained access and little is known
about the status of native wildlife, though zoos
in the North and South have recently exchanged
animals.
With chronic shortages of all
supplies and the country on the edge of famine,
questions about the care of animals in a North
Korean zoo would be natural. This film does little
to provide assurances that Pyongyang Central Zoo
animals are being properly looked after.
