Video Description: Americans hear about North Korea a lot. Unfortunately, it’s usually from pop culture: The Daily Show, The Interview, Saturday Night Live skits. Former Washington Post correspondent Blaine Harden says those depictions often paint the totalitarian state as having a cartoon-like craziness. For years, he wanted to write a book on North Korea, the Korean War and the Kim dynasty, but Harden knew a book on those topics probably wouldn’t fly off store shelves. Then the phone rang in December 2012. See how that phone call from former North Korean fighter pilot No Kum Sok provided him with the perfect action story to animate the history of North Korea and the opportunity to tell a forgotten story.

• Provide the video to students for their own use in research for an independent or group project related to North Korea, recent world history, or related topics.
• Use the video in a flipped learning activity and have students come to class prepared to share two insights gained by watching the video and two questions they’d like answered through their own or class research.