7 Examples That Prove North Korea Takes Movies Way Too Seriously

2. North Korea Made a Twenty-Hour Long Spy Epic Featuring American Defectors

Unsung Heroes (AKA Nameless Heroes) is a twenty-hour long movie in 20 parts that were released from 1978 through 1981 about spies during the Korean War. It is an espionage adventure drama that tells the heroic "true story" (in North Korea's sense of the term) its spies played in the war. What makes the serial so significant besides its sheer length is the cast. Playing the villainous American and British personnel who supposedly masterminded the Korean War were four American soldiers who had defected to the country in the 1960s to escape the Vietnam War. When the film was finally acquired by the U.S. government in 1996, it proved that the four soldiers had been living in North Korea years after their defections. Of course, using actual Americans to play villainous Americans in Unsung Heroes was a high point for North Korea's movie propaganda machine, and the American "actors" became huge celebrities in North Korea because of their performances.