In the communist revolution in North Korea, when they threw out the Japanese occupiers, they claimed the power in the dynamic of this volcano for their revolution, saying that this is at the center of the dynamics of our revolution. Everything that you encounter - you don't have, for example, any advertisements, you don't have anything like that anywhere in the country - if you see anything it would be propaganda, and propaganda always inevitably comes back to the volcano. It's always including the volcano. You see the new leader and standing behind him you see the volcano.
Werner HerzogThe paintings are not just on flat walls - you have these enormous niches, bulges and protrusions, as well as stalactites and stalagmites. The effect of the three-dimensionality is phenomenal. It's a real drama which the artists of the time understood, and they used it for the drama of their paintings.
Werner HerzogFragility of modern world leaves me with the idea we'd better anticipate what's going on. We take our right steps today and now. And we'd better avoid, that we are overdependent on, let's say, the internet.
Werner HerzogIt's very enigmatic because of course, the population [of North Korea] has no contact with the world outside or it's very, very limited. They don't have any telephone connections, no radio, no TV, no movies, no newspapers - nothing from the outside world. This is very strange and there's the very strict, unifying government that forces you to be in step. You see it in the stadium where the spectators create, by flipping cards, an image of the dear leader, or of the volcano, and it's made of a 100,000 human pictures.
Werner HerzogWhen I see a face, I see a face in general and I see you are curious, I see the curiosity but I don't not look after a dermatological report of your cheeks, and that's what you see when you're too high-resolution. And now desperately in post-production, in color grading, they are trying to wipe out the precision of the dermatological report.
Werner Herzog