Live a Worthwhile Life

[October 27, 2025] I was intrigued by the view of a North Korean defector who watched an American War movie: Saving Private Ryan.  Her perspective on “war movies” and the differences how the Hermit Nation addresses war versus how America views it, was startling, and indicative of how Communists view human existence.  Hanaya’s takeaway is that we must learn how to live a worthwhile life.

Hanaya is a recent defector who escaped North Korea with her family.  Her YouTube channel documents the contrast between our two nations, but crucially, the difference in the impact of cultural differences.  And that is brought out in how war is viewed, how we see the value of life, and who we owe allegiance to.

Hanaya begins with a discussion of her growing suspicion about what she had been taught while a citizen of North Korea.  She questions whether everything she learned there was a lie.  To answer her own question, she decides to watch an American war movie.  Exactly why she settles on a war movie, at least at first, is unclear but her reasoning bears out a clear lesson, answering her questions.

The movie Saving Private Ryan caught her eye.  She asks, “Is this about saving a soldier?”  And, then if it’s about saving a soldier, “Is it an actual war movie?”

The movie begins with the D-Day Normandy Landings in northern France, June 1944.  “Shells exploded, bullets flew, and soldiers fell helplessly, as if I were right there on the battlefield.”  She watches the full two-hour movie without looking away, even for a moment.  Hanaya says that sometimes “the act of watching a movie becomes an experience rather than just viewing.”  This movie was that kind of experience for her.

This movie shook the world view that had dominated her mind up to that point.  “The raw scenery of limbs being torn off, intestines spilling out, and the sea turning red with blood, the sight of soldiers falling to the hail of bullets the moment the ramp dropped.”

The sights and sounds of this movie “directly contradicted my past memories” that showed that war was a “noble sacrifice” or a “glorious victory.”  This is how war movies in a Communist nation frames the battlefield; it’s about how the individual is subservient to the nation state and any individualism is not allowed.

”All the war movies I saw in North Korea were epics about defeating the enemy for the regime and the Kim family.  And there was no such thing as the misery of an individual dying in terror, crying out for their mom.” – Hanaya

The realism of this movie, she sensed for the first time, the true weight of the word “war.”  She tells us that she is aware that the movie is a mere story, not a true story, but the fact that the movie could be made with such an astonishing story was amazing to her.

What was most “shocking” about this movie was the nature of the mission; an order to rescue one soldier, Private Ryan.  Ryan was the last remaining son of a mother who had already lost three of her sons in the war.  And the plot of eight soldiers going deep into enemy territory for that one person, disrupted all the logic in her mind that she had been taught in Communist North Korea.

Hanaya had learned in North Korea that any effort to save an individual was reactionary and a waste.  A place where the individual exists for the state and the leader, and where a whole family’s sacrifice is considered an honor.  The mission of these soldiers to rescue on soldier was incomprehensible by the logic of that place, where a survivor would become a target of punishment and surveillance.

I seemed the soldiers who came along felt the same way.  Captain Miller’s squad members carrying out the mission also voiced their complaints.  “They were questioning orders, demanding logic, and weighing their own ‘lives.’”  That these soldiers could voice their feelings and thoughts so honestly without being punished was a shock.

She notes that even Captain Miller frames the mission with a personal motive.  “If this mission earns me the right to get back to my wife, then that’s my mission.”  His mission was not to satisfy the state or some ideology, but the deeply personal existence of his wife was his reason for enduring the hell of the battlefield.

“Even inside the giant machine of war, they had not given up on being human.”

Captain Miller’s confession was that his humanity would be eroding the longer the war went on, confused Hanaya.  She quotes Captain Miller to emphasize this point, “I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel.”  This is not the cheers of a hero, but the anguish of someone becoming a killer.  She notes that he is so different from the heroes she knew in the Communist movies.

When Captain Miller’s soldiers finally meet Private Ryan, he refuses the order to be rescued.  The reason he gave was not the state, but people.  “Tell her [Ryan’s mother]  that when you found me, I was with the only brothers I had left and that there was no way I was deserting them.”  To Private Ryan, brothers were not just blood relatives, but those soldiers fighting alongside him; brothers sharing life and death, not bound by ideology.

In the end, they fought together, and Captain Miller died saving Private Ryan.  His last words destroyed every slogan Hanaya had heard her entire life in North Korea.  “This Ryan had better be worth it.  He better go home and cure a disease or invent a longer-lasting light bulb or something. Earn this.  Earn it.  Don’t let it be in vain.  Live a worthy life.”

Hanaya highlights the fact that the last words of Captain Miller were not “avenge me or win for the motherland.”  Miller just spoke of one person’s life.  He was saying that all the horrific sacrifices could be redeemed by one person living a worthy life.  One worthy life could be greater than the immense weight of a nation’s sacrifice.

”When the movie ended, I realized Saving Private Ryan was not just a movie to me.  It was a monumental event that shattered the great wall of lies that had bound me in North Korea; the lie of the individual’s sacrifice for the whole with a hammer called humanity.”

Her idea of what it is to live a human life, she admits, has now just begun.

Live a worthy life.

Hanaya can be found on YouTube at @Hanaya21.

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Please read my books:

1. “55 Rules for a Good Life,” on Amazon (link here).
2. “Our Longest Year in Iraq,” on Amazon (link here).