North Korea: Life Inside The Secret State
Kim Jong Un, the world's youngest dictator, rules the world's most secret and repressive state. But the walls are beginning to crumble. Thanks to the digital revolution, Kim can no longer keep the world from seeing the reality of life in North Korea - and just as importantly, he can't stop his own people from discovering that everything they have been told about the outside world is lies.
With unique access to astonishingly brave teams of undercover film-makers, Dispatches investigates the information revolution that is ending North Korea's sixty years of isolation. We follow Mr Chung, the former inmate of of a political prison camp who escaped to the west, as he risks his freedom smuggling USB sticks and DVDs of South Korean soap operas and entertainment shows into the North, posing as a mushroom farmer. He says that his biggest hit so far has been the Bond movie 'Skyfall'.
Dispatches films with Jiro Ishimaru, a fearless Japanese journalist, who has risked his freedom for fifteen years, training undercover cameramen in North Korea. We follow his latest trip to the border with China, where he secretly meets one of his agents - and we see the latest undercover footage that reveals the truth about life in the secret state. Homeless children are starving in the streets. The elite in Pyongyang drive the latest Mercedes, while kids scrabble for crumbs nearby. One secret film-maker asks to buy goods in Pyongyang's No. 1 Department Store - but he's told he can't: they're just for show, to impress the foreigners. And we see the first stirrings of open dissent. A woman running a bus service on the back of a lorry refuses to bribe a soldier, and instead openly screams abuse. More ominously for Kim Jong Un, we hear mutterings of discontent and disrespect from an official comandeered to build a special railway to the supreme leader's birthplace. "How much does he know about the military? He shouldn't be there....he's hopeless!
