Secret State of North Korea (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

[Music] inside the north korea the regime wants to keep hidden the way north korean regime keeps the region going is this pervasive security apparatus and fear tactics if people stop believing in the regime that means central control is breaking down with undercover footage and exclusive interviews frontline uncovers a new generation risking their lives to smuggle images out and information in north korean defectors have emerged as very quiet agents of social progress threatening kim jong-un's total control of what the world sees of north korea and of what north koreans see of the world there really is a potential here that something quite dramatic could happen but how far will the new dictator go to hold on to power if a government is willing to kill as many people as necessary to stay in power it usually stays in power for a very long time frontline takes you inside the secret state of north korea [Music] oh [Music] is a journalist trying to expose what kim jong-un's regime wants to hide the secret world of the north korean people he has an undercover network which covertly films life inside the country [Music] obviously it's an extremely dangerous thing to do in north korea even filming everyday life is considered a form of political treason even filming on the chinese side of the border is illegal then [Music] the people who work for jiro smuggled their footage across the tumen river which divides china from north korea the north korean border guards have been known to shoot to kill the border has become even more tightly controlled since kim jong-un took over as supreme leader two years ago the third ruler in the kim dynasty after his father and grandfather he inherited the world's most isolated country where the people have no internet and the state has almost total control on any information coming in or out even with the tight security giro and his japanese news organization managed to get the footage out he's going to meet one of his contacts who's made it across the border with new images from north korea um [Music] secretly film in areas no foreigners or journalists are allowed to visit [Music] these are pictures kim jong-un doesn't want the world to see [Music] jiro has recruited a network of ordinary north koreans living in towns across the country they risk their lives to get the footage one of his contacts is a state employee but has been smuggling footage out for five years he agreed to speak if his identity was concealed [Music] this is dangerous and if i get caught i know i'd immediately be executed as a traitor to the korean people but i've got to do this i've got to do this no matter what i'm just one person even if i have to sacrifice my life someday something is going to change the famine which killed more than a million north koreans in the 1990s has ended but the united nations says the country is still vulnerable to food shortages and more than three quarters of the population don't have enough food to eat [Applause] over the past three years jiro's undercover network has filmed orphan street kids gathering in the markets begging for money and on the lookout for scraps of food for the safety of the people filming he disguises their voices foreign [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] very few of these orphaned children managed to escape north korea but we found one who did he asked to be identified as lee and agreed to speak to us if we concealed his true identity [Music] my father passed away when i was three and then my mother left home and didn't return i was almost always hungry when i was young there were times when i ate a meal a day but when i starved i didn't eat for two days [Music] did any of your friends die jesus yes they did how old were you all then i was about 11. [Applause] undercover footage from last march shows a group of homeless orphans trying to stay warm and below zero temperatures foreign there is an elite in the capital city pyongyang and despite tough international sanctions they live a comfortable life with the latest luxury goods this woman was filmed getting into a newly imported mercedes on her wedding day [Music] north korean state tv makes the country out to be a land of plenty [Music] they show pictures of an advanced economy well-fed children and shops overflowing with goods [Music] pyongyang's department store number one is stocked with imported products from around the world but as jiro's footage shows many of the items are not for sale [Music] the department store is regularly featured on state tv which tells its people they live in the best country on earth [Music] one of the regime's senior propagandists defected and is now living in the south as well as a physical dictatorship they oppress people with an emotional dictatorship in north korea they promote the leader to be the sun if you go too close you burn if you go too far you freeze to death you think of him as incredibly godlike we thought he didn't even go to the toilet koreans can't escape the omnipresent propaganda kim jong-un's speeches are pumped from speakers on street corners this one was on a loop for three months promising his people a bright economic future [Music] since the north and the south split in the late 1940s hatred of america has been central to north korean indoctrination this government video shows a north korean dreaming of new york city being destroyed by a missile attack [Music] the average north korean believes a significant part of the anti-american propaganda they believe that americans are ready to invade they believe that america is a threat they believe that americans started the korean war in order to enslave or maybe commit a large-scale genocide in korea they believe it not all but majority state tv news is broadcast on public squares warning of imminent war with america [Music] once a week whole villages are required to attend meetings glorifying the leader [Music] [Music] [Applause] the regime demands displays of total loyalty if you don't attend these weekly meetings you could come under suspicion the way north korean regime keeps the region going one of the reasons is fear tactics in north korea it's not only the person who commits the crime that is punished often their whole family will be arrested for guilt by association it's up to three generations when the senior most north korean defector hang downhill defected his relatives were rounded up in north korea and were sent to prison camps these guys didn't even know they were related to hong kong when when the security guards came knocking on their door they said well i'm related to kong it was like a ninth cousin this is how north korea operates recent satellite imagery analyzed by amnesty international shows that since kim jong-un came to power the political prison camps have grown two hundred thousand civilians that are outside of the criminal penal system the one of the camps poisson is 540 square kilometers is three times out of washington dc it's estimated that as many as 100 north koreans is a political prisoner many of whom were caught trying to defect still several thousand north koreans try to escape through china each year lee the former street kid fled when he was 18. i was very scared but i thought it's better to die than live like an insect [Music] i ate little bits of that as i went night i crossed the river when nobody was watching [Music] i crossed the river alone and made it into china i used the sun to get my directions and went inland defectors like lee risk getting caught and sent back by china north korea's closest ally but lee says he met a broker who smuggled him 2 000 miles to the south korean embassy in thailand he was granted asylum and flew to seoul where he has lived for the last two years he still hides his identity because he's afraid of north korean agents discovering him i graduated from high school in february this year i'm currently looking for a job but i'm not working yet although i live in south korea now it still troubles me to think about the north korean children who society that needs to be cured our footage is forcing north korea to acknowledge the hardship that their people face the authorities don't like it at all because if the truth gets out it would put kim jong-un's power under threat [Music] jiro ishimaru smuggles footage out of the country but there is also a steady flow of information back in jungkwang il is a defector living in seoul who smuggles foreign films and tv shows into north korea the men prefer watching action films men love their action films i sent them skyfall recently the women enjoy watching soap operas and dramas they like that kind of film now they're sharing thumb drives a lot even officials have one or two thumb drives north korea is trying to hunt them down because the thing that changes people's mindsets is popular culture that probably has the most important role in bringing about democracy in north korea [Music] jung and his partner also a defector are on their way to the chinese border to smuggle in laptops radios thumb drives and dvds of course there's a risk but i want to send them in so i just do it [Music] in north korea rumor has that there are 100 people that are desperate to get their hands on me but they don't know when i go do they they are filming their trip with a hidden camera posing as mushroom importers they bribed a border guard to let them across the border guard isn't where he said he'd be so they call him [Music] oh [Music] hey is [Music] the guard says he can't get them across so they decide to wait until night [Music] before defecting chong used to cross the border illegally as a smuggler until he was caught and accused of being a spy he was taken to a notorious political prison camp yodak when i arrived at the prison camp it was april 6 2000. it was awful when i went inside before i got arrested i weighed 165 pounds after 10 months when i looked at what i weighed i was 79 pounds i couldn't endure it anymore after three years in york he says the authorities determined he wasn't a spy and let him out a year later he defected and has been working against the regime ever since tonight he's going back to the border [Music] on the chinese side of the tumen river for his north korean smuggler they find each other by sparking their cigarette lighters [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] um [Applause] [Applause] [Music] the dvds and thumb drives make their way to markets across the country that are filled with goods illegally smuggled from china [Music] okay [Applause] [Music] within days jung smuggler delivers some of his thumb drives and dvds to two teenage girls and films them watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] my [Music] [Music] it's been reported that almost half of the north koreans who defect had watched foreign television even though it's illegal information and knowledge of the outside world is beginning to widen out this is far more inner penetration of north korean society today than before if north korean people themselves stop believing in the regime and the story they tell themselves that means central control is breaking down in some ways kim jong-un has reportedly been sending his security forces house to house searching for illegal dvds and last november ordered the execution of as many as 80 people some for watching foreign television [Applause] [Music] for north korea is a station staffed by defectors transmitting stories into the country from across the border in the south what the north korean regime fears the most is information about the outside world going into the country we tell the north korean people how vicious their dictatorship is if someone listens to these broadcasts and passes the story on to other people and if the story is political it becomes a very serious matter in these cases i understand that some even face public execution the story they are broadcasting today that kim jong-un's wife a former pop star recorded a pornographic video is quickly spreading around north korea and has provoked a vicious reaction the station reports that the singer of the popular song horse lady and other performers in this video have been executed for starting the rumor [Music] because north koreans are so cut off they're incredibly curious and we found that people take the risk of listening to these broadcasts surveys of defectors suggest that more than a million north koreans listen to illegal foreign radio [Music] the more i listen to the radio the more i thought what we've learned isn't true i've been fooled and has made me want to become free chanyang is 22 she lives in seoul but grew up in a remote region of north korea her father bought the family a radio which he modified to pick up foreign stations my father was preparing to come here since i was nine years old living constantly in fear like that was really difficult if we got caught the whole family would get taken away i was exhausted by it all so i asked my father even if it's north korea can't we just live safely but he said no i want your generation to learn when freely was 17 her family decided to defect to avoid raising suspicion they left at different times she was the last to leave were my friends and neighbors [Music] after two years laying low chanyang escaped through china and reunited with her family in seoul my brother and sister had grown up so much when i saw them and their accents had all changed too we were all back together again in a circle we're a family of five we were all just so happy that we didn't even need to say a word the first thing we did was just eat together [Music] chanyang now appears on a weekly tv show with other defectors called on my way to meet you here is my name and my phone it's broadcast in south korea but is a popular show smuggled back into the north and all the children of the party officials in north korea watch it and say they will defect we're going to talk about that today when my friends see me on the show they'll fantasize about south korea they'll say i've changed a lot in north korea i never smiled [Music] [Applause] the show is part current affairs [Music] part talent show [Music] part beauty pageant [Music] north korean de factos have emerged as very quiet agents of social progress in north korea because people often assume that they just leave north korea and that's it and at this point where you have over 20 000 north korean refugees that resettled in south korea that's a significant population that are joining forces to reconnect with their families back inside and when they see that one of them can leave that community go to south korea that's a huge wake up for them that shows just how much more advanced and how much more open south career is [Music] chung is back in seoul meeting with a group of defectors who are plotting against the north korean regime have found another way to penetrate kim jong-un's secret statement [Laughter] she suffered at the hands of the north korean regime her brother was caught trying to defect and she was punished she says she was locked up and tortured by security agents [Music] foreign she says the officers tied her brother's hands to the back of a truck and dragged him along a dirt road as an example to others [Music] escaped with her husband and son leaving her brother and mother behind [Music] [Music] foreign is [Music] sharp new warning of all out war for the first time the mysterious and secretive nation there is nothing imminent but these threatening statements have everyone on edge are we on the brink of a nuclear war last spring north korea became the first country since the cold war to threaten the united states mainland with a nuclear attack when watching this i thought wow even from north korean centers this is really over the top they always do the cycle of provocation it's just the intensity of the recent provocation was even greater [Applause] i don't think anybody really believed the north koreans were going to launch a nuclear missile at the united states but the basic question that rose does this guy know where the red line is does he know when the bluster should stop or is he really going to do something stupid this fellow may not know what is real and what is a video game [Music] western intelligence agencies were concerned because they knew so little about the young leader it's really sad but when kim jong-un first became known the cia had just won that picture of 11 year old boy with with that bretty grin and that's what we were working with uh that's what this is the photo that we had and what we knew about it was already in the new york times it wasn't really much more than that kim jong-un was brought up by his mother opera singer ko young ki one of kim jong-il's four wives he spent three years in a school in switzerland posing as the son of a diplomat at the age of 18 he was called back to pyongyang where he was secretly groomed to become leader [Music] state media had never shown kim jong-un or mentioned him by name until the year before his father's death in december 2011. he was then unveiled to the north korean public in this state-produced documentary [Music] [Music] kim jong-un succeeded his father and grandfather to become the new leader of north korea and north korea reverence for age experience these things matter and now you're sort of parading around this 29 year old guy who did not serve a day in the military i doubt that people genuinely have that kind of feeling towards kim jong un as they did for kim jong-un but the north korean government spread these rumors that although he was young he was very wise that's what the government kept saying [Music] giro's undercover footage shows people all over the country being forced to prove their dedication to the new leader but some resenting having to do it [Music] these soldiers were ordered to build a railroad from kim jong-un's birthplace to pyongyang to mark him coming to power the undercover footage even shows a local official criticizing kim jong-un's succession [Music] to compensate for his lack of experience the regime made parallels with his grandfather kim il-sung who is still widely worshipped and is officially eternal president of north korea there's all kinds of rumors that kim jong-un even had cosmetic surgery to look like his grandfather but certainly his style he seems to be more like kim song as well trying to be a reincarnation of his grandfather which is actually smart in a way because his grandfather is remembered by a lot of north koreans as a much more benevolent leader than his father pr style at the moment according to the defectors that i've spoken with who've left the country fairly recently the economy has not improved under kim jong-un the problem for kim jong-un is that north korean's expectations are changing because more information is flowing in it's getting very difficult to make people better there are very few people left who blindly obey every command that comes from behind closed doors even members of the north korean elite have voiced unhappiness with the regime like this um [Music] the cynicism about their leaders comes partly from radical change in the way people make a living [Music] looking at footage shot inside north korea we can see that a huge number of people have started doing business with each other this used to be illegal and anyone caught buying or selling for personal gain was severely punished illegal markets first began to appear when the state became unable to feed its people during the famine today the state tolerates them but people are pushing the limits of private enterprise this woman is running an illegal private bus service an army officer tries to stop her from picking up passengers [Applause] [Laughter] [Music] people's willingness to confront or ignore authority has become more and more common [Music] often now when north koreans are challenged for infringing a certain law as long as the offense is not political they don't hesitate to protest if they believe the law to be irrational until recently it was illegal for women to wear pants soldiers are arguing with this woman about breaking the dress code [Music] [Applause] but before long she rips it off and a senior officer steps in [Music] five years ago cell phones arrived in north korea the undercover footage shows dozens of people lining up to buy sim cards the phones can only make calls inside north korea but they can be modified to call outside the country a very serious crime there's an awareness and ability for the population to communicate instantaneously that was never there before north korea went from zero to one million cell phone registrations in three years and but to get from one million to two million it only took one year and probably to get from two million to three million will only take six months that concrete wall that has been there for 60 years or so will become more porous [Music] these changes cannot be stopped marketization information flows all of these kind of trends lead to a transformation one way or another of north korea the system as it stands is just unsustainable kim jong-un faces the dictator's dilemma which is they need to open up to survive but the process of opening up could lead to the collapse of the regime not the state but other regime and so this is a dilemma that he faces it's one his father faced that's what his grandfather faced this dilemma has led to a power struggle at the very top of the government according to the regime's former propagandist in the past there weren't hardliners and reformers there was only party loyalty however rival factions have formed fact a split exists shows he hasn't got a stable leadership like his father so the only way for kim jong-un to hold on to power is through a reign of terrorism children kim jong-un came to power surrounded by his father's generals since then he has purged almost half of the top military in december 2013 his uncle jiangsung tek an advocate for reform who'd served at the top of the government for 30 years was forcibly removed from a party meeting a week later he was executed [Music] if a government is willing to kill as many people as necessary to stay in power it usually stays in power for very long time there are many people who are not happy there are many people who in the privacy of their bedrooms sometimes say something very very subversive to their wives and most trusted friends but no networks and no activities yet because the government is brutal even if let's say the public is more aware of the outside world is that going to necessarily lead them to have a revolution several people cannot even get together to even talk about it with what's happened in the middle east there's a twitter there's facebook there's people can get mobilized they can get together the way korean system is set up right now they don't have any kind of mechanism to do that i think in the case of north korea there are credible pieces that you can put together and say there really is a potential here that something quite dramatic could happen no one could predict the collapse of the soviet union no one could predict the arab spring afterwards everybody said it was obvious [Music] it's not easy to predict when the regime will fall however the foundations of change in north korea are being laid [Music] north koreans have undergone a huge shift in their collective mindset i think change will come [Music] for more on this and other frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org frontline front lines secret state of north korea is available on dvd to order visit shoppbs.org or call 1 800 play pbs frontline is also available for download on itunes [Music] you

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

Views: 2,732,099

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Id: N-cX1d4BSCI

Length: 53min 18sec (3198 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021