SHANE SMITH: Hey, it's
Shane from Vice. And this show features
all of our best shit from over the years. It's some freaky, freaky
business, and we hope you like it. Welcome to Vice Presents. I actually went to North
Korea twice. The first time we snuck
in, they wouldn't let me shoot anything. And then while we were there,
we got drunk doing karaoke with some generals. And they let us come in the
second time when we shot. But when they heard what we had
shot, and when they saw the documentary, they
got mad at us. In fact, my PA called me one day
and said, don't come into the office. There's two North Koreans
here from the embassy. Problem is, they don't have
an embassy in America. So I didn't go into the office,
and I'm sure as hell not going back to North Korea. Nobody knows anything about
North Korea, so we were fascinated by it. And we tried to get in for a
year and a half but couldn't, because North Korea doesn't
let anyone in. They do not want anyone to
corrupt their 100% homogeneous society that is 100% ruled by
one person, Kim Jong-il. In the end, we just got so
frustrated that we ended up flying to South Korea and
saying, well, at least we can go to the DMZ and put our foot
into North Korea and at least see a little bit of
it from the South. Let's go see the DMZ, which is
the Demilitarized Zone, which is the border between North
Korea and South Korea. Since the Korean War ended, it's
been the most militarized zone on earth, with two million
estimated troops on the North Korean side,
about 500,000 on the South Korean side. Missiles pointed at each other,
artillery, tanks. There's three million mines
on the border itself. In fact, there are so many mines
that the North Koreans built invasion tunnels where
they went 70 meters down. And they're like, we can be in
Seoul in an hour and a half. Now the CIA and the American
Army have found a number of these, but they think that
there's even more. It's been called the end of
the world, and it's the closest you can get to
seeing North Korea. Getting to the DMZ isn't easy. It's only an hour and a half
North of Seoul, but you have to go through about
15 checkpoints. Then you have to go through
a United Nations sort of indoctrination session, where
they're like, don't point, don't look at them,
don't take any pictures, don't do anything. We're only going to be there
for two and a half minutes. So we're at the last stop
in South Korea before going to the DMZ. This here is Freedom Bridge, but
after the Korean War was the last time the North and
South exchanged POWs. And on the other side of that
now, a little further back, is North Korea. Right here, it's kind of
like a theme park. But as you see just beyond the
theme park, kind of hidden by the trees, there's barbed wire
and land mines and checkpoints everywhere. So it's kind of a very
bizarre theme park. So a lot of families come, and
they put up messages or prayers for their family in the
North that they've been split and never allowed
to see. So they all come here and make a
pilgrimage and say, OK, this is what I'm going to put up. Someone's put up some
golf balls there. I think the South's going to
lose pretty damn quick. They're going to be sort of rave
soldiers, brought up on PlayStation. Versus the North Koreans
who eat grass and sleep with their AK. And so you get off the bus,
and you look across, and there's North Korea. They're like, that's North
Korea, get back on the bus. You could start World War III. They really get you terrified. They let you into one barracks
room, and the barracks room is half in North Korea, half
in South Korea. And they set that up so that
they could have talks. But it's the only place where
you can go and actually set foot, technically,
into North Korea. And this is as close as 99.9%
of the people in the world will ever get to getting
into North Korea. And people are like,
that's North Korea. MALE SPEAKER: So that
piece of concrete-- SHANE SMITH: That concrete--
so the gravel is South, the concrete is the demarcation
line, and the sand is-- MALE SPEAKER: North. SHANE SMITH: No finger
pointing. We're like, dude, we have
to get into North Korea. We have to get in. GEORGE BUSH: North Korea has a
regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass
destruction. States like these and their
terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil arming
to threaten the peace of the world. The United States of America
will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to
threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons. SHANE SMITH: We couldn't
get in. We tried through the Embassy,
through press, through Swedish embassy, British embassy,
Canadian embassy, German embassy. And I was saying to myself,
what in God's name is going on here? So we were interviewing North
Korean refugees in South Korea, and a few of them had
said, just go to Shenyang and bribe the consulate there. That's what everybody
else does. So we were in South Korea, and
we said why not, we're here? So we flew up to China, and
we had nothing to lose. And we met the consul
in Shenyang, paid a fee, a visa fee. And we left our passports there,
and in fact most of our money, and we went back to
this North Korean hotel. We had to stay in one of their
hotels in Northern China, and we were supposed to hear
back from them at 4:00 the next afternoon. At 6:00 in the morning, there's
a banging on our door, and we wake up all
discombobulated. And they're like, we have
to go now, here's your passport, let's go. And we're like where
are we going? Where are we going? And they don't give you any time
to react, not one second. They take you right out from
the room at 6:00 in the morning, get you on the plane. Shenyang, you know, you've
got to come to Shenyang. Stay here at the North Korean
hotel with concrete beds. You're not allowed to bring
anything into North Korea. You can't bring a cellphone,
you can't bring a computer, you can't bring any printed
material, any music. They don't want you to
have anything that you even leave there. In fact, they don't want you to
bring any type of camera in that was too sophisticated. No telephoto lenses, nothing. You can bring basically
a point and shoot, and that's it. In fact, when you go in you have
to sign a thing saying I'm not bringing in anything. And let me tell you, if they
find out that you did, you're in deep shit. And then you're flying from
Shenyang to Pyongyang in North Korea, and you go holy shit,
we're going to North Korea. And with the express purpose of
shooting, which you're not allowed to do. With the express purpose of
making a documentary, which you're not allowed to do. This is terrifying. So from the first minute I got
there, I was shit scared. SHANE SMITH: First sight of
Pyongyang, pretty dismal. We're in a hotel that's
about 47 stories tall. Nobody's in it. I think there's only one floor
with any people on it. We're in the hotel, and we've
been told that they're bugged, that they're listening to us. I don't know if whispering
is going to help. That might be where
it all stems from. Hello? Hello? Oh! Come in. Come in, Tokyo. Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? We're here. Right after we get there, we
were taken for our first meal. And the first time you eat in
North Korea, it's kind of a sign of the very weird
things to come. FEMALE SPEAKER:
[SPEAKING KOREAN] Oh, this is where we go, here? Table is over here. FEMALE SPEAKER: Sit please. SHANE SMITH: We're in the
big banquet room. As you can see, it's huge. There's about 20 women, we're
getting ready for our dinner. First of all, they give you
about three or four courses of absolutely inedible food. It's just matter, it's
like fried matter. And you're kind of going,
yeah, yeah. But you're waiting for everyone
to fill in, when's this banquet happening? When's the banquet? There is no banquet. Where is everyone? It's not very busy here. They realize they've gotten so
much bad press for not having food that they want to show oh,
there's plenty of food, food everywhere. And they're carefully laying
out the food the whole time you're eating. And then as you're leaving you
notice they're pulling all the things they've just carefully
laid into little tiny trays they're carefully going
to bring back and keep for the next day. And you're just sitting there
by yourself, eating your matter, going OK, I've
come to crazy land. Thanks a lot. I hope you liked the episode. And if you did, subscribe
to our channel. Why? Because it's the easiest way
to check out our shit.
