Hyeonseo Lee was just seventeen when she fled North Korea. She found herself in China, alone and with no identity. Her mother’s first words over the telephone to her lost daughter were “Don’t come back”.

In her memoir The Girl with Seven Names, Lee recounts her life inside the secretive and brutal communist regime: the ‘self-criticism’ classes in primary school; forcibly joining the Youth Corps aged nine; and witnessing public executions of people who had not mourned enough for the death of Kim Il-Sung. She describes her escape and brave efforts to persuade her mother and brother to join her.

We are pleased to welcome Hyeonseo Lee to the Frontline Club to share her insight into growing up North Korea, the story of her escape and how she went on to rebuild her life and discover her identity. She will be talking to Paul French, an author and a widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international bestseller Midnight in Peking.

Hyeonseo Lee lived in North Korea until her escape in 1997. She arrived in Seoul in 2008, where she currently lives, and has recently graduated from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. As a student, she was a Young Leader at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a journalist at the Ministry for Unification and a selected member of the ‘English for the Future’ programme at the British Embassy in Seoul. She is an international campaigner for North Korean human rights and refugee issues and speaks on the subject all over the world, including at the UN and the Oslo Freedom Forum.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Jang Jin-sung, a poet laureate for North Korea, led a privileged life unaware of the suffering of his fellow countrymen. He was a cadre in Section 5 (Literature), Division 19 (Poetry) of Office 101 and was personally endorsed by Kim Jong-il for a triumphalist poem he’d penned glorifying the Kim dynasty and the state.

It was only following a visit to his home town, where he witnessed suffering, starvation and unimaginable poverty, that he began to question the system in which he lived. What followed is an extraordinary story of awakening, terror and escape.

Jang Jin-sung will be joining us to share his story and give us an insight in to the circles of power and privilege in North Korea. We will also be joined by experts to reflect on Jang Jin-sung’s story and explore what it reveals about the inner workings of North Korea’s elite.

Chaired by John Everard, a retired British diplomat who served as British Ambassador to North Korea. He is author of Only Beautiful, Please: A British Diplomat in North Korea.

The panel:

Jang Jin-sung is a former court poet for North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. Since leaving the country he has become a bestselling author and poet. He has been awarded the Rex Warner Literary Prize and read his poetry at London’s Cultural Olympiad in 2012. He now lives in South Korea and is editor-in-chief of New Focus International. He is author of Dear Leader.

Paul French is an author and a widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international bestseller Midnight in Peking. He has lived and worked in Shanghai for many years and has visited North Korea on a number of occasions.

Join us with a panel of experts to break down the escalating rhetoric and examine the intentions of DPRK. We will be asking if Kim Jong-un, the 29-year-old inexperienced leader, is just attempting to bolster his image at home or if there is any weight behind his threats.

Chaired by Charles Scanlon, BBC East Asia editor. He was BBC Korea correspondent from 1994 – 1997 and Japan and Korea correspondent 2000 – 2007.

With:

Dr John Swenson-Wright is Fuji Bank University senior lecturer in Modern Japanese Studies at the East Asia Institute, University of Cambridge. He is a senior consulting fellow at the Asia Programme, Chatham House.

Andrea Berger is a research fellow for nuclear analysis at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and deputy director of the UK project on nuclear issues.

John Everard is a retired British diplomat, who served as British Ambassador to North Korea. He is author of Only Beautiful, Please: A British Diplomat in North Korea and is now a consultant for the UN.

Little is known about the prison camps of North Korea where it is estimated that 200,000 are imprisoned. Many are born in the camps and generations of families are imprisoned because one of their relatives has been detained.

Shin Dong-Hyuk is one such case. He was born 26 years ago in Camp 14 in Pyeongan province, known as a ‘complete control district’, where the only sentence is life.

For most of his life all he knew was the camp, working 12 to 15-hour days mining coal, building dams or sewing military uniforms. If inmates were not executed they were killed in work-related accidents or died of an illness usually triggered by hunger.

But after the execution of his mother and brother, Shin Dong-Hyuk decided to try and escape. No one born into a North Korean prison camp has ever escaped before.

Shin Dong-Hyuk will be joining us at the Frontline Club with Blaine Harden whose book Escape from Camp 14; One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West recounts his extraordinary journey.

Blaine Harden is an author and journalist who reports for PBS Frontline and contributes to The Economist. He worked for The Washington Post as a correspondent in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia, as well as in New York and Seattle. He was also a national correspondent for The New York Times and writer for the Times Magazine.

Chaired by Charles Scanlon, Asia Pacific editor at BBC World Service and formerly BBC correspondent in Japan and South Korea from 2000 to 2007.

Little is known about Kim Jong-il’s youngest son Kim Jong Un but his promotion to North Korea’s powerful defence commission is being interpreted as a clear sign that he is being groomed to be his father’s heir.

If Kim Jong-il is paving the way for a handover of power to a third generation of his faimily, what does this mean for the future of the communist dynasty and its economic and foreign polices?

With so much of what goes on inside North Korea veiled in secrecy we will be discussing what recent developments mean for North Korea and its relationships with its neighbours and the world beyond.

With North Korea’s nuclear threat said to have reached an “alarming level” we will turn to the issue of nuclear proliferation and assess the dangers posed not only by North Korea, but also Libya Iran and the South Asia region. An opportunity to ask questions and discuss with experts.

With:

Aidan Foster-Carter, Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea at Leeds University;

Charles Scanlon, BBC correspondent in Japan and South Korea from 2000 to 2007, currently an editor at BBC World Service news;

Tim Tate, investigative journalist and film maker, director of Dirty Little Secrets;

Mark Fitzpatrick, director of Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at International Institute for Strategic Studies;

More to be confirmed shortly.

Hosted by Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, October’s First Wednesday discussion will be another opportunity to join in a lively public meeting which brings together experts and commentators and mix their views with contributions from our audience.

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Just announced: John Laurence will be joining the panel.

Join us for this special event to discuss the iconic war reportage, to mark 35 years since the end of the Vietnam War.

This special event brings together reporters who covered Vietnam to reflect on the war that changed the way the public think about conflict.

Saturation bombing, worldwide protests, napalm, agent orange and an estimated two million lives lost.

Has any war since had such an impact on the public psyche? Why was the reaction to the carnage in Vietnam so strong? Was it because of a lack of conviction in the cause the US was fighting for? Or was it because of these reporters and photographers and their work that so poignantly captured the brutality of war?

Jon Swain was the only British journalist in Phnom Penh when it fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975. His coverage of these events and their aftermath won him the British Press Award for Journalist of the Year. His story was retold in the Oscar-winning film, The Killing Fields and his bestselling book River of Time. Swain wrote an article about covering Vietnam in his early 20s in the most recent issue of Frontline: A Broadsheet.

French war photographer Patrick Chauvel was only 18 when he started covering the Vietnam war. In the years that followed he has covered over 20 wars and in 1995 won the World Press Photo award for Spot News. He is the author of two books in French, Rapporteur de Guerre and Sky.

John Laurence, author of the prize-winning memoir The Cat from Hue, covered the war for CBS News from 1965 to 1970 and made the multi-award winning documentary The World of Charlie Company. He also covered 15 other wars in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

This special event will be moderated by Michael Nicholson OBE, former senior foreign correspondent for ITN. Nicholson reported for over 25 years from 15 conflicts, including Vietnam. The film Welcome to Sarajevo and his book Natasha’s Story were both based on his experiences covering the war in Bosnia.

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The sinking of the South Korean navy ship Cheonan and the subsequent international report that found a North Korean submarine’s torpedo was responsible, has lead to heightened tension between the two countries that co-exist uncomfortably at a constant level of alert.

North Korea is once again in the spot light, but what lies behind the borders of this most secretive of countries? The totalitarian regime stands accused of systematic human rights abuses amongst the worst in the world, its prison camps have been compared to the concentration camps in Nazi Germany and it is reported that there are acute food shortages due to economic mismanagement and natural disasters.

Join us at the Frontline Club with an expert panel to discuss the implications of recent events, the role and responsibility of the international community and what life is like for people living in this most secretive of countries.

With Vitit Muntarbhorn, former UN Special Rapporteur on situation of human rights in North Korea; Lord Alton of Liverpool, chair of the all party parliamentary group for North Korea; Professor Hazel Smith, professor of security and resilience at Cranfield University and author of Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance and Social Change in North Korea and North Korean refugee, Mrs Park Ji-hyun.

Chaired by Charles Scanlon, BBC correspondent in Japan and South Korea from 2000 to 2007, currently an editor at BBC World Service news.

US Army Photo by Edward N. Johnson

Philip Jones Griffiths, widely considered to be one of the greatest war photographers of the twentieth century presents his Vietnam Trilogy; photographs from the books that became classics of photojournalism and had a major influence on American perceptions of the war.

Griffiths joined the Magnum Photo Agency in 1966 after stints with the Sunday Times and Observer, before he first travelled to South East Asia. His seminal work, Vietnam Inc, was published in 1971 and has been cited as the most effective book of photojournalism published on the war.

He worked throughout Asia in the 1970s before relocating to New York to serve as president of Magnum for a record five years between 1980-85.

His two other works on Vietnam, Agent Orange and Vietnam at Peace, were published in 2003 and 2005 respectively by Trolley books.

Paul French, Director of Access Asia, talks to The Economist’s Simon Long about life in North Korea, the most isolated country in the world, plagued by famine, industrial decline and repression.