Preview Screening: North Korea – Life Inside the Secret State

North Korea is the most totalitarian regime still in existence, yet knowledge of the outside world is slowly but relentlessly filtering in, in the form of USB sticks and wind-up radios. Channel 4’s Dispatches followed North Korean defector Mr Chung and Japanese journalist Jiro Ishimaru, who smuggle information and video footage in and out of North Korea.

On 12 November the resulting documentary North Korea – Life Inside the Secret State was previewed at the Frontline Club followed by a discussion with director James Jones, Dr John Swenson-Wright, senior lecturer in Modern Japanese Politics and International Relations at the University of Cambridge, and Rajiv Narayan, researcher for East Asia Team at Amnesty International.

Jones started off by saying how he wanted to show the side of North Korea that’s not commonly seen in the outside world:

“Our objective starting out was to go beyond the media caricature of North Korea – which 90% of the stuff you see is about mad tubby little leaders with bad haircuts threatening the world with nuclear war. That’s not really what affects North Korean’s lives.”

“We didn’t really know what we were going to get until we saw the footage; some of the stuff I suppose is familiar – the poverty, lack of food…. But what really surprised us were the signs of cracks in the regime of control. People standing up to authority.”

Narayan said that cracks started to appear during the 1990’s food crisis:

“The food crisis has resulted in more than a million people dying and…the world food program still estimates that something like two thirds of the population just eat two meals a day… This is over the last twenty years, so it’s a very undernourished population.”

One of the most unexpected aspects of the documentary is the footage of North Korean women standing up to officials – one for the right to wear trousers, and one to run her private bus service. Narayan said the catalyst for this was the appearance of the black markets:

“In this footage…Jiro and the documentary shows so vividly  that markets have come to place. The government has tried very hard to stop it.”

“They tried some quirky ways which only you’d think of in countries like North Korea…under Kim Jong-il they tried to stop men from working in the markets  – so they allowed only women about age 49 for some reason. So women have got now economic power and you can see they’re challenging authority.”

Jones said of the women standing up to authority:

“I was genuinely struck by those women…it’s so satisfying to see these individuals [having the] self confidence to stand up to authority. . . . Women for the first time ever are the people who are going to the market and earning a living, so they’ve become the people pushing the boundaries of these changes.”

Narayan added that these markets are often key in spreading information among the people:

“The role of the markets is very crucial, because [they] allow channels of information. That’s the USBs, DVDs, food etc. People are no longer dependant on the North Korean authorities.”

“Access to information at the end is key; at the end it may not be the weaponry… it’s soft power that will eventually bring down the fort.”

Swenson-Wright said that jobs and economic development would be key to North Korea’s success, the freedom of its people and a soft transition devoid of conflict and military intervention:

“There’s an appetite now for them seeing economic prosperity as an opportunity for individuals. It’s a movement that’s not actually very political. It’s not about formally challenging authority. It’s simply the logic of a market world. Persuading people that North Korea is an international business is going to be the basis for their ability to survive this regime.”

Jones says that is hard to gauge the level of active opposition within North Korea:

“The sad truth about North Korea is that no none really knows. We spoke to a woman from the CIA and even they know nothing. She said that when Kim Jong-un came to power all they knew about him was an article they’d read in the New York Times six months earlier.”

“People just don’t know. We don’t have informers, we have defectors who can feed information but … it’s very hard to verify what a defector tells you. So you hear stories about people putting posters up saying ‘down with Kim Jong-un’… I take those kind of stories with a big pinch of salt … people just don’t take the risk.”

“In 2009 when the currency was re-valued – basically they chopped off two zeros – people were so pissed off that they actually took to the streets. It’s that kind of thing that gives you some hope that these latent feelings of cynicism about their rulers could one day translate into some kind of action.”

North Korea – Life Inside the Secret State will air on Thursday 14 November at 11.05 PM on Channel 4.

North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un is the world’s youngest dictator, ruling the world’s most repressive state. Through unique undercover material, director and producer James Jones reveals cracks in the regime and investigates the impact the information revolution has had in North Korea.

Jones follows Japanese journalist Jiro Ishimaru, who has been training undercover cameramen in North Korea for fifteen years. On his latest trip to the border with China, he secretly meets one of his agents and receives new undercover footage revealing the harsh reality of every day life on the other side of the border. The footage shows starving homeless children and the elite driving the latest Mercedes in Pyongyang.

We also meet Mr Chung – posing as a mushroom farmer, he smuggles USB sticks and DVDs of South Korean soap operas and entertainment shows into the North. Through these activities, Kim Jong Un 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 what the outside world is really like.

Photo by Daily NK

Directed and produced by James Jones
Duration: 48′
Year: 2013

This preview screening is in partnership with Dispatches, Channel 4’s investigative current affairs programme.

Michael Herr’s memoir of his time as a correspondent for Esquire magazine from 1967 to 1969, first published in 1977, was described as the best to have been written about the Vietnam War.

And the best piece of advice Mason received during his career?

It was a lesson from a feature writing tutor at Reed Business Information in the 1990s who taught him about the "nut graf". 

The nut graf is the part of the story that reveals the story’s content and message and explains its significance as a news story. It’s called the nut graf because, like a nut, it contains the “kernel,” or essential theme, of the story. You can read more about the nut graf here.

The Reflections events at the Frontline Club are a great opportunity to hear about the craft of journalism from the experts. 

ITV News’ Bill Neely’s discussion with VIn Ray was full of insight , as were those by other Reflections interviewees, including Lindsey Hilsum and Nick Robinson, who also reflect on what makes good television reporting.

If you want to hear more from Paul Mason, the BBC Newsnight’s economics editor about the lessons he’s learnt during his careers and the work of those journalists who inspired him, then book now for the latest in our Reflections series on Wednesday. Paul Mason will be in conversation with Matthew Eltringham, editor of the BBC College of Journalism website and events.

In fact, Knight and Nordland represented 100 percent of the world’s journalists covering the story when they were there. That’s right: as far as they could determine, they were the only recognisable journalists there reporting. How can this be? In a world of wealthy and powerful 24-hour news channels and networks, in a media world of committed documentary-makers, in a world of hungry freelancers, more than 2 million displaced people living in refugee camps are getting virtually no coverage.

Newsweek magazine deserves credit for bankrolling what was an expensive and time-consuming assignment. And it devoted four pages in both its domestic and international editions to the story. Knight and Nordland proved what tenacious and resourceful journalism is all about by overcoming all the obstacles to getting to the Darfur story. How they accomplished this and what they found is compelling listening and viewing on the Frontline video recording of their presentation. (www.frontlineclub.com)

It’s worth a reminder that the tragedy unfolds out of view while we’re being force-fed the media gluttony of Shilpa and Big Brother, Anna Nichole Smith, and Britney Spears.

For those who do take the risks to get to the Darfur and witness what is a complicated story now that the rebel groups are so badly divided themselves, there’s no guarantee that their stories will be aired or published.

Knight despairs about the celebrity-driven media market in Britain. Along with Mort Rosenblum and Simba Gill he plans to introduce a new serious quarterly international news magazine called Dispatches later this year that will feature reportage and photography from the sharp edge of journalism.

If mainstream journalism isn’t interested in Darfur – apart from admirable journalist-commentators such as the New York Times‘s Nicholas Kristof – is there anything that can be done to support freelancers who can’t afford to travel to Khartoum or N’Djamena and find a way to get in? What will it take to underwrite more independent filmmakers such as Phillip Cox, who first showed us the unfolding tragedy more than three years ago?

This is where the Frontline Club could make a difference. All it needs is to establish a fund for the coverage of humanitarian crises. A survey carried out by the Reuters Foundation and the Fritz Institute several years ago found that journalists, especially those living outside North America, would accept money from an “independent” source. Who is independent and what funders expect from their investment will always be an issue. But if the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation or any other reputable foundation wants to empower the Frontline Club to ensure that crises on the scale of Darfur don’t go uncovered, then surely the lesser evil is informing the world.