Preview Screening: North Korea – Life Inside the Secret State

This Channel 4 Dispatches preview screening will be followed by a panel debate 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.

North Korea

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.