Plots(1)
Kim Jong Un rules the world's most secret and repressive state. But thanks to the digital revolution, Kim can no longer keep the world from seeing the reality of life in North Korea - or stop his own people from discovering that everything they have been told about the outside world is a lie. Dispatches films with Jiro Ishimaru, a fearless Japanese journalist who has risked his freedom for fifteen years, training undercover cameramen in North Korea. The programme follows Jiro's latest trip to the border with China, where he secretly meets one of his agents with the latest undercover footage revealing the reality of life in the secret state. The programme also follows Mr Chung, a former inmate of a political prison camp who escaped to the West, as he smuggles USB sticks and DVDs of South Korean soap operas and entertainment shows into the North, posing as a mushroom farmer. There are the first stirrings of open dissent: a woman running a bus service on the back of a lorry refuses to bribe a soldier, and more ominously for Kim Jong Un, there are mutterings of discontent and disrespect from an official commandeered to build a special railway to the supreme leader's birthplace. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)