North Korea's great escape
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7426127.stm Version 0 of 1. Some remarkable television pictures have come to light of North Koreans overcoming extraordinary obstactles to escape their country and Olenka Frenkiel goes in search of the journalists who hid for months on end to film those attempting to flee. A North Korean woman and her 'guide' cross a partially frozen river Mr Lee opens a laptop and presses play. I see shades of green and black and a river at night and in the distance on the far bank the camera finds two figures. They start to cross, naked from the waist down, carrying their clothes to keep them dry. They are escaping. The images are from the Chinese side of the 324 mile-long (521km) Tumen River that forms part of the border with North Korea. Next, a naked man appears from the undergrowth, thin, wet and shivering. This time he is not escaping but trading. He is on business, courtesy of the North Korean border guards who take a cut of all the illicit traffic on this narrow stretch of river. He is sorry, he tells a group of potential customers who are waiting for him, he could not bring a woman this time but he can instead offer the contents of a small parcel wrapped in plastic that he takes out of his mouth. "Banguppi," he explains... the best. It is a heroin based crystal. He can bring them a kilogram if they want but now he has to get back before the shift change. Shivering uncontrollably he wades back into the freezing waters to North Korea. Human suffering There is much more. Astonishing, bizarre, terrifying and heartbreaking. Some I do not see until I fly to Seoul to talk to the South Korean camera crew, who filmed the footage, and hear how they staked out the river border and bribed the police to evade arrest while they filmed for 10 months to see what happens after North Koreans escape. I need to be sure though that this is what it claims to be... genuine footage shot in one of the world's most restricted zones. Kim Jong-il succeeded his father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994 In Seoul I see the rest, 50 hours of footage. The urchins who cross every day to beg and steal in China, adorable grinning cheeky-chappies demanding money with ruthless capitalist glee, to sing in praise of Kim Jong-il, their "dear leader". I see the long-lost sisters who meet after years apart only to fight. The older one, who escaped 10 years ago and who has returned to the border to get her younger sister out. And the younger one, who has agreed to be smuggled out of North Korea to meet her sister on the Chinese side, but who then refuses to stay. She says she will not betray the Communist north and goes back in tears. The material is an amazing and courageous piece of journalism that I, as a Westerner, could never have filmed And the incredible Geumhee, caught once by the Chinese and sent back - pregnant - to North Korea, where an abortion was forced on her. Geumhee escaped again and had a child in China. But Bosong was born with cerebral palsy and cannot walk. Geumhee audaciously allows herself to be filmed openly leaving China, not the usual way overland through Laos and Thailand, but with nerves of steel through Beijing airport on a false passport. As the child of a North Korean, her son has no legal status in China and cannot get schooling or medical help there. I met her in Seoul as she was still trying to raise the funds to help him. Why now? By the time I have examined their footage and questioned the filmmakers, I am convinced. The material is an amazing and courageous piece of journalism that I, as a Westerner, could never have filmed. I also know, having filmed in North Korea and met the survivors of its prison camps, that behind the facade shown to tourists lies a horror of human rights abuse, public executions and torture. It's our story and we should be onto it just like anybody else Journalist, The ChosunIIbo The ChosunIlbo - the South Korean newspaper behind this project - is a conservative organ with a hawkish history. They were out of favour for 10 years as successive South Korean governments pursued a "sunshine policy " of being nice to the North so as not to provoke its volatile leader. So why, I asked, had they embarked on this project now? "Indignation," they said, "and shame that we left the subject to Western journalists when these refugees are Koreans. "It's our story and we should be onto it just like anybody else," they told me. Inevitably, in a country where the Cold War lingers some will see it as propaganda, a resurgence of anti-communist rhetoric. But for the modest young team of cameramen and women who did this work - the filming and the waiting on that cold river bank - these ideological quarrels feel obsolete. A woman's body lies in the river bed where she died fleeing North Korea And for me? It is the pictures that matter. In the brilliant sunlight of an icy February day, the camera takes us onto the frozen river. A female figure lies, face down, hip raised in the classic pose of a reclining beauty, a North Korean woman - fully dressed - who fell while crossing. Like a sculpture cast in bronze, nameless, iconic, she is a monument to all the fallen who went unfilmed, their deaths unremarked. The Chinese guide who has brought the crew to see her has seen it all before. He kicks her foot. "Rock hard," he says and relieves himself nearby. Her body lay there for three weeks until the ice melted and she was washed away. From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 29 May, 2008 at 1100 BST on BBC Radio 4. 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