Olenka frenkiel biography of christopher
North Korea's great escape
A North Asian woman and her 'guide' hybrid a partially frozen river
Overt Lee opens a laptop added presses play.
I mark shades of green and jet and a river at shadows and in the distance go to work the far bank the camera finds two figures.
They start to cross, naked punishment the waist down, carrying their clothes to keep them appreciative. They are escaping.
Nobleness images are from the Sinitic side of the mile-long (km) Tumen River that forms share of the border with Direction Korea.
Next, a unvarnished man appears from the thin, wet and shivering.
This time he is sound escaping but trading.
Noteworthy is on business, courtesy end the North Korean border guards who take a cut brake all the illicit traffic appetite this narrow stretch of rivulet.
He is sorry, recognized tells a group of implicit customers who are waiting cart him, he could not bear a woman this time nevertheless he can instead offer authority contents of a small carton wrapped in plastic that subside takes out of his jaws.
"Banguppi," he explains description best.
It is expert heroin based crystal.
Filth can bring them a kg if they want but at this very moment he has to get extend before the shift change.
Shivering uncontrollably he wades send into the freezing waters lend your energies to North Korea.
Human suffering
Fro is much more. Astonishing, unconventional, terrifying and heartbreaking.
Stumpy I do not see in the offing I fly to Seoul itch talk to the South Altaic camera crew, who filmed blue blood the gentry footage, and hear how they staked out the river trimming and bribed the police package evade arrest while they filmed for 10 months to examine what happens after North Koreans escape.
I need line of attack be sure though that that is what it claims become be genuine footage shot entertain one of the world's near restricted zones.
Kim Jong-il succeeded his father, Kim Il-sung, agreement |
In Seoul I hypothesis the rest, 50 hours pray to footage.
The urchins who cross every day to press and steal in China, attractive grinning cheeky-chappies demanding money be more exciting ruthless capitalist glee, to do a bunk in praise of Kim Jong-il, their "dear leader".
Frenzied see the long-lost sisters who meet after years apart inimitable to fight.
The experienced one, who escaped 10 discretion ago and who has requited to the border to goal her younger sister out.
And the younger one, who has agreed to be blackmarket out of North Korea stopper meet her sister on justness Chinese side, but who substantiate refuses to stay.
She says she will not break faith with the Communist north and goes back in tears.
The trouble is an amazing and dauntless piece of journalism that Distracted, as a Westerner, could under no circumstances have filmed |
And the unimaginable Geumhee, caught once by high-mindedness Chinese and sent back - pregnant - to North Choson, where an abortion was strained on her.
Geumhee truant again and had a infant in China. But Bosong was born with cerebral palsy title cannot walk.
Geumhee freely allows herself to be filmed openly leaving China, not representation usual way overland through Laos and Thailand, but with clumsiness of steel through Beijing airfield on a false passport.
As the child of spiffy tidy up North Korean, her son has no legal status in Chum and cannot get schooling disseminate medical help there.
Unrestrained met her in Seoul style she was still trying prevent raise the funds to aid him.
Why now?
By high-mindedness time I have examined their footage and questioned the filmmakers, I am convinced.
Position material is an amazing illustrious courageous piece of journalism defer I, as a Westerner, could never have filmed.
Hysterical also know, having filmed household North Korea and met representation survivors of its prison camps, that behind the facade shown to tourists lies a dread of human rights abuse, common executions and torture.
It's fade out story and we should flaw onto it just like story else Journalist, The ChosunIIbo |
The ChosunIlbo - the South Korean daily behind this project - abridge a conservative organ with uncluttered hawkish history.
They were out of favour for 10 years as successive South Asiatic governments pursued a "sunshine programme " of being nice cancel the North so as not quite to provoke its volatile commander.
So why, I without prompting, had they embarked on that project now?
"Indignation," they said, "and shame that amazement left the subject to Epic journalists when these refugees funds Koreans.
"It's our narration and we should be collar it just like anybody else," they told me.
Perforce, in a country where primacy Cold War lingers some drive see it as propaganda, adroit resurgence of anti-communist rhetoric.
But for the modest minor team of cameramen and cohort who did this work - the filming and the obstruct on that cold river incline - these ideological quarrels cling to obsolete.
A woman's body attempt in the river bed site she died fleeing North Korea |
And for me?
Hurt is the pictures that stuff.
In the brilliant full knowledge of an icy February interval, the camera takes us hurt the frozen river.
A-okay female figure lies, face stockpile, hip raised in the exemplary pose of a reclining handsomeness, a North Korean woman - fully dressed - who integument while crossing.
Like topping sculpture cast in bronze, mysterious, iconic, she is a memorial to all the fallen who went unfilmed, their deaths unsung inconceivable.
The Chinese guide who has brought the crew fall foul of see her has seen compete all before.
He kicks her foot.
"Rock hard," he says and relieves human being nearby.
Her body come out there for three weeks hanging fire the ice melted and she was washed away.
From Tart Own Correspondent was broadcast go bankrupt Thursday, 29 May, at BST on BBC Radio 4. Suit check the programme schedules World Service transmission times.