North Korea’s Lifeline & Escape from North Korea (video reportings)
Lately, many interesting reportings on North Korea have surfaced; these video reportings below titled ‘Escape from North Korea’ and ‘North Korea’s Lifeline – Japan’ by Journeyman.tv could be interesting for the blog readers.
Synopsis: Escape from North Korea
“So many people have defected from North Korea that the government is now building a wall along the Chinese border. This exclusive report follows one family’s dangerous exodus.
At a safe house in China, a brother and sister collapse into each other arms. For months, ‘Uncle Jung’ has been trying to smuggle his sister and her family out of North Korea. Today, they crossed the Tumen river into China. “We wanted to wait for darkness but were afraid the guards would find us”, explains Park Myong Kwan. “So we just jumped into the river”. One risky journey may have ended for the Park family but another is just beginning. China regularly returns refugees to North Korea where they face almost certain execution. In contrast, Thailand deports immigrants to South Korea. Over the next week, the Parks will travel by any means possible to the Lao border, a journey of 4,000 miles. They don’t speak Chinese and don’t have any documents. “We feel like we’re lying on a chopping board right now”, confides Park Myong Kwan. “It’s like we’re gambling but the stakes are our lives”. But for them, the gamble pays off. They make it to Thailand before being arrested. In a few months, they will be flown to South Korea, where they can build a new life.”
Synopsis: ‘North Korea’s Lifeline – Japan’
“Despite its insularity, North Korea is successfully exporting its fanaticism through half a million expatriates living in capitalist Japan. Chongryun, the Workers Party of North Korea, is meeting in Tokyo. It’s easy to imagine we are in the heart of North Korea as over 10,000 fiercely patriotic members come together to celebrate the dictator Kim Jong II’s party leadership. Commitment to the cause starts young thanks to the Party schools run outside the jurisdiction of Japanese education authorities. This is the first time that the Northern Korean community has allowed any Western media to film inside their schools. Taught in Korean with censored North Korean text books, these children will never hear any criticism of their homeland. We follow eighteen year old Jong Ryol and his classmates as they prepare for their graduation visit to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang: a school trip into a country still considered hostile to the outside world, but for these students, a journey “home”. Jong Ryol returns from his trip with a glowing report Yet the bulk of funding from Japan does not come from patriotic ex-pats. Most of Japan’s 18,000 gambling parlours are owned by Koreans with an estimated $250 billion turnover. While North Koreans overlook their leaders’s autocratic ways, it seems he turns a blind eye to the origin of the money his regime receives.”
