BBC News: The extraordinary process of secretly interviewing people inside North Korea

Report at BBC News - bbc.co.uk/news/world
By Jean Mackenzie
Seoul correspondent
Dated Thursday 15 June 2023 - full copy:

The extraordinary process of secretly interviewing people inside North Korea

In the dead of the night, two North Koreans meet in secret. One is an ordinary North Korean citizen who has agreed to risk all to be interviewed by the BBC. The other is a source, working for an organisation in South Korea to leak information out of the country.

At a secure location that cannot be bugged, the source relays one of our questions to the citizen and notes down the answer. Later, when it is safe, they will send it back to us, in multiple instalments. Sending even one full answer at a time is too risky.

This is the start of a painstaking process that will take us many months, as we investigate the consequences of the North Korean government's decision to seal the country's border more than three years ago.

North Koreans are forbidden from talking to anyone outside the country, especially journalists, and if the government finds out they have done so, they could be killed.

But when the border was shut in January 2020, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, a country that was already difficult to report on became virtually impenetrable.

All the sources that journalists would ordinarily rely on to relay what was happening on the ground dried up, as foreign diplomats and aid workers left the country. It also became nearly impossible for North Koreans to escape and share their experiences.

At the same time, there was good reason to suspect the border closure was causing people significant suffering, based on our knowledge of how people in North Korea make their living and acquire their food. Then, last year, we started to get unconfirmed reports of severe food shortages and possible starvation.

This is why we decided to take such extraordinary measures, to interview three ordinary North Koreans inside the country.

First, we sought advice from those who work closely with North Koreans and understand the risks. Sokeel Park, from the organisation Liberty in North Korea, who has been working with escapees for more than a decade, was of the view this was an important and worthwhile undertaking, in spite of the risks.

"There is not a single North Korean who won't understand the danger, and if people want to do this, I think we should respect that," he told us. "Every conversation with people inside North Korea, every titbit of information, is so valuable, because we know so little," he said.

But to do this, we could not work alone. We teamed up with a news organisation in South Korea, Daily NK, that has a network of sources inside the country. These sources found us people who wanted to be interviewed. Aware we would only be getting a snapshot of life inside the country, we chose to speak to people of varying ages from different areas.

We explained what the BBC was, and how far and wide their interviews would be seen and heard, and they gave their consent.

"They are looking forward to telling the world how bad the situation is in North Korea," said Daily NK's editor-in-chief Lee Sang-yong. "They hope the international community will take notice."

Mr Lee has been working with his sources for 13 years to smuggle information out of North Korea. He assured us that his methods of communication were robust. He was confident he could keep people safe but warned that the process would take time.

Image caption,

Lee Sang-yong, editor-in-chief of Daily NK - the organisation that helped us carry out the interviews

As we waited, there were moments we worried we might not get enough information. What if we received one-line answers - perhaps not even enough to report? This was the gamble.

But when we finally collated the messages, we were blown away by the level of detail. People revealed far more than we had expected, and the situation was worse than we had imagined. It pointed to a dire humanitarian and human rights situation unfolding in the country, and chronic food shortages.

Inside North Korea - voices from behind the sealed border

• In depth: Read the full BBC investigation
• Read more: North Korean experts on what this testimony tells us

We then set about verifying as much as we could. Helpfully, our three interviewees corroborated each other. They all cited the same quarantine rules and the same new laws which frightened them. They all spoke about the scarcity of food and medicine, and had experienced increasingly severe crackdowns and punishments. They even shared many of the same hopes and fears.

But there were also illuminating differences. It appeared there was more government support in the capital Pyongyang than in the border towns, but also more control, surveillance and fear there - which was in line with what we had expected.

Our next step was to take our interviews to NK Pro, a news service in Seoul which monitors North Korea. One of the only remaining sources of information on North Korea is the country's own state-run newspaper and TV channel. While much of the content is propaganda, NK Pro's state media expert Chung Seung-yeon monitors this daily, combing it for clues as to what is really happening in the country.

"We think of North Korea as a very secret state. Certainly, they never speak loudly about their problems, but they drop hints," she said. And when they actually mention a problem, as they have done with the food crisis, this means it's "a really big deal", she explained.

She showed us one news report from February in which North Korean party members were praised for donating rice to the government. "That the state is receiving grain from its people, shows us how desperate the food situation is," she pointed out.

Image caption,

Expert on North Korean state media, Chung Seung-yeon, looks for clues in their reports about what is really happening

With Ms Chung's help we were also able to confirm many of the quarantine and lockdown rules our interviewees had cited, and the new laws and punishments that had been introduced.

To corroborate other details, we analysed the available data on food prices and trade, and viewed satellite images of the border. We combed the texts of new laws that had been smuggled out the country, while cross-referencing our interviews with reports from the South Korean government, the UN, and other sources, until we were confident that our interviews - while not comprehensive - provided reliable snapshots of life in North Korea.

As much as we have published, there are many details we have held back, to protect our interviewees. But through their bravery, we know so much more about the situation in North Korea than we did before.

"The world has not realised how bad things are for the North Korean people right now," said Sokeel Park. "These interviewees are not the full picture. In future years, we'll probably learn in depth just how difficult this period has been," he said.

When we last checked in with our interviewees, through Daily NK, they were all safe.

Related Topics

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More on this story

In depth: Read the full BBC investigation

North Korean experts on what BBC testimony tells us

View original: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-65903359

[Ends]

North Korea: Residents tell BBC of neighbours starving to death

Report at BBC News Asia - bbc.co.uk/news

By Jean Mackenzie

Seoul correspondent

Dated Wednesday 14 June 2023 - full copy:

North Korea: Residents tell BBC of neighbours starving to death

People in North Korea have told the BBC food is so scarce their neighbours have starved to death. 

Exclusive interviews gathered inside the world's most isolated state suggest the situation is the worst it has been since the 1990s, experts say. 

The government sealed its borders in 2020, cutting off vital supplies. It has also tightened control over people's lives, our interviewees say. 

Pyongyang told the BBC it has always prioritised its citizens' interests. 

The BBC has secretly interviewed three ordinary people in North Korea, with the help of the organisation Daily NK which operates a network of sources in the country. They told us that since the border closure, they are afraid they will either starve to death or be executed for flouting the rules. It is extremely rare to hear from people living in North Korea. 

The interviews reveal a "devastating tragedy is unfolding" in the country, said Sokeel Park from Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), which supports North Korean escapees. 

One woman living in the capital Pyongyang told us she knew a family of three who had starved to death at home. 

"We knocked on their door to give them water, but nobody answered," Ji Yeon said. When the authorities went inside, they found them dead, she said. Ji Yeon's name has been changed to protect her, along with those of the others we interviewed. 

A construction worker who lives near the Chinese border, whom we have called Chan Ho, told us food supplies were so low that five people in his village had already died from starvation. 

"At first, I was afraid of dying from Covid, but then I began to worry about starving to death," he said. 

North Korea has never been able to produce enough food for its 26 million people. When it shut its border in January 2020, authorities stopped importing grain from China, as well as the fertilisers and machinery needed to grow food. 

Meanwhile, they have fortified the border with fences, while reportedly ordering guards to shoot anyone trying to cross. This has made it nearly impossible for people to smuggle in food to sell at the unofficial markets, where most North Koreans shop. 

A market trader from the north of the country, whom we have named Myong Suk, told us that almost three quarters of the products in her local market used to come from China, but that it was "empty now". 

She, like others who make their living selling goods smuggled across the border, has seen most of her income disappear. She told us her family has never had so little to eat, and that recently people had been knocking on her door asking for food because they were so hungry. 

From Pyongyang, Ji Yeon told us she had heard of people who had killed themselves at home or disappeared into the mountains to die, because they could no longer make a living. 

Media caption, 

Watch a clip from Ji Yeon's animated testimony

She was struggling to feed her children, she said. Once, she went two days without eating and thought she was going to die in her sleep. 

In the late 1990s, North Korea experienced a devastating famine which killed as many as three million people. 

Recent rumours of starvation, which these interviews corroborate, have prompted fears the country could be on the brink of another catastrophe. 

Inside North Korea - voices from behind the sealed border

• In depth: Read the full BBC investigation
• Read more: The extraordinary process of secretly interviewing people inside North Korea

"That normal, middle-class people are seeing starvation in their neighbourhoods, is very concerning," said the North Korea economist Peter Ward. "We are not talking about full-scale societal collapse and mass starvation yet, but this does not look good." 

Hanna Song, the director of NKDB, which documents human rights violations in North Korea, agreed. "For the past 10-15 years we have rarely heard of cases of starvation. This takes us back to the most difficult time in North Korean history." 

Even the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has hinted at the seriousness of the situation - at one point referring openly to a "food crisis", while making various attempts to boost agricultural production. Despite this, he has prioritised funding his nuclear weapons programme, testing a record 63 ballistic missiles in 2022. One estimate puts the total cost of these tests at more than $500m (£398m) - more than the amount needed to make up for North Korea's annual grain shortfall.

Photo credit: NK NEWS

A rare photo taken inside North Korea during the pandemic, showing people at a crossing in Phyongysong

Our interviewees also revealed how the government has used the past three years to increase its control over people's lives, by strengthening punishments and passing new laws. 

Before the pandemic, more than 1,000 people would flee the country each year, crossing the Yalu River into China, according to numbers released by the South Korean government. The market trader Myong Suk told us it had become impossible to escape. "If you even approach the river now you will be given a harsh punishment, so almost nobody is crossing," she said. 

The construction worker Chan Ho said his friend's son had recently witnessed several closed-door executions. In each one, three to four people had been killed for attempting to escape. "Every day it gets harder to live," he told us. "One wrong move and you are facing execution." 

"We are stuck here waiting to die." 

North Korea: The Insiders

For more than three years, North Korea has sealed its borders. People are banned from leaving or entering the country. Almost every foreigner who was inside has packed up and left. The world's most secretive and tyrannical state is now an information black hole. For months, three people inside North Korea have risked their lives to tell the BBC what is happening. 

Watch now on BBC iPlayer (UK only) or at 19:00 BST on BBC Two in the UK

We put our findings to the North Korean government, which told us it "has always prioritised the interests of the people, even at difficult times". 

"The people's well-being is our foremost priority, even in the face of trials and challenges," said a representative from the North Korean embassy in London. 

They also said the information was "not entirely factual", claiming it had been "derived from fabricated testimonies from anti-DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] forces". 

But Sokeel Park, from LiNK, said these interviews reveal a "triple whammy" of hardship. "The food situation has become more difficult, people have less freedom to fend for themselves, and it has become pretty much impossible to escape." They support the theory, he said, that "North Korea is now more repressive than it has ever been before." 

In Pyongyang, Ji Yeon said the surveillance and crackdowns were now so ruthless that people did not trust each other. She was taken in for questioning under a new law, passed in December 2020, which bans people from sharing and consuming foreign films, TV shows and songs. Under this Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act, aimed at rooting out foreign information, those caught distributing South Korean content can be executed. 

A former North Korean diplomat, who defected in 2019, said he was shocked by how extreme the crackdown on foreign influence had become. "Kim Jong Un is afraid that if people understand the situation they are in, and how wealthy South Korea is, they will start hating him and rise up," explained Ryu Hyun Woo. 

Our interviews suggest that some people's loyalty has waned over the past three years. 

"Before Covid, people viewed Kim Jong Un positively," Myong Suk said. "Now almost everyone is full of discontent." 

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View original: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-65881803

[Ends]