• 3 months ago
Panorama.S2014E04.Educating.North.Korea
Transcript
00:00North Korea, one of the most closed and repressive societies on earth, led by an unpredictable
00:10despot who recently ordered the execution of his own uncle.
00:16Remarkably, weeks before his death, we gained access to North Korea to film a pioneering
00:22experiment.
00:23Inside here, fully we have freedom.
00:26A ground-breaking university, paid for by the West, designed to open the minds of the
00:31secretive state's future elite.
00:37Tonight on Panorama, can foreign lecturers change the mindset of a brainwashed generation?
00:44If there's going to be change in North Korea, it's probably going to come from these elite
00:48students.
00:50But is change possible in a country where people worship their leader like a god?
00:55And appear to be in the dark about the outside world?
01:26Meet Dr. James Chin Kyung Kim, the president of Pyongyang University of Science and Technology,
01:40or PUST.
01:42Dr. Kim, an American citizen, is on a mission from God to use PUST to peacefully transform
01:49North Korea.
01:54It's remarkable, given North Korea persecutes Christians, the regime hates America, and
01:59they once condemned Dr. Kim to death for being a spy.
02:05Must make friends, you know?
02:08Otherwise, it's all human beings' society.
02:12Fighting, fighting, fighting.
02:15This is our captain speaking.
02:17Welcome on board Air China 121.
02:19Foreign journalists are all but banned from North Korea, but Dr. Kim has spent 18 months
02:24helping us negotiate access to the university.
02:28Quite what I'm going to be able to film and how much we're going to see is anyone's guess.
02:39Welcome to Pyongyang Airport.
02:45Our drive from the airport to the university takes us through the showpiece capital, Pyongyang.
02:53The image of North Korea the regime wants visitors to see.
03:00No sign of the poverty and food shortages which human rights groups say belight the rest of the country.
03:07Pyongyang is impressive.
03:09You see all kinds of things that prove that the regime must be wise and must be magnificent.
03:16I mean, who could build Pyongyang who wasn't wise?
03:20The answer is on display everywhere, the Kim family dynasty.
03:30They have had North Korea in their ruthless grip since 1948.
03:36First there was Kim Il-sung.
03:39Then his son, Kim Jong-il.
03:44And when he died two years ago, his son, Kim Jong-un, took over the brutal family firm.
03:52Any hopes the young dictator would be more moderate have been dashed.
03:56He's threatened nuclear war against America.
04:01Two weeks before Christmas, executed his uncle, supposedly for plotting a coup.
04:20Approaching the university on the outskirts of Pyongyang, it's clear from the start PUST is no ordinary academic institution.
04:30The campus is guarded by troops.
04:37Given the go-ahead by Kim Jong-un's father, the university opened three years ago.
04:50These are the students.
05:01Marching to breakfast, singing songs about war.
05:08Dr Kim says PUST is unique by North Korean standards.
05:12Paid for by the West, it exposes students to Western ideas and technology.
05:31Every student, though, is hand-picked by the secretive state.
05:37There are 500, the majority in their 20s,
05:42and said to be the sons of some of the most powerful men in North Korea, including senior military figures.
05:49The regime doesn't allow women to study here, but they do make up the majority of guards on campus.
06:01North Korean citizens are usually banned from speaking to foreign journalists.
06:08But during my ten-day stay at PUST, I am allowed to film with students.
06:15The downside, I will be closely monitored.
06:20And student accommodation blocks are off-limits.
06:25The students are all keen to tell me how they are studying for the glory of North Korea.
06:38So those songs you're singing when you're marching, is that patriotism?
06:42That's all about the good of our country?
06:46Thanks to our good leader.
06:53The students' life runs along military lines.
07:01Rain or shine, the day begins at half-past six with full-on exercise sessions.
07:08After a quick cold shower, they're changed and marching to breakfast on the stroke of seven.
07:17So open up your books to page 36.
07:20By 8.30, they're beginning three hours of classes, including English language skills.
07:25Don't listen to our advice.
07:30Dress badly and have ugly hairstyles.
07:37After which, time to get the collective blood flowing.
07:46With a daily pre-lunch parade ground workout.
07:54Workers across North Korea take part in similar synchronized displays every morning.
08:03And so the regimented day goes on.
08:06At first sight, PUST feels like it's business as usual for the institutionalized North Koreans.
08:17But PUST patrons believe the university can help the country move in a radically different direction.
08:26The hope is that the young people who come through that university will be people who will question,
08:32and will ask the right questions about the ideology, about the system, the way the country is structured.
08:3978-year-old Dr. Kim invited me to join him on his daily morning run around the campus.
08:45He thanks God he's alive.
08:48The regime sentenced him to death in 1998 for spying whilst bringing aid into the country.
08:54So how many days were you in prison?
08:5642 days.
08:58Not that you're counting.
09:01My lifetime.
09:03Dr. Kim says he was freed after convincing the regime he was a force for good.
09:13Three years later, it invited him to build PUST,
09:17based on a similar university which Dr. Kim had opened in northern China.
09:23Everyone knew what he represented in North Korea, they're not stupid.
09:28And he's not naive, he understands also the dangers that he has placed himself in,
09:33and he's walked that tightrope.
09:40Dr. Kim had to raise £20 million to build PUST,
09:44largely from US and South Korean Christian charities.
09:49He also raises around £2 million a year for running costs.
09:54Dr. Kim calls it unconditional generosity,
09:58giving graduates the economic, agricultural and technical skills to benefit North Korean society.
10:05It is hard to believe.
10:15Christian lecturers, teaching in a country which persecutes religious beliefs,
10:20are being forced to give up their jobs.
10:23They're being forced to give up their jobs.
10:26They're being forced to give up their jobs.
10:29They're being forced to give up their jobs.
10:32A country which persecutes religious believers.
10:35In English, the language of the hated enemy, America.
10:39What is going on?
10:42You know, there are many things about North Korea that on the face of it don't make any sense.
10:46They're full of contradictions, and PUST is an obvious kind of contradiction.
10:51I think they want the outside technology so bad that they're prepared to accept some risks.
10:57Have any of you had a mother or father who has ever flown on a plane?
11:01No.
11:03The risks? Students' minds become polluted by Western ideas
11:07and begin to question regime propaganda.
11:10If you go global, then you get big sales, potentially.
11:14Colin McCulloch left Yorkshire to teach business studies at PUST.
11:18The former business consultant lives on campus and gives his time for free.
11:22Some of the other 40 lecturers are sponsored by Christian charities.
11:26I'm sure that the leaders and the government here recognise
11:29that they need to connect with the outside world.
11:32It's not possible to be a totally hermetic, closed economy in the modern age.
11:38PUST says it's careful not to pass on technology which could be exploited militarily.
11:44But equally, what's taught is also censored by the regime.
11:49Do you find yourself having to adapt the lesson
11:52to make it suitable for where you are and who you're teaching?
11:56Yeah, I mean, that's part of the deal.
11:59They have a kind of editorial control over what we're actually going to put forward.
12:05What we're going to do this morning is make you the managers of four companies.
12:11In a country where the supply of products is controlled by the regime,
12:15the concept of a free market is new to these students.
12:19And then you should give up your ownership, I think.
12:23That's the serious problem.
12:25Are they getting it?
12:27They're starting to get it, although the issue is that there's only limited context
12:32in their own public media and their own home environment.
12:37But not borrowing from the bank?
12:40No, no, it means that the bank owns the shares, not borrowing.
12:45It's hard to see how the students will put these skills into practice.
12:49All North Korean business is state-controlled
12:52and trading with foreign companies is restricted by further UN sanctions
12:56imposed after last year's nuclear threats.
12:59The students are conditioned not to question the regime.
13:03But are they becoming frustrated?
13:06I've never played this before.
13:11Finding out what they really think isn't easy.
13:17Maybe sport will help me break down the barriers.
13:23In the evening, I'm approached by a student who seems keen to talk.
13:28May I have your name, please?
13:30Chris, Chris.
13:31Chris.
13:32Yeah, sorry.
13:34When you leave Pust, what job do you want?
13:37I don't know.
13:38Yeah.
13:39I don't know what my job is.
13:40You don't know?
13:41After I graduate this university, the government provides us the job.
13:47He quotes the party line on why North Korea is so underdeveloped.
13:52US imperialism isolates our country.
13:55Yes, yes.
13:56That's the main reason.
13:57Why is it important to you to have foreign teachers rather than Korean teachers?
14:03Foreign language is the eye of scientists.
14:06Also, learning a language is learning a teacher.
14:08Yeah, yeah.
14:09You want more?
14:10Yeah, I want more.
14:12Just as I feel I'm starting to make a connection,
14:15a uniformed guard walks over and takes him aside.
14:19We're invited guests.
14:21We've got permission to film,
14:23but you can feel the tension developing the moment we have a long conversation with the students.
14:34What is becoming clear is just how out of step the students appear to be with the outside world.
14:40You've probably seen these gentlemen around.
14:43American lecturer Erin Fink invites me to talk to her students.
14:48Who's heard of Michael Jackson? Put your hand up.
14:50Do you know who that is?
14:52No.
14:53Michael Jackson?
14:54Michael Jackson.
14:55Michael, yes.
14:56Is he your...
14:59No, he's not the president, no.
15:01He's Michael Jackson.
15:04He was a very famous singer.
15:07How old is he?
15:08How old is he? He died.
15:10He was 50 years old.
15:14You might have thought students would have found out about Michael Jackson on the Internet.
15:18Unlike most of North Korea, it is available at PUST.
15:25But the woman seen here on the left censors access.
15:29Students have to let her know in advance which site she's on.
15:33Students have to let her know in advance which site they intend to go to.
15:37And it's strictly no email, no social media and no international news.
15:43Do you ever see a day when you'll be able to sit in a cafe in Pyongyang and use the Internet?
15:49Would that be useful?
15:53I'm not interested in anything else but boarding my bus.
16:04For North Korean citizens, news of the outside world is almost non-existent.
16:13Off campus in Pyongyang, all we see and hear is a daily diet of regime propaganda.
16:19Kim Jong-un's visit to Pyongyang
16:29The only news at 8 o'clock every night on state TV is Kim Jong-un news and what he's doing for the country.
16:36Even the daily newspapers dedicate their front pages to Kim Jong-un news.
16:42There he is opening up a children's hospital and today meeting his generals.
16:50No mention of the reality of life for the vast majority of North Koreans.
16:56According to the UN, millions suffer from chronic poverty and a lack of food and medical care.
17:03They're spending their money, it's literally a matter of guns before butter.
17:09A current UN investigation into human rights abuses in North Korea has gathered testimony from defectors.
17:16They were previously imprisoned in the country's brutal labor camps.
17:22Independent estimates put the number of political prisoners in the tens of thousands.
17:28Many die, many stories of prisoners being put onto trolleys and taken out to be burned in a vat.
17:39People growing up their whole lives there, living on rodents and on grass just to survive.
17:46And it may amount to a crime against humanity.
17:51Human rights activists question whether PUST should be operating at all in such a country.
17:58If the price to pay for being allowed to establish a presence inside North Korea
18:04is ignoring North Korea's egregious human rights violations, I will say that that price is too high.
18:14You have to start somewhere.
18:16So this isn't an excuse for appeasement, which I'm totally, utterly opposed to.
18:22This is an argument for some form of engagement in order to try and change things.
18:27But is contact with the West really transforming these young men?
18:32Leader Kim Jong-un studied in Switzerland, and Pu Sen selected students abroad.
18:38Three have just returned from a year at Westminster University in the UK.
18:43Has this opened their minds?
18:45How different is Britain to the DPRK?
18:49It is a little bit beyond my imagination.
18:54On the face of it, no.
18:56There would have been things that you saw in Britain that you don't see here,
18:59like the television is very different, the music is very different.
19:02Did you ever get away from studying?
19:04Did you ever come across new types of music in the UK?
19:08No, just focusing on my studies.
19:12And is this student also studying his colleagues?
19:15He is clearly monitoring them.
19:18What about you? You're being very quiet.
19:21I think we have the same opinions,
19:23because we don't know exactly, even though we have studied in the UK,
19:27we just have studied, and that's all.
19:32I have no idea if it's out of fear or the conditioning of their minds,
19:36but this awkward interview is going nowhere.
19:39It leaves me wondering if these students can ever be agents of change.
19:44I think we have to devote ourselves
19:47to the construction of the great prosperous population
19:51and the great leader Kim Jong-un.
19:55Devotion to the leader appears absolute.
20:03We discover students are receiving two separate educations on campus.
20:09Alongside Western lectures, they also come to this building
20:13for lessons in the regime ideology known as Juche.
20:18It's become a kind of catch-all for a fierce, strident nationalism
20:23of the kind practised by North Korea.
20:26Putting it down to precise meaning is actually quite difficult.
20:30We're forbidden from filming in the Juche building.
20:35But I speak to some students outside.
20:39Do you learn about Juche from when you were a young child, or only now?
20:45Your whole life.
20:47Describe it to me.
20:49Juche means you have to be reliant on yourself, not others.
20:54For the country?
20:56For the country, either for individual,
21:01and the master of your destiny is yourself, not the other.
21:05That's powerful stuff.
21:11It's 7am on a Sunday.
21:14My colleague finds students inspecting the area
21:17around a monument built to honour Juche and the regime.
21:21Hey, guys, what are you doing here?
21:23We just get rid of dirty dirt.
21:27Dirty dirt.
21:29Say again, sorry?
21:31We just get rid of dirt.
21:33Dirt?
21:35Dirt, not doubt. Dirt. D-R-T-I-R-T.
21:39Oh, dirt!
21:41Every last speck of it.
21:44The students arrive in droves
21:46to obsessively scrub the monument area clean.
21:50Yes!
21:55Even the dirt between the paving is scraped out.
22:08Is it hard work?
22:14They carry on cleaning into the night.
22:20Just beyond the campus,
22:22the lights of the showcase capital, Pyongyang.
22:27Resources are so scarce,
22:29electricity is cut off at 11 o'clock every night,
22:33plunging the city into darkness.
22:37The university has spared the switch-off,
22:40perhaps a sign of its importance to the regime.
22:44By now, I've been at Pust for six days,
22:47and the constant monitoring by government minders is becoming wearing.
22:51It gets to you after a while.
22:54It's a bit like being under house arrest.
22:57Imagine spending months teaching here.
23:03Business legislation has been put in place
23:05to make it easier for students to attend classes.
23:10Business lecturer Sandra Lee Moynihan has been at Pust for a term.
23:15It is very restrictive.
23:17What it brings you to is a knowledge of how precious freedom is.
23:21We can't even take a walk in a park.
23:27Sandra Lee, a Christian like many Pust staff,
23:30does have the freedom to go to church in Pyongyang.
23:33Mr Chang, could you take another one? Thank you.
23:36But it's yet another contradiction.
23:38Practising Christianity can lead to the prison camp.
23:43The authorities wanted us to film mass at this church
23:47to show that there is religious freedom in North Korea.
23:50Of course, it's only for foreign workers here and some hand-picked locals.
23:57Yes, President Kim, let's go to mass.
24:01Are the North Koreans really true believers,
24:04like Sandra and her Pust colleagues?
24:07The students told me there is no-one who is a Christian in their country.
24:12The locals come across as extras in a well-rehearsed show.
24:18Watch carefully.
24:19They're not actually putting money into the collection.
24:23Even the farewell to the foreigners appears choreographed.
24:26Are you all Christian? You come here every Sunday?
24:30At least until we try to talk to the local congregation.
24:34A minder quickly appears.
24:36Hello, I'm Chris, yes.
24:38I'm very surprised to see a Christian church in DPRK.
24:43I don't know what's going on.
24:45I don't know what's going on.
24:47I'm very surprised to see a Christian church in DPRK.
24:56I think we've got to go.
24:58How do you change a brutal, paranoid dictatorship
25:02which unashamedly lies to its own people, foreign visitors and the world?
25:07If change is going to come to North Korea in positive ways,
25:11it's probably going to come from privileged people like the students at Pust.
25:15They're the ones who have access, after all, to the leadership.
25:20Do your parents, or even grandparents, do they ever bother you?
25:27Yeah?
25:28After ten days with students and staff,
25:31I'm convinced some students' minds are being opened up by Pust.
25:35And I'm not alone.
25:37I believe they are getting bolder, and I believe that's very good.
25:41They really have had so little freedom.
25:44If you only had one company, do you think that they would invest in new technology?
25:50Weeks after our filming, Sandra Lee got her freedom back, opting to leave Pust.
25:56Deemed too outspoken in class,
25:59she has since been blacklisted by the North Koreans.
26:07But Pust remains for the students a unique window on the outside world.
26:14There is no clearer example than the university dental clinic,
26:18run by American dentist Byung-Mu Lee.
26:21It offers something the regime can't, painless dental care.
26:26All of them are terrified of going to the dental clinic.
26:31There are not much skills, instruments and materials.
26:36Once we start giving them pain-free treatment,
26:41more patients want to come.
26:44Before Pust, have you ever been to a dentist?
26:48No.
26:50By learning about the West like this,
26:52it must increase their own sense of aspiration
26:55of what they would like to see for themselves,
26:58for their families and for their society.
27:01And they will feel frustrations
27:03because their society won't be able to meet those expectations.
27:07That's the way revolutions often start, or changes in regimes.
27:11When you first met a foreigner, an American, were you wary?
27:15Were you nervous of meeting an American?
27:28Do you think in the future you may like the government as well as the people?
27:33But before they can answer, the North Korean head of security intervenes.
27:46People often say to me, is there any hope for North Korea?
27:49Well, the one thing that was left in Pandora's box was hope,
27:52and I feel that way about North Korea.
27:54There, of course, is hope in the eyes of some of these young people,
27:57and we've got to carry on encouraging that.
27:59Will the first students graduate from Pust in May?
28:02Will they, and those that are set to follow,
28:05help lay the foundations of a new North Korea?
28:10Or simply use their newfound knowledge to perpetuate the regime?
28:20Next week, Panorama goes undercover to expose fraud in the immigration system
28:25and reveals the network of agents and criminals involved in the bogus student visa trade.
28:34Everyone is expected to do their bit as Britain's Great War continues,
28:38next tonight on BBC One.
28:40On the day One opened up in Buckinghamshire,
28:42Horizon investigates sinkholes on BBC Two,
28:45and BBC Three follows a group of young actors with Down syndrome
28:49as they head out on tour with a production of Hamlet.
28:55.