CHRIS: This is the world’s last Cold War battle front. Don’t worry though, hostilities aren’t yet raging on the Korean peninsula. I’m in a gaming arcade-cum-internet café and bizarrely it’s the headquarters of a clandestine human smuggling operation…but only for ten minutes. In this week’s Crossing Continents: escape from the Axis of Evil. George Bush says North Korea is on that axis. In the programme I’ll be uncovering the underground trail that leads from the world’s most secretive state and ends here in South Korea. Many of those attempting to flee have been caught and executed, but I’m here to meet the forgotten survivors who against all odds made it across Asia’s Iron Curtain. This is a typical internet café in Seoul’s Myong Dong district. It’s bathed in a lurid red light the walls are festooned with the latest teenage pinups and it is heaving with assorted Korean anoraks all at computer screens. With me is Norbert Vollertsen, who gave up the comfortable life of a German doctor and went as an aid worker to help North Koreans. Today he masterminds a covert escape route for them. NORBERT: Now I will try to get the real picture from Pyongyang what is going on there, oops. CHRIS: This is an e-mail from a contact of yours in North Korea, in Pyongyang? NORBERT: This is definitely a e-mail from Pyongyang and most of the time we have our security concerns we are using a secret code. CHRIS: Tell us about the code, how does it work? NORBERT: He will talk about the relation to his girlfriend. When it’s down then I know that the relation to his counterparts to the North Korean Security is down, that he is maybe threatened that he is under danger. CHRIS: What’s he saying, what is the news from Pyongyang? NORBERT: He is talking about here Absurdistan. CHRIS: Absurdistan meaning North Korea. NORBERT: That’s his secret name for North Korea. CHRIS: Tell me about what you are doing practically, you’re setting up a clandestine network out of North Korea into South Korea. Where is that network and how does it work? NORBERT: Most of the time the North Korean refugees are crossing the border in the very north eastern part of North Korea, at the Chinese-North Korean border, and they we are waiting for them. We are providing food, medicine and shelter and money to get to Beijing or to Mongolia. And from there most of them are forced to go by feet, by train, by bus, to the border of Laos, to the border of Vietnam, to the border of Cambodia or to Thailand and then we are trying to catch them up there in Thailand. So we are going to Bangkok to pick them up and to bring them home to South Korea. CHRIS: Norbert believes his life is in danger he says the place is crawling with North Korean agents and Chinese spies. The South Korean government too sees his as a threat. It backs the so-called Sunshine Policy of engaging North Korea. Norbert’s people and the grim testimonies they bring expose the hypocrisy of embracing the regime in the north. So sensitive is his mission the South Koreans have even put secret agents on his trail. NORBERT: OK, I think I will close down here. We are spending a lot of time and this internet facility and normally I do not stay more than ten minutes in one facility in order to change my place as often as possible. Because I am afraid that I will get watched here in this place. So better let’s go. CHRIS: We are now on the move. We are walking across town to the City Hall. As Norbert made clear, we have to keep moving. Norbert, before we go into the City Hall, you said to me that you actually have the personal calling card and the phone number of your South Korean intelligence minder. Can you give him a ring and see if he’ll talk to us when we have been into the City Hall? NORBERT: Of course, let’s give his number a call, 016 I never called him before but OK, he will get a little surprise. Here Mr Vollertsen hello Mr Chin? Mr Chin I am still alive. Yeah is there any chance to meet you? Can we meet at City Hall? Can we meet there at ten o’clock? OK, thank you Mr Chin, Ok bye-bye. CHRIS: Great, well we look forward to that meeting. I’m gazing across the most heavily militarised border on earth at the Demarcation Zone that separates North and South Korea. Just yards away is the Hermit Kingdom, its brutality equalled only by its secrecy. North Korea has seen famine for a decade and oppression for half a century. Hundreds of thousands have fled into China, but only a tiny number have endured the circuitous odyssey that leads to South Korea. There were just a thousand last year. I’m with Kim Sam Hung a former UN official now an activist working with North Korean refugees. His admirers call him Korea’s Oscar Schindler. Mr Kim, here we are in a fully functioning democracy looking over into a totalitarian state, certainly we couldn’t be making this documentary over there. It is a completely different universe isn’t it? KIM: It is an entirely different world from an imagination, the worst crimes against humanity today are taking place inside North Korea. It is a really shocking. CHRIS: Mr Kim was the brain behind the dramatic new escape route for North Koreans, audacious and simple, storming foreign embassies in Beijing to claim political asylum. The plot came to a head on the 13th of March 2002. He’d secretly smuggled a group of 26 North Koreans into a restaurant in Beijing. KIM: We were there at the Chinese restaurant on the eve of our D-day. And there for the first time I told them of my plan - that there will be a bus, a tourist bus, tomorrow morning and we were to meet the bus at a certain location. And it didn’t work out we didn’t take into consideration of one way street. All in our junction where you cannot make a left turn youk now and we found them at another location luckily, and we continued with our plan. They were very nervous, I was very nervous and I explained to them the German whom you met at a previous night would be waiting for you in front of a certain building. And when you approach him he will speak to a guard of that building. That is the Spanish Embassy we expected to go inside, so don’t make mistake there. CHRIS: I should explain that that German was the incorrigible Norbert Vollertsen who we have already met. I also understand that Norbert was prepared at least to go as far as having a fight with the guard on the gate, so that the refugees would stand a better chance of getting in to the embassy unimpeded. KIM: Yes I’m doing this because they are my people, my brothers and sisters I’m really, really impressed by his dedication to the cause of humanity. CHRIS: So how did you feel? You knew this was zero hour, it was the culmination of months of meticulous planning? KIM: It was very, very emotional, moment it was very emotional moment. CHRIS: Did you ever think, looking back on all this that in your craziest of dreams that at the age of seventy you would find yourself operating clandestinely underground in China and pulling off one of the great PR stunts ever perhaps to have happened in Beijing? KIM: Often I question myself, you know I mean I never imagined any time in the past in my life that I would be forced to lie about my name, lie about where I am staying, lie about people I am meeting. CHRIS: Why not just chuck it all in, retire to the seaside with your wife and have a nice life? KIM: That’s my plan! But I cannot refrain from helping them. CHRIS: It’s not the activists but the refugees, the defectors who are at the heart of this story. I am now on a train rattling my way south of Seoul to meet one, Mr Hyut Kim lives in the town of Nonsan training to be a car mechanic. TRAIN ANNOUNCEMENT: In a few moments we will be arriving at Nonsan station, passengers getting off at Nonsan station have a nice day. CHRIS: I’m in a vast garage with dozens of students in greasy grey boiler suits and as you can hear, today’s class appears to be how to saw through a piece of metal. With me is Hyut Kim. He fled North Korea two years ago and escaped into China, where there is a bounty of four hundred dollars on the head of any North Korean defector. On one occasion he was captured and sent back to a labour camp. Eventually he did make it through China to Mongolia walking 18 hours across the desert. HYUT: DUBBED Mr Kim said in North Korea when you think about it the most important thing is food, that’s why I crossed a border into China. I myself was eating grass porridge for two weeks, it was horrible, your body swells up and when that happens people often die. At the train station when I looked around there were people lying there and if you lifted up their arms you realised they were dead. You can see so many people dead at train stations. Dozens of dead people. Sometimes people I was with one day were dead the next. CHRIS: What about the cruelty and the strangeness of the regime. What are your personal experiences of that? HYUT: One out of three or four people is a government spy. You can’t even trust your closest friends and if you are reported you may be sent to a political prison and spend the rest of your life there. Every household has to have on their wall pictures of the president leader Kim Jong Il and his late father, Kim Il Sung, and if the picture’s get damaged, for example if the house is humid and fungus is growing on them or a child scribbles on them and this is discovered by an official you could be sent to prison for up to six months. CHRIS: What are conditions like in prison in North Korea? HYUT: Most people died of hunger or the terrible conditions. After eleven months there I was sent to a rehabilitation camp. Twenty two of us went in to together, twenty starved to death, and only two of us survived. Every month or so they would collect the bodies into piles. Every so often they forced prisoners to stack the bodies on trucks but the flesh soon decayed and you would see it falling off the bodies. We used to hear crows overhead which is how we knew they were moving the bodies. CHRIS: Hello Mr Chun how are you? Hello I’m Chris Gunness, it’s nice to meet you. Could you take us to the Shinsei Gei department store? OK, let’s go. We are on our way to the pinnacle of South Korean capitalism, our cab driver is Mr Chun Yong, he came from North Korea in 1997 and has been working as a cab driver ever since. Right let’s go in. We have arrived at the Shinsei Gei department store. I have to say it is designer label heaven. The windows packed full of Vuitton luggage, goodness knows what else, Gucci over there, Yves Saint Laurent over there, Lancome down there, Clinique, Chanel, it’s all here. I’m here with Yung Jun our translator. Yung Jun, can you ask Mr Chun when he comes to a place like this laden with all these luxury goods, symbols of capitalism, what does he make of it all? YUNG JUN TRANSLATING QUESTION AND ANSWER. CHUN: I wonder who will buy this kind of stuff and who wears this kind of clothing. Sometimes I convert it into North Korean money and it’s huge compared to what they get in North Korea. I don’t think they can believe there are some jackets cost several thousand dollars or a coat costs over $10,000. CHRIS: Thanks a lot Mr Chun, I think we should find somewhere quiet ‘cos I want to ask you about your life and about what brought you here, let’s go and find the coffee shop. Mr Chun, why did you leave North Korea and how did you get to South Korea? YUNG JUN TRANSLATING FOR MR CHUN. CHUNG: Mr Chun said I came to South Korea because my eldest brother defected from North Korea and because of this the whole family was sent to a mining area and we suffered terribly for seven years. We were only breathing there but it wasn’t really living. We didn’t feel like human beings. CHRIS: So tell me about the journey, you decided to leave, how did you make your way out of North Korea? CHUN: My eldest brother helped us. With his money the border guards were bribed to disappear for an hour. The river was thirty to fifty metres wide and it took less than ten minutes to cross it. It was the longest ten minutes of my life and when I crossed the river and was on Chinese soil I looked back and started crying because I knew that I could never go back. CHRIS: What about when you arrived in South Korea, looking forward, what were your feelings when you first touched the ground of your new home? CHUN: In China I watched some South Korean TV and read some books but I was still so surprised when I arrived. It was so chaotic and it looked like there was no order and when I looked at the neon signs at night it made me dizzy. In Pyongyang it’s so quiet. CHRIS: I’m in downtown Seoul fro that meeting with Norbert Vollertsen and his South Korean spy, the supposedly undercover agent who is shadowing him. I’m actually quite nervous it’s my first ever brush with the South Korean intelligence services. Time I suppose to go in and wait for the big sting. So the appointed hour has come, Norbert has joined me, good morning, Norbert. NORBERT: Good morning. How are you? CHRIS: I’m very well. Norbert reliably informs me that not just has the mysterious or perhaps not so mysterious Mr Chin - one of his minders - arrived but actually he has brought with him another of his minders, so Norbert will you come over and introduce us to him? NORBERT: Sure I would like to do so? CHRIS: Can I just ask you a couple of questions? We’re from the BBC, and Norbert was saying that you are here to protect him, what exactly are you protecting him against? Don’t walk away just tell us. MR CHIN: I’m sorry no comment. CHRIS: But Norbert I think feels as if he is being spied upon by you and by the security services, is that fair? I mean are you really keeping an eye on him at his house and when he goes around the city? MR CHIN: No Comment. NORBERT: No surprise, they are not supposed to talk to any journalist they are not allowed to give any comment about this whole story. I will think about my consequences and I will try to go out of this country as soon as possible, CHRIS: I think we should go out of this building as soon as possible there are security people all around us now, we have caused quite enough tension. This is the Hanawan facility south of Seoul. It’s where refugees are brought when they first arrive. Ironically it looks like a prison. A sprawling red brick complex behind massive security walls. Here they are taught to embrace capitalism, how to open a bank account, computer skills, how to get a job. They’re also given benefits to the tune of 30,000 dollars, I’m here with Mr Chun, the taxi driver, remember him? To find out about making that transition from communist to consumer. CHUN: Staying in this facility is not boring because everything is unfamiliar, everything is new. One of the strange things about getting used to South Korea is that here people just crumple their bank notes up. But in North Korea Kim Jong Il’s picture is on the hundred won and five thousand won bills and you have to be very careful not to fold his face, and if the bill is damaged you cannot use the money. That’s why bills with Kim Jong Il’s pictures stay very clean for a very long time. CHRIS: You’re a very interesting character because you led a very privileged life in North Korea. Your father was a general in the North Korean army, your mother was on of the country’s leading architects. You actually went to school at the same school as the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il. CHUN: It’s true the school I went to was the most privileged school in north Korea, it was built by Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong Il often said we were the sons of his revolutionary comrades. And that’s why even his wife prepared meals for us. On our birthdays and national holidays we could eat anything we wanted. For instance, if one student said, I want to eat whale meat, they’ll send some people out to kill a whale. And if there was a new movie that we wanted to see, Kim Jong Il would take us to the movie theatre. I thought we were special people and deserved all we had. I didn’t pay attention to the starving people outside. CHRIS: One of the hardest things was surely getting used to family life? Families are presumably more liable to break down in a liberal permissive environment like South Korea, rather than in North Korea? CHUN: Sometimes whole families come to South Korea and they have difficulty adjusting because in North Korea the husband is the sky and the wife is the earth. Maybe it is because men have to serve in the army in North Korea so there are more women than men and women have to work harder whilst we men get laid and hang out. But in South Korea women realised they have more equal rights and so when they arrive in South Korea I often hear of families splitting up because the women assert themselves. CHRIS: It’s quite amazing but Mr Chun has actually allowed us to join him in his favoured house of ill repute, as you can hear he is getting a right old slapper of a massage. As for the place itself, better not say too much about the pink salmon bedspread and the mini bottles of ginseng for those concerned about potency. On the way here Mr Chun confided that he was taken to his first South Korean brothel by his two brothers and it was all paid for by his sister-in- law, who of course wanted the boys to have a wild night out on the town. Mr Chun how does it feel? CHUN: It feels really good, really relaxing. I don’t get a massage every day but after hard work when my body is worn out it feels great to relax my muscles. CHRIS: Do many single young North Korean boys who defect find consolation in places like this? CHUN: Of course it is difficult for young men from North Korea to go out with South Korean girls. They are curious about our lives but they are not willing to date us, maybe because they find North Korean men authoritarian. That’s why some of us pay money for places like this and some people even go once a week. CHRIS: Now tell me about the first time after you defected, what was it like going to a brothel? CHUN: I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t realise until my brother actually took us to this place. I was feeling nervous because it was the first time. It was a strange feeling and I thought maybe this is the feeling of capitalism. CHRIS: Mr Chun, many many thanks indeed for that fascinating insight into your private life, you’re clearly having a great, great time, I’ll leave you to get on with it, in fact I’ve got an appointment to see a mechanic friend. Well we are now at the mechanic’s school in Nonsan, we are in a huge garage area. The students are standing around in their grey uniforms and I think that Mr Kim is about to start an engine and there it goes! No. KIM: One more time. CHRIS: One more time, OK, let’s see if it works. Well, well he’s done it, well done Mr Kim. HYUT KIM SINGING CHRIS: A wistful tune sung by Hyut Kim about the father of North Korea, the monstrous Kim Il Sung. When Hyut first arrived in South Korea interrogators asked him to sing it as proof that he really was from the north. A sort of music ID card. Oh, I am now lying flat on my back underneath a car with Mr Kim and also with our translator Yung, mind your head, Yung Jung. Hyut, it’s clear from the fact that we are in this position gazing up at the underside of a car that you are making every effort to fit into society here. After you made your epic voyage of arrival what now are your dreams, what are your ambitions? HYUT: My great dream is that one day when the two Koreas are united I am going to go back to my home town in North Korea and build a big car mechanic company. In order to achieve that I am going to have to work incredibly hard. CHRIS: I end where I began with Norbert Vollertsen. One nagging question remains in my mind and before I leave Seoul I want it answered. What motivates him? To put it bluntly, why would a successful German doctor with a comfortable lifestyle abandon his wife and children to work as a medic in North Korea and then risk his life helping people escape? NORBERT: That’s real hardship and a real emotional problem, mainly my main emotional problem. My wife she blamed me in a way that I’m not taking care for my family, that my political activities, my goal, my mission is much more worth in my eyes and afterwards I realised that she was right. I do not want to sacrifice my family but I know that nowadays my wife and her new partner are taking care for my children and they are safe, they are healthy but the North Korean children are not. I joined North Korea in July 1999 and I took care for ten different hospitals and I saw the condition in those hospitals, there is no medicine, there is no food even to feed the doctors, there is no heating system in winter, there is no running water, there is no soap, there are no blankets, there is nothing, it’s only the concrete, it’s only the building. CHRIS: You became the darling of the North Korean regime you gave your own skin for a skin graft for a burns victim. Tell us about that story. NORBERT: What’s the better way than to give your own skin in order to show friendship to the ordinary North Korean people? And two weeks later we became awarded the first westerners ever the so called friendship medal of the North Korean people. CHRIS: Now you have got the medal with you, let’s have a look at it, get it out of that bag. Ha a very beautiful red leather case, rather dog-eared, ah and the medal itself. What’s this, the red flame, the torch of the people and the dear leader. NORBERT: And then I got additional this. CHRIS: A leather bound certificate of some sort. NORBERT: It’s the so called friendship medal passport, it’s a sort of VIP passport and with this VIP passport I was allowed to travel around and when ever there was a security guard a policeman or soldier who wanted to stop me I just showed the outside of this passport and then … go through. CHRIS: But you exploited that freedom of movement you travelled round the country documenting human rights abuses and eventually you were expelled. At that point why didn’t you just give up? NORBERT: You know about German history that we Germans were accused that we failed to act when we got the knowledge about concentration camps, nobody wanted to know and I don want to make the same mistake twice. I’m a German too. What shall I tell my own boys that I got the knowledge that there is something of crimes are going on in North Korea crimes against humanity and then I am going back to Germany and living there under nice conditions and will forget about those starving children there? No I will not do that CROSSING CONTINENTS - North Korea