Life and death in North Korea

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Pascale Harter introduces reports from North Korea, Iran, Ghana and South Georgia North Korea sealed its borders when the Covid pandemic struck, and little news from this most isolated and secretive of states has leaked out since. The BBC's Jean Mackenzie, with Daily NK, an organisation with sources inside North Korea, has managed to make contact with North Koreans who reveal lives defined by fear - and the growing threat of starvation. When an Iranian former political prisoner went missing, who did his family turn to for help? The daughter of Ebrahim Babie feared to contact the Iranian authorities who had targeted her father; instead she contacted the BBC's Persian Service. Jiyar Gol tells the story of his search for a missing dissident. There are now more Ghanaian doctors working in the British health service than in Ghana itself. Naomi Grimley has been to southern Ghana to see the impact on patient services of the flood of nurses and doctors leaving for better salaries abroad, and found a system under stress And a visit to that rarest of treasures, an ecosystem in recovery. Fur seals, humpback whales and a tiny songbird - the pipit – are once more thriving on the island of South Georgia, in the South Atlantic ocean north of Antarctica. Producer: Louise Hidalgo Editor: Richard Vadon Production co-ordinator: Janet Staples