Dispatches
Undercover in the Secret State
TV-PG
2005 • E21 Oct 16, 2005 45mThis heartbreaking film is like a bad dream: there's a sense
of bleakness and you can't see anything clearly. Its saddest
sections are filmed undercover in the closed world of North
Korea where we discover, with a lurching stomach, that it's
not uncommon to see people lying dead in the street. Reporter
Kim Jung Eun tracks down dissidents who have fled the country
and builds a picture of the makeshift underground: a big force
for change is smuggled videos of foreign soap operas; one man
who managed to paste up a defiant poster and film it has become
a hunted hero. It becomes unbearably moving to glimpse the plight
of a whole nation through snatches of secretly filmed footage,
but by the end you feel the very least we can do is watch.
of bleakness and you can't see anything clearly. Its saddest
sections are filmed undercover in the closed world of North
Korea where we discover, with a lurching stomach, that it's
not uncommon to see people lying dead in the street. Reporter
Kim Jung Eun tracks down dissidents who have fled the country
and builds a picture of the makeshift underground: a big force
for change is smuggled videos of foreign soap operas; one man
who managed to paste up a defiant poster and film it has become
a hunted hero. It becomes unbearably moving to glimpse the plight
of a whole nation through snatches of secretly filmed footage,
but by the end you feel the very least we can do is watch.