Subtitled by TVE Accessibility.
The south and the north, the north and the south,
the two faces, very different and facing each other,
from the Korean Peninsula,
divided since the end of World War II
in the communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north,
and the Republic of Korea, in the south.
25 million North Koreans vs. 51 million South Koreans.
More than 7 decades of division against centuries of union.
We're heading from Seoul
to the last frontier of the Cold War,
the most tense girl on the planet.
It is not possible to cross to the other side.
The so-called DMZ, the demilitarized zone,
but heavily militarized,
It is 4 km wide and 250 km long.
Former US President Bill Clinton
He called it the scariest place in the world.
But it's also a tourist attraction.
We visit it as tourists,
since there were no visits from journalists during our stay.
Everything is reminiscent of the terrible war that pitted the two sides against each other.
In June 1950, North Korea invaded the South.
as you cross the 38th parallel,
the border established by the Soviets and the Americans
after liberating the peninsula from Japanese occupation.
The USSR and China fought together in the north;
together to the south, an international coalition under the banner of the UN
and led by the United States.
4 million dead, total devastation
and millions of separated family and friends was its result.
There was no peace agreement, only an armistice,
signed on July 27, 1953.
There is a situation on the Korean Peninsula
which is unnatural.
We really want to start negotiating
the establishment of a lasting regime of peace.
It's a story of borders,
of hatred and mistrust,
with the 38th parallel as a symbol of the open wound.
After years of tension over the North Korean nuclear program,
a glimmer of hope opens
after the historic inter-Korean summits
and that of Kim and Trump.
Both in the 70s, and in the 80s and 90s,
in 2000 and in 2007,
Five times there was a climate of opening on the Korean Peninsula.
This openness did not last long.
During our journey across the border,
It's hard not to think about families apart,
in those kidnapped by the north
and in its violations of human rights.
This photo, the only one with him,
is the most precious treasure
that Hwang In-cheol kept from his father.
I was 2 years old.
It was December 11, 1969.
My father was on a business trip.
and was flying to Seoul.
Ten minutes after takeoff,
the plane he was traveling on was hijacked
by a North Korean agent.
He and his sister were condemned to grow up without their father.
His mother, waiting for a long-awaited return.
When I saw other children on the shoulders of their parents,
I was envious.
I wanted to do the same,
and over and over again I would ask my mother:
where is my father?
And my mother always told me that my father was,
for work reasons, in the United States
and that he would come for Christmas.
When they tell you that your father is coming back for Christmas,
You wait for the gift with great anticipation,
one Christmas after another.
At the age of ten, his uncle confessed to him the terrible truth:
His long-awaited Christmas gift might never come.
When I heard that,
I thought I would never see my father again.
It was the time of the Cold War
and the relationship between the two Koreans was really tense.
Also..., I imagined North Koreans with horns,
as if they were monsters.
As an adult, he launched the "Bring My Father home" campaign
(bring my father home).
It is the heartrending cry of a son
who sees that time is running out to get his father back,
81 years old, alive.
Of the 50 kidnapped from the plane,
North Korea allowed 39 to return due to international pressure,
but not her father, who was a journalist.
He is one of more than 500 South Koreans still being held captive,
most fishermen and over 70 years old.
It is unknown how many are alive.
Pyongyang says they stayed of their own free will.
Through an intermediary,
Hwang In-cheol learned a few years ago that his father was alive.
and that he wanted to come back.
She doesn't give up hope of seeing him again.
I want to hug him tightly and I would say:
Father, father...
I would hug him with all my love.
He also took his campaign to the Freedom Bridge,
"the bridge of freedom",
where prisoners of war were exchanged.
Today, separated families remember their loved ones here
those who haven't been able to see in decades.
From the Dora observatory,also in the demilitarized zone,
you can see Kijong-Dong, called"the village of peace", in the north,
and nicknamed "propaganda" by the south.
It was built by Pyongyang
to show the greatness of his regime.
It's ironic that it's empty.
It is the showcase of an anachronistic dictatorship,
of a Stalinist dynasty.
With its massive militarization,
subjected to harsh international sanctions,
tries to hide hunger, violation of human rights
and the lack of freedoms that his people suffer.
A people indoctrinated to pay homage
and personality cult of its supreme leader, Kim Jong-un,
the third in the Kim saga
who with an iron fist keeps his country isolated.
On rare occasions
that allow journalists to enter,
the political commissars leave them neither sun nor shade.
They seize your phone,
they place eternal companions on you,
as kind and friendly as they are inflexible.
The struggle for wanting to see and not letting you see.
Good exercise in mutual patience and temple.
Welcome to the kingdom of incoherence,
megalomania and excess.
-Of each new building that arises in the city of Pyogyang,
some, by the way, with a very modern and avant-garde aesthetic,
a replica is made here in this theme park,
a kind of panorama of a city
Through which, by the way, they haven't let us walk much.
The most closed country in the world
He opens his doors when he needs money,
but, in return, it only gives a showcase
of which you never know what is behind.
Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have fled from that hell,
especially because of the devastating famine of the 1990s,
after the mismanagement of Kim Jong-il,
father of the current leader,
and the collapse of the communist economy.
Between half a million and 3.5 million people died.
70% of the population,
including 1.3 million children,under the age of five,
He needs food aid, according to the United Nations.
41% of North Koreans suffer from malnutrition.
And more and more flee in search of freedom.
I was jailed for 9 months
and tortured in every possible way.
I can't even explain the torture, it's impossible.
They went with electricity and water and I was hung upside down.
When I was arrested I weighed 75 kg,
but, after 9 months, he weighed 36.
So I couldn't take it anymore and, in the end,
I confessed that I had spied, although it was not true.
Then I was subjected to forced labor for three years.
Jung Gwang Il was a soldier in the North Korean Army.
Then he worked at a company that traded with China.
There he came into contact with some South Koreans,
something forbidden.
He was arrested and charged with espionage.
I can't...
get me out of memory...
memories and suffering...
for torture...and forced labor.
I still can't sleep from those memories.
No trial or legal assistance,
in 2003 he was released.
She fled to China with her family.
He obtained fake passports and made it to Seoul.
I fight for human rights.
I went to Holland
and I started a process before the International Criminal Court
against Kim Jong-un
for crimes against humanity.
And I have already stated on several occasions
to the United Nations.
We asked for a photo with Donald Trump.
It's from February 2 of this year, I met him at the White House.
He called me because he wanted to find out
on the situation in North Korea.
70 years have passed since at the age of 10,
hand in hand with my mother, I deserted to the south,
preventing discovery by Soviet Forces
who guarded the 38th parallel.
We leave you, parents and grandparents,
and we suffered through the korean war, living as refugees.
Your graves will be neglected.
I always dream of coming back.
This is the letter from Yoon Young-il, 82,
in memory of his older brother,
who was in the north at the beginning of the war.
His trace was lost in 1950.
There is not a sad photo of the long-awaited brother.
We know very well that North Korea is a country
that has a regime that represses the people.
We don't know if my brother is alive or dead
and if he died, how could he have died.
The truth is that we don't have much hope
to see him alive again.
His family has asked, over and over again, for him to be found
to have a family reunion,
like the one they have already enjoyed, for a few hours,
something more than 2,000 separated families.
Many have died or will die
without seeing their loved ones again.
At over 80 years old, they haven't even been able to communicate.
To separated families, like ours, it makes us angry;
we're angry because we can't do it.
Every time he meets
only a small number of separate families,
about 100 of the 130,000 there are.
It will take a million years for them all to meet again.
Mistrust and the Cold War
They made impossible, for decades, these reunions.
In general, inter-Korean meetings
to negotiate issues like this
are held in the Joint Security Area of the demilitarized zone,
the only place where soldiers from the north and south
they're face to face, dog face.
In Panmunjon the armistice was signed.
Kim Jong-un and the South Korean president,
Moon Jae-in, met here for the first time,
April 27, 2018.
It was the first meeting in 11 years between the leaders of the two countries.
They approved the Declaration of Panmunjon
for Peace, Prosperity and Unification.
And Kim and President Donald Trump celebrated in June
their historic summit in Singapore.
The denuclearization of North Korea
and a peace agreement are the main issues to be negotiated,
but not human rights.
Between skepticism and hope
There is talk of the beginning of a new era.
The denuclearization of the North and the peace treaty
They are two sides of the same coin.
What I mean is
that it will be possible to sign a peace treaty,
when there is a sufficiently credible denuclearization.
But currently, the two Koreas and the United States are talking,
first on the declaration of the end of the war;
that is, put an end to it, before signing a peace treaty.
-A new era is still far away on the Korean Peninsula.
All these hopes and expectations have been created by ourselves,
Western countries, including South Korea.
We have to check if Kim Jong Un really has
the intention to abandon nuclear weapons.
Sports diplomacy has paid off
like the whole parade
at the opening of the Winter Olympics,
held in South Korea
or the current summits.
And there are already sports exchanges.
Even so, there is still a long way to go.
And there is a lot of mistrust
on the intentions of a Kim Jong-un
which has conducted more than twice as many missile tests
than his father and grandfather together.
Also nuclear tests, like those carried out in this silo
which was blown up and destroyed in May 2018.
Four deserters, all volunteers,
They work at Radio Free North Korea.
Broadcasts by short wave, one hour daily,
mostly news.
Their goal is to dismantle the lies
that Kim sells to his countrymen.
There are more than 30,000 defectors in South Korea.
When they lived in North Korea
They had no information about the rest of the world.
They thought they lived in the best country on the planet,
in communist society like paradise,
the only place to live happily.
After escaping,
they have realized that this is living hell,
in which people are killed
by virtue of their fidelity or not to the regime.
Now I know that North Korea is a country that cannot exist
in this 21st century.
Kim Seong-min is its president.
He was a captain in the North Korean Army and a political commissar.
That allowed him to listen to South Korean radio.
One day in 1999
became the first artillery captain to desert.
Like many dropout friends,
what i did...
was to go to China first,
on a boat...,illegally,
but they captured me.
They took me to North Korea, again.
There, when they arrest a person like me,
who commits this crime, they shoot her,
no one is spared.
While they took me by train to kill me,
I jumped...
and I made it back to China.
With a false passport he was able to reach South Korea.
But it's not easy,
as you know well at LINK,Freedom in North Korea,
an NGO that helps refugees.
China doesn't really recognize them as refugees.
So, when they are caught by the Chinese Police,
are deported to North Korea.
In China, many live in hiding.
They are vulnerable and exploitable.
Many decide to leave China
and continue on your way to South Korea.
This video shows
to one of the many North Koreans we have rescued
and he fled North Korea because he wanted to live a new life
and she wanted the freedom to pursue her dreams.
Fleeing across the inter-Korean border is not possible.
Through China is his only way out.
But then, as irregulars,
They can't fly to the South Korean capital either.
They could go to Ullan Battor, in Mongolia,
a very dangerous route, and fly to Seoul.
The most viable is through Southeast Asia
and from there to Seoul,
where they are recognized as South Koreans.
It is a journey, long, complicated and dangerous,
traversing China in fear of discovery.
By bus, van, car...
What is this video about and who is Joy?
-His story is really very heartbreaking
because in China it was...
exploited.
It was sold...
and forced into a marriage she didn't want.
And she was stuck in that marriage for many years,
before escaping his Chinese family and coming to South Korea.
Many women are vulnerable to being trafficked.
They don't hide their pride
for having already rescued more than 800 deserters.
But, there could be thousands hidden in China.
Sokeel Park, director of LINK in South Korea, knows this well.
His contact with North Korean refugees
has allowed him to meet a generation of young people
like the ones in the documentary "The Jangmadang Generation"
showing that street markets have proliferated in North Korea
and private stalls,
even with products smuggled in from China.
Jangmadang is the North Korean word for market.
It's about showing the market generation.
A form of native capitalism in North Korea,
that grew during the very severe famine in the 1990s
when the north koreans found out
that they could no longer trust the state.
And so, this millennial generation grew up from an early age
with this growing market economy,
having more access to foreign media,
South Korean movies, Chinese media, etc...
things that were smuggled into the country.
The purpose of making this documentary
is to humanize North Koreans,
show to international audiences
that North Korea is not just Kim Jong Un
and missiles and nuclear weapons,
but also normal people, like you and me,
who have creativity, are dynamic, have ambition,
They're funny, and yes, they have personal tragedies, too.
Even so, he acknowledges that it is not foreseeable
the early fall of the totalitarian regime of the Kims.
There is no dissent within the country, no opposition that we know of.
This is not to say that there is not a change
and that the government is not sensitive to what is happening.
One of the reasons why Kim Jong Un
is currently engaging with the international community
it's because he's facing a political confluence
different from his father.
He's going to allow some economic development
and will be involved in improving relations with the outside world
to lower trade and investment sanctions.
Sun Mu acknowledges his indoctrination.
The famine led him to look for work in China
and he couldn't come back.
She was studying Fine Arts.
She remains anonymous for fear of reprisals for her family.
He didn't want to leave North Korea.
He was willing to die for the regime.
That's why it wasn't so easy for me to quit.
Every year, for their birthdays, he would paint a giant poster,
of them..., of the leaders.
I wanted them to admire me for my work.
I thought I was living my own life in North Korea,
but here I realized
that this was not my life
but that of the regime,
where each one lives with the ideas of the regime.
I didn't exist in North Korea.
She has exhibited in South Korea and other countries.
He helps and finances the art collector, Hyunjoo,
whose parents were from the north.
And this designer, Kangcheol, gives him the space to create.
My dream is to visit North Korea freely
and see my loved ones and friends,
who I miss so much.
At the moment, it is so difficult for that dream to come true
as the Dorosan station comes into operation,
impeccable, silent and unused.
One day you will have to unite the two countries by rail.
Not far, on our tour of the border,
we went down to one of the four tunnels discovered between the 70s and 90s.
Built by North Korean military,
they were to serve the Pyongyang regime
to infiltrate the south.
This third one was discovered in 1978.
It is now locked.
In the dark, North Korea.
A North Korea, whose violation of human rights
they never tire of denouncing the NGO PSCORE,
whose goal is reunification.
It has been directed since its founding in 2006 by Kim Young-il.
She fled the north with her parents and siblings.
North and South Koreans work together in it
and foreign volunteers.
They strive to identify
where are the re-education and forced labor camps
of political prisoners.
There could be more than 150,000 detainees.
The North Korean regime denies this.
From the air, these fields look like towns.
They are in completely isolated areas.
A person can be sentenced to death,
no lawyer and no trial.
There is no legal mechanism that protects your life.
There is no protection from a lawyer.
If they want to kill, they kill, and they despise the right to life.
There is no protection possible.
If you speak ill of the regime,
you are illegally accused of a political crime
and they send you to jail.
In addition, the system consists of the following:
if they accuse a person,
They send the rest of the family to jail too
and to the labor camp.
He knows that reunification will be difficult
because of the huge differences.
For this reason, dropouts face adaptation problems.
It is thought that we speak the same language
but in South Korean there are many words
that derive from English or other languages.
In North Korea, as it is isolated,
I didn't know those words,
That's why, when I watched the news here on TV,
I understood almost nothing.
It took me quite a while.
-When I arrived at the Incheon airport in South Korea,
I felt like I was in paradise.
What I liked the most were the lights
and that there were many cars on the streets.
Kids have problems too
by the different educational systems.
To help them, this dropout, Ryuyoun, organizes support classes.
His brother was accused of a political crime
in North Korea
and as a relative, she too was detained and tortured.
My parents were from South Korea.
but, because of the civil war,
they were taken to North Korea
and for the South my parents were listed as kidnapped.
For my brother's case,
my parents got kicked out of the party,
accusing them of giving their son a bad education.
And my mother was tortured.
Then my parents died from the pressure.
-I'm Casey Lartigue.
I am a co-founder of TNKR.
In the American-Korean NGO TNKR
help young North Korean refugees
to improve their level of English.
They put them in contact with volunteers who give them classes.
My father's family were Poles who fled to America.
They were called displaced.
They arrived after World War II.
I am very lucky, and I want to share that fortune.
I have always been passionate about responsibility towards society.
He helped South Asian people in Singapore.
And now, back in Korea, I want to do something else for Korea.
-Now, have the students introduce themselves.
-I left my country in 2012.
I am a business student at the University.
I joined TNKR three years ago
because my English was that of a three-year-old baby.
Now I can chat with everyone.
-I plan to go to America next year for my Ph.D.
and I have to study more.
The north lives isolated from progress and development.
The South is the third Asian power,
leader in Science and Technology.
The KIST institute is one of its exponents,
with research ranging from technology in 3 dimensions
even robotic intelligence.
Because of its lack of natural resources and capital,
South Korea's only hope of overcoming poverty
were Science and Technology.
Hopefully they will be, even more essential for the future than in the past.
The global economy has become more competitive.
I hope to share our experience one day
with North Korea and thus contribute to peace and prosperity.
Peace and reconciliation is what these young people are also asking for
of the association Peacezen,"Citizens for peace".
They gather on Wednesdays in a plaza in Seoul.
It is also a matter of debate
among Korean Studies students at Korea University.
We need to reflect
on whether North Korea intends to denuclearize
They are authentic and sincere.
-Trump is a very frank person,
speak clearly
and showed a lot of enthusiasm and confidence
about what they had achieved.
-North Korea shows strong will
to be recognized as a sovereign state
and you really want economic growth
because Kim Jong Un wants to maintain his regime.
-What do you think about the separation and our two dreams?
-I live near the military line
where the issues about North Korea and nuclear
they're pretty sensitive to Koreans.
He is, in a way, a threat to them.
In the long run,
I think we should also talk about reunification.
-We have to build a stable security environment,
so people don't have to live in fear
to a nuclear war.
-Older people,
who lived in the North before the division
or who experienced the division of the country,
They think that the South and the North are the same people.
Those who lived through the war
They are very critical of the North Korean regime,
but they think unification has to be done.
Young people who have experienced material abundance
and development and welfare in South Korea,
make up the generations that do not hide their concern
on the alleged economic burdens
that they think they should take on at the time of unification.
For South Koreans,
Korean unification has to be done
on the basis of liberal democracy
and the capitalist economy.
For North Koreans,
on the basis of North Korean socialism.
The two Koreas...
have been in a relationship called... confrontational,
in the last seven decades.
The first thing to do
is to improve inter-Korean relations
in different fields.
And after a period of better relations,
we can think about the possibilities of talking
on Korean unification.
Groups of deserters have sent, for years,
by various means, information to the North Koreans.
They think it's key
to counter the regime's propaganda.
We also did it through private merchants,
but after Kim Jong-unal arrived in the government this changed.
He's much stricter.
Also, he has killed them.
In USB flash drives they copy all kinds of content:
movies, news, documentaries,
or also Trump's speech
at the South Korean National Assembly.
Or videos of foreigners who have been on both sides.
I'm going to teach you this...about America.
It's nothing special, it's normal people.
Or what a US market is like,
and what they say.
In North Korea,
this is harmful,
because North Koreans don't know about it.
There are no markets like these.
Along with other deserters, he prepares a new shipment.
They put rice and a USB stick into each bottle.
They want to help alleviate hunger,
physics and knowledge of his compatriots.
Financially funded by defectors and South Korean Protestant churches.
But the South Korean government
He doesn't even help us with a euro.
He's afraid of Kim Jong Un,
so we don't count on their support.
Two days later, we accompanied them to the South Korean island of Ganghwado.
There, they glue a plastic-wrapped bible to each bottle.
North Korea is in that direction,
behind an electric pole...and the mountain.
The rice in each bottle weighs 1 kilo 300.
Its value, in North Korean currency, is about 7,000 won,
Two months' salary of a North Korean.
Pray for peace
and so that the largest possible number of bottles arrives
to your destination.
Not even the rain stops them.
We release bottles twice a month,
at a specific time,
when there is a strong tide and more water enters.
This way, the bottles can float
and the strong current carries them towards North Korea.
Beyond borders and parallels,
"bottles of hope" float towards their destination.
The one on the Korean Peninsula
Still as open as the wide, vast sea.
Subtitles made by Chus Suárez Liaño.
