The city is in North Korea and the news agency is the first Western news organization to open report from North Korea.

North Korea has mostly been off limits to international journalists for decades.

AP CEO Tom Curley says the new bureau is located inside the headquarters of the state-run Korean News Agency.

Pyongyang is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

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Their former leader, Kim Jong-il, died 10 days ago. And Thursday, his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, led a memorial service.

Eulogies were read out in front of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians as they stood, heads bowed, in the central square.

And then, there was the silence.

Silence can be a powerful thing. There’s the pause in a speech that adds extra weight. The moment of silence before a performance begins. Or, sometimes, a performance itself.

In composer John Cage’s “4 minutes, 33 seconds,” a full BBC orchestra remains silent onstage, formally dressed, instruments poised. This audience is first game, then restless. Tension builds.

Finally, the first “movement” ends, and the conductor turns the page and wipes his brow.

The audience laughs, some cough, and there’s palpable release, even after just a couple of minutes of shared total silence.

Thursday, North Koreans shared their own silence – kind of.

Horns blared in the country’s capital, marking the three minutes North Koreans were to stand silent, shoulder to shoulder in public squares, bowing to mourn the passing of the man they called Dear Leader.

The ceremony was also meant to turn a page, as with a speech by a top general.

“But now we stand by Kim Jung-un. Kim Jong-un is a great leader. We will serve Kim Jong-un as the highest official. And under his leadership, we will complete this nation,” the general said.

The head of North Korea’s legislature also said, “Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un is our party, military and country’s Supreme Leader, who inherits our great comrade Kim Jong-il’s ideology, leadership, character, virtues, grit and courage. “

It’s hard to know whether all those standing silent think that’s a good thing. Criticism of the Kim family is silenced in North Korea, sometimes by imprisonment, sometimes by death. Most don’t dare, and keep silent.

In China, the country’s leaders wish more Chinese would do the same. Dozens of activists and civil rights lawyers have been imprisoned and silenced this year. Two writers Chen Wei and Chen Xi, received prison sentences of a decade or so each last week – for writing articles criticizing the government and calling for political reform.

And Thursday, lawyer Ni Yulan and her husband Dong Jiqin went on trial for helping victims of government-backed land grabs. They could face their own imposed silence.

Silence can be powerful. It can be eloquent, or oppressive. It can open up new spaces for the imagination, or shut them down. Only those experiencing a silence know which it is for them. Only once the silence ends, can they say.

The silence Thursday is in contrast to the screaming and crying Wednesday during the Kim Jong-il funeral procession.

If there were any questions left as to whom now runs the reclusive state, the answer was made clear. Kim Jong-un. The son of Kim Jong-il, who’s in his late 20s, was called the Supreme Leader of the party, people and military.

Kim’s command of the North’s million strong army has some in South Korea concerned. Namely, that country’s own military conscripts.

Service in South Korea’s military starts with a buzz cut.

Lee Kwang-min’s barbershop is right outside an army post in Seoul. Soldiers drop in for their regulation shave. But Lee says, it’s not just a haircut for new conscripts, it’s a rite of passage.

“It’s kind of becoming a man,” he said with a laugh. “New life is coming.”

Soon conscript Kim Min-jun will sit in the barber’s chair. Kim was informed this week that his mandatory military duty will begin in February.

He had hoped against hope that this day would never come.

“When I was very young, I thought when I become 20 years old, which is the age you have to complete the duty of military, I thought our nation would be unified with North Korea. So it doesn’t really matter to me, I thought. That’s what I thought when I was 10 years old.”

That didn’t happen. In fact, relations between the Koreas are arguably worse now than they were a decade ago.

North Korea’s military is twice the size of the South’s. It also has a nuclear weapons program. And the North Korean army is now under the control of Kim Jong-un, who’s only in his late 20s.

Some South Koreans are concerned about the age and inexperience of North Korea’s new leader.

“The problem is that he’s too young,” said Kim Min-jun’s friend, Choi Chanyong. “In the young times, in the young ages, you can be aggressive, take risks, adventures, so what I was worrying about is that he’s young he wants to do something, he wants to show something, so he could accidentally do something”

Do something, Choi says, like launch an attack on South Korean soil. That’s not a far-fetched scenario. Last year, the North bombarded Yeonpyeong Island. Two South Korean marines and two civilians died in the shelling.

And so, Kim accepts the necessity of mandatory conscription, though, he’s not exactly looking forward to serving in the military.

“Very personally, I don’t like it,” he said. “But thinking about the country, yeah there are no options, no other options, yeah, I’ll have to accept it”

Kim says for now, he just wants to enjoy his last two months of freedom before he gets that buzz cut.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is in the capital of North Korea’s closest and perhaps only ally, China. Mary Kay watched the funeral procession on TV in Beijing today. What were your impressions?

Mary Kay Magistad: Well, it was very somber with the snow falling and the North Korean announcer saying in mournful tones that this was the sky weeping for the dear leader. There certainly was an outpouring of grief. It almost felt like the reciprocal pep rally where different sections of the crowd were trying to outdo each other in how loudly they could weep, how much they could jump up and down and bend over double as the hurst went past them. It was meant to mark the passing of a leader the people were meant to revere as a god and to allow them to see his son, Kim Jong Un, walking beside the hurst as the heir apparent. Sort of a moment for North Koreans to just concentrate their minds and recognize that they’re moving into a new era. And at least to that extent it accomplished its purpose.

Mullins: Let’s talk about the new era in a second, but you also saw the funeral, you were in South Korea at the time, of Kim Il Sung, this was Kim Jong Il’s father. He did in 1994. That was broadcast at least in South Korea, but what were the differences from that funeral to this one?

Magistad: Well, one of the similarities is that it was almost the same funeral, the same route moving the body from the same place to another place, and it was Kim Jong Il, the son, who choreographed his father’s funeral. So in a sense he also choreographed his funeral, but what was different is that for Kim Il Sung I think people still really believed in him as this supernaturally great leader. I had been in North Korea in 1989 and then again in 2005 and it was really dramatic to me how much of a difference there was in how people talked about the leadership. In 1989 it really was like they were talking about someone they believed in as though he were a god.

Mullins: This is Kim Il Sung.

Magistad: Kim Il Sung.

Mullins: The founder of modern North Korea.

Magistad: In 2005 they were still saying the words, but it almost seemed like there was an edge of cynicism as they said them. And one reason for this could be that there had been a famine in the 1990s during which between one and two million North Koreans died or believed to have died. The economy had contracted and by the time Kim Jong Il died the average North Korean lifespan is now 3-1/2 years shorter than it was when he came to power.

Mullins: Well, bearing all of that in mind could it be that the grief that we saw during this funeral procession today, could it be that it really was genuine?

Magistad: I’m sure some of it was, but the likelihood that that many people standing out in the cold for that many hours could turn it on like that when the hurst went by with that much intensity, I think some of it was probably done for theatrical effect.

Mullins: Did anything about today’s events tell you who is in control in North Korea? If it is indeed Kim Jong Il’s son, Kim Jong Un?

Magistad: Well, certainly, Kim Jong Un was walking next to the hurst and the funeral cortege. Near him were his uncle, Jang Song Taek, who is considered to be sort of a regent or at least a guide for him in his new role, and also the army chief of staff, Ri Yong Ho. So it’s sort of the old guard who are expected to give Kim Jong a fair bit of guidance as he takes up the role of leader of North Korea.

Mullins: What about South Korea, what’s the reaction been there?

Magistad: In South Korea as when Kim Il Sung died people are sort of shrugging and getting on with life. I mean I think there is a little bit of alertness to see what might Kim Jong Un do to try to earn his stripes. And just in the past year or so he’s taken a more prominent role in the party, it appears that he has clamped down a bit on North Koreans who are trying to escape to get to China, to South Korea. And there have been purges within the party that he is said to have been behind. So it’s unclear what his leadership style is going to be and how much of it is going to be him and how much of it will be those behind him, but South Koreans are certainly interested in finding out as time goes on and of course, so is China.

Mullins: The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing, thank you.

Magistad: Thank you, Lisa.

Mullins: Mary Kay has been updating her Twitter stream with the latest on North Korea. You can follow her @marykaymagistad. To get the latest news about the changing of the guard in North Korea from our partners at the BBC, extensive coverage at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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Attached to the balloons are leaflets describing atrocities allegedly orchestrated by the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who died last Saturday.

The defectors shout Down with Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and now Kim Jong Un, as they released the balloons.

Park Sang Hak, who organizes frequent balloon drops into his former homeland, said, “We’re sending a message to the North Korean people about the truth about the Kim Jong Il dictatorship.”

North Korea has threatened to attack the launch site if the South Korean government doesn’t put an end to the balloon leafleting. But Seoul said it won’t interfere, saying it’s a matter of free speech.

Seoul said the same thing about an evangelical Christian group that asked for government permission to switch on Christmas lights along the Korean border. The lights can be seen from the North, and Pyongyang has called the display “psychological warfare.”

This week, Seoul changed its stance on the decorations.

Yu Woo-ik, South Korea’s Minister of Unification, said since North Korea is in a mourning period, the South Korean government has urged the religious groups to postpone the lighting of the Christmas trees.

On Thursday, the evangelical group agreed to hold off.

The Unification Ministry also said that while the government won’t offer official condolences to Pyongyang, it will allow private citizens and organizations to express sympathy via letter or fax to the North.

Seoul won’t send a delegation to Kim’s funeral either. But it will permit the wife of the late South Korean president Kim Dae Jung and the chairwoman of the Hyundai Group to attend. Pyongyang sent delegations to their husbands’ funerals.

Mixed Signals

John Delury, who lectures in East Asian Studies at Seoul’s Yonsei University, said South Korea is sending mixed signals. He added that the government’s indecision over how to respond to Kim Jong Il’s death will only add more strain to inter-Korean relations, and confuse the South Korean public.

“The deeper issue here is that the responses in South Korean society are very complex and people don’t know what they can say and can’t say,” Delury said.

But the fact that Seoul is saying anything about Kim Jong Il doesn’t sit well with for Park Sang Hak. The North Korean refugee wonders why anyone would commemorate this dictator.

“What kind of person was Kim Jong Il?” Park said. “No one sent condolences to Libya after Gaddafi died, and Kim Jong Il was worse than him. Gaddafi didn’t have prison camps, he didn’t starve his people like Kim did.”

Park said he’ll have his own send off for his former Dear Leader. He plans his next balloon launch for December 28th, the day North Koreans lay their late ruler to rest.

Moshik, Ma'ariv, Israel

North Korea’s Kim Jong Il has always been fodder for political cartoonists and his untimely death is no exception. In these cartoons look for wailing and crying, body doubles, the late leader trying to take a nuclear warhead into the afterlife, and the cartoon debut of Kim Jong Un, the “Hair Apparent”.

• The World’s Global Political Cartoons
• Follow Global Cartoons on Twitter @globalcartoons
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It was just the start of lunch hour on Monday when South Korean local news was interrupted by a special broadcast from the North.

A very emotional North Korean anchorwoman wearing a traditional Korean black funeral gown announced that Kim Jong-il had died this past Saturday from a heart attack. She said the Dear Leader was exhausted from all the guidance he had given to make North Korea a great nation.

The South Korean government went into immediate crisis mode.

Choi Bo-sun, a spokesman for the Ministry of Unification, the government body that deals with all North Korean matters, gave a live address on South Korean television. Choi said Seoul is following established protocol, and is coping with the death of Kim Jong Il according to long-established plans. He added that a special commission has been created to monitor all developments in the North.

That might include whether or not the firing of a short-range missile off North Korea’s East coast late on Monday was connected to Kim’s death. So far, South Korean government sources have told local media that the two are not related.

President Lee Myung Bak has urged South Koreans to remain calm and go about their normal lives. And judging by reactions in Seoul, it seems many South Koreans are doing just that. Many people I spoke to on the streets of Seoul on Monday said they didn’t care about the death of North Korea’s leader; some even laughed it off.

But Yu Mi Hyun, who’s 25, said people here should care. Yu said she was in her office when she heard the news. At first she didn’t think it was a big deal. “But after I spoke to friends in the military, I realized that this is really important.”

A 56-year-old man named Mr. Seong who reading newspapers posted on a billboard outside the Seoul Press Center had other concerns. He said he’s worried how the North Korean leader’s death might affect the economy.

“Everything in the market is going to change,” Seong said. “All sectors are going to be affected by his death.”

Seong had a point. South Korea’s KOSPI index took a 3.2 percent hit as news of uncertainty on the Korean peninsula reached investors abroad.

But the uncertainty is raising hopes for some in South Korea, namely, the 22,000 strong community of North Korean defectors.

Kim Hung-kwang, president of North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, an organization made up of former North Korean elites, said he’s telling constituents not to get too excited though.

He said North Korea under a new leader can go one of two ways; it can become open to the international community and engage, or it could become an even more militarized state and even more dangerous than before.

But Kim Hung-kwang said now’s the time to reach out to North Koreans and counter the propaganda that painted Kim Jong Il as a hero.

He said even though many difficulties lie ahead, the day when he and other defectors can finally return to their home suddenly seems closer.

More from the BBC

North Koreans weeping publicly (KCNA footage)

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Reaction inside North Korea is much harder to gauge. The government in Pyongyang keeps a very tight reign on information. So far the images being broadcast by North Korean state media feature people in the capital wailing and crying as they mourn the loss of their dear leader. The students at the Pyongyang No. 1 Secondary School were united in their sorrow. Professor Hazel Smith is an expert on North Korea at Cranfield University in England. She lived in North Korea for two years. Smith says those wailing students are not your average North Koreans.

Hazel Smith: Pyongyang No. 1 Secondary School is where the elite go to school and where they will have been filmed by the North Korean TV to show all this grief in order to put on a show for the world. So the main question is what about the rest of the people? Most people think that Kim Jong Il doesn’t provide them with a descent life, enough food to eat, that they’ve suffered a calamitous degradation of their lives economically over the past 20 years. And so certainly there is little legitimacy of this government among the population as a whole.

Werman: Well, then let me as this question, if the state has less control now why were there not people happy and maybe expressing the happiness that Kim Jong Il is gone?

Smith: Well, this is still an authoritarian country and it’s still incredibly difficult in that they would be punished if they criticized the leadership, that’s one thing. And the other thing, it’s about minus 14 degrees celsius…

Werman: Yeah, that’s 7 Fahrenheit, it’s really freezing.

Smith: People literally can’t move from door to door without freezing. I lived there through two very cold winters and it’s no joke. Without fuel you simply have, you can’t move outside because if you breath you freeze. So there is no scope for people getting on the streets and demonstrating one way or the other. In fact, the coldest people are going to be those that have to take part in these orchestrated funeral ceremonies that will take place over the next few weeks.

Werman: Now, Hazel, we’ve seen people take to the streets and put everything on the line in the Arab world through the Arab Spring to push their heads of state out of power. Now, Kim Jong Il has died, he’s gone. Do you personally hold out any hope as somebody that’s live in North Korea, somebody that visits there, that Kim’s death could lead to greater freedoms for North Koreans?

Smith: What we see in North Korea is that the country is run domestically by a military commission and it has been run by this commission since the late 1990s, and Kim Jong Il was leader of this commission. That means there’s going to be no change in the central authority or the central approach towards increasing political freedom for people in the country. At the same time the people as I said earlier, the vast majority of the population of the 24 million population simply do not have enough food and fuel to survive. All the revolutions made in history and those in the Middle East are not made by starving people. Revolutions are made by people who have enough to eat and want more freedom, usually educated, usually lower middle class, although there is an educated middle class in North Korea, these people are the ones that don’t have food in the back garden who live in big apartment blocks (it’s a 70% urbanized country) who are literally as I said earlier, trying to scrape enough food to eat and to physically get the family through the winter.

Werman: What have the multiple generations of Kims done to North Koreans in terms of obedience? Do North Koreans follow these leaders because they have to now or has time meant that they actually want to follow them?

Smith: There was strong ideological control for the media and through education through the whole of the period of Kim Il Sung and it was backed up by very strict penal controls. There were purges in the ’50s, people were executed as happened in the Soviet Union. When you come to the last 20 years the state hasn’t been able to maintain those controls and North Koreans, as any other people in the world, they’re just the same as you and me, they want a good job, they want their children to have a good education…you know, they want to have a good laugh and be able to go out and enjoy themselves like everybody else. They are not a brainwashed people who just do what they’re told. There is not sense of cause because they’re not idiots. That Kim Jong Il has delivered anything for them when their families are living in poverty and where they get lots of information about the outside world today through South Korean media, through DVDs, when you see the kids, when I saw the kids in Pyongyang in May when I was last there, you can see them copying the styles of the South Korean male pop stars. Young men you know, coiffed up hair and jackets pushed back toward the elbows. You can see it’s very apparently a way it wasn’t 8-9 years ago when I used to live there. There’s a lot of influence from the outside world there.

Werman: Hazel Smith, a professor at Cranfield University in England, thank you very much.

Smith: Thank you.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: New Jersey native Robert Egan serves as an unofficial ambassador for the government of North Korea. When he’s not behind the counter of his barbecue restaurant in Hackensack, Egan is running a trade group that’s worked to improve ties between North Korea and the US. Egan’s work has been profiled in The New Yorker as well as on this program. When we reached him at his restaurant today he was full of praise for the late Kim Jong Il.

Robert Egan: Nobody can dispute that we know more about North Korea today than we’ve ever known before and all that credit goes to Kim Jong Il. He was the one that was responsible for cracking that door open.

Werman: You almost make Kim Jong Il sound like a reformer.

Egan: Yeah, he was a reformer as far as dictators go. Let’s face it, it was a bad year for dictators. Kim Jong Il saw this coming years ago…

Werman: But he was also a man who has starved over a million of his own people.

Egan: No, he didn’t starve a million of his own people, okay? What he inherited in the division of the Korean Peninsula after WWII starved a million people. We cut that country in half after it was united for 5,000 years because we didn’t want to go to war with Russia, okay, we gave half that peninsula to the Russians and Stalin.

Werman: Robert Egan, tell me how you became involved with the government of North Korea.

Egan: North Koreans were investigating how Vietnam achieved a roadmap toward normalized relations with the US. The knew the route to do that like with Vietnam was to get normalized relations with the US. I walked Vietnam through the roadmap of normalized relations with the US. North Korea went knocking on Vietnam’s door, they asked for a recommendation, and Vietnam recommended me.

Werman: Did you ever meet Kim Jong Il?

Egan: No, I didn’t. Actually I was at the same ceremony as him, but he was certainly a guy working at my level doesn’t get those opportunities too often, but it was his regime and the men that were working under him that allowed me to have access to non-governmental organizations over the years, brought many, many top secret North Korean delegations over to the United States to negotiate with the United States. I brought delegations over to North Korea.

Werman: So what kind of window through those upper level officials in North Korea, what kind of window did you get into the man Kim Jong Il? I mean what do you know about him that the rest of us don’t know?

Egan: He liked women, he liked cigars and he liked booze. He was a regular guy, and certainly he knew that his country was in a lot of trouble. Well, he sought out help from the west. Did he come as far as we would have liked him? Of course not, he’s a dictator, but certainly I think it’s time now to reflect back and to encourage whoever steps into his shoes to open up more. And be doing that we need to recognize the liberties that Kim Jong Il gave his own people to interact with his enemies.

Werman: You once said that you were Kim Jong Il’s man in New Jersey. Will those loyalties now shift to his son, Kim Jong Un?

Egan: You know, there’s a lot of doubt whether he’s gonna be able to maintain that…

Werman: Are you hoping that the crack…

Egan: that his father and his grandfather had.

Werman: Right, but are you hoping that maybe the crack gets wider and there’s a role for you to play now?

Egan: No, you know, this is what I hope — I hope it becomes a democracy. Okay, and I hope some of my guys that I know run for office, maybe one of them [unknown 03:14] North Korea.

Werman: Have you spoken to any of them, Robert Egan, in the last 24 hours?

Egan: Yes, yes, I’ve spoken with a few of them.

Werman: And what have they told you?

Egan: There’s uncertainty and they’re sad. You know, even if your father has been abusive and he dies, are you gonna cry at the funeral? Of course you’re gonna cry. Well, this was their father. He’s a colt-like figure, so certainly at this point you know, they’re gonna be sad. I think as time goes on then they can reflect back and to see you know, exactly the atrocities that were committed. There were millions of people that needlessly died, not because Kim Jong Il killed them, but this is the system that he inherited.

Werman: We’ve been speaking with Bob Egan about the death of North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il. Egan’s book about his personal outreach efforts to the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is Eating With the Enemy: How I Wages Peace with North Korea from My BBQ Shack in Hackensack. Robert, thank a lot.

Egan: Okay, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. Two days of nuclear talks between the US and North Korea ended today without an agreement. The US wants North Korea to reopen its nuclear program to inspections. Today Chief American Negotiator Steven Bosworth said the sessions were positive, but fruitless.

Steve Bosworth: We came to the conclusion that we will need more time and more discussion to reach an agreement in an effort to assess whether we have sufficient agreement to resume our active negotiations, both bilaterally and in the six party process.

Mullins: These latest US-North Korea talks were held in Switzerland. Authorities in Pyong Yang don’t like to host visitors, but some people are allowed in. Sam Gellman had the chance to visit the country as a tourist back in September. Gellman works in Financial Services in Hong Kong. Every moment of his four day tour of North Korea was tightly supervised, but he took and he took a lot of pictures and his photos, which are now posted on Flickr have been viewed by nearly a quarter of a million people. Sam Gellman says some of his best images show something called “The Mass Games”

Sam Gellman: The Mass Games are that it’s a one hundred thousand person performance which is just kind of a grand spectacle full of propaganda and it’s a show that I think that they’re very proud of.

Mullins: So you were there at the Mass Games and a lot of folks will recognize the descriptions that you provide and the pictures, in fact, that you provide which are stunningly beautiful pictures, but this is basically, as you say, images of human pixels. Tell us what the set up was like and what you mean by that term.

Gellman: That’s just kind of a term I have used myself and you have tens of thousands of performers and the probably more interesting part is in the background which you might be able to see in some of those images. You have thirty thousand children who have these individual signboards and they flip the signboards kind of in rhythm with each other and to a very very distinct, you know, cue and those create incredible images that are constantly changing and they can go from being the North Korean flag to a picture of Kim Il-sung to a boy playing a beach ball and then individual kids will just flip their signs so, you know, everybody is the same, but the beach ball flies across that side of the stands.

Mullins: And this is like split second accuracy?

Gellman: Split second accuracy, yeah. I mean you even have little things like cars driving up mountains and that’s pretty incredible to watch. I mean perhaps a little strange that, you know, thirty thousand children are doing it.

Mullins: Do you have a favorite photo of your own?

Gellman: I think some of the Mass Games pictures are visually very appealing. I like one picture of the soldier in the bumper car. Yeah, we spent a few hours a kind of like a carnival type event where, you know, we’re playing bumper cars with soldiers and I found that festival really interesting because it was an opportunity to really kind of interact with people in a much more fun way and, you know, a lot of the soldiers would have their kids with them and clearly these are people who, you know, on a Saturday night want to have fun with their kids just like you or me. I think there were little moments like that where you really get the sense that regardless of how much our countries probably kind of dislike each other, that you can kind of break through that.

Mullins: You know, one picture that I’m kind of marveling at as I look at it, unusual to be able to get a North Korean soldier to smile, but also smile for the camera and you got it.

Gellman: That was actually pretty interesting because we were at the border between the North and South Korea and the soldier gave us a tour and spent a lot of the time talking about kind of American Imperialism and Americans occupying the South and South Korea, saying negative things about Americans and then after the tour, he was more than happy to have his picture taken. I mean at those moments you realize that in some ways these are just people who are doing their jobs and people tend to be friendly when other people smile at them and he was no different.

Mullins: Were you ever stopped from taking a photo of anything?

Gellman: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, you have to be careful about what you take pictures of I think. I mean you don’t want to take pictures that make the country look poor. Those are clearly pictures the pictures they don’t want.

Mullins: Was it worth it?

Gellman: I think it is worth it. I think, you know, you go to places like North Korea, you go to, I’ve been, I’ve spent ten days in Myanmar, you know, and these are countries where the people have very little exposure to foreigners. I think there is kind of a real fear of the unknown and as just someone who goes into these countries and tries to be friendly and kind of have moments where you are actually hanging out with people who probably were afraid of you ten minutes earlier I think is worth doing. You know, that, for me, I’m just most intrigued by the fact that the people are in many ways similar to us and I think that experience is worth it.

Mullins: Alright. Sam Gellman, thank you very much.

Gellman: No problem.

Mullins: You can see Sam Gellman’s captivating photos from the thousands of North Koreans moving in unison in the Mass Games to the picture of the soldier in a bumper car. The slide show is at the theworld.org.

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Park is an anti-Pyongyang activist involved in sending propaganda leaflets to the North. The detained man is said to have had a poison-tipped needle on him when he was arrested.

Lisa Mullins gets details from Jason Strother in Seoul.

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Lisa Mullins: Our next story sounds like something out of a spy novel.  It involves a man who defected from North Korea to the south, but who may have been a North Korean secret agent posing as a defector.  Authorities in South Korea arrested the man.  They say he was plotting to kill a political activist in the south with a poison needle. The activist targeted is a fierce critic of the North Korean regime.  Reporter Jason Strother is in Seoul now where details about the alleged plot are just beginning to emerge.

Jason Strother: Well, authorities have only released the family name of the would-be assassin, calling him Mr. An.  He’s in his forties.  He’s said to be a former special ops from North Korea who defected to the south back in the late ’90s, but pretty much laid low since then until earlier this year. He had recently contacted Mr. Park Sang-hak, who is a defector himself and a human rights activist.  He’s been launching balloons carrying leaflets about the Arab Spring and other anti-Kim Jong-Il propaganda across the border for some time now.  Mr. Park was approached by the would-be assassin, Mr. An, a few weeks back asking to meet at a local subway station here in Seoul to discuss working together to spread anti-North Korean leaflets. However, the activists, Mr. Park, was tipped off by the national intelligence agency here, saying that this could be an assassination attempt.

Mullins: So what happened?

Strother: Authorities picked up Mr. An at the subway station where he was supposed to meet the activist, Mr. Park.  That’s where they say that they found this poison needle on him and now they’ve taken him in for questioning to determine whether or not he was sent by Pyongyang to assassinate this activist.

Mullins: The activist who escaped death because he didn’t show up at that subway station, what’s he involved in in the anti-Pyongyang propaganda?

Strother: Well, Mr. Park’s activist group along with many other human rights organizations here in Seoul have participated over the past year or so in sending balloons fitted with leaflets denouncing Kim Jong-Il.  They’re basic balloons like you would find at a birthday party. Activists go to parks or other areas near the North Korean border and in mass let off these hundreds, if not thousands of balloons carrying anti-Kim Jong-Il leaflets, news from the outside, even sometimes DVDs that have videos of what’s taking place here in South Korea, all the hopes of causing something similar to what we saw in North Africa, in the Middle East earlier this year.

Mullins: And what happens to Mr. An now, the would-be assassin?

Strother: Well, right now, according to reports here, he’s being questioned by the national intelligence service to determine whether or not he was in fact ordered by Pyongyang to carry to carry out this alleged assassination.  If it is found that he was taking orders from the north he could face several years in prison.

Mullins: All right, thank you, Jason Strother in Seoul, South Korea, telling us about the foiled assassination plot against an anti-North Korean government activist in Seoul.  Thank you, Jason.

Strother: Thank you, Lisa.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World, the co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Imagine you live in the Northern United States and you want to immigrate to Canada, but instead of simply heading north you have to make a circuitous 3000 mile journey via Panama to get there. Well that’s sort of what’s going on for some North Koreans trying to escape to South Korea. They’re using a kind of underground railroad that takes them through South East Asia before getting them to freedom in South Korea. Patrick Winn has written about that for Global Post, where he’s a South Asia correspondent. He’s speaking with us from Bangkok. So Patrick, visualize this for us, where are these North Koreans starting, where do they end up and what kind of transport do they use to get there?

Patrick Winn: Well they’re starting in North Korea and just imagine an extremely bleak, a famine stricken farm, that’s a pretty typical environment for a North Korean. The next step to get out of North Korea involves crossing the river border into China and many wait until the river freezes over, some chance it and find a shallow stretch to swim across. But when they’re crossing, they have to worry about border guards on both sides. So getting out of North Korea is the first step and it’s a pretty difficult one. From China they need to get to a secondary country that will not send them back to North Korea; Chinese police will. So they have to go all the way down to South West China and into one of the South East Asian nations, either Vietnam, Burma or Laos. Neither of these countries are very sympathetic to incoming refugees, so the best bet is to make it into Thailand, which is a pretty strong South Korean ally. From there, the South Korean government will give them the necessary things to patriate into Seoul and then they can begin their life anew in South Korea.

Werman: And how long does this trip typically take?

Winn: It depends on the defector, once they get to China and they find a safe house, run by this defector’s network, they spend about a month, simply eating. They come out of North Korea so starving and bone thin, that they need to eat for about a month, just to pass as Chinese, otherwise they’re pretty easy to spot because of the malnutrition.

Werman: Wow.

Winn: So, that’s one month right there. Some end up falling into various traps in China. Prostitution is pretty common for women that don’t have any other options, forced labor happens as well. So, some fall into these traps in China and, and perhaps never make it out. And some manage to scrounge up a little money in China and that helps smooth the way into that 3rd country, where they can finally fall into the, into the care of the South Korean government and make it all the way to Seoul.

Werman: And what kind of transport do they use to kind of make this trip, all the way down to Bangkok, is it mix of walking and buses and mass transit?

Winn: It’s actually mostly public transportation. The defector’s network doesn’t really, as far as I could tell, it doesn’t really run its own routes, by keeping people on the back of truck beds or anything like that. They actually put them on trains and public buses and there’s always this ever present fear that they’re going to be stopped by the Chinese police officer, they’re going to be tipped off by a local that notices someone that looks or is acting a bit strange. And even if they can present a fake Chinese ID, you know, they don’t speak the language and it’s pretty easy to figure out that they’re not actually South Korean and from there end up in prison.

Werman: And this network of people that help them along the way, do they accompany them along the trip and would you describe them more as Samaritans, the one who help North Koreans or are they more like money-grabbing coyotes?

Winn: I would describe it as a mix. Yeah, usually if they’re plugged into the network, then they can get someone to guide them all the way to Thailand or at least through most of that journey. Once they, if they can finally get to South Korea, they get a cash payout from the South Korean government to help them start their lives. And about 1500 to 2000 dollars of that payout is expected to be paid to the network that helped them escape. So, yes there is money to be made, it has this Samaritan feel to it as well, and I think there is a mix of the money-grubbing coyotes like you would have shuttling people from say Mexico to the United States, they’re some of that as well.

Werman: What’s the North Korean government doing to thwart this underground escape route?

Winn: Some North Korean intelligence officers’ figure out which family has left from what village and they look up their kin and they start monitoring to them to see if they are getting money from defectors that have made it all the way to South Korea and have decent jobs. So, I’m sure that some of them basically looking for families to extort and they don’t necessarily mind that they have left for that reason. But it’s widely understood to any North Korean, if he try to escape and you’re caught, you very well maybe executed and that threat alone keeps a lot of them sort of scared in place.

Werman: Patrick Winn, South Asia correspondent for Global Post. He’s been speaking to us about a long journey that some North Koreans are willing to take to get to South Korea. Patrick, thank you very much.

Winn: Thank you Marco.

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From The Atlantic: North Korea’s Digital Underground

Han Bok Yeo (center) sits together with two of her neighbors from Seo-Yeonpyeong Island inside their government supplied apartment in Gimpo. (Photo: Jason Strother)

South Korea today proposed a date to resume military talks with North Korea. The two sides haven’t met since Pyongyang launched an attack on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island in November, killing two marines and two civilians.

About 1,500 people lived on Yeonpyeong and a smaller adjacent island before the attack. Most evacuated and are now living on the mainland.

In the city of Gimpo, an hour outside of Seoul, Han Bok Yeo welcomes people to her seventh floor apartment. It is more than four hours from home on Seo-Yeonpyeong Island, a small island that also came under North Korean fire late last year.

The 60-year old Han now lives with several of her island neighbors in this spacious apartment. Around 900 islanders live in this apartment complex, all paid for by the South Korean government.

Han said she appreciates everything that came with the apartment, but it’s been tough to adjust to life on the mainland. “Normally, we just watch TV,” she said. “Some people go to church, sometimes we take walks. But we have a hard time getting used to all the air pollution here.”

Like most of the islanders, Han doesn’t have a job here. She relies on a government stipend. Han said she wants to return to Seo-Yeonpyeong Island as soon as possible, but all the pipes in her house are frozen.

51-year old Lee Seong-bon, a member of a residents committee that formed after the evacuation, said that most of the homes on the islands have frozen pipes and busted boilers. He said there are many other problems that make it difficult for islanders to go back home.

For instance, temporary shelters on the island aren’t warm enough, many homes still have cracks, and melted snow is leaking in. Lee said the government should do more to fix these problems.

But the government says it has done enough.

An official from the South Korean Department of Disaster Management, who declined to go on the record, maintained that the homes on the island are in fine condition. He said the islanders keep asking for more money, but all financial and housing support for them is set to end on February 18th.

According to Lee Seong-bon, the residents will push for an extension of aid, though he is optimistic about Seoul’s decision to re-open dialogue with Pyongyang. He said many islanders are still afraid to go home, and he thinks the military talks could calm their fears.

Still, he added, the islanders feel wronged by the North Korean and the South Korean governments. “We want an apology from North Korea,” Lee said, “but we also want a stronger guarantee from the South Korean government that it will do a better job of protecting the islands’ residents.”

Han Bok Yeo, who lives in the 7th floor apartment in Gimpo, doesn’t seem too concerned about getting an apology from North Korea. “I don’t know a lot about these talks and I don’t really care about them,” she said. “I just want to go back to the island.”

• In pictures: Korea’s day of tension
• FAQ Korean crisis
• North Korea affects US-South Korea relations

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World.  The Korean peninsula was heating up again this past weekend.  South Korea was planning to conduct a military exercise near the disputed border with the North.  Today, it made good on that threat.  But, North Korea did not make good on its threat to retaliate.  Not only that, officials in the Communist state told visiting New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson that they have agreed to allow international inspectors to resume monitoring North Korea’s nuclear facilities.  The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing says the North Korean response comes as a surprise.

MARY KAY MAGISTAD: It sort of begs the question of, is this yet another, very dramatic example of North Korea making big threats, saying, you know, “We can make your lives very difficult.  We have the weapons.  We have the potential to, you know, turn the whole peninsula into an island of fire.  You need to deal with us.”  Bill Richardson comes in, they talk and they agree to move forward in a new direction.  And then it’s really interesting the way the Chinese media are spinning this.  They’re basically saying, “Look, North Korea is emerging as the great statesman here.”  They’re quoting the North Korean high command saying, “We don’t need to respond to South Korea’s provocations.  You know, we’re going to see here who’s the real peacemaker and who’s the provocateur.”

MULLINS: So, as you say, North Korea has sometimes been willing to play ball, sometimes it hasn’t in the past.  So, who’s to say now that even though we’re told that they will allow in U.N. weapons inspectors once again that they will actually do that and give them unfettered access?

MAGISTAD: Excellent question.  North Korea has in the past played ball but it hasn’t always been the same game of ball that those on the other side would like it to play, and it doesn’t always play all the innings.  It might agree to a package of things that it’s going to do in exchange for aid that it’s going to get and it will do some of those things, get a lot of the aid and then, perhaps, the aid doesn’t come in on schedule and so it stops or, perhaps, it just decides it’s going to stop.  It feels that there’s bad faith on the other side or so it says in its official media, and so changes its policy.  You know, at this stage, North Korea has every incentive to … the North Korean government has every incentive to try to get more aid in.  It’s been a bad harvest this year.  The economy is in a shambles and there’s a succession coming up where the father Kim Jong Il is trying to pass on power to his son Kim Jong Un over time, and he would like to, you know, be able to resolve the differences that North Korea has long had with the United States and get North Korea into a sustained position of more power than it has at the moment.

MULLINS: And just to be clear, Kim Jong Il, presumably, is still the one calling the shots, not his son who is going to be taking power?

MAGISTAD: Right. I mean it’s certainly assumed that Kim Jong Il will be the leader of North Korea until he dies.

MULLINS: Mary Kay Magistad, The World’s Beijing Correspondent speaking to us from Beijing, China.  Thanks, Mary Kay.

MAGISTAD: Thank you, Lisa.

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