Original subtitles

In Ireland, a place of refuge turns into a house of horrors.

All hell broke loose. There were bodies everywhere.

It was appalling. And it was totally unnecessary.

A weird and wonderful fantasyland in the heart of Alabama.

Everybody loves it so much, they don't even wear shoes,

as a symbol that they never want to leave.

In South Korea, the fate of a nation is determined behind these walls.

They were trapped, cut off from the outside world,

but would fight to the death for democracy.

And on the Namibian coast, the chilling evidence of a trade

the world could not have lived without.

Today, we see it as a cruel and brutal industry,

but it was lucrative enough to bring people

to even the most desolate and inhospitable places.

Decaying relics.

Ruins of lost worlds.

Sites haunted by the past.

Their secrets waiting to be revealed.

In County Cork, on Ireland's southern coast,

are haunting remnants of a tragic era.

The area's covered in lush green hills

and pristine beaches.

There's a reason this country is called the Emerald Isle.

Yet the land's natural beauty hides a painful history.

On the outskirts of a small town

are the sprawling remains of a stone complex.

You can still see these imposing walls,

but the overgrowth has almost entirely reclaimed these buildings.

The crumbling relic reveals little about its original purpose.

When this was built, the country was in the grips

of a horrible catastrophe - partly natural, partly manmade.

I still imagine those poor people coming up

knowing what their fate was going to be behind these walls -

that they'd never come out again.

Additional ruins expose a different chapter

of this heartbreaking story.

The structure of a wall

and a tall, dark building with the windows boarded up.

How are all these structures connected

and what happened here?

This became the epicentre

of one of the worst crises in Ireland's history.

The first time I came here, I wasn't ready for it.

I could actually feel the sorrow seeping out through the walls,

and it really did have a profound impact on me.

Terri Kearney grew up in the nearby town of Skibbereen.

She's dedicated her life to preserving the memory

of a tragedy many in Ireland wanted to forget.

For 150 years, Ireland really did forget.

You know, it wasn't spoken about. It's called the Great Silence.

So, these places are really, really important

as a physical manifestation of over a million dead.

I always describe it as a prison environment.

But this was no prison.

During the 19th century,

thousands of desperate people came here by choice

because their only other option was an agonising death.

They were surrounded by high stone walls.

When you went in, you had to go in as a family.

You were segregated - men, women, boys, girls.

You weren't allowed to see the other members of your family.

And they put them doing degrading, demeaning work -

breaking stones or pushing a wheel.

This is the Schull workhouse,

the government's answer for a population in dire straits.

The workhouse was an institution in Ireland.

At their peak, there were over 160 of them.

It was really a last resort for the poorest families.

If you couldn't support yourself,

you could come to a workhouse

and receive food and shelter for your labour.

The workhouse system, funded by local taxes,

was first put in place by the British government

in the late 1830s.

When they opened, the conditions were so bad,

the workhouses were rarely full.

But, by the 1840s,

buildings like this all across Ireland

were filled to capacity.

The reason for the increased demand

dates back to when the English invaded these shores.

The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in the 17th century,

and the system of landlords and tenants that was put in place,

created a precarious situation amongst Irish farmers.

The Penal Law of 1704 dictated that, when an Irish tenant farmer died,

his land should be equally divided among his sons.

As the population continued to grow,

this farmland got subdivided into smaller and smaller plots.

As a consequence, these farmers

turned to the one crop that,

even in that limited space,

could feed a whole family - the potato.

Ireland's reliance on a single food source

would prove to be fatal.

In 1845,

a blight that had been travelling around North America and Europe

landed on Irish shores, and the potato crop was decimated.

Somewhere between a quarter and a third of the crop failed.

And we'd had multiple failures of the crops here before -

one in 1817 and one in 1822 -

so people around here were well used to failures,

and they thought, "One year. We just need to get over one year."

But the next year, the situation only got worse.

In 1846, there was a 90% failure of the crop.

The poor farming region of West Cork was one of the hardest-hit areas,

and the town of Skibbereen became ground zero

in the Great Potato Famine.

By 1846, people were dying in this town

and society was breaking down.

Death by starvation is a long, slow, painful disease,

and it robbed their humanity.

A local doctor named Daniel Donovan

witnessed the tragedy that was unfolding,

and he stepped in to be a champion for the people.

Oh, Dr Dan was an extraordinary man. He was qualified as a surgeon.

He could have gone off to Dublin and had a very illustrious career.

Instead, he stayed here in Skibbereen

during this worst catastrophe.

He did so much to help people.

He wrote and looked for help, screamed for help.

His efforts brought Skibbereen's plight

to the world's attention

when horror stories describing the suffering

were published in British newspapers just before Christmas 1846.

So, people were sitting down to their big meal

and they read about people in their own country,

as it was, starving to death.

The British Relief Association was set up shortly afterwards,

and that brought £400,000 worth of aid into Ireland.

Everyone from the Sultan of Turkey to the Indian Relief Fund

started to send money to Ireland.

The old mill building in town

was hastily converted into a makeshift soup kitchen

to feed the hungry.

The relief effort embarrassed British politicians.

Here was the world's greatest empire

becoming reliant on external aid to help its people.

Now in the spotlight,

the government was forced to offer support.

In 1847, the Soup Kitchen Act was passed

and, within months, 3 million Irish people were being fed.

They served a concoction of barley, water,

beef, and onions, known as Soyer's soup.

It was nothing fancy,

but it gave people just enough calories to survive.

Charles Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary to the Treasury,

was the man in charge of Britain's relief efforts.

His political and personal views

dictated the government's initial reluctance to help.

Charles Trevelyan was a subscriber of the laissez-faire policy,

which is government noninterference in economic matters.

That meant that, in the middle of the famine,

food was being exported out of Ireland,

even as millions continued to starve.

Trevelyan infamously wrote that

the famine had been brought about by God

as a judgement on Ireland's excessive population growth

and dependency on the potato for food.

Even today, he's a hated figure across Ireland.

It's not hard to see why.

Only three months after crucial, life-saving aid was given,

it was swiftly taken away.

In 1847, a financial crisis hit Britain

and they withdrew entirely their support

for the Soup Kitchen Act.

The consequences were devastating.

From the autumn, the only relief thereon

was through the workhouse system.

All hell broke loose. It really did.

It was the worst year of the Great Famine.

And it was totally unnecessary.

In Skibbereen, the existing workhouse,

all but demolished today apart from its outer wall,

was unable to cope with the sheer number of destitute people.

When the Skibbereen workhouse was full,

a new one was opened in the neighbouring town of Schull

to take the pressure off.

So, this Schull workhouse was one of the later workhouses,

built in the late 1840s, early 1850s.

Horrible, horrible places.

During the Great Famine, they were so overcrowded and underfunded.

They kept running out of food.

They were breeding grounds for disease.

The awful truth was that families often didn't come here to live,

they came to die.

Catholic families came to workhouses

because they knew they would get a properly consecrated burial.

And so many accounts of that -

people clamouring at the workhouse walls,

just wanting to get in,

so they knew they wouldn't be left to rot at the side of the road.

At Skibbereen's Abbeystrowry Cemetery

are the unmarked graves of over 10,000 people -

a small fraction of the total death toll.

These mass graves are all over Ireland.

Overall, it's estimated we lost about a million people

and about another million and a quarter emigrated.

It was the biggest mass migration in world history.

By the mid-1850s, the potato crop had almost fully recovered

and the dependence on workhouses steadily declined.

The famine may have ended, but its legacy had only just begun.

I suppose you could say the events of this era

would eventually lead to Irish independence, too,

because some of those who survived were violently changed by it

and became revolutionaries with arms.

Their fight for freedom would eventually bring about

this building's demise.

During the War of Independence,

the Irish Republican Army burned the workhouse to the ground

to prevent it being used as barracks by the British forces.

Since then, it's become dilapidated and overgrown,

a ghostly reminder of the country's most dire period.

In Central Alabama is a curious collection of buildings

where reality collides with fantasy.

A short distance north of the capital, Montgomery,

is a place called Jackson Lake Island.

And it's small - I mean, less than a half a mile across.

It's really beautiful, but also kind of spooky.

At the end of the island is what looks like

this abandoned, desolate town.

There's something old about it,

but something kind of otherworldly, too.

As you get closer to these buildings,

you realise there's something really odd about them.

There's nothing inside. In fact, some of them aren't even finished.

At the town's entrance, the plot thickens.

There's these two trees that frame the street,

but if you look closer,

you can actually tell that they're fake,

like where the bark is wearing away, there's Styrofoam.

So, this is not actually a real place.

It's a place of complete make-believe.

Everything seen here

is the creation of a visionary with a wild imagination.

For the man behind it, it was a big gamble.

I mean, he needed a win,

and there was no guarantee that this was going to be it.

It's a magical story.

Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's sad,

and sometimes it is just downright weird.

And there are goats - lots and lots of goats!

For many years, this was just a place where

people loved to come and fish, and maybe picnic or camp.

Bobby and Lynn Bright are the owners of Jackson Lake Island.

In 2003, an out-of-the-blue phone call

changed their world forever.

We were contacted by the Alabama Film Commission,

and they said that they had a production company

that was interested in maybe doing a movie on our island.

It was exciting because once we learned it was Tim Burton,

we knew that it wasn't going to be a small-time deal,

it was going to be a major production.

When a big Hollywood picture comes to town,

it's like an occupying army.

They bring almost everything they need -

trailers, trucks, catering.

Well, at the beginning, there was nothing here.

It was just grass and trees.

And they came in and just kind of cleared the site

and then started the construction.

It was a big operation.

This is the fictional town of Spectre,

one of the many whimsical locations in the 2003 cult film Big Fish.

If you haven't seen the movie Big Fish,

it's this really lovely magical-realism film.

At its core, it's a story of a father and a son's

troubled relationship.

So, Ewan McGregor stars as the dad when he's younger,

and Albert Finney plays the older version of him.

And he loves to tell tall tales about his life.

I mean tall tales - like, really.

The son is played by Billy Crudup,

and he plays a character named Will Bloom,

and Will is absolutely fed up

with what he sees as his father's lifetime of lies.

But when Will discovers his father is dying,

he decides to find out the truth about his life.

That's where the town of Spectre comes in.

In the film, a young Edward Bloom wants to leave home.

You know, it's too small for him. He's a big fish in a small pond.

So, he goes on kind of a journey, and that journey brings him here.

The town of Spectre is kind of like a Brigadoon place

where you feel like you've stepped out of time

into a different world where things just work differently,

like nobody wears any shoes.

Shortly after Edward arrives,

he's invited to the mayor's house for apple pie,

and the townspeople try to convince him to stay.

Under the table comes little Jenny,

unties his boots, runs out the front door with them.

She runs down the street, throws them over the line

where all the residents' shoes are,

and he quickly learned why she took his boots.

And the reason for that is they love the town so much,

they don't ever want to leave.

The movie is full of all these weird and wonderful scenes,

in a way that makes you think it could only be a Tim Burton film,

but it almost didn't turn out that way.

The movie was originally conceived from a novel,

and it came to Steven Spielberg, who was interested in directing it.

But then, mid-project,

he got called off on a different film,

and director Tim Burton got involved.

Although it was a departure from his normal style,

Burton was drawn to the story for deeply personal reasons.

Burton's father died in 2000,

and his mother, about two years after that.

And he wasn't really close to either of them.

I mean, he left home when he was really young.

When Burton's father began to get ill,

Burton tried to reconnect with him

and re-establish a relationship with him.

So, in many ways, what he went through

is actually much like what the character Will Bloom

went through in Big Fish.

It offered him a form of catharsis.

It's said he was also anxious to score a box-office triumph.

When Tim Burton came on board,

some say it was because he needed a win.

If you remember, he had just put out that movie Planet Of The Apes.

It was kind of rushed into production,

and it was nowhere near the hit that he really needed it to be.

The pressure was on to make this film a success.

Landowner Bobby Bright's first encounter

with the future Oscar-winner didn't help matters.

I would always come over after work and kind of ride through the set

to see what progress they had made.

And as I got behind

the mayor's house, this stranger came walking out,

and I thought maybe he was up to no good.

But I had no idea who Tim Burton was before the movie came here.

I almost started to do a citizen's arrest on him!

Despite Bobby's best efforts, Burton did continue filming,

but Spectre was about to hit hard times, Hollywood-style.

Spectre wasn't big enough for Edward Bloom.

I mean, he's a big fish and so he leaves.

Later in the movie, Edward comes back

to the town of Spectre, and something has happened -

the town is now in ruins.

So, in order to shoot that,

the filmmakers first had to build these nice new buildings

and then make everything look like it had aged 50 years.

They tore up the fences - the picket fences.

They used sandblasters, they used heating torches

to burn the paint off, to make the paint peel like that right there.

They took up the sod,

and they did everything they possibly could

to make it look like it was in really, really bad shape.

So, really, what you're seeing here is not actual decay.

It's Hollywood magic.

Yet that Hollywood magic didn't translate into

the runaway box-office success Burton had hoped for.

It did about 60 million domestically and 120 million worldwide

with a $70 million budget.

So, a solid success, but not a great blockbuster.

For the Bright family, though,

the old movie set seemed like an opportunity too good to miss.

So, towards the end of the filming,

we, as a family, decided that, you know,

"What if we let it stay?" We had an expectation that

people would be really interested in seeing it.

Then nobody wanted to come see it!

People just didn't realise it was here.

In the years after the film,

the elements slowly took over the set.

Floods came in and destroyed one of the main character's homes.

Things really went to rack and ruin.

Spectre was in danger of complete destruction,

this time, for real.

If it was going to survive, it needed a lifeline fast.

It was not until around 2011 or so, when social media picked it up,

and the next thing we knew, people knew we were here.

And once people started to come visit,

then we really realised that we needed to do whatever we could

to keep the structure standing.

They also come to see the goats.

And the goats take a toll not only on the island,

but they take a toll on the town of Spectre.

Today, there's not as much of the town left as there once was,

but thousands of fans still come

to walk the fictional street of a film they adore.

Big Fish has gained quite a cult following over the years.

It's really the message and the heartwarming nature of the movie

that people really love because, in the end,

Edward and Will do get their relationship back on track

and it's really beautiful.

We had a man that came from South Florida,

and he told us the story of how he had watched the movie with his son

while his son was on his deathbed, and they healed their relationship.

He was so emotional about it, I was crying listening to him

because I could tell that it really mattered that he get here,

you know, for the memory of his son.

Although the movie will live on

and likely get new fans over the years,

the future for the town of Spectre is not so certain.

I'm not sure how much longer it'll last.

At some point, it's just going to all give.

They're not built on real foundations,

so you can't expect it to last forever.

In the city of Gwangju, South Korea,

are the forsaken reminders of a sacrifice that forged a nation.

From the outside, it could be a rundown apartment block

or an office.

Peering through the dirty windows, it's really hard

to get a sense of what's inside.

As soon as you walk in, you can really feel the decay.

There are CT scanners, X-ray machines,

and cabinets still filled with vials of medicine, and syringes.

So, clearly, this was some kind of medical facility.

It's kind of post-apocalyptic, like everyone just vanished.

Nearby are the remains of another facility

that, at first, appears to have no obvious connection.

Set back from the square, behind heavy, metal gates,

lies this imposing white building.

A grand staircase greets you as you first walk in.

Inside, it has clearly been gutted.

These holes, surrounded by yellow tape,

suggest that something has been dug out of the walls for evidence.

Together, these structures tell a story of heroism

in the face of mortal danger.

When the government goes rogue, it's up to the citizens to rebel.

Jun-Bong Kim was an employee of a local cement company in 1980.

Events that played out in that year had a lasting impact on his life.

The catalyst for the cruelty Jun-Bong endured,

and which connected him to these buildings forever,

began in 1979.

Park Chung Hee had ruled South Korea

as an authoritarian dictator since the 1960s.

At a dinner party in the presidential complex,

the head of intelligence pulled out a gun

and shot him in the head and in the chest.

The assassination was just the first act

of a military coup to take over the country.

In South Korea's major cities, like here in Gwangju,

student protests erupted.

7,000 protesters

broke through the police barrier surrounding their school

and went to the square in front of the Provincial Government Building.

They demanded an end to the martial law

declared across the country.

At 1am on May 18th,

the government announced a stoppage to all such activity.

They closed universities,

they banned protests and demonstrations,

and they announced new restrictions on the press.

The military government deployed troops all over the city

to enforce the new laws by whatever means necessary.

These were soldiers trained against

the looming threat of invasion from North Korea,

not the policing of peaceful protests.

A 24-year-old deaf man was beaten so badly by soldiers

that he died of his wounds the following day.

But the people refused to be silenced

and the protests continued for the next three days.

On the 21st of May, an alarming decision was made.

The stage was set for a clash

that would reverberate through South Korea's history.

At 1pm, the national anthem was played out over the PA system.

As soon as the last note of the anthem played, the soldiers,

armed with American-provided M16 assault rifles,

opened fire on the crowd. GUNFIRE

Tens of thousands of people were running for their lives,

diving for cover in nearby alleyways.

Jun-Bong was working in an office

across from the Provincial Government Building

when he was unexpectedly drawn into the turmoil.

He rushed the wounded to the city's Red Cross Hospital,

located less than half a mile away.

When he arrived, the scene was one of utter chaos.

It soon became clear that

the hospital was going to run out of blood supply for transfusion,

and when that happened, people suffering from gunshot wounds

were going to die very, very quickly.

Jun-Bong was desperate to help in any way he could,

even if it meant risking his own life.

He and a team of doctors drove into the city

as the crackle of gunfire echoed all around.

Those with serious gunshot wounds were stabilised,

had the bullets and shrapnel removed from their bodies,

and then taken to larger hospitals for longer-term care.

But the real fight had only just begun.

The citizens of Gwangju mobilised,

raiding police stations and military depots

to take up arms against the aggressors.

The military forces facing this mass armed resistance

retreated to the outskirts of the city.

They cut off all outside communications

and closed the roads.

What had become a demonstration and a response

had now become a siege.

For a few days, there was peace,

but this was just the calm before the storm.

On May 26th, it became clear

the military was moving to retake the city.

As news of the imminent attack began to spread,

armed protesters took up station

inside the Provincial Government Building.

They were determined to make a last desperate stand.

Jun-Bong was one of the city's defenders

holed up inside.

As church bells pealed at 4am, the first shots were fired.

Then the chaos of war erupted.

GUNFIRE

By 5.10am, with the sun just beginning to rise over the city,

it was all over.

17 people were killed inside the Provincial Government Building,

and over 200 were arrested.

Yet the event was swept under the rug.

In the years that followed,

any mention of the uprising by the city's residents

was met with severe punishment.

The Provincial Government Building was once again used

as an administrative headquarters.

All traces of the brutal attack were covered over.

But the events of May 1980

laid the foundations for democracy to eventually flourish.

In 1987, the country held its first free elections.

Under the new regime, the city's Red Cross Hospital

remained operational for another 27 years.

By 2014, however, its doors were locked,

with everything left inside,

and the whole facility was just left to decay.

Today, Jun-Bong works with the May 18 Foundation,

founded to protect these structures

and the memory of the Gwangju Uprising.

In western Namibia, where the desert meets the ocean,

traces of weather-beaten structures line the shore.

We're on the South Atlantic coast of Africa.

This is a place where, to this day, almost no-one lives.

Then, here and there, we see some signs of human activity.

There are these huge metal structures,

almost like barrels, lined up in rows.

And, from above, you can see the outline

of a large concrete slipway on the water's edge.

Chains set into the ground suggest that something massive

was either lashed down or dragged across the beach.

What would require such heavy-duty infrastructure

out here in the middle of nowhere?

These are the last remains of a booming industry

that powered the industrial age.

I believe it was a necessary evil

at a time when we had no other source of fuel.

If you walk on this beach, you see something kind of chilling.

There are bones everywhere - enormous bones.

It's easy to see how this place got its name -

the Skeleton Coast.

I am a born Namibian. At a young age,

my father brought me out into this area

and it really grew my passion for the desert.

Paul Lombard is a local expedition leader.

It took years of experience

to learn how to live in this unforgiving environment.

As an early sailor,

if you were stranded on this coast and had no knowledge of the desert,

the chance of survival was next to nothing.

Yet hundreds of people did venture here,

willing to risk their lives in search of fortune.

The prize they sought wasn't buried in the desert.

It was in the ocean facing it.

There are giant seal colonies,

sharks come in close to the shore,

and there are whales.

In the winter, they migrated north to the warmer waters,

like those along the South African and Namibian coasts.

They sought out shallow bays like these

to give birth.

In the early 1700s,

the Dutch West India Company sent whalers to this region,

and American, French, and Norwegian hunters soon followed.

Whaling stations were quickly established

along Namibia's coast to exploit the abundant population.

This one became known as Meob Bay.

Everyone thinks of Moby-Dick and the 19th-century ships

that sailed around the world chasing a variety of whales,

especially sperm whales.

But here in Africa,

it was possible to hunt whales right off the beach.

The unique design of these surf boats

was specific for breaking through the waves,

with the bow and the stern the same shape.

If the small crew of men got twisted or turned in the waves,

they could just turn their paddles around

and row their way through.

They would then have the open ocean

to chase across and hunt down their prey.

The hunters' catch of choice was the southern right whale.

Legend has it the right whale got its name because,

for the early whalers, it was the easiest whale,

the right whale, to catch.

They often swam up close to the shore

and stayed near the surface,

making it easy to spot and follow them.

They also floated when they were dead,

which made it much easier to lash them to the side of ships

or drag them back to shore.

The whale was a gold mine,

and a use was found for every part.

The most important product from whaling

was the oil produced from the animal's blubber.

A fully-grown male would harvest

about 40 to 50 barrels of oil,

where a fully-grown female would be about 60 to 70 barrels of oil.

Before the dawn of the electric light,

whale oil was considered the best kind of oil

to burn in a lamp for illumination,

and that made the oil extremely valuable.

Over the course of a century, around 3,700 right whales

were killed by the industry in Namibia.

Their downfall was inevitable.

By the 1800s,

right whales had been hunted almost to the verge of extinction,

but whalers didn't have the technology

to catch and harvest whales which didn't float when they died.

As a result, near-shore whaling declined,

and stations like this were left abandoned.

But in the decades to come, the Industrial Revolution's advances

would see the trade return to Namibia with a vengeance.

Steam power was coming in,

so ships could travel faster and farther.

And they began to develop mechanised harpoons

that could shoot farther with much more force.

And most kind of chilling of all,

they developed harpoons with a kind of grenade tip.

Jean-Paul Roux is a local marine scientist

who studies the ecosystem of these waters.

Faster whales could be taken because of new technology,

which allowed the whalers to target the humpback whale,

blue whales, fin whales.

They were more abundant because they had never been exploited before.

150 miles south of Meob Bay, just outside the town of Luderitz,

a collection of rusted remains

hint at the scale of this deadly new era.

This is the Sturmvogelbucht whaling station.

When the German-run operation opened in 1913,

it was equipped with the latest hunting and processing technology.

So, that's where it all started.

After the killing of the whale, it was towed here,

fastened to cables, and dragged tail-first.

You can see how the cables have made grooves in the concrete here.

Once the whale had been brought to the factory,

a process known as flensing began.

Using long-hooked knives,

workers would cut off sections of blubber,

which were then dragged to the boilers

and cooked down into oil.

This method required fresh water,

which was hard to come by in the desert.

They had to set up a big powered system

to boil seawater and condense it.

But it wasn't an easy start.

There were constant problems with the water supply,

and they only produced 2,000 barrels of oil,

which was way below what they'd hoped.

The situation was about to get far worse

for the whaling station's German owners.

A conflict loomed that would bring

the entire industry here crashing down.

Since 1884, Namibia had been a German colony,

then part of what was known as German South West Africa.

Soon, however, World War I would intervene.

On the request of the British government,

South Africa invaded Namibia and occupied the town of Luderitz.

The station's ships were seized and operations ground to a halt.

JEAN-PAUL ROUX: All the machinery was taken away.

The sheds themselves were left abandoned.

But even had the station survived the First World War,

it probably would have gone out of business anyway.

At the end of the war,

Norwegian whalers mostly had discovered that

it was far better to look for whales in Antarctica

instead of having these shore stations,

and, later on, developed the concept of a factory vessel.

This is what brought most whale stocks to decline.

For centuries, whaling was a vital

yet unpleasant part of human development.

Whaling in Namibia or South West Africa,

at that stage, put us on the map.

And my town, Walvis Bay, where I was born and bred,

was founded on the backbone of the whaling industry.

In 1986, the International Whaling Commission

outlawed all commercial whaling.

Though some countries ignore the ban,

the majestic creatures are slowly returning to Namibia's waters.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media