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CITY NOISES

After escaping the difficult conditions of North Korea,

Mr. Lee and more than 20,000 other North Korean refugees

find themselves grossly unprepared for their new lives.

TRAFFIC NOISE

The stark cultural and economic differences

make it difficult to integrate into the fast paced

and modern South Korean society.

TRAFFIC NOISE

Koreans have been victimized in the 20th century.

They were taken over by the Japanese,

divided by the United Nations, and then the Korean War

and they still haven't recovered from the national division.

And this is termed, this is expressed in the term "han".

"Han" means this regret or this angst, this anxiety that...

many times Koreans say you can't translate "han",

but it's this feeling of being victimized and it's expressed

very well in the Korean National folk song "Arirang".

Arirang is a mythical place, it doesn't exist,

and the line goes, Arirang

SPEAKING KOREAN

They've gone over the Arirang pass.

Who has gone over the mountain pass?

SPEAKING KOREAN

"My lover who has cast me aside

has crossed over the Arirang pass".

And it has a rather whimsical final line that says,

"may you have blisters on your feet

before you've gone ten lee".

The conditions that drove Mr. Lee to leave his home

in North Korea have been over a century in the making.

Occupied by Japan for much of the first half

of the 20th century, Korea was then divided up

by the victorious allies at the conclusion of World War II.

Five years later tensions on the peninsula between the South

and North Korean governments boiled over

leading the North to invade the South.

Full-scale war resulted involving the U.S.

and it's allies aiding the South Korean government,

while the Soviet Union and communist China

supported the North Korean regime.

The result was a devastating three-year war

ending in stalemate and then an uneasy armistice

that left Korea divided.

Today, Seoul bares little resemblance to the impoverished,

war torn city it once was.

Rather it stands as a symbol

of the vast economic and cultural divide

reinforcing the division between the two Koreas.

After the end of the Korean war,

South Korea was really struggling economically.

It was South Korea that was considered to be

the economic basket case, and it was only through

beginning to industrialize and pursue export led growth

that they began to grow,

and it wasn't until the late 70s, early 80s, that South Korea

finally overtook North Korea in terms of per capita GNP.

Having lived in Korea in the 1950s and '60s,

after the war, when South Korea was that poor,

it's possible to compare conditions in the North today

with what South Korea was like then.

And then you say, well I think I know how this could unfold

if the North Koreans could have the advantages

that the South Koreans acquired in rebuilding their country.

The story of South Korea's economic success began humbly;

small companies run by ordinary Koreans, many like Mr. Lee,

refugees from North Korea.

When I first moved to Korea in 1965, I met a friend, Mr. Chung,

who at that time was working in a tailor shop,

and tailor shops were the hot business in those days.

It was something that people could do, labour intensive,

they measure you and fit you and cut the, the cloth,

you had a tailor-made suit for very little money.

When I returned to Korea in 1973,

he was supervising a wig factory.

Wigs don't sound like a major industry,

but this was huge in Korea because it was a great way

to capitalize on a natural resource Koreans had,

good Korean hair.

It doesn't sound like a major step

in the economic development,

but the wig industry was a huge step forward for Korea

in terms of capitalization, in terms of learning to...

export and learning how the international market worked.

If you look at South Korea you see what

with far fewer resources than the North,

you see the extraordinary, stunning

economic growth of the South,

and you realize it's the same people with even better

economic resource base in terms of natural resources

and other sorts of things, and it's just an utter disaster.

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North Korean state television delivers

a tightly controlled message,

displaying only the purported successes of the regime.

This is in stark contrast to the stories of deprivation

and oppression from defectors like Mr. Lee.

Well, everywhere you go, the country reveals itself

as a very poor place.

North Korea has never been able to feed itself.

That the plantations, the broad plains,

the big rice fields have always been in South Korea.

it has always been the bread basket

of the Korean people.

Besides that, there have been some colossal

bad decisions on the North Korean part about agriculture,

about fertilizer, about soil and crop use.

If you look at the last decade and a half,

you know by most estimates,

one if not two million North Koreans have died by famine.

And no one else in the region died of famine,

So there's no other reason than the nature of the regime.

That's not to say that we should invade North Korea,

that we ought to destabilize it

and pursue unification now, but that said,

whenever we weigh these issues,

that we need to be very cognizant

that it is not a value free equation.

There are costs here,

and they're very real costs in terms of North Korean people.

The dramatic disparity between the two Koreas

is so great that one of the primary concerns of South Korea

is how to stem the tide of North Korean refugees they expect

to spill over the border should there be an abrupt unification.

Early on, a lot of researchers

tried to figure out what level of...

standard of living would you have to have in North Korea

where North Koreans wouldn't feel the desire

as mass floods of refugees go into South Korea.

And to do that back in 2000, that would have cost you

something about four trillion dollars.

How do you take two remarkably disparate economies,

keep people in place, and improve the one

without everybody getting on their bicycles

and riding south.

That is not a laughable idea, but an offensive idea,

I think it would throw them back rather seriously on their heels

if you said,

well, when unification comes you'll have to adjust to

what the South wants you to do.

I don't think they have that in mind.

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It was just a year ago

that authorities in communist Germany,

appalled at the numbers who are fleeing to the west

throughout the wall.

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I served in the state department

during the first Bush administration

and in that capacity, immediately got asked to

work as the legal advisor to the U.S. delegation

on German unification.

When I left the government I was asked to lead

a large-scale study, seeing if there were

any insights from the German experience

that might be relevant in terms of planning for,

and thinking about potential Korean unification

and it was really an interesting exercise because there are many

there are many differences that are important.

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The gulf between the East and West German economy

was far less than the gulf

between the North and South Korean economies,

and yet that was incredibly expensive for the Germans,

so you can just imagine the expense

that's going to be involved in the case of Korea.

The simple fact is that Koreans could never even begin to dream

of a unification scenario as relatively inexpensive,

as smooth, as peaceful as you had in the German scenario.

So the costs in the Korean case are going to be much higher,

and the Koreans know that and as a result,

that's why you've seen some real reticence

on the part of Korean policy-makers.

There were also differences in terms of flow of information.

I mean, most of the East Germans knew a lot about West Germany.

They knew product brands, they saw West German television,

that doesn't exist in North Korea.

You've got virtually no information that

has crossed the border.

No sense of what democratic institutions look like

or what the debates or the political parties are like,

very little experience now after all these years with a...

market oriented economy,and all that that means in terms of

personal initiative and personal sacrifice.

To visit North Korea is to...

encounter a very human situation,

to see people trying to get to work, kids getting to school,

being friends, laughing, holding hands,

walking down the street,

it's a real environment.

I mean that the North Koreans are regular folks,

that they, they have, they think they're normal.

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Getting permission to film

in the Hanowan Resettlement Center is extremely difficult.

It is not allowed under any circumstances

to show images of refugees.

There is a justified fear of North Korean reprisals

against defectors and the Hanowan staff

takes great care to make sure

defectors identities are not exposed.

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While Mr. Lee and his wife, also a defector,

have struggled to adapt to South Korean life,

his children are fully integrated.

Yet despite his hopes that his kids will see a united Korea,

they are part of a growing younger generation

that does not necessarily share

their parents' desire for unification.

It's a generation gap that could hold

profound consequences for both Koreas.

South Korea is becoming a dominant cultural force,

not just in Asia, but internationally as well.

Its growing young population has created a vibrant youth culture

that is vastly different than the traditions

of their parent's generation.

These days, I think kids, they're exposed to like,

everything and they can access to every kind of culture

and cultural phenomenon.

So that makes it a whole lot different from the past.

After the Korean war, Korea, Korea's main concern was

economic development.

Korean society became more open.

So youngsters had more freedom to create

the kind of films they wanted, the kind of [music] they wanted,

and since then it was just a major change

in culture in general.

KOREAN HIP HOP MUSIC

Something that is really interesting

to watch pop culture in Korea

is to watch the thing called the "hanyu".

The "hanyu" is the Korean wave, this wave of culture

that is sweeping across all of China and Japan and Asia.

There is a very interesting cultural mix

between the kind of western, the arts, popular culture

and traditional Korean arts and popular culture.

Young Japanese think young Koreans are cool,

and they are cool because they have these wonderful pop music

videos and songs and great high energy performances,

great TV actors, and great stories that young

that young Japanese just really enjoy.

So we've had a sea change in Japan in attitudes toward Korea,

and this is a measure of how different the younger generation

in Korea is from the older generation in Korea.

The younger generation is more focused

on the United States, on Europe, on the world writ large,

they're very wired in, they're very

international in nature.

If you look at club scenes in big cities of Korea,

then you tend to think that this the gap between the South

and North bigger and bigger, and you wonder if this

generation really wants reunification of the country.

Only few people have had the experience

of the Korean war and post war, it's a whole different matter

for this generation.

Anybody who is under 50 years of age is

is very unlikely to have an immediate brother or sister,

father or mother, or even grandparent

living in North Korea.

So the personal level ties that would make this

a personal issue, not a broader cultural one

aren't going to be there.

So understandably, there is going to be a gap between

those with direct experience, the older generation

and the younger generation.

The contrast, people say stark contrast,

but I'll just say contrast, between North

and South Korea is huge, and you don't really see

how they could ever get back together again.

The people of those two countries

have been educated since birth

in two different national stories.

Who are their heroes?

Who were the winners and losers, the good and bad guys?

Aspirationally, on an emotional level, of course.

Every class,

every family narrative is a narrative of the tragedy

of the division of this nation.

They are one people.

One language, one history, and they are artificially

divided by the Cold War.

And so clearly every South Korean wants unification.

but, if you then dial that down to much more

specific questions like, do you support unification now?

Those numbers drop dramatically.

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Mr. Lee does not let the generation gap

or South Korea's reluctance to pay for unification,

should it ever come, deter his efforts.

He devotes all his working time

to help his brothers in the North.

Several times a year, he launches balloons

that carry humanitarian items and messages of hope

across the heavily guarded border.

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Mr. Lee's cross-boarder humanitarian operation,

decried by North Korea and tolerated by the South,

faces a sizeable, almost impenetrable physical roadblock.

The southern boundary fence-line running around here

is the defendable territory of the DMZ.

It was originally intended to be two km south, two km north.

Due to the fact that we can't support some of the area

as defendable Republic of Korea, they built a fence-line

along the defendable area.

The DMZ, the demilitarized zone, is an oxymoron,

it's not demilitarized.

It's the most heavily militarized

place on the planet these days.

It's a two and a half mile strip that goes across

the whole peninsula, cutting right across its waist,

separating North Korea from South Korea.

Since the armistice agreement was signed in 1953,

the 38th parallel has been a bloody barrier

between two nations still technically at war.

After 60 years of tension, security still remains high

with the constant threat of renewed conflict.

Since 1953, North Korea has violated the armistice agreement

over 200 times, creating a cycle of provocation and retaliation

between the two Koreas.

In recent years the North has tested nuclear devices,

long range missiles, launched artillery attacks

against South Korean islands

and sunk the South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan.

The North Korean perspective is that the provocations

come from the other side.

When they sank the Cheonan, nobody much

nobody much mentions the joint manoeuvres

that were going on in those waters

with U.S. and South Korean naval forces at the time.

The North Korean side would be totally, well, we were trying

to make a statement, you can't just bring a corvette

into our territorial waters and roam around at will.

We're going to control that.

Of all the North Korean provocations,

there are some that stand out for their audacity.

One of the most remarkable is simply known as

the Blue House raid.

In January of 1968 I was in Korea living in a place called

Cheongun-Dong which is very close to the Blue House,

the presidential mansion.

And that night we were just folding up getting ready

to go to bed when we heard this pop, pop, pop stuff going on.

And we thought oh, there's some kind of exercise.

And then we saw machine gun fire.

MACHINE GUN FIRE

We could see the tracers, and if you can see the tracers

you know those aren't blanks.

It was a James Bond style squad of highly trained

North Korean commandos who had come down and had run,

marathon runners, so they, the South Koreans

and the Americans knew they had come through the DMZ,

but they didn't realize they had come down so quickly.

To show you how dangerous it was,

there was an older gentleman

two doors down from our gate

who stepped out to see what was going on

and one of the squads came by and shot him right there.

Of the 31 commandos that came down 29 were killed.

They refused to surrender.

They shot their way till they died.

Finally he realized everything they were telling him

in the North was false, and that he was misled

and he could go through South Korea, see the markets,

see the houses and realize that South Korea had a better

way of living and thus he converted and changed.

Kim Shin Jo paid a steep price for his betrayal of the North.

Upon receiving citizenship in 1970, his parents were executed

and the remaining members of his family were purged.

SHOUTING ORDERS IN KOREAN

The North Koreans have this wonderful pattern of basically

doing something quite terrible and then there's a negotiation

and they exact some price to promise

not to do the terrible thing again.

There's not a lot of evidence conciliation has worked much,

and there's not a lot of evidence

that a hard-line has worked very much.

And I think it's also fair to say that if you've reached

your hand out and tried and it kind of gets bitten

or slapped every time, why continue with that policy,

at least try something else.

It's important when there's an eruption of trouble

on the Korean peninsula to remember that

there's a logic to both sides behaviour.

The North Koreans have some reason

for doing what they're doing.

It may be an internal reason and maybe inscrutably local

and hard for us to divine with the information that

we have from the outside, but they are doing it for a reason.

The secret to what's going on in North Korea

is to understand,

that whatever they're doing, it's for domestic consumption.

They don't really care that much about their relations

with South Korea or with the United States,

they're primary concern is maintaining their control

on society.

The passing of Kim Jong Il and the succession of his son

Kim Jong Un has ushered in a new era

of North Korean sabre rattling.

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Two of the biggest obstacles to reunification right now

are North Korean arms developments, in two ways:

one is launching missiles,

the second is developing a nuclear bomb.

And of course, they've done both.

Then when you look at broader regional and global issues,

and you start asking questions about

denuclearization, that's where the problem becomes,

you know, more difficult.

We have this problem that North Korea now

has tested a nuclear weapon

and they've declared themselves a nuclear power.

So how do you engage North Korea

without recognizing them as a nuclear power.

For the North, this is a huge step forward.

This is a validation that the socialist system is working,

that they have scientists and technologists that

are joining the advanced countries of the world

that can launch a satellite and can develop a nuclear bomb.

For a country that sees itself surrounded

by enemies on all sides, being picked on, being isolated,

this is tremendous benefit for them domestically

and it's a huge barrier to unification.

SPEAKING KOREAN

Missile launches and threats to continue testing nuclear weapons

are suspected to be the result of the new leader

out to prove himself and further consolidate power.

Imagine the situation that Kim Jong-Un is in.

A young man, raised for this job, pruned for this job,

and yet surrounded by some men that are old enough

to be his grandfather, in uniform

with stars on their epaulette,

and he is their commander.

It was almost impossible to imagine this scenario

while Kim Jong-Il was alive,

where North Korea would begin to open,

or even have real instability

at that level of power,

but now with the transition,

there's an opportunity for change.

We've got a rogue regime that has the capacity for

developing nuclear weapons and selling fissionable material,

While it may not use it itself, selling it to people who are

less reticent to use it.

If we were in the effort of trying to solve

the Korean peninsula problem, ignore that,

ignore everything they've done, we would de facto recognize them

as a nuclear power,

SHUTTER SOUND

and the question then becomes, if a country that is poor,

starving, backwards, a pariah regime that abuses human rights,

you know, smuggles drugs, counterfeits currencies,

has never met a weapons system that

it wasn't willing to export to the worst people in the world,

if that kind of country can be recognized as a nuclear power

and as a negotiating counterpart as a nuclear power,

who can't?

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Despite continuing threats and provocations

by the North Korean regime, Mr Lee remains dedicated

to his mission of providing humanitarian aid

to his former countrymen, and retains hope

there will someday be a peaceful

and diplomatic path towards unification.

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There is a concern on the part of China

that if you have a unified Korea that's very heavily armed,

it's got West-leaning orientation to be sure,

and at the end of the day you might find that

the political dynamic to keep U.S. troops kind of goes away

in which case you have a heavily armed Korea

staring at a heavily armed China,

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That concern is diminished dramatically,

given the deeper integration of their economies now.

And ultimately it's going to have to result

in some serious reassessment on the part of China

of its relationships to North Korea.

But nevertheless I think there's a little bit of concern there.

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The prevailing narrative for the last 30, 40 years

has been that the Chinese want North Korea as a buffer state.

I'm not convinced that it's entirely because they are afraid

of having a South Korean regime on their borders,

and that they want a buffer,

but they're afraid of the process instability.

I think that the Chinese are rather annoyed

by the North Koreans.

I think they see the North Koreans as a giant step

backward on the socialist progression that the communists

in China have achieved, the refugee case

is a huge thorn in China's side

because you've got all these refugees

that are sneaking over the border into China,

not into South Korea,

they can't get there directly through the DMZ,

not to Japan by the ocean, but by land into China.

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China's shared border with North Korea and its large

ethnic Korean population along the border have facilitated

escape for thousands of North Koreans over

the past six decades.

China's large ethnic Korean population

closely follows relations between the two Koreas.

Many sympathize with the plight of North Korean defectors

and help them once they arrive in China.

However, while many defectors like Mr Lee successfully escape,

others are not so fortunate.

Alright gentlemen, welcome to Conference Row,

the official meeting place for the UN Command

Command and the UNZ for the North Koreans and KPA.

All the blue buildings here belong to the UN Command

while the grey/tan buildings belong to the KPA.

The large grey building on Conference Row

is the North Korean's visitors centre or the Panuon dock.

There is one soldier out on the stairs,

the other soldier sits inside with a camera

taking our pictures today...

The U.S. genuinely supports reunification,

our hope obviously,

is that we can handle the process of unification

well enough that we would still have an alliance

with a unified Korea,

that it would be a unified Korea under an open democratic regime

that is a market economy and is an ally of the United States.

I think that North Korea will change.

But is there a scenario

for the Korean peninsula that doesn't involve

millions of people getting killed?

That's what I really care about,

because there are lots of scenarios,

and most of them,

including some pretty likely ones, are very violent.

You look at Seoul, they would never risk this.

You know what, they're risking it.

and the North Koreans as well.

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While security concerns and regional rivalries dominate

thinking at a national level, and younger generations

of South Koreans feel and know less

about their northern neighbour, Mr Lee's activism has drawn

hundreds to his cause and seeks to keep the suffering

of North Koreans on the public agenda.

The truth is, the greatest obstacle

to unification is Koreans.

South Korean doesn't want to pay the price of unification

and who can blame them?

It's an astronomical cost in that process.

The North Koreans don't want unification

because they don't want to be absorbed like East Germany was.

They are the weak system, they will lose everything.

The privileged elite in N. Korea

will not be the same in S. Korea,

in a unified Korean peninsula.

In terms of the broader question of unification.

China, Russia, Japan, the United States, South Korea

all decided that we did not want a precipitous unification,

we did not want a collapse of North Korea,

because it was too risky,

and we didn't want to pay the price of unification.

That's still our position today.

That makes sense, and I still support that position,

but we need to be very cognizant with ourselves,

or very honest with ourselves

that there is a price that is being paid in terms of

the horrific human rights situation in North Korea.

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There are significant challenges facing Korean reunification.

For now Mr Lee continues his mission to help the people

of North Korea and keep the hope of unification alive

in a South Korea that is growing further apart

from its North Korean brethren every day.

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Mr Lee's balloon launches are meticulously planned

and executed.

However, despite careful preparation,

launches are often aborted or delayed due to weather,

security concerns or other circumstances

beyond his control.

The prospects for Korean unification

balance on similar unpredictable events.

South Korean opinions, change in North Korean leadership

and Chinese support of the regime

are all factors that could push the peninsula closer

or further from being unified.

Ultimately, Koreans and the world will have to wait

for what most see as a difficult but inevitable reunification

of a people long divided.

CHEERING

You know the question of unification,

it could happen any time.

It could happen by the time this film is aired.

Something could happen in the north,

an adventuresome military commander

could decide to take over and sue for peace

with the South and say, Hey, we want to be part of this,

not part of this failed economic system in the north.

That could happen tomorrow...

and it could take another 30 or 50 years.

It's really hard to say.

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