For the safety of the people filming, he disguises their voices. NARRATOR: Over the past three years, Jiro's undercover network has filmed orphaned street kids gathering in the markets, begging for money and on the lookout for scraps of food. STREET CHILD: Please give us a little money.

But the United Nations says the country is still vulnerable to food shortages, and more than three quarters of the population don't have enough food to eat. NARRATOR: The famine which killed more than a million North Koreans in the 1990s has ended. Even if I have to sacrifice my life, someday something is going to change. And if I get caught, I know I'd immediately be executed as a traitor to the Korean people. He agreed to speak if his identity was concealed. One of his contacts is a state employee, but has been smuggling footage out for five years.

They risk their lives to get the footage. Jiro has recruited a network of ordinary North Koreans living in towns across the country. These are pictures Kim Jong Un doesn't want the world to see. NARRATOR: They secretly film in areas no foreigners or journalists are allowed to visit. JIRO ISHIMARU: I think you should turn off the camera when we're close. NARRATOR: He's going to meet one of his contacts, who's made it across the border with new images from North Korea. He inherited the world's most isolated country, where the people have no Internet and the state has almost total control on any information coming in or out.Įven with the tight security, Jiro and his Japanese news organization manage to get the footage out. The border has become even more tightly controlled since Kim Jong Un took over as Supreme Leader two years ago, the third ruler in the Kim dynasty after his father and grandfather. The North Korean border guards have been known to shoot to kill. NARRATOR: The people who work for Jiro smuggle their footage across the Tumen River, which divides China from North Korea. You can sense the psychological pressure they are starting to put on the North Koreans. It shows the (Chinese) government's determination to keep the defectors out. It's high, isn't it? This was not here a year ago. JIRO ISHIMARU: A barbed wire fence has been installed. NARRATOR: Even filming on the Chinese side of the border is illegal. If they're caught filming, they'd be locked up and may never be let out again. In North Korea, even filming everyday life is considered a form of political treason. JIRO ISHIMARU: Obviously, it's an extremely dangerous thing to do. He has an undercover network which covertly films life inside the country. NARRATOR: Jiro Ishimaru is a journalist trying to expose what Kim Jong Un's regime wants to hide, the secret world of the North Korean people. JIRO ISHIMARU, Editor, Asia Press: Have you arrived? Where shall we meet? Oh, I see.

The secret world the 3rd age