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This evening we're delighted to welcome
you to take a look inside North Korea with Asia Press International journalist
Ishimaru Jiro. Japanese journalist Ishimaru Jiro is one of the world's leading
experts on North Korea
a veteran of more than 90 reporting trips to China/North Korea border
Ishimaru has interviewed more than 900 North Koreans.
Mr. Ishimaru writes widely on North Korean affairs
and is a regular commentator on North Korea in the Japanese press.
He's a member in Asia Press International and edits
Rimjing-gang: News from inside North Korea, a journal
of North Korean affairs, which he founded in 2008.
In 2002, Mr. Ishimaru created the world's first network
of independent North Korean citizen journalists,
all of whom were trained by him personally. Their reports which cover a
broad range of economic
social and political issues have been featured in major Japanese media outlets
and in such international media outlets such as The New York Times
Wall Street Journal, Economist, The Washington Post and among
many others. Video footage smuggled out of North Korea by
Ishimaru's network has aired on outlets worldwide
including the BBC, Al Jazeera, the UK's Channel 4,
South Korea's KBS, and Japan's TBS
So please help me welcome Mr. Ishimaru Jiro.
Hello
I am Ishimaru from Japan.
I'm very grateful to the Korea Society for inviting me tonight.
I cannot speak Korean that well, but since this is the Korea Society,
I will speak in Korean tonight.
And I myself have been to North Korea three times.
I went in 1995, 1997, and 1998
And probably the people that have
travelled to North Korea
and I experience most likely similar things
in our travels to North Korea.
Probably besides the time that we slept in our hotel rooms
we were constantly
guarded by our monitors and guides at all times.
And I as a journalist, because I wanna to a report from
North Korea, I contacted for a long period of time
with the North Korean government to try to get permission to go into North Korea
A reporter must go
to the scene of source, must get close as possible to where the action is.
That is the common way of thinking when it comes to journalists,
but not so in North Korea
Why is that? Because even if I were to go to North Korea
Why is that? Because even if I were to go to North Korea
I cannot travel freely to where I want to travel to.
I cannot freely meet whoever
I want to meet in North Korea.
And of course, they do not allow foreign visitors to talk freely with anyone
that I would like to
So, after my three visits North Korea, I
came to the realization that
my visits, not that they were unneeded, but I
felt that it was not good for me to continue traveling to North
Korea
read a book among while cutting machine
So, want I'm trying to say is that not that there's no meaning in traveling to North Korea, but
that there was a no purpose in me trying to go to North Korea
that there was a no purpose in me trying to go to North Korea
and to report from North Korea.
Then, where can I go? And who should I meet our to find out about the reality
of North Korea?
So, the area that I chose is the border area.
And, as you all know,
the length of the border between China and North Korea is about
1,400 kilometers.
Starting from the
1990's, large number of North Koreans
have escaped from North Korea to China as refugees
And in the border area in China, for the first time, was when I was
able to speak freely
with out any restrictions, on terms of my conversation with the North Koreans
in the border area.
And I learned a lot from the North Korean refugees that I've met.
And, I believe that the starvation and
the difficult period that began in the 90's was a truly a tragic
time period, to the point where I could not believe what I was seeing
or hearing on the ground.
And the reports that I
did the interviews that I did with the defectors, the refugees that were
shown on Japanese and South Korean media
many people, it seemed to me at the time, could not really believe
what they were seeing.
Every person that I interviewed,
they said that a huge amount of people
died, passed away from the hunger and starvation.
And some, I recall some telling me that during 97-98, when these citizens
went to
jangmadang, or the black market, that there wasn't a day when they
did not see any
bodies of people who have passed away from the hunger and starvation.
However, it was very difficult to try to convince, solely with the
interview footage that I
sent out.
So people did not believe
just by reading or just by seeing the interview material that
I had put out to the world.
And of course, even if one wanted to go into North Korea
And of course, even if one wanted to go into North Korea
to see what was going on, that was impossible as well.
So, for us foreign journalists when it comes to reporting
in North Korea, there's a wall that is too high for us
to scale, climb over.
So, no matter how much money we spend or how much effort we put into it,
that is a barrier that we cannot overcome.
Therefore that is why I came up with the idea
of using North Korean citizens,
these people who are able to overcome that wall of working inside North Korea
to report from North Korea.
So that reporting began from 2002.
So we will see the first video.
And this footage was taken right in front of the
riverbanks of the Tumen River on the Chinese side.
And this person, North Korean, he's our partner, what I'd call partner, his name is Lee Jun.
And we went out to greet him as he crossed the river from
North Korea into China and we went out to greet and meet him.
And this is a Joseon-jeok ethnic Korean/Chinese village about 50 from the river where we met.
And at that time, he was able to bribe the border guards in North Korea
and come through the river, across the border.
And this is footage shot in 2006.
So these are the mini DVD, the video tapes, that Mr. Lee Jun
shot inside North Korea that he brought to us.
So he wrapped it in plastic so that even if it fell in the river
it will not get wet and get damaged.
And I first met Lee Jun in 2002 and he has been able to go back and forth
between North Korea and China.
And over time as we met continually
and built this relationship, he expressed the desire to become
a journalist, so we taught him how to use a computer, how to use a video camera.
And I'll choose one more person know, another person.
And this video was taken in 2010.
And the name of this partner is Kim *** Chul.
And this footage you're seeing is Mr. Kim *** Chul explaining to me
what scenes he shot inside North Korea.
Mr. Kim lives in North Pyeong-Ahn Province.
His job is just a regular laborer. He's a driver. He works as a driver in North Korea.
And I'll describe how I've come to meet these North Koreans who became
our partners and what kind of work,
how they carry out their work, I'll describe that in a little bit.
Now. Soon.
And the next video is a video shot last year in 2013, that another one our partners brought out.
As you all know, it's been two years since Kim Jong Un came to power.
And so in terms of what is going on, the whole world is keeping an
eye on what's going on in North Korea regarding the new
leader, Kim Jong Un.
The next video, Peter.
So this is a footage shot in Hyesan, Ryanggang Province.
And this is just a display store,
where the goods are on display only.
So this is a department store where one can not buy the products but can just
do eye shopping and look at the products.
And this is a footage taken from the biggest store or department store
in Ryanggang Province.
But as you can see, there are no customers in the store.
However, you can see in this footage of the street market, the jangmadang,
you can see it's bustling with people selling, buying goods on the market.
And there are a lof of Chinese goods that come across the border.
There's beer.
That's a South Korean instant noodle, Ramyun.
And Chinese rice.
So when we're to go to the jangamadang, the black market,
there are a lot of food. A lot of food items that's available for purchase.
And the transaction is done mostly in the Chinese currency.
Of course, the North Korean currency is used also, but a lot of people
use Chinese currency
So I can say that this shows that the importance
and the effect of the Chinese money, Chinese economy has increased,
whereas the importance or the relevance of the North Korean currency
has decreased significantly.
And this is the underground or black market currency trader working.
A footage shot of that.
So in Chinese currency the portrait of Mao Zedong is printed on the currency.
And in North Korean currency, there's a portrait of Kim Il Sung printed on them.
So it seems like the Korean people
prefer Mao over Kim Il Sung right now.
This is about 80 kilometers north of Pyongyang, the city of Pyongsong.
And this is in front of the rail road station.
And what you see in this footage is people with those cards,
waiting for people, passengers coming out of the rail station
and selling themselves as people who can carry their luggage
for them. So it's sort of like a freight service for the people that are
coming out the rail station.
And as most of you have heard, the market economy has increased greatly in North Korea.
So you see a people becoming people who are selling their services or selling things in the market place
becoming more of a majority within the population in North Korea.
So it has increased, whereby the people selling their services, people selling goods
has increased significantly in North Korea.
So this is a footage of people collecting coal that has fallen off
from a train or from whatever was carrying such goods.
So the caption just showed how this woman makes five thousand North Korean won a day,
but the average out salary for a North Korean Junior High School teacher
is two thousand won. So that just goes to show how much money
is being made doing this sort of work.
So one dollar is equal to about 7,500 North Korean won.
This audio file that you're listening to is a recording
of a phone call made from inside North Korea to us, outside of North Korea.
And lastly we will see one more video clip.
And this is the footage of North Korean a soldier
member of the military, engaging conversation in this footage.
And this footage was taken in 2011.
And this footage is from the summer of 2011 as well.
So this footage is of soldiers
who were suffering from malnutrition and the higher ups decided that if they were
not treated they would die
from malnutrition/starvation, so they are on their way to a hospital
to be taken care of and that's where the footage is taken, right now.
So in North Korea, they proclaim the military-first principal or military-first idea.
But, my guess is that about 30 percent of the soldiers
in the military are suffering from malnutrition
in North Korea right now
As you saw in the previous footage,
if one were to go to the black market, to the jangmadang, rice is available.
So it's not the fact that there's no food available
but the state, the regime, has lost the ability to properly distribute and to
give out the food so that
people and soldiers would not have to starve in
and suffer malnutrition.
And this is from the summer of last year, summer of 2013.
And this particular soldier because of the severe malnutrition he's suffering,
he was released from his unit and is being sent home.
So you've just seen the footage that we saw on the screen here
and a foreign journalist, if he or she were went into North Korea,
these are images that he or she cannot
see as a foreign journalist in North Korea.
So the clean and sanitized Pyongyang
has been shown through many media outlets throughout the world.
However the different outline cities or provinces or even
within Pyongyang, except for the central district in Pyongyang, the outlying
areas in Pyongyang where the citizens live,
it is impossible for foreign journalists to approach or to go there and to report
from those areas and cities.
And I said in the beginning that a reporter/journalist must go to
as close as possible to where the action is happening.
However, it is my thinking that if that is impossible, then the
partnering with working with the North Korean
citizen journalist and working together is the next best the way to go
about reporting from North Korea.
And I'll just touch briefly about how we are in contact with
the people inside North Korea.
So we use Chinese-based cell phones.
So these Chinese-based cell phones in the border area,
they can penetrate up to two kilometers inside
North Korea. So this is along the border area
on the Yalu River or the Tumen River.
So just looking at last year,
through this method of using Chinese-based cell phones and
reaching into two kilometers into North Korea, we've
made about twice a week phone calls
with our contacts in North Korea.
So, through that method we've collected information about what is going on
in North Korea, what the living situation is like in North Korea.
I won't mood torso Honeywell
And with the reporters who are responsible for taking video footage,
when we talk with them by phone we asked them, we talk about what they're investigating
what area they visited and who they talk to in terms of recording the footage, secretly.
So even though I myself am a journalist and a reporter, but the
people, the ones who are shooting the footage,
reporting from North Korea, inside North Korea,
are North Korean citizens.
And I believe that the
issue of the North Korean problem, telling the issue the North Korean problem to the world
is a job that should be done by the North Korean people.
So what I am doing is supporting and aiding
these North Korean citizens, reporters who are bringing information
of the outside world,
of North Korea, to the outside world.
So this is obviously very dangerous work
where these North Koreans are risking their lives
staking their lives in this work of reporting from North Korea and
that is what we
are trying to help, that this is what helping and aiding.
And I strongly believe that the footage and the reporting done by the North Korean
citizens, the reporters, has the power to convince
and it has more credibility in terms of reaching
the people outside of North Korea about what is going on inside the country.
So I will end my remarks here.
Thank you.
Please join me in thanking him and
and Henry Song for this wonderful presentation.
I'd like to also thank the Open Society Foundation for their support
in this program and once again thank you very much to our presenters