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North Korea¡¯s public executions became a great deal more public on Sunday, when CNN aired a documentary combining horrific footage shot by dissidents in the Stalinist country. Titled "Undercover in the Secret State", the film showed a public execution by firing squad as residents of the local town look on of a man suspected of aiding a defector, scenes from a concentration camp for political dissidents, and images of people starved to death.
According to the cable broadcaster, dissidents used small digital cameras and camcorder phones as weapons in their fight to show the outside world what is really happening in the secretive country. Footage also showed a dissident defacing a Kim Jong-il poster to draw attention to growing internal opposition to the country¡¯s leader.
The documentary included scenes of haggard children begging or stealing in the streets in the midst of scattered dead bodies, while at what is said to be a nearby market, bags of UN relief food were being sold.
North Korea did not respond to CNN¡¯s request for comment.
Sarah McDonald, who directed the documentary, told the broadcaster¡¯s online edition her crew interviewed a man shown in a concentration camp scene, but decided to leave what he told them out of the film because it was too dreadful.
"It is so appalling, you just can't imagine,¡± she said. ¡°He said that 95 percent of people who go into that prison die in the prison. Their whole motivation is to kill these people, but they won't let them die easily. They torture them to death over a very long period of time."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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