[00:00.000 --> 00:01.500]  How are we all holding up?
[00:04.640 --> 00:06.980]  Wow, this house is really packed.
[00:09.500 --> 00:17.400]  Mark Fahey is a friend of mine I met a few months ago at a little known... He flew all the way from Sydney, Australia to HOPE.
[00:17.560 --> 00:20.620]  I have several other Australians here halfway around the world to come to HOPE.
[00:24.400 --> 00:27.720]  I mean, I only have to come from Philadelphia, but this is like, geez.
[00:28.770 --> 00:36.300]  So I ran into Mark a few months ago at a little tiny conference called the SWL Fest for shortwave listeners.
[00:36.540 --> 00:38.300]  It's for people that are really into the radio hobby.
[00:38.840 --> 00:40.580]  It's just north of Philadelphia every March.
[00:40.640 --> 00:43.240]  You can look up swlfest.com, get a plug in for him.
[00:43.740 --> 00:46.500]  But he gave this... there's only maybe a hundred some people at this event.
[00:46.620 --> 00:47.720]  It's not nearly the size of HOPE.
[00:48.180 --> 00:54.480]  Mark gave this fascinating talk, actually a couple of talks, about his experiences in North Korea.
[00:54.480 --> 01:00.560]  Social engineering and exfiltration of state media.
[01:01.000 --> 01:02.100]  It's amazing stuff.
[01:02.260 --> 01:03.780]  My jaw dropped seeing this.
[01:03.900 --> 01:08.540]  And it's relevant, I think, to this crowd and our community.
[01:08.540 --> 01:20.160]  Because it demonstrates, when you see these examples of state media, how a totalitarian regime, if they have complete control over all media, how it affects the populace.
[01:20.160 --> 01:22.340]  And it's kind of scary.
[01:23.060 --> 01:26.280]  Our media is not as free as we would like to think it is.
[01:26.560 --> 01:29.780]  But we're nowhere near what the DPRK is, North Korea.
[01:30.000 --> 01:36.100]  But it's food for thought to see where things can go if they get really crazy and out of control.
[01:36.600 --> 01:38.880]  So without any further delay, I want to introduce Mark Fahey.
[01:46.960 --> 01:47.660]  Thank you.
[01:47.920 --> 01:48.560]  Thanks, Bernie.
[01:50.080 --> 01:51.360]  Yeah, so my name's Mark.
[01:51.540 --> 01:52.880]  I'm from Australia.
[01:53.900 --> 01:55.940]  And so thanks for having me here at HOPE.
[01:56.960 --> 02:04.620]  Just before I start, I wanted to let you know I probably may channel into a North Korean during part of my talk.
[02:05.840 --> 02:11.880]  My nine-to-five job, I'm a biomedical engineer, but this is my true passion, what I've been living for the last four years.
[02:11.880 --> 02:19.420]  This project's coming to an end, and I've got a new project planned, a totally different part of the world, but a very similar type of country.
[02:21.040 --> 02:28.880]  And so as I channel myself, I might find myself just starting to use terms that are quite common in North Korean propaganda.
[02:28.880 --> 02:34.900]  Because I'm presenting to Americans, and sorry to say, North Koreans don't like you very much.
[02:35.700 --> 02:43.860]  I hope you won't be offended when I say things like North Korean, sorry, American dogs or imperialist aggressors.
[02:44.120 --> 02:45.420]  Are you okay with that?
[02:45.720 --> 02:46.200]  Yeah!
[02:49.340 --> 02:54.540]  In that case, I'm going to put on my North Korean jacket, and
[02:58.880 --> 02:59.520]  we'll get underway.
[03:01.220 --> 03:03.800]  Oh, the last session was really fascinating.
[03:03.800 --> 03:11.760]  So, because there's vision-impaired people in the audience, I do have a couple of slides which are only text, so I'll also speak the words.
[03:13.980 --> 03:16.580]  Also, anyone can get a copy of this presentation.
[03:17.600 --> 03:20.520]  Everything I'm doing is Creative Commons.
[03:20.800 --> 03:21.940]  It's free to share.
[03:22.700 --> 03:26.720]  Some of my friends have pieces in the presentation.
[03:26.800 --> 03:33.580]  I don't want to speak for how they want their information passed on, but anyway, go for it.
[03:39.050 --> 03:43.950]  So, the Korean DMZ is what most people see.
[03:44.790 --> 03:46.550]  Like, what most Westerners see.
[03:48.270 --> 03:50.570]  And this is what you're likely to see if you go there.
[03:50.570 --> 03:53.050]  All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to UNC Checkpoint 3.
[03:53.190 --> 03:57.770]  As you were told in your slide brief, that once upon arriving here, you'd be surrounded on three sides by Communist North Korea.
[03:58.270 --> 03:59.810]  At this time, I'm going to show you how.
[03:59.930 --> 04:04.170]  If you look directly to your right, about 50 meters, in the tree line, you'll see a black and yellow panel marker.
[04:04.170 --> 04:12.610]  As the tree line goes down, forming a 90-degree angle, the MDL goes out, making an abrupt left, continuing to the Satchon River, continuing west into the Haunt Estuary.
[04:13.170 --> 04:16.590]  You cannot see what I'm mainly talking about, but you might be able to just a little bit.
[04:16.690 --> 04:18.870]  As you look out to the far distance, you'll see a hill.
[04:18.870 --> 04:22.570]  You'll see what looks to be a J-shaped or a hook-shaped dirt road.
[04:22.970 --> 04:24.990]  That is the northern portion of the DMZ.
[04:25.110 --> 04:27.590]  And it's approximately 2,000 meters from where we stand now.
[04:27.970 --> 04:30.670]  If you look amongst all the trees, you'll see another tan building.
[04:30.810 --> 04:34.150]  KPA guard post number 5 is currently monitoring us at this time.
[04:34.370 --> 04:38.470]  So once again, police don't point, wave, or make any gestures towards North Grand, any wave.
[04:39.770 --> 04:43.290]  As you look out into the field, once again, you might be able to see it.
[04:43.330 --> 04:43.850]  You might not.
[04:44.050 --> 04:45.950]  But you'll see a blue rooftop building.
[04:45.950 --> 04:49.570]  That is the former check-in Polish in an SE camp, however, it's no longer used.
[04:49.810 --> 04:52.830]  North Korea claims it as a QRF, or Quick Reaction Force.
[04:53.250 --> 04:58.510]  However, we just seldom see any vehicles or personnel there, so we give it the nickname, North Korea's Slow Reaction Force.
[04:59.930 --> 05:06.010]  Now, if you look to your very far left, you'll see the large flag follow the stands in the village, Gijandong, a propaganda village.
[05:06.390 --> 05:08.790]  As you can see, the flag is not flying well today.
[05:08.950 --> 05:11.050]  It takes a large gust of wind to get this flag flying.
[05:11.270 --> 05:13.390]  And it has a dry weight of 600 pounds.
[05:13.390 --> 05:16.910]  It must be lowered during inclement weather for it to retire under its own weight.
[05:17.490 --> 05:22.470]  You can't really make out the village, but if you remember from your slide brief, you would see that it looks like a really nice place to live.
[05:22.770 --> 05:25.770]  Well, it is more or less a multi-million dollar Hollywood prop set.
[05:25.930 --> 05:28.370]  All these buildings pretty much are mostly uninhabited.
[05:28.590 --> 05:36.210]  The way we know this is, from when North Korea does have electricity, they'll have bright lights at the very top floor, and they'll just dim down as it gets towards the bottom floor.
[05:36.210 --> 05:38.910]  That's how we also know there's no floors inside these buildings.
[05:39.150 --> 05:41.850]  There's also some windows and doors even painted on.
[05:50.950 --> 05:59.450]  So basically, most people only get to see North Korea by saying, well, you can't really see it, but behind these trees, and kind of have to use your imagination.
[06:01.530 --> 06:05.470]  I decided I wanted to get behind the trees and see what's actually there.
[06:05.470 --> 06:08.810]  My project is called Behind the Curtain.
[06:09.030 --> 06:17.050]  It's a multimedia project, essentially an e-book, which runs on iPads, Macs, and so on, and will be on other devices as well.
[06:19.590 --> 06:22.110]  But just a bit about North Korea.
[06:22.330 --> 06:25.430]  Also, you might hear me use the term DPRK.
[06:25.690 --> 06:27.970]  That stands for Democratic Republic of North Korea.
[06:28.130 --> 06:34.430]  As probably most of you know, if the word democratic appears in the name of your nation, you can pretty well count that it's not democratic.
[06:36.210 --> 06:37.430]  There's no freedom.
[06:37.750 --> 06:39.230]  There's no outside information.
[06:39.550 --> 06:41.690]  The people are isolated and ignorant.
[06:44.290 --> 06:48.630]  There's torture, public executions, and concentration camps.
[06:51.570 --> 06:59.350]  And the population is 24.5 million people, which is just slightly more than the country I'm from, Australia.
[07:00.230 --> 07:03.950]  And essentially, close to 100% of those people are brainwashed.
[07:06.790 --> 07:10.790]  It's certainly the strangest country, strangest nation on the planet.
[07:13.940 --> 07:15.680]  But they're real people as well.
[07:45.010 --> 07:46.790]  People ride the subway to work.
[07:46.970 --> 07:48.110]  They hate their boss.
[07:48.350 --> 07:49.670]  They fight with their wives.
[07:49.670 --> 07:58.890]  So, you know, we can quite often think of North Koreans as drones and robots, but they are real people as well.
[07:59.790 --> 08:02.610]  My project, as I said, behind the curtain.
[08:03.790 --> 08:06.590]  I've been interested in North Korea for quite some time.
[08:06.870 --> 08:08.170]  It wasn't just North Korea.
[08:08.290 --> 08:15.150]  I was interested in growing up as a teenager during the Cold War, very interested in the Soviet Union, Albania, East Germany, and so on.
[08:15.810 --> 08:17.570]  All of those countries have changed.
[08:17.910 --> 08:19.030]  Even China has changed.
[08:19.270 --> 08:25.810]  If you ever go there, it's communist by name and political system, but it certainly doesn't look like a communist country any longer.
[08:26.450 --> 08:30.130]  North Korea is the last of all of these countries.
[08:30.650 --> 08:40.050]  And in fact, I have an interest like Bernie in radio, and the first time I wrote to the North Koreans was when I was 13 years old.
[08:40.050 --> 08:45.090]  And this is the postcard they sent me back after I heard their radio station.
[08:46.610 --> 08:59.050]  In my home in Sydney, Australia, I actually have a live satellite dish and other equipment so I can watch North Korean television and receive Korean radio.
[08:59.430 --> 09:01.450]  Television runs for about five hours a day.
[09:01.670 --> 09:03.410]  Radio runs for 18 hours a day.
[09:03.550 --> 09:07.610]  So I actually consume a lot of that information for this project.
[09:08.650 --> 09:14.010]  But consuming it from outside the country all the way in Australia, I kind of felt that I was really missing out on things.
[09:14.130 --> 09:16.370]  So I decided to do some work on the ground.
[09:19.190 --> 09:22.430]  Going in, you...
[09:22.430 --> 09:26.690]  Originally, when I went into North Korea, you weren't able to take things like...
[09:27.190 --> 09:28.750]  Your phones were taken off, you confiscated.
[09:29.370 --> 09:37.410]  They were sealed in a great big plastic bag with heaps of tape around it and handed back to you as you left the country at the Chinese border.
[09:38.070 --> 09:45.590]  So, for the types of information I wanted to collect, I wanted to collect local information, particularly the mass media, electronic mass media.
[09:45.810 --> 09:48.830]  It meant that I had to disguise equipment to take in.
[09:49.090 --> 10:01.410]  So here you can see various radios, recorders and so on, disguised as MP3 players, a USB memory stick, and inside this camera body is a radio as well.
[10:04.650 --> 10:08.870]  And one thing you could get in was a laptop.
[10:09.170 --> 10:12.090]  In fact, this is the very same laptop I'm presenting from today, a MacBook.
[10:12.850 --> 10:21.530]  And the reason you can get that into North Korea is that there's no Internet, there's no Wi-Fi, so there's no ability to connect to the outside world.
[10:21.790 --> 10:26.510]  So they were feeling it was quite safe to allow me to have a laptop with me.
[10:26.510 --> 10:34.530]  If you look carefully there, you'll see that out of the USB stick is a wire coat hanger, and that's been specially crafted as a radio antenna.
[10:37.130 --> 10:44.910]  I collected data, radio transmissions, television transmissions, and then bring them back home to Australia to edit.
[10:45.350 --> 10:48.970]  Each trip... I've been to North Korea a total of four times.
[10:49.210 --> 10:51.410]  Each trip was about six months in the planning.
[10:51.590 --> 11:00.590]  I had to work out exactly what content I wanted, what I wanted to receive, and then usually many months of editing information when I get back, trawling through it.
[11:00.930 --> 11:03.270]  Really in-country, I'm just sucking things up.
[11:03.830 --> 11:06.890]  And then when I get home, I've been going through it.
[11:08.570 --> 11:16.310]  The project itself, as I said, runs on an iPad, but there'll be no doubt an Android version as well, runs on a Mac.
[11:16.570 --> 11:18.250]  It's fully interactive.
[11:18.250 --> 11:20.270]  You touch the graphics and they all move.
[11:20.410 --> 11:22.450]  Lots of video, lots of audio, and so on.
[11:22.450 --> 11:39.670]  So what we're talking about today, a really brief introduction to North Korea, propaganda primer, social engineering, you know, how to conduct yourself in the country, smuggling gear in and media out, and the highlight is the death to the USA.
[11:44.860 --> 11:51.480]  And one thing I do have to be mindful of is speaking faster, because normally I present this over about three hours.
[11:52.680 --> 11:55.500]  So I've cut it down a tiny bit, but I better get going.
[11:57.440 --> 12:00.080]  North Korea 101, what's the country about?
[12:00.080 --> 12:05.620]  So just a geography introduction.
[12:06.420 --> 12:06.940]  I'm from here.
[12:08.880 --> 12:10.320]  North Korea's up here.
[12:12.480 --> 12:16.100]  So to the west of Japan, you can see it there marked in red.
[12:16.580 --> 12:23.240]  This is actually a North Korean map, and you can see both South Korea and North Korea are marked as one country.
[12:23.440 --> 12:26.180]  They don't recognise South Korea as a separate country.
[12:26.180 --> 12:34.880]  In fact, when you see the word South Korea written in North Korean documents, the S is always spelt with a lowercase s.
[12:36.560 --> 12:38.280]  This is the Korean Peninsula.
[12:38.960 --> 12:44.200]  So it sits in the Sea of Japan or the Sea of Korea, whichever you wish to call it.
[12:45.040 --> 12:46.700]  The bottom path is the South.
[12:47.120 --> 12:48.660]  The northern part is the North.
[12:48.880 --> 12:50.160]  Here's the two capital cities.
[12:50.300 --> 12:52.920]  The red one is Ponyang, capital city of North Korea.
[12:53.080 --> 12:55.460]  The blue one, Seoul, capital city of South Korea.
[12:55.460 --> 12:57.440]  In fact, they're incredibly close together.
[12:58.020 --> 13:02.280]  The North Korean border is only about 36 kilometres north of Seoul.
[13:05.040 --> 13:08.260]  The country has land borders with Russia.
[13:08.880 --> 13:12.760]  And actually, here's one of my minders, which I'll be introducing you to in a minute.
[13:12.960 --> 13:17.020]  He's actually pointing to where we're standing, which is right on a border town.
[13:17.360 --> 13:19.920]  And the yellow country there is Russia.
[13:19.920 --> 13:20.000]  Russia.
[13:20.580 --> 13:25.620]  On the other side, over here, this is China.
[13:27.700 --> 13:29.460]  And a common...
[13:30.300 --> 13:34.320]  Most North Korean propaganda, the imagery, revolves around the flag.
[13:35.160 --> 13:37.860]  You'll see this everywhere.
[13:39.340 --> 13:43.260]  Just like the stars and stripes are here in the United States.
[13:45.000 --> 13:45.620]  It's...
[13:45.620 --> 13:46.100]  It's...
[13:46.100 --> 13:46.410]  The...
[13:46.820 --> 13:47.120]  It...
[13:47.120 --> 13:47.860]  Well, I don't...
[13:47.860 --> 13:49.840]  Actually, usually don't even call it a country.
[13:50.080 --> 13:50.620]  It's a racket.
[13:51.180 --> 13:58.240]  The regime is run by the Kim family for their own amusement.
[13:58.660 --> 14:00.440]  And they're incredibly corrupt.
[14:00.800 --> 14:05.080]  And the population are just their servants.
[14:05.900 --> 14:07.540]  Kim Il Sung founded the country.
[14:08.100 --> 14:09.000]  Kim Jong Il.
[14:09.240 --> 14:11.900]  You might remember he died December 2011.
[14:12.800 --> 14:16.500]  And the current one, little Kim, or fatty Kim, is Kim Jong Un.
[14:19.570 --> 14:21.230]  This is Kim Il Sung.
[14:21.610 --> 14:24.650]  Everywhere you go in the country, you're going to see statues of Kim Il Sung.
[14:25.070 --> 14:29.830]  These statues are kind of the equivalent of a church in their country.
[14:29.830 --> 14:32.770]  When you're married, if there's...
[14:32.770 --> 14:39.210]  If you felt you wanted to reflect or anything like that, you'd usually go to one of these statues in your town.
[14:40.030 --> 14:46.470]  Kim Il Sung liberated the country because the country doesn't really, in their version of history, doesn't know about the Second World War.
[14:46.730 --> 14:51.350]  They don't know about the efforts of the Americans at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
[14:51.950 --> 14:56.570]  And they believe the Japanese were defeated pretty well single-handedly by Kim Il Sung.
[14:56.570 --> 15:03.570]  And as you can see here, being that Japan occupied Korea during the Second World War.
[15:03.890 --> 15:08.270]  As you can see here, Kim Il Sung is about to catch some Japanese.
[15:09.270 --> 15:12.370]  Kim Jong Il is a toddler on his mum's arm.
[15:12.610 --> 15:14.730]  And he's right in the battle there as well.
[15:15.030 --> 15:16.670]  And his mum's got a pistol firing.
[15:18.230 --> 15:19.790]  This is Kim Jong Il.
[15:20.250 --> 15:24.870]  So the one that died, the Kim that died a few years ago.
[15:24.870 --> 15:27.790]  Here he is as a young guy.
[15:28.430 --> 15:29.110]  And it's interesting.
[15:29.110 --> 15:33.190]  He's wearing a flower, which we're going to talk about a bit in a sec too.
[15:33.490 --> 15:36.070]  This place is called Paktisan, the secret camp.
[15:37.390 --> 15:42.470]  And most of the stories around North Korea are very similar to Bible stories.
[15:43.130 --> 15:47.210]  The Kim family, actually, if you go back in the Kim family, they actually were Christians.
[15:47.210 --> 15:52.350]  And the grandfather of Kim Il Sung was actually a Christian pastor.
[15:52.970 --> 15:56.650]  So a lot of the propaganda has been built around the Bible stories.
[15:56.650 --> 15:58.510]  They've changed the actors and the locations.
[15:58.870 --> 16:01.790]  So this is where Kim Jong Il was born.
[16:01.910 --> 16:03.650]  It's pretty well Bethlehem.
[16:03.890 --> 16:05.550]  Instead of a stable, there's a hut.
[16:05.830 --> 16:10.850]  And instead of a star above, birds were speaking Korean.
[16:10.850 --> 16:12.690]  There was a double rainbow and so on.
[16:15.090 --> 16:17.790]  It was great to go there, actually.
[16:18.090 --> 16:19.670]  In 2011, I went up there.
[16:21.710 --> 16:26.830]  As Kim Jong Il grew up, the two of them ruled the country.
[16:26.990 --> 16:28.570]  They were loved by their people, of course.
[16:29.150 --> 16:30.630]  Here's a North Korean monorail.
[16:32.290 --> 16:41.870]  And still today, of course, on special events, people will have their photographs taken in front of images of the Kims.
[16:43.430 --> 16:44.490]  Kim Jong Il.
[16:44.690 --> 16:46.710]  So he died December 2011.
[16:58.610 --> 17:01.050]  Well, I'm so proud of it.
[17:01.490 --> 17:05.390]  I am happy to be here.
[17:06.130 --> 17:10.050]  I am happy to be here.
[17:13.870 --> 17:21.050]  The number of people I live in is my Genughal born will be with me from the beginning of the world.
[17:21.750 --> 17:24.830]  You are such a great man today.
[17:25.990 --> 17:27.770]  I am happy to be here.
[17:27.770 --> 17:28.690]  What happened is our father before you were !
[17:28.690 --> 17:29.070]  We have been here and there which I was born for my mother is a boy that's all right.
[17:29.070 --> 17:31.010]  .
[17:31.010 --> 17:31.710]  It's the first sentence.
[17:31.930 --> 17:37.650]  So, I'm sorry, my enemies are the ones you can live without me.
[17:39.810 --> 17:40.590]  I have been sad.
[17:41.590 --> 17:46.950]  We can tell you what you've been doing by the river of the river, and you will not have to die.
[17:48.490 --> 17:50.570]  You will not have to die.
[17:50.570 --> 17:53.010]  You will not have to die.
[17:55.990 --> 17:58.150]  So, that's the funeral of Kim Jong-il.
[17:58.150 --> 18:03.010]  Kim Il-sung, his father, Kim Il-sung, died in 1994 but is still the president of the country.
[18:03.650 --> 18:10.290]  In fact, the younger Kims are kind of like channels of the originator, Kim Il-sung.
[18:12.890 --> 18:16.630]  Kim Jong-il, he's a bit of a ladies man... sorry, Kim Jong-un, a bit of a ladies man.
[18:18.210 --> 18:20.170]  And here's the North Korean Navy.
[18:24.490 --> 18:30.030]  Kim Jong-un, actually, he's only been in power a couple of years, three years, two and a half years.
[18:30.230 --> 18:37.050]  And he's actually, at the rate he's going, he's going to be the most bloodthirsty of all of the Kims, even though he's had a Western education.
[18:38.130 --> 18:49.790]  In this photograph here on the horses, these were the inner circle of power when he became the ultimate leader.
[18:50.050 --> 19:00.910]  In fact, every single one of them has been purged in some way, including his uncle, which is the guy on the white horse on the left who was executed last year.
[19:02.350 --> 19:06.830]  Everywhere you go in North Korea, you'll find images of Kims on every building.
[19:08.030 --> 19:09.950]  They're just everywhere to be seen.
[19:11.650 --> 19:12.690]  Railway stations.
[19:14.170 --> 19:21.430]  Older buildings just have Kim Il-sung, but since the death of Kim Jong-il, you'll find his image starting to appear on buildings as well.
[19:21.430 --> 19:26.310]  Even in the subway, you'll find the Kims in every single subway car.
[19:27.710 --> 19:35.690]  And in the countryside as well, this is kind of a socialist realism type of art, which is similar to what was in the Soviet Union.
[19:35.970 --> 19:40.270]  Here you can see a mural which is showing a wheat field.
[19:41.270 --> 19:53.930]  And they usually put these mosaics in places in front of fields and on farms and so on, so the workers can imagine what it would be like if they could actually grow crops like that.
[19:58.010 --> 20:00.430]  Bicycles are the main transport once you leave Ponyang.
[20:01.330 --> 20:04.910]  And as I said, everywhere you go in North Korea, you're going to see Kims.
[20:05.090 --> 20:09.770]  So you'll see these images repeated time and time again, town to town.
[20:10.690 --> 20:12.790]  North Korea isn't a market economy.
[20:12.930 --> 20:13.850]  There's no advertising.
[20:14.270 --> 20:18.330]  There's not what you'd really call supermarket stalls or anything like that.
[20:19.790 --> 20:23.990]  And so, because it's not a market economy, there's no advertisements of any type.
[20:24.210 --> 20:28.790]  But there's certainly a lot of billboards and what appears to be advertising.
[20:28.790 --> 20:31.070]  What it's doing is advertising the regime.
[20:32.410 --> 20:34.990]  Everywhere you go, go for a walk in the park, there's Kim Il-sung.
[20:36.190 --> 20:37.390]  Let's go for another walk.
[20:37.510 --> 20:38.270]  Oh, there he is again.
[20:39.310 --> 20:50.250]  And actually, this is the large monument in Ponyang, which is the largest of the statues and recently added Kim Jong-il there on the right.
[20:50.950 --> 21:02.390]  But not being content with appearing everywhere you look, in every neighbourhood, in every corner, every North Korean citizen wears images of the Kims on there, above their heart.
[21:03.710 --> 21:05.450]  And this is a rite of passage.
[21:06.350 --> 21:13.150]  So when children turn around 13, between 13 and 15, they'll be given their first pin.
[21:13.950 --> 21:21.170]  And then, based on different stages of life and achievements, they'll receive other pins during their life.
[21:21.770 --> 21:29.390]  The first point, the first room you walk into inside any building is also essentially a shrine to the Kims.
[21:30.470 --> 21:39.350]  So any public building and quite often, kind of like commercial buildings as well, the first room will always be a shrine to the Kims.
[21:40.050 --> 21:42.290]  Their images appear on walls.
[21:43.770 --> 21:49.010]  And every room, pretty well inside North Korea, has these images as well.
[21:49.310 --> 21:53.870]  They're kind of spooky if you look carefully at the frames of the photographs.
[21:54.530 --> 21:58.970]  They're angled down, so the eyes follow you as you move around the room.
[22:01.730 --> 22:07.030]  The only rooms in North Korea that you don't see images of the Kims are bathrooms.
[22:08.210 --> 22:09.230]  And kitchens.
[22:10.270 --> 22:19.910]  And so here's an example of a room where, a room that I slept in, in a, in what was supposedly a typical North Korean house.
[22:20.090 --> 22:23.030]  Of course, it was designed for foreigners, so it was sanitized.
[22:23.350 --> 22:27.370]  But as you can see, there's, well, I don't think you can see any Kims in that room.
[22:29.170 --> 22:34.150]  And when you're in towns or cities, you actually won't sleep on the floor and you'll sleep in beds.
[22:34.330 --> 22:37.350]  And probably most of you can't see Kims in that room either.
[22:37.730 --> 22:39.050]  But in fact, they are there.
[22:39.310 --> 22:40.610]  Every North Korean can see them.
[22:40.790 --> 22:42.810]  So I'll show you how this works.
[22:44.630 --> 22:54.630]  Just like a crucifix represents a Christian or Star of David for Jewish people, there's imagery like that in North Korea as well.
[22:55.050 --> 23:02.530]  So the purple orchid represents Kim Il-sung, and the red flower there, Kim Jong-il, represents Kim Jong-il.
[23:03.330 --> 23:09.410]  So if you go back into this room, you'll see that both Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are in that room.
[23:09.410 --> 23:12.690]  And in fact, on my bedspread, there's Kim Jong-il.
[23:14.510 --> 23:16.770]  So this is kind of fascinating.
[23:17.050 --> 23:22.470]  A lot of people that visit North Korea on a casual basis probably don't go this deep into it.
[23:22.590 --> 23:27.930]  But these whole hidden messages and so on became quite fascinating to me, and so I sort them out.
[23:33.800 --> 23:34.280]  OK.
[23:35.140 --> 23:39.400]  So travelling the country, a bit about the social engineering and so on.
[23:39.520 --> 23:40.920]  The country's totally closed.
[23:41.440 --> 23:43.980]  In fact, here's the beach side.
[23:44.200 --> 23:45.260]  There's electric fences.
[23:45.660 --> 23:47.800]  There's higher ones than this on other parts of the country.
[23:48.860 --> 23:54.520]  And here's the advice from my country, Australia that says, please don't go there.
[23:57.860 --> 24:04.920]  And early last year, around April last year, you might remember things were quite hot and people were even predicting a nuclear war to break out.
[24:04.920 --> 24:08.700]  So, of course, that, for me, was a perfect time to go into North Korea.
[24:10.220 --> 24:16.640]  Unfortunately, I got... because everyone was coming out and I was going in, I received some media attention.
[24:18.200 --> 24:23.320]  And it was, at that time, planned to be my last trip, so it didn't really matter that much.
[24:23.800 --> 24:27.180]  But, as it was, I went back one other time.
[24:27.180 --> 24:30.720]  But what's circled in there in red is saying that, I'm not worried.
[24:30.920 --> 24:32.160]  My dad isn't worried.
[24:32.300 --> 24:35.280]  My son, who's in the room here, I don't think he was particularly worried.
[24:35.540 --> 24:37.440]  But the people at work think I'm nuts.
[24:39.240 --> 24:52.440]  The way to conduct yourself and to collect information and to not be found with the information you're smuggling out and the equipment you're smuggling in is to be a useful idiot.
[24:52.760 --> 25:07.920]  So this is a term that was coined by the Soviets to describe people in the West that actually subscribed to their way of life and their systems and believed the propaganda and then became vehicles for the propaganda to spread outside of the country.
[25:11.330 --> 25:17.790]  So, as I said, South Korea and North Korea, of course, there's a land border of 1,000 kilometres or so.
[25:18.350 --> 25:25.650]  And, as I said, North Korea is only 36 kilometres north of Seoul.
[25:26.090 --> 25:31.870]  But you can't actually travel between the two Koreas from south to north.
[25:32.550 --> 25:36.830]  The easiest way, in fact, the only way for Westerners really is to come in through China.
[25:36.830 --> 25:40.250]  So, there's three different ways you can get in.
[25:40.390 --> 25:41.890]  You can travel by train from Beijing.
[25:42.110 --> 25:45.830]  It's about a 24-hour train road to Ponyang from Beijing.
[25:47.990 --> 25:50.390]  Or you can travel in by plane.
[25:51.030 --> 25:53.050]  Air Corio, which is North Korea's airline.
[25:57.060 --> 25:59.240]  These are great old Soviet planes.
[26:00.980 --> 26:03.560]  This is Ponyang International Airport.
[26:03.720 --> 26:06.700]  It's really the only international airport in the whole country.
[26:06.700 --> 26:07.480]  or not really.
[26:07.600 --> 26:12.120]  It is the only international airport in the whole country for visitors to foreigners to enter by.
[26:12.240 --> 26:14.220]  As you can see, it's a really busy place.
[26:16.160 --> 26:20.700]  And you can walk into North Korea, which is what I did last time.
[26:20.880 --> 26:29.780]  So, way up near the Russian border, you leave a city called Yanji and head out and you can walk into North Korea.
[26:30.380 --> 26:35.140]  And to do that, you cross the Tumen River on this bridge.
[26:35.400 --> 26:39.680]  And that's actually quite surreal to walk into the country.
[26:40.740 --> 26:43.300]  On arriving into the country, you're met with your minders.
[26:43.440 --> 26:44.420]  They're called your guides.
[26:44.660 --> 26:48.800]  But it works on a system of good cop, bad cop.
[26:50.260 --> 26:54.840]  If there's... usually there's three minders assigned to a group of people.
[26:54.840 --> 27:00.940]  If there's an American in the group, occasionally you find Americans in North Korea, they'll potentially be an extra minder added.
[27:02.540 --> 27:14.340]  So, here's an example of the sweet, you know, late 20s, maybe early 30-year-old female guide, who's a good cop, even though she looks a tiny bit sour there.
[27:14.680 --> 27:17.460]  And the bad cop is standing there, as you can see.
[27:17.460 --> 27:22.900]  Every single photograph I've got of the bad cop, he's got his fists clenched as if he's about to smash you.
[27:23.120 --> 27:25.840]  So, he's ready for action.
[27:26.300 --> 27:32.220]  And then the other person is usually an elderly gentleman, my age or a tiny bit older.
[27:33.540 --> 27:38.500]  And he usually pretends not to speak much English, just smiles a lot.
[27:38.680 --> 27:41.200]  But he's actually the leader of the group.
[27:41.420 --> 27:44.020]  He's got an important job, and you're going to see what that is in a sec.
[27:44.840 --> 27:57.360]  If you come in through Ponyang, the first place, usually you arrive late in the day, and you're put on an island like Alcatraz, which is the Yanggato Hotel, which is that high-rise there.
[27:57.500 --> 28:00.260]  It's the second largest building in North Korea.
[28:01.400 --> 28:07.080]  And it's separated from the city of Ponyang by this bridge, and you're told never cross this bridge.
[28:10.120 --> 28:16.820]  And so Mr. Kim here, the older Mr. Kim, one of his important jobs is to fill you with alcohol.
[28:17.560 --> 28:19.100]  They don't leave your side.
[28:19.320 --> 28:20.900]  They actually sleep on the same floor.
[28:21.100 --> 28:23.720]  If you're in a hotel, I sleep on the same floor.
[28:23.800 --> 28:26.800]  If you're sleeping somewhere else, I sleep in the next room.
[28:26.940 --> 28:29.460]  They never leave your side, their mind is.
[28:29.740 --> 28:36.800]  So if they fill you with alcohol, and they encourage drinking, then actually you'll probably get sleepy and go to sleep.
[28:36.800 --> 28:48.820]  So, for anyone that decides they'd like to get an off career, one social engineering trip is you've got to be able to give the impression that you're drinking a lot of alcohol, but don't get drunk, because all of your fun will happen at night.
[28:49.780 --> 28:52.400]  So we saw elevator hacking a bit earlier.
[28:52.960 --> 28:57.980]  Well, here's an elevator for you, but if you look carefully, there's no fifth floor.
[28:59.300 --> 29:03.320]  So one of the challenges in the Yankato Hotel is to get onto the fifth floor.
[29:04.080 --> 29:09.180]  So if you go to the staff elevators, you'll find there is a button on the fifth floor.
[29:09.340 --> 29:16.040]  And in fact, in the stairwell, which is the way that I've always got to the fifth floor, it's accessible as well.
[29:16.220 --> 29:19.200]  It's not accessible any longer, but I've been there three times.
[29:19.380 --> 29:24.680]  When I tried late last year, I found that the doors were well and truly sealed.
[29:26.000 --> 29:35.060]  The fifth floor, there's a whole lot of legend built around it, that it's a listening post where the people listen in on the rooms that are bugged and so on.
[29:37.240 --> 29:42.660]  Others think that it's just for the in-house television distribution and so on.
[29:42.840 --> 29:54.900]  But what's interesting is that the Yankato Hotel, I think from memory it's 46 or 48 stories, there's a total absence of North Korean propaganda in this whole building, except for the fifth floor, which foreigners can't go to.
[29:55.120 --> 29:59.760]  And on the fifth floor, you'll find posters, a lot of propaganda posters.
[30:00.300 --> 30:02.960]  And so just two of them, I'll read out what they say.
[30:03.080 --> 30:09.120]  The one you can see here, it says, the 21st century is the age of information's communications industry.
[30:09.900 --> 30:15.460]  And then one around the corner, which you'll see in a video in a sec, says, the bomb is the product of the Americans.
[30:15.900 --> 30:20.740]  Every product of Americans is our... every product of the Americans is our enemy.
[30:21.080 --> 30:23.820]  Get revenge a thousand times against the Americans.
[30:24.120 --> 30:28.940]  So when you're actually in this hotel, the staff are serving you, they're smiling at you.
[30:29.100 --> 30:31.200]  Actually, because I'm white, they assume I'm an American.
[30:32.220 --> 30:37.620]  They're sweet to you, they... we don't have to tip there, but they act as if they'll like some.
[30:38.060 --> 30:46.400]  But actually, when they go to the fifth floor, which is no doubt where they go to human resources and so on, they're reminded, don't forget your mission.
[30:47.020 --> 30:50.640]  They're the enemy, and you're here to... to take advantage of that.
[31:18.660 --> 31:20.120]  So it's quite spooky.
[31:20.260 --> 31:28.880]  You can't really hear it in this video, but there's just a loud buzz of 60 hertz, or... it's 50 hertz, actually, in North Korea, like AC buzzing sound.
[31:32.660 --> 31:37.600]  And of course, when you're in there, you're expecting to be found and detected at any time.
[31:38.160 --> 31:42.920]  On my first trip down, we did... we did get caught, and we'll shoot off the floor.
[31:44.860 --> 31:52.520]  What you also do at night, when your mind is... feel you're drunk, and what was of particular interest to me is collecting intelligence transmissions.
[31:52.940 --> 32:00.260]  So both communications between South Korean spies that may be in North Korea, and North Korean... messages to North Korean spies.
[32:00.920 --> 32:08.720]  Both voice... so if you know anything about numbers stations, voice, data, morse code, and so on.
[32:10.720 --> 32:16.740]  This one here is a North Korean numbers station, so sending messages to North Korean agents.
[32:16.740 --> 32:19.060]  Actually, this wasn't recorded in Ponyang.
[32:19.160 --> 32:22.820]  This is recorded in Dandong in China, which is a border city.
[32:30.660 --> 32:49.820]  So the operator is saying which agent the message is for, and then they're sending a sequence of four sets of numbers, which actually will be used on a... what they call a one-time pad, which the agent will use to decrypt the message.
[32:54.060 --> 32:58.660]  All night, in your hotel room in the Yang Gatto, you hear this dredging.
[32:59.120 --> 33:04.080]  You have to listen carefully here, but this is really, really loud when it's the middle of the night and you're trying to sleep.
[33:05.040 --> 33:11.740]  And this is primarily because the North Koreans built a great thing, kind of like a dam.
[33:11.940 --> 33:17.860]  It's called the West Sea Barrage at the mouth of the Tandonggang river.
[33:18.440 --> 33:21.940]  And as a result, the river is silted up.
[33:22.060 --> 33:25.140]  So they dredge all night, 24 hours a day actually.
[33:26.840 --> 33:33.680]  At six o'clock, the PA system through Ponyang starts playing trance music.
[33:37.880 --> 33:43.660]  This actually originates from speakers at the railway station, but it echoes through the city.
[33:44.380 --> 33:52.100]  The recording, this recording was actually made at a hotel called the Corio Hotel near the railway station.
[33:52.100 --> 33:55.160]  But you can actually hear the Yang Gatto in the distance as well.
[33:55.740 --> 33:58.860]  This just plays kind of like a trance music.
[34:00.520 --> 34:05.900]  Around 7am, propaganda announcements start through the PA systems.
[34:10.080 --> 34:14.140]  So all of this is recorded just by poking a microphone out of my hotel window.
[34:16.140 --> 34:22.140]  And then as workers start going to work, patriotic working music starts.
[34:31.110 --> 34:48.470]  And because I had an interest in radio, I was also collecting samples, like quite a lot of samples, hundreds of hours of domestic North Korean radio, particularly FM radio, which most of the North Korean radio I can actually receive by satellite back in Australia.
[34:49.150 --> 34:53.310]  This is a satellite they're using to send it to their transmitters around the country.
[34:53.910 --> 34:56.090]  But FM radio I can't receive in Australia.
[34:56.370 --> 34:59.930]  So that was a particular interest to me, to actually collect FM radio.
[35:01.130 --> 35:05.670]  On the FM band in Ponyang, again, remember how close Ponyang is to Seoul.
[35:05.990 --> 35:10.950]  There's a possibility that FM radio from Seoul would reach North Koreans in Ponyang.
[35:11.110 --> 35:13.670]  So they take measures to avoid that happening.
[35:19.970 --> 35:21.930]  So this is jamming.
[35:22.290 --> 35:31.710]  And as you go across the band, you'll find any signal which is from South Korea is being jammed.
[35:32.590 --> 35:35.990]  And then there, you'll also find their own radio programs.
[35:36.170 --> 35:37.350]  7시를 알려드리겠습니다.
[35:37.770 --> 35:38.750]  Of course, unjammed.
[35:49.260 --> 35:54.480]  So most of these FM stations, you'll now find good samples on YouTube and so on.
[35:54.480 --> 35:58.820]  And pretty well all of them, if not all of them, have originated from my recordings.
[35:59.360 --> 36:01.920]  I just share information so it quickly gets out there.
[36:02.520 --> 36:05.520]  Now, North Koreans don't know radios as we know them.
[36:05.840 --> 36:09.660]  Radios, usually in North Korea, don't have a tuning dial.
[36:09.960 --> 36:12.040]  They're simply a speaker and it's a cable radio.
[36:12.680 --> 36:19.540]  So North Koreans are primarily using radio as a way of distributing the signal around the country to cable head-ins.
[36:20.540 --> 36:24.480]  This example here is called the Third Network, which is a speaker on a wall.
[36:24.700 --> 36:26.780]  They're in every house in North Korea, in every building.
[36:28.240 --> 36:32.020]  And reports are that you can turn it down, but not completely turn it off.
[36:32.240 --> 36:35.500]  It starts around 5 o'clock in the morning and finishes around 10pm.
[36:36.660 --> 36:37.800]  It's a secure network.
[36:37.800 --> 36:43.540]  I don't know of anyone that's ever managed to get a recording out of the country of the Third Network.
[36:43.540 --> 36:49.640]  So most secure messages for North Korean citizens are sent on that network and not through the airwaves.
[36:50.240 --> 37:09.860]  But because North Koreans don't have radios and you don't expect to come across one inside North Korea, one day I was blown away when I walked into a hotel room in a new hotel, recently refurbished hotel in Hamheng, which is a city which has only just recently opened to foreigners.
[37:11.180 --> 37:16.600]  Because, wow, look, this is exactly what you'd see in every hotel room around the world, except not North Korea.
[37:16.860 --> 37:18.560]  There's a radio between the beds.
[37:19.240 --> 37:21.920]  Of course I went there, turned on the radio, didn't work.
[37:22.080 --> 37:26.620]  But, you know, when you go around the world and you stay in hotels, quite often the radio doesn't work in hotels.
[37:26.620 --> 37:30.020]  So I decided, OK, well, this radio's not working.
[37:30.240 --> 37:30.900]  This is bizarre.
[37:31.180 --> 37:33.200]  I've never seen a radio before in North Korea.
[37:33.440 --> 37:38.480]  And how would they let such a subversive type of instrument be available to foreigners?
[37:38.880 --> 37:41.980]  So I spent the night trying to find out why it didn't work.
[37:45.580 --> 37:46.660]  It's not broken.
[37:47.000 --> 37:50.140]  They've actually cut the transformer windings.
[37:50.220 --> 37:55.340]  They've removed the speaker, removed all of the cables, the audio cables.
[37:57.000 --> 38:02.800]  And so quite deliberately, they've disabled this radio, and yet they've kept it in the room.
[38:03.160 --> 38:10.100]  And this is, in my book, I go a fair, quite deeply into this, which is propaganda for visitors.
[38:10.680 --> 38:17.020]  This is an illusion of being connected to the outside world, an illusion of normality in a hotel room.
[38:17.120 --> 38:21.720]  But as you can see, that radio is never intended to work and will never work again.
[38:21.720 --> 38:28.780]  In fact, the following morning, I reported at the reception desk that my radio didn't work, and they showed me they'll have it.
[38:29.020 --> 38:29.760]  You know, thank you.
[38:29.900 --> 38:31.580]  We'll get it fixed for the next guest.
[38:34.960 --> 38:37.620]  Your mind does meet you for breakfast, about eight o'clock?
[38:39.020 --> 38:43.000]  And in North Korea, there's kind of zany music everywhere.
[38:52.100 --> 38:54.140]  Everywhere you go, you're hearing zany music like that.
[38:54.440 --> 38:56.100]  Have something going to move through faster.
[38:57.880 --> 39:01.520]  So as we go through North Korea, you meet interesting people.
[39:01.900 --> 39:06.060]  Simply due to the fact you're a Westerner, you get amazing access because they want to show you things.
[39:06.180 --> 39:07.600]  They want to show you how great their country is.
[39:08.180 --> 39:10.280]  Here you can see a classroom full of computers.
[39:11.460 --> 39:15.540]  And wow, you get to visit a high school in the computer lab.
[39:15.720 --> 39:17.460]  As you can see, the computers don't work.
[39:18.100 --> 39:21.280]  It's because there's no power to that school at the moment.
[39:21.560 --> 39:24.960]  But they were sitting there and actually typing on the keyboards.
[39:30.500 --> 39:35.700]  I always worry about this photograph because I always think it looks like I'm a pedophile.
[39:38.160 --> 39:39.840]  Hello to any pedophiles here.
[39:43.880 --> 39:51.640]  You get taken to endless propaganda concerts at primary schools, elementary schools and kindergartens and so on.
[39:52.760 --> 39:59.620]  And you meet plenty of just real North Koreans who of course are actually trained to interact with foreigners.
[39:59.820 --> 40:01.500]  So very carefully chosen.
[40:01.700 --> 40:03.980]  You don't get the chance to meet with any real North Koreans.
[40:04.860 --> 40:10.980]  One thing I liked doing was collecting video and kind of doing a...
[40:12.580 --> 40:20.180]  Just going through, walking through buildings, shooting it to kind of give an impression of what it's actually like to be in a North Korean building.
[40:26.820 --> 40:30.820]  Usually I would be doing this with a camera and making it...
[40:30.820 --> 40:36.100]  This is a 35mm camera and not really making it obvious that I'm filming.
[40:36.100 --> 40:41.000]  As I go up the stairwell, I actually move it to the side of my hip.
[40:41.320 --> 40:44.000]  So people just think I'm holding a camera and not filming.
[40:44.440 --> 40:47.400]  But you'll see as I come back down the stairwell, I'm not...
[40:47.400 --> 40:51.300]  When there's a mirror, I can't help but kind of point at the mirror.
[40:54.480 --> 40:56.550]  So this is a typical North Korean factory.
[40:57.480 --> 40:59.780]  Propaganda music playing and a lot of people working.
[41:10.160 --> 41:12.580]  It's a very typical North Korean building.
[41:55.020 --> 41:58.360]  Propaganda posters are everywhere, in every town, every corner.
[41:59.540 --> 42:04.410]  Everywhere you'll see a billboard or an advertisement in our culture, you'll find propaganda.
[42:04.420 --> 42:07.400]  In fact, the buildings, you'll see signage on buildings.
[42:07.680 --> 42:11.590]  The signage doesn't indicate what the function of the building is.
[42:11.880 --> 42:14.590]  It's talking about the regime or the Kim family.
[42:16.900 --> 42:25.240]  So we'll usually say something like, be loyal to Comrade General Kim Jong-un or something like that.
[42:25.240 --> 42:26.900]  They also have targets.
[42:27.090 --> 42:35.800]  That last one there was, they liked showing lots of bar graphs and line graphs, showing how they've exceeded targets in production and so on.
[42:36.550 --> 42:37.050]  Hairdresser.
[42:38.260 --> 42:43.070]  Probably the closest you would see in Ponyang to a vegetable store, sweet potato.
[42:44.120 --> 42:53.800]  And one of the really landmark sites in Ponyang is the Tower of the Zhuge ideas, Zhuge being their philosophy.
[42:53.800 --> 42:58.620]  They proudly tell you that it's X metres taller than the Washington Monument.
[42:59.820 --> 43:01.760]  You can actually go to the top of it.
[43:02.300 --> 43:10.640]  And in my e-book, you actually have a panographic view and all of the landmarks marked.
[43:11.280 --> 43:17.480]  So that was a fair bit of research to work out where everything was and what I'm looking at.
[43:17.660 --> 43:19.360]  There's our hotel down there at Yangato.
[43:20.340 --> 43:21.760]  And Kim Il Sung Square.
[43:22.140 --> 43:24.760]  This is where you see the military parades.
[43:28.820 --> 43:32.240]  Very much styled after the Soviet square.
[43:36.810 --> 43:39.350]  So this is what's marked in Kim Il Sung Square.
[43:39.590 --> 43:40.030]  There's markers.
[43:40.230 --> 43:43.690]  So when you see those mass military parades, you have to know where to stand.
[43:43.690 --> 43:45.930]  So this is how you know where to stand.
[43:46.710 --> 43:47.910]  As you can see there.
[44:24.960 --> 44:27.400]  So citizens of Ponyang are the elite.
[44:27.700 --> 44:31.340]  To live in Ponyang, you're chosen to live there.
[44:32.080 --> 44:36.040]  And as you can see, they're very loyal and patriotic.
[44:57.310 --> 44:58.830]  Now I'm really going to speed up.
[44:59.070 --> 45:00.190]  I'm running out of time.
[45:04.610 --> 45:06.070]  This is a propaganda van.
[45:06.230 --> 45:08.450]  Very common sight on the streets and towns.
[45:38.710 --> 45:40.190]  So let's leave Ponyang.
[45:40.190 --> 45:41.930]  It's actually a very beautiful country.
[45:42.470 --> 45:43.510]  The scenery is fantastic.
[45:47.750 --> 45:50.990]  And of course, most of it's pristine, unspoiled.
[45:51.270 --> 45:56.710]  When you leave Ponyang, your accommodation isn't as flash as Ponyang.
[45:56.950 --> 45:58.870]  You're not going to find a radio between your bed.
[45:59.070 --> 46:00.450]  And you sleep on the floor.
[46:00.630 --> 46:06.590]  I love this photograph here because one of the biggest problems when you're collecting data in the country is keeping your devices charged.
[46:07.230 --> 46:09.490]  And this photograph, it's just a fluke.
[46:09.490 --> 46:11.250]  You can actually see the power strip there.
[46:11.430 --> 46:13.610]  The light is on saying that I've got AC power.
[46:13.830 --> 46:18.830]  That must have been like the only minute of the whole 24 hours that there was AC power in that room.
[46:21.490 --> 46:26.550]  So that was always a challenge for me, keeping my devices charged when I was out of Ponyang.
[46:30.230 --> 46:34.370]  Now, North Koreans will tell you how bad the Americans are.
[46:34.810 --> 46:38.930]  And due to their unfair sanctions, they have no petroleum or gasoline.
[46:41.490 --> 46:45.410]  So they've actually converted trucks to run on burning wood.
[46:45.630 --> 46:47.250]  So they're not like steam trucks.
[46:47.450 --> 46:53.710]  They actually burn the wood, produce gas, and then they have modified combustion engines, which do that.
[46:53.710 --> 46:55.310]  Oh, I skipped through a bit fast there.
[46:55.430 --> 46:57.630]  But actually, most of those trucks you don't see moving.
[46:57.750 --> 47:02.390]  You see more of them on the side of the road with the bonnet up and smoke pouring out the back.
[47:03.390 --> 47:06.290]  In 2011, I was actually detained in North Korea.
[47:06.510 --> 47:07.990]  It was my first scouting trip.
[47:08.330 --> 47:13.130]  And where I was using social engineering and trying to find out how far I could push the limits.
[47:13.590 --> 47:17.530]  This is a place called Pektusan, Mount Pektu.
[47:18.150 --> 47:21.490]  So the photograph where I'm standing, to take this photograph, is in North Korea.
[47:21.630 --> 47:23.410]  The far side of the lake is in China.
[47:25.550 --> 47:27.130]  And I was left to my own devices.
[47:27.390 --> 47:30.050]  And mine just said, well, you know, we're up here for about two hours.
[47:30.210 --> 47:32.430]  You're in the middle of nowhere on top of a volcano.
[47:33.790 --> 47:35.710]  Walk around, but don't go off the tracks.
[47:35.850 --> 47:37.330]  So, of course, I went off the tracks.
[47:39.110 --> 47:43.810]  And soon found that it was like an ant's nest.
[47:43.810 --> 47:45.910]  There were entrances everywhere.
[47:46.050 --> 47:49.010]  And I saw soldiers going in and out of these entrances.
[47:49.350 --> 47:55.610]  I thought I was taking photographs of the entrances without being obvious and so on.
[47:55.790 --> 48:10.470]  But actually soon found a gun in my back and was marched down to this post here where they yelled at me in Korean for about 10 minutes and then deleted every photograph of my camera.
[48:10.470 --> 48:17.470]  The reason I've got the photographs is that North Koreans, they know how to delete photographs, but they're not that tech-savvy actually.
[48:18.050 --> 48:25.050]  What they should have done is kept the SD card because as soon as I got back to Australia, I simply got the deleted photographs back.
[48:33.730 --> 48:41.870]  So when you go to North Korean farms, they probably tell you that they can produce more food than we can in the West.
[48:41.990 --> 48:46.750]  In fact, at this farm they're claiming they're receiving or producing four crops per year.
[48:47.110 --> 48:50.730]  When you pick up a piece of the dirt, there's no organic matter in there at all.
[48:50.830 --> 48:51.910]  It's just kind of clay.
[48:53.670 --> 48:55.970]  And you get very used to...
[48:55.970 --> 48:58.530]  Well, the social engineering is...
[48:58.530 --> 49:06.790]  Really, the method I used was to learn a lot of North Korean propaganda and simply parrot it back to them.
[49:06.790 --> 49:18.990]  Because they, even the minders, the people that are with you have no outside reference, it's kind of like sarcasm or bullshitting someone, they don't kind of really understand that concept.
[49:19.210 --> 49:21.150]  And they tend to believe what you say.
[49:21.410 --> 49:27.630]  So if you repeat back the propaganda they produce from their own country, they actually think that you are truly admiring their nation.
[49:28.930 --> 49:33.690]  And so after a while, this was on my third trip, you start to...
[49:34.230 --> 49:38.830]  After your first trip, which is kind of a scouting trip, you start to notice things aren't exactly as people say.
[49:39.450 --> 49:47.050]  So when you go to factories, and unlike that factory you did see machine workers making garments, usually you go to factories and nothing's happening.
[49:47.270 --> 49:51.550]  You can see all the machinery and you can see the end product, but you can't actually see anyone working.
[49:52.090 --> 49:56.210]  I went to this farm and they were very proud of this farm, but I couldn't find any farmers.
[49:56.650 --> 50:02.510]  And they tell you, oh, you should have come this morning because they were quite busy preparing the fields.
[50:03.370 --> 50:03.770]  What...
[50:03.770 --> 50:06.790]  When you're in North Korea, you hear these type of things, just look around.
[50:07.010 --> 50:08.590]  There's always something to...
[50:08.590 --> 50:10.690]  to prove that what they're saying is wrong.
[50:10.890 --> 50:15.950]  As you can see, these wagons here look like they've never moved from when they were parked there.
[50:16.110 --> 50:17.590]  There's no tracks on the ground at all.
[50:18.070 --> 50:21.850]  And yet they had told me that earlier in the morning, all of them were out in the fields.
[50:23.410 --> 50:26.490]  Here at the same farm, are some of the...
[50:26.490 --> 50:31.130]  probably, you know, farmers, or so-called farmers walking by.
[50:31.130 --> 50:36.090]  As you can see again, the roads don't show any movement of tractors or anything like that on them particularly.
[50:37.410 --> 50:45.470]  This here is a fertiliser factory, the largest fertiliser factory in North Korea, which is quite close to that farm.
[50:45.530 --> 50:49.010]  And when I found no organic material in the ground, I thought, well, far out.
[50:49.150 --> 50:51.330]  Like, there's a large fertiliser factory nearby.
[50:51.610 --> 50:52.950]  I was lucky enough to visit.
[50:52.950 --> 50:58.710]  The reason I'm showing you this fertiliser factory is that many people just believe it is a large fertiliser factory.
[50:59.170 --> 51:05.210]  But it's also rumoured to be one of the largest chemical weapons production sites in the world.
[51:05.730 --> 51:07.230]  And there's also been some...
[51:07.230 --> 51:12.970]  Some people believe that chemical weapons used in Syria were sourced from this area as well.
[51:13.090 --> 51:14.090]  Maybe this very factory.
[51:23.770 --> 51:30.010]  So the reason you get shown these type of things, it's kind of like in the first Iraq war, being shown a baby milk factory.
[51:31.110 --> 51:32.150]  They look...
[51:32.150 --> 51:37.350]  In some ways, it could be a fertiliser factory or it could be a military factory.
[51:37.550 --> 51:46.330]  As you can see, the emittery and the posters on the wall are usually military themes.
[51:47.110 --> 51:50.210]  But they're showing us that it's simply a fertiliser factory.
[52:11.610 --> 52:13.750]  Pushbikes in North Korea have licence plates.
[52:14.850 --> 52:17.030]  Because, of course, that's the main mode of transport.
[52:17.030 --> 52:20.390]  Just really touching quickly on the gear.
[52:20.710 --> 52:23.030]  As I said, do some work in Australia.
[52:23.930 --> 52:24.990]  Take devices in.
[52:25.390 --> 52:30.130]  Really just taking in devices, hiding them, making them look like simple consumer items.
[52:30.610 --> 52:33.010]  An MP3 player and so on.
[52:34.050 --> 52:36.530]  The last two trips I did get a GPS in.
[52:36.630 --> 52:37.910]  GPSs are really forbidden.
[52:38.610 --> 52:41.210]  I got a GPS in on my iPhone.
[52:41.510 --> 52:43.250]  The last two trips I had my iPhone on me.
[52:43.430 --> 52:44.730]  They didn't actually confiscate it.
[52:45.290 --> 52:50.770]  And they felt that it was quite safe having an iPhone because you can't connect to the phone network easily.
[52:51.310 --> 52:53.470]  There's no Internet, no Wi-Fi to connect to.
[52:53.630 --> 52:59.290]  And, of course, the iPhone GPS isn't going to work without a network signal, is it?
[52:59.530 --> 53:00.710]  Well, how wrong can you be?
[53:00.710 --> 53:04.130]  All you've got to do is download the maps before you go into the country.
[53:04.330 --> 53:05.810]  You know exactly where you are.
[53:06.350 --> 53:10.010]  And I started the tracker running at the beginning every day and turned it off every night.
[53:10.150 --> 53:13.830]  And I've got breadcrumbs of everywhere I went through the whole country.
[53:14.350 --> 53:21.090]  And so correlating that to timestamps on photographs, I know exactly where every photograph I took was taken.
[53:21.330 --> 53:26.150]  So a lot of photographs are of transmission sites, things which they don't want you to photograph.
[53:26.570 --> 53:30.430]  I've got the exact coordinates of them and I've been sharing those with people interested.
[53:30.430 --> 53:38.070]  Also, some guys were quite interested in understanding the local mobile phone network.
[53:38.310 --> 53:40.290]  So I did some measurements of that as well.
[53:41.750 --> 53:42.530]  It's amazing.
[53:42.650 --> 53:46.870]  When I do this talk, I've done this talk quite often, but you meet these amazing people.
[53:47.050 --> 53:48.330]  And so one that actually...
[53:49.650 --> 54:00.850]  someone I'm helping right at the moment is that there's a North Korean defector in Sweden and he's likely to be deported back to China because Sweden has decided that he's not from North Korea.
[54:01.030 --> 54:04.950]  He's actually a Chinese masquerading as North Korean.
[54:05.530 --> 54:10.770]  If he goes back to China, they'll immediately hand him back to North Korea and he'll end up in a camp.
[54:10.950 --> 54:17.190]  So I'm helping with this because this statue is actually in the hometown of this defector.
[54:17.190 --> 54:20.330]  And of course, he's got no papers to say he's North Korean.
[54:20.510 --> 54:21.970]  He actually was a street person.
[54:22.570 --> 54:30.850]  He's describing to his legal counsel his town and I'm providing them photographs so they can correlate his story and descriptions.
[54:31.330 --> 54:32.870]  This is quite a remote town.
[54:33.450 --> 54:36.110]  And so if he...
[54:36.110 --> 54:43.490]  the likelihood of him being able to describe it incredibly accurately would be quite similar unless he actually did live there.
[54:44.730 --> 54:46.690]  Alright, now we get to the exciting part.
[54:47.190 --> 54:51.750]  I'm actually going to show the United States blown up by a nuclear weapon so I'm warning you about that.
[54:53.690 --> 55:01.270]  I don't know if you've ever seen when Bill Clinton went in to rescue the two journalists a few years ago.
[55:01.470 --> 55:10.250]  He made sure that when he was standing next to Kim Jong Il he never was seen as smiling in photographs so I've used that method as well.
[55:10.250 --> 55:16.250]  So every photograph I have with a person with the regime I deliberately avoid smiling.
[55:16.870 --> 55:32.230]  Here we are down right on the border in the DMZ past the minefields and there's an electric fence there and this is looking at the front line looking at the United Nations, U.S. outpost in South Korea from the northern side.
[55:33.510 --> 55:40.690]  Here's the actual electric fence and massive minefields around this.
[55:41.310 --> 56:00.330]  When we started you heard about the large flag this is what it looks like from inside North Korea and there's tank traps down this part of the country so this is the only road between South and North Korea which is where the American tanks and American military vehicles would come up they actually have wedges to be able to,
[56:00.690 --> 56:08.110]  with a small charge make those cement blocks tumble down into the canyon to prevent any vehicles coming up.
[56:08.370 --> 56:09.930]  This is the DMZ.
[56:10.210 --> 56:25.390]  So you might have seen photographs of this before but this is actually looking from North Korea into the south and of course the last few trips where I had an iPhone with me I couldn't help but hide from my North Korean minders behind some pillars and send text messages to all my friends.
[56:25.390 --> 56:35.210]  So here's an American soldier on the other side looking in and saying, what the f*ck are you doing?
[56:37.630 --> 56:48.470]  As you can see on the south side there's South Korean Americans there they take aggressive stance, they wear sunglasses the North Koreans don't have sunglasses
[56:52.350 --> 57:12.570]  and the hatred of Americans hatred or suspicion, I use the term hatred but the suspicion of foreigners is bred into North Koreans at a very early age right through the whole education system there's a general poster on a wall which is saying don't play with landmines and so on but one of the,
[57:13.130 --> 57:35.850]  again using social engineering techniques saying, oh gosh I'm really busting it I need to go to the toilet and if you've won the... or built some relationship with your minders sometimes they'll let you go without them following you and then what you do is immediately go down corridors which you're not meant to go down you can usually find the corridors you're not meant to go down because they
[57:35.850 --> 57:59.790]  have no lighting, they're dark and if you go down those corridors which is in a high school you'll find his grandpa congratulating the kids because they've caught an American soldier you can always pick an American because they've got a hooked nose and here's a clueless American that's crashed his Jeep and here's a poster saying as students study hard and you can,
[57:59.930 --> 58:25.030]  with what you learn you'll be able to slaughter Americans and Japanese so this is all in a high school down dark corridors which isn't where my mind has expected me to go this poster was taken in Ponyang a minder was walking past this and a minder pointed out to me something to the left and when the minder points something out to you make sure you look in every direction other than where they're
[58:25.030 --> 58:30.350]  pointing what this poster says is death to Americans and all that support them
[58:36.770 --> 58:49.350]  this artwork here is I actually have the original of and this is what North Korean schoolgirls dream of felix symbol missiles And kind of North Korean Lego they build military apparatus with.
[58:49.590 --> 58:52.130]  So I've actually got that original hanging in Sydney.
[58:52.290 --> 58:52.750]  It's fantastic.
[58:53.690 --> 58:56.450]  The Pueblo, most of you probably know about that.
[58:56.530 --> 59:03.570]  It's the only United States piece of military hardware or ship which is in a foreign port, an enemy port.
[59:03.770 --> 59:07.350]  So it's the Pueblo, which has just recently been restored in Ponyang.
[59:07.350 --> 59:08.030]  NSA.
[59:08.430 --> 59:08.830]  Yeah.
[59:09.250 --> 59:11.990]  Here's the signed confessions of the American crew.
[59:12.530 --> 59:16.550]  And also they're very keen to show off American hardware that they've caught.
[59:16.790 --> 59:19.710]  Now I've only got four minutes to go.
[59:20.390 --> 59:23.230]  And I'm going to show you the destruction of the USA.
[59:23.450 --> 59:27.950]  So this is the biggest song in North Korea last year.
[59:28.050 --> 59:29.930]  It still is probably the biggest song in North Korea.
[59:30.050 --> 59:32.690]  It's still played on North Korean radio very frequently.
[59:33.230 --> 59:35.250]  I actually recorded it, remixed it.
[59:35.370 --> 59:36.830]  You can find it on SoundCloud.
[59:36.830 --> 59:38.850]  I've done remixes and so on.
[59:39.710 --> 59:42.190]  My SoundCloud account is called Meteor Explorer.
[59:42.390 --> 59:45.490]  You'll also find lots of my Chinese work on that account as well.
[59:46.330 --> 59:47.590]  And here it is.
[59:47.710 --> 59:49.650]  So this is the official video clip to this song.
[59:50.190 --> 59:56.390]  At four minutes, 18 seconds in, you'll see North America destroyed by a nuclear weapon.
[59:56.750 --> 01:00:02.150]  What the film clip is going to show is Kim Jong Un approving the building of the missiles.
[01:00:02.930 --> 01:00:06.630]  Also, when they use the term satellite in North Korea, they're primarily...
[01:00:07.150 --> 01:00:11.690]  It's interchangeable between rocket, nuclear weapons and so on.
[01:00:12.070 --> 01:00:16.090]  You'll see Kim Jong Un approving the plans, signing off on the launch.
[01:00:16.210 --> 01:00:19.730]  The launch happens and then you'll see the United States destroyed.
[01:00:25.260 --> 01:00:25.900]  Hudson!
[01:00:40.660 --> 01:00:41.300]  Hudson!
[01:01:28.110 --> 01:01:28.750]  Hudson!
[01:01:29.690 --> 01:01:29.690]  Hudson!
[01:03:42.300 --> 01:03:42.940]  Hudson!
[01:04:40.880 --> 01:04:41.360]  Hudson!
[01:04:41.840 --> 01:04:41.840]  Hudson!
[01:04:42.040 --> 01:04:42.040]  Hudson!
[01:04:51.610 --> 01:04:55.890]  So I'm sorry to say you're all vaporised and I think they got Australia as well.
[01:04:56.130 --> 01:04:56.850]  Thanks for having me.
[01:04:59.620 --> 01:05:00.540]  Thanks, Mark.
[01:05:00.860 --> 01:05:01.840]  Thanks very much.
[01:05:08.100 --> 01:05:08.680]  Now...
[01:05:21.640 --> 01:05:24.760]  This is like one of the only standing ovations we've had all weekend.
[01:05:25.820 --> 01:05:27.100]  Just a handful.
[01:05:37.870 --> 01:05:38.950]  Download the book.
[01:05:39.110 --> 01:05:41.270]  It's available around October, free of charge.
[01:05:41.490 --> 01:05:43.190]  First place is in the iBook store.
[01:05:46.570 --> 01:05:47.550]  Thank you, Mark.
[01:05:47.750 --> 01:05:48.730]  Now that's entertainment.
[01:05:53.630 --> 01:05:56.090]  Sorry we ran a few minutes late, but we didn't want to miss that.
[01:06:00.900 --> 01:06:01.760]  We'll give you a few more minutes.
[01:06:01.880 --> 01:06:02.380]  Sorry about that.