| Tokyo. World cup big screens | Music | 00:00 |
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| MARK WILLACY: It’s like arriving in a strange parallel world where cheering for North Korea is regarded as the most natural thing you could do. Only this is not communist Pyongyang, but capitalist Tokyo. These people were born in Japan and have lived here all their lives. Some families have been here for a hundred years and yet they consider themselves Korean through and through. | 00:13 |
| Inside auditorium
| Inside this auditorium they’re barracking for a motherland most have never set foot in, but for them North Korea playing in the World Cup is a truly momentous occasion and one player stirs them like no other. | 00:40 |
| Jong Tae Se on screen | MALE FAN: Player Jong Tae Se is really a hero for us and something to live for. | 01:00 |
| Male fan | He is also a hero for kids. | 01:05 |
| Female fan | FEMALE FAN: Player Jong Tae Se is proud of our ethnicity and he is a hero for Korean residents in Japan. | 01:11 |
| Jong signs autographs | Music | 01:23 |
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| MARK WILLACY: This is Pyongyang’s new poster boy. Other than the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, he’s probably the most recognisable North Korean in the world. | 01:28 |
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| He’s a star of Japanese soccer, but he’s really hit the big time as the explosive attacking weapon of the North Korean World Cup team. | 01:40 |
| Hummer/Jong in Hummer | His wheels of choice, an American Hummer, probably wouldn’t go down too well with his comrades in Pyongyang. Jong Tae Se is a member of the Zainichi -- a passionate Korean community smack bang in urban Japan. | 01:50 |
| Jong driving | JONG TAE SE: I think standing on the stage of the World Cup is the proudest thing I’ve done in my life. It has given me confidence in myself which will last the rest of my life. I’m not an old man yet. | 02:12 |
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| MARK WILLACY: Spend just a little time with Jong and you get the impression that he really doesn’t understand the horrors of Kim Jong-il’s dystopia. | 02:33 |
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| JONG TAE SE: I respect Kim Jong-il absolutely. It’s a wonderful thing that he wins everybody’s trust in that way. | 02:42 |
| Kim Jong-il on balcony/Military parade | I’d like to believe and follow him whatever happens. | 02:54 |
| Chongyron assembly | Music | 03:06 |
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| MARK WILLACY: To understand the making of Jong Tae Se and other Zainichi of his generation, you need to understand the power of an organisation called Chongyron. | 03:09 |
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| It functions as Pyongyang’s de-facto embassy in Japan relentlessly promoting North Korea’s eccentric leader Kim Jong-il and his late father, Kim il-sung. | 03:22 |
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| And it runs the schools where North Korean nationalism is instilled in all students. | 03:32 |
| School classroom |
| 03:42 |
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| This is the system in which soccer star Jong Tae Se was educated. | 03:49 |
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| Under the benevolent gaze of the Dear Leader, these young ethnic Koreans never hear stories of state terror. | 03:53 |
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| It looks harmless enough but these schools have been drip fed millions of dollars by the North Korean regime and stand accused of brainwashing students in the cult of Kim Jong-il. The principal of the East Osaka school is Kang Hwa Jong. | 04:08 |
| Kang Hwa Jong | KANG HWA JONG, East Osaka Principal: We teach that he is the highest leader of modern North Korea. At the same time, for Korean residents who live in Japan, we teach that he sends scholarship money and financial aid to our education system. | 04:28 |
| Ou Yun in restaurant kitchen | MARK WILLACY: The grand-daughter of a Korean taken to Japan by force, Ou Yun runs a barbeque restaurant in Yokahama and sends her daughter to a North Korean school. Ou Yun’s visited North Korea twice and now regards it as her spiritual home. | 04:57 |
| Ou Yun | OU YUN: I went when I was a student and I felt very comfortable. The reason is that I had no worries. When I’m in Japan I always have to be cautious but there I didn’t need to be, and I was able to feel free. | 05:16 |
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| MARK WILLACY: Ou Yun is thankful to the regime of Kim Jong-il for supporting her children’s education. | 05:42 |
| Ou Yun and Kim Aryong in restaurant kitchen | Sixteen-year old Kim Aryong is in her senior year and she too has visited the north. | 05:50 |
| Kim Aryong | KIM ARYONG: I was really impressed when I arrived at the Pyongyang airport and well it’s my homeland. | 05:57 |
| Kim Aryong set table | MARK WILLACY: This teenager now has a new pin-up – the Deadly Striker Jong Tae Se. | 06:08 |
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| KIM ARYONG: I want an active role like him in the world so I really respect him and I want to be like him. | 06:14 |
| Korea Town | Music | 06:29 |
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| MARK WILLACY: There are an estimated 600,000 ethnic Koreans living in Japan. The forces of history meant the biggest community developed in the country’s second largest city. | 06:36 |
| Osaka | Osaka is home to thousands of Koreans who live, eat and work here in Korea town. This place exists because Japan was the colonial power in Korea. One hundred years ago it annexed the entire Korean peninsula. For decades Koreans were brought here to labour in the mines and the factories – a practice that continued until the end of the Second World War. | 06:49 |
| Shin Sugok gives lecture | Shin Sugok is a third-generation ethnic Korean. This activist, author and businesswoman tries to educate Japanese audiences about what it’s like being a minority. | 07:15 |
| Shin Sugok with map | SHIN SUGOK: This is North Korea and South Korea. How do you feel this picture? MARK WILLACY: The South must be very rich. SHIN SUGOK: Yes, and? MARK WILLACY: The North must be very poor. SHIN SUGOK: They don’t have food, they don’t have voice. I’m sad. | 07:30 |
| Shin Sugok family photos | SHIN SUGOK: My grandmother on my mother’s side came to Japan to labour at a textile mill. Working at a textile factory isn’t voluntary - it was slave labour. | 07:58 |
| Cover of book/Photos | MARK WILLACY: But Shin’s family was also a victim of the Chongyron movement which promoted, after the Korean War in the early ‘50s, the joys of ‘return’ to North Korea. Her uncles did so and were sent to work in coal mines. | 08:20 |
| Excerpt Red Cross film | This Red Cross film made in 1959 paints an extremely positive view of the migration in which more than 90-thousand Zainichi decided to re-locate to a country “sold” as a workers’ paradise. | 08:37 |
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| B&W FILM CLIP: At the pier, two ships are waiting. | 08:55 |
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| MARK WILLACY: Those who rallied to the call arrived in a North Korea which was starkly different to the propaganda reels. | 09:00 |
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| CHONG PAK SONG: As soon as we got off the ship and looked around we saw naked kids. We’d been told there were no beggars. | 09:08 |
| Chong Pak Song | As soon as he got off the ship my father said that what he’d been told were lies. | 09:21 |
| Osaka fringe | MARK WILLACY: On the fringes of Osaka, traditional paddy fields puncture the urban sprawl of low cost housing blocks. | 09:37 |
| Willacy walks with Yayoi Eguchi | With producer Yayoi Eguchi I’ve come to see a remarkable escapee from North Korea. | 09:45 |
| Yayoi and Willacy visit Chong Pak Song | Chong Pak Song is enjoying being a grandmother though this flat is pretty cramped for six people. Chong is 62 and only returned to Japan two years ago. She was just a girl of 12 when her parents swallowed the propaganda from Chongryon about the communist utopia in North Korea. Chong Pak Song lived for nearly half a century in the Orwellian hell created by the Kim dynasty, where a knock on the door could result in a family being torn apart. | 10:04 |
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| MARK WILLACY: Can you tell me what really happened to your second husband? | 10:40 |
| Chong Pak Song | CHONG PAK SONG: A man came and took him away on a “business trip”. Since then I haven’t heard from him. This kind of thing was done by the public security bureau. Once a man is taken we’re told nothing… why he was taken, or if he died in a detention centre. The rumour was, he died. | 10:45 |
| Chong’s grandchild | MARK WILLACY: Chong risked everything to flee North Korea. And so did this man. | 11:07 |
| Li Sang Bong walks up stairs to apartment | Li Sang Bong has been to hell and back. The horrors of Kim Jong-il’s excesses have been etched on his body and mind. | 11:16 |
| Li Sang Bong at home | An ethnic Korean, he was born in Japan but was taken to North Korea as a teenager in the call to come home. | 11:27 |
| Archival. North Korea | LI SANG BONG: Chongjin’s port was desolate and I thought we were deceived. I’ve never seen such children as the ones who welcomed us at the port. Never in my life. They were wearing ragged clothes, and their toes were sticking out from their sneakers. Their faces were very grimy and then I knew that Chongryon advertising the place as paradise on Earth was a downright lie. | 11:36 |
| Korean border | MARK WILLACY: Li Sang Bong only escaped two years ago bribing border guards in North Korea and then in China to make an exhausting and dangerous bid for freedom. He left behind his wife and three children. Because of fears for their safety he can’t be identified. | 12:20 |
| Archival. North Korean famine | LI SANG BONG: North Korea always had a big shortage of food. But in 1995 it was the worst situation and I had the hardest time. People were dying from starvation. | 12:50 |
| Li Sang Bong | People were starving to death and went to the fields to get grass. | 13:19 |
| Archival. Children | They were lying around everywhere and children were lying dead. | 13:34 |
| Li Sang Bong with brother | MARK WILLACY: Li Sang Bong risked his life to warn his brother back in Japan . As part of a pre-arranged plan he wrote on the back of a stamp: | 13:50 |
| Writing on stamp | “Brother do not come, sister should not come either. There is no freedom here.” LI SANG BONG: Because my brother stayed in Japan and didn’t return to North Korea | 13:59 |
| Li Sang Bong | he was able to send us money and goods for 45 years. But had he come, we would have starved to death long ago. I think I really owe my life to my brother. | 14:16 |
| Archival. Field workers | MARK WILLACY: We’re told that of the 90,000 Zainichi who went to North Korea, only 200 ever returned. | 14:34 |
| Chongryon school | Many Zainichi who’ve raised families and built lives here aren’t welcomed by Japanese nationals or for that matter the government which makes it incredibly difficult to get citizenship. | 14:48
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| With financial support from Pyongyang waning, the Chongryon schools are being left out of a generous tax-payer funded tuition program offered to every other high school in the country. including British and American schools. | 15:02 |
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| KANG HWA JONG, East Osaka Principal: It is discrimination against our links with North Korea. | 15:17 |
| Kang Hwa Jong | This isn’t a new problem. The Korean peninsula was once a colony of Japan. But we’ve never had an apology or compensation for that. | 15:29 |
| Shin Sugok SUPER: Shin Soguk Korean activist | SHIN SUGOK: Shame on Japan. Japanese government – they have to apologise. It justice. We will make our future. | 15:41 |
| Protest rally | NATIONALISTS [at protest rally]: We do not forgive! | 15:56 |
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| MARK WILLACY: For many Japanese too, this is an unresolved issue, unresolved because they want the Koreans out. And any notion of apologising to Koreans would be a heresy for these ultra-nationalists. | 16:00 |
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| NATIONALISTS [at protest rally]: We do not forgive the hyenas who try to snatch tax money. | 16:14 |
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| MARK WILLACY: These Japanese are confronting a peaceful rally of ethnic Koreans who are protesting against the government’s tuition policy. A century of conquest, kidnappings and colonisation isn’t easily forgotten by either side. | 16:21 |
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| NATIONALISTS: We do not forgive! | 16:39 |
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| MARK WILLACY: These proud nationalists believe these Koreans are a fifth column – collaborators with an enemy which is pointing nuclear weapons at Japan. | 16:45 |
| Makato Sakuri | MAKOTO SAKURAI [Japanese protestor]: Supporting Korean schools is the same as supporting North Korea. North Korea kidnapped our fellow Japanese and has not returned them. They trade drugs, have developed nuclear weapons and missiles, and make forged money. They commit crimes whenever they want. We cannot support such a country, even indirectly. | 16:57 |
| Ou Yun at protest rally | MARK WILLACY: Ou Yun, the Korean restaurateur we met earlier, is sick of what she sees as Japanese prejudice against the Zainichi. | 17:18 |
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| OU YUN: There’s been so much discrimination. But thinking of these children I cannot tolerate this. This is discrimination, isn’t it? Because this is discrimination, the issue must be solved by our generation. I cannot let it pass. | 17:34 |
| Traffic/ Jong Tae Se drives Hummer | Music | 17:53 |
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| MARK WILLACY: While they fight for their rights in Japan, there’s little doubt that the global fame of Jong Tae Se has been good for Zainichi morale. | 17:57 |
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| Jong Tae Se returns to his Hummer, his comfortable Tokyo life and the prospect of playing in Europe. | 18:08 |
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| JONG TAE SE: I want to get used to the European soccer in Germany and then go to the premier league. | 18:18 |
| Willacy and Jong Tae Se in apartment | JONG TAE SE: I’m ready for it. MARK WILLACY: Germany? JONG TAE SE: Yeah, I’m ready, all ready for Germany. MARK WILLACY: So you’ve even started packing up to go? JONG TAE SE: Yeah, everything. These box are for sent for Germany. MARK WILLACY: So you’re very excited. JONG TAE SE: Very excited. | 18:27 |
| Jong plays hand held computer game | MARK WILLACY: Jong spends a lot of time playing computer games where killing the enemy is just a fantasy. MARK WILLACY: Are you trying to kill all the bad guys, are you? JONG TAE SE: Yeah, enemies. MARK WILLACY: All the enemies? JONG TAE SE: Yes. MARK WILLACY: But steer the conversation back to the reality of North Korea and he’s much less comfortable. | 18:40 |
| Willacy and John on sofa | MARK WILLACY: We met some people, Zainichi, who lived in North Korea but escaped, had some hard experiences. Would you like to talk to them about their experience, your experiences to get to understand each other? | 19:01 |
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| JONG TAE SE: I’m not very interested because every person has different interpretation and it might not have fitted that person, but it might fit you. I don’t need to force myself to hear the stories because everyone has their own experiences. I don’t think there’s any need for me to get involved in that. | 19:15 |
| North Korean assembly performances | Music | 19:41 |
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| MARK WILLACY: Jong Tae Se may be a true believer but he’s in no hurry to live in his adopted motherland. | 19:43 |
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| MARK WILLACY: One day when you’ve finished your career maybe would you ever think of living in North Korea? | 19:50 |
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| JONG TAE SE: I wonder. | 19:56 |
| Jong | All my families and friends are in Japan and I was born and raised in Japan. I don’t think I’d want to go back, because Japan is my homeland. I don’t have any wish to go and liver over there. | 20:01 |
| Jong’s possessions in removal boxes | MARK WILLACY: And so it’s on to Germany and the next stage of a career which will earn him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. | 20:19 |
| Li Sang Bong plays guitar | Music | 20:28 |
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| MARK WILLACY: For some though North Korea has been the ruin of their lives. Every time Li Sang Bong plays the guitar he remembers the North Korean guard who smashed his fingers – punishment for singing a Japanese song. This lonely old man knows he’s unlikely to see his wife and children again. | 20:49 |
| Li Sang Bong | LI SANG BONG: It’s heartbreaking. I can imagine how much they’ve suffered, been controlled and persecuted. It breaks my heart. | 21:06 |
| Chong Pak Song | CHONG PAK SONG: We do not have any emotions any more. If a person was taken away we knew that person would die. Because North Korea is a heartless place, we have lost our emotion and our tears. | 21:29 |
| Shin Sugok | SHIN SUGOK: For those who are in North Korea and can’t return home to Japan, Jong Tae Se – who can come and go freely from North Korea– is not a symbol of hope, but one of sadness. | 21:51 |
| North Korea farms | Music | 22:18 |
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| Reporter: Mark Willacy Editor: Nick Brenner Garth Thomas Camera: Jun Matsuzono Research: Yayoi Eguchi Yumiko Asada Producer: Greg Wilesmith | 22:38 |