REPORTER: Yaara Bou Melhem
This is the North Korea that's paraded to the world. A spectacle of military might and national unity. But today a world away in London's Westminster, a landmark UN inquiry will reveal a very different reality.
JUSTICE MICHAEL KIRBY, UN COMMISSION LEADER: I'm Michael Kirby and I am the chair of the commission of inquiry.
Led by former High Court judge Michael Kirby, a distinguished team has assembled and the media is out in force at this rare chance to peer inside the secret state.
JUSTICE MICHAEL KIRBY: And I call forward the first of such witness, Mr Kim Song Ju.
KIM SONG JU (Translation): In North Korea anyone who enters a prison is regarded as an animal. In the cell you couldn't stand up without permission .There were 40 - 50 people sitting side by side. They couldn't move or lie down at all.
Starvation forced Kim Song Ju to try to flee to China. He was caught and sent to a labour camp.
KIM SONG JU (Translation): One meal consisted of... The amount we were given was the size of my fist. It was shaved corn but it still had the corn husk, dust and stones in it. They'd mix it with water and boil it.
Park Ji Yung fled the country after threats from the military.
PARK JI (Translation): On the day we planned to leave, I left my father in a cold room with a bowl of rice. I still don't know what day my father passed away and where he was buried.
Kim Joo-il is a former soldier.
KIM JOO-IL (Translation): I witnessed around three public executions. The first one I witnessed was when I was 10 years old.
Kirby has been inundated with requests from defectors to tell their stories about life in the labour camps in prison.
KIM JOO-IL (Translation): Criminal activities that take place in the army, these criminals will be charged under military law, and then sent for forced indoctrination training or labour work. They may never get out of these labour camps.
So secret are these camps, it's taken satellite imagery to reveal their location. An estimated 200,000 people have disappeared into this network. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, North Korea denies their existence. Kirby doesn't buy that.
JUSTICE MICHAEL KIRBY: Even today I saw new images of a particular camp, Camp 16, which is in the north-eastern corner of North Korea, which has not been fully described before.
There is almost no footage from inside these camps. This extremely rare vision allegedly smuggled out by a defector is thought to be Camp 15, the Yodok labour camp in the country's east.
JUSTICE MICHAEL KIRBY: The prison camps are extremely cruel and of every five who enter, about two leave as a corpse or don't leave at all.
Witnesses have described how whole families, including children are committed to a life of hard labor. Few escape, but some who have, recorded the horror. These drawings have been compiled over many years.
JUSTICE MICHAEL KIRBY: Prisoners have to collect the bodies. They have to collect them on carts, drag them to a pot and set them on fire. This is testimony which is believable in the context of the humiliating circumstances and particularly the lack of proper food which is the daily life of a prisoner. I was a judge for 34 years in Australia and I saw plenty of harrowing stories.
But all those years on the bench didn't prepare him for the horror of North Korea.
JUSTICE MICHAEL KIRBY: I felt on the verge of tears, if not felt tears, because these are human beings who have shared with you - when they didn't have to.
When Park Ji Yung told her story, it defied imagination. Not only did she escape leaving her dying father, she fell into the hands of people traffickers who sold her into marriage.
PARK JI (Translation): I can't say I was married then because I was sold.
WOMAN: Did they harass you sexually harass?
PARK JI (Translation): Yes.
WOMAN: Eventually you gave birth to a boy in this marriage?
PARK JI (Translation): Yes.
Today, Ji Yung lives with her second husband and children in the north of England.
PARK JI (Translation): Yoo-gin, let's go over there. Do you want to play with Mummy? Where is your brother?
YOO-GIN (Translation): In there.
PARK JI (Translation): What are you doing, son?
Inside, I meet the eldest of her three children, Chul-he. When he was only four, his mother was arrested by the Chinese and sent back to North Korea. There she was sentenced to years of hard labour in a prison camp.
PARK JI (Translation): Four women had to pull the plough everyday. We didn't pull, we had to run. They didn't give us shoes because they thought we were going to run away. There was glass and other sharp objects on the ground.
Though she could barely walk, Ji Yung eventually escaped again.
JI YUNG (Translation): My hair was turning yellow. I looked like someone dying. I had lice all over my body. I was like a dead person.
When she got to China, she was desperate to find her son.
JI YUNG (Translation): I wanted to know whether my son was still alive. When I called, they said he was there. I was so happy. Finally he said "Mum..." and started crying.
Together they joined a group of North Koreans crossing the border into Mongolia.
JI YUNG (Translation): I could see a Chinese security car in the distance heading our way. I didn't know what to do. I was with my son. Then suddenly a man appeared and piggybacked my son. He held my hand and we just ran. I just started running like crazy.
The man who rescued Ji Yung and her son, another North Korean escapee, is her husband today. We can't reveal his identity as he fears for family still in North Korea.
JI YUNG (Translation): He risked his life to save me. That's why I am alive here today.
And now Ji Yung frequently speaks out about the situation in her homeland.
JI YUNG (Translation): This is the only way human rights in North Korea will improve.
Back at the commission, the former army officer, Kim JooIl, continues his testimony.
KIM JOO-IL (Translation): I believe with all my heart that one day the North Korean people will rise and fight for their human right.
Kim Joo-il says he fled North Korea after he began questioning the regime. Arriving in the UK, he started this newspaper but the memories of his former life haunt him.
KIM JOO-IL (Translation): The train station was packed with people but in one corner there was always a pile of dead bodies. Many people died of starvation there and were just left there untouched. Is Pastor Park going to continue writing for this column?
He hopes his newspaper will counter the propaganda from Pyongyang and wants one day to have it smuggled into North Korea.
KIM JOO-IL (Translation): This is Korea Food. It's the biggest Korean supermarket in Europe.
Kim Joo-il's newspaper office is above this supermarket. He comes here almost every day. It's a constant reminder of his homeland and its brutal rulers.
KIM JOO-IL (Translation): We can't take the cameras inside because there are many North Korean defectors who work here. The defectors don't want their faces shown so we can't go inside. Sometimes officials from the North Korean embassy do their grocery shopping here. I've bumped into them before at the supermarkets. They avoid me if I try to start a conversation with them.
Today the commissioners are on their way to the parliament. Justice Kirby is preoccupied with the important task that lies ahead.
JUSTICE MICHAEL KIRBY: I don't believe in making banal conversation on the street, I am concentrating on what follows now.
When the committee's report is written, the judge doesn't want it to gather dust on a shelf somewhere. They've come to lobby the government. Lord David Alton chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea.
LORD DAVID ALTON: It is a special pleasure and an honour of welcoming Justice Kirby to our proceedings today. You have a very distinguished record in Australia.
Kirby wastes no time making his point.
JUSTICE MICHAEL KIRBY: It will simply be a shattered opportunity if having created the Commission of Inquiry and having raised so many hopes of people in so many countries - not only in Korea but around the world - if giving the report is deemed to be enough, it is not enough. It is simply the beginning.
LORD DAVID ALTON: I promise you on my own part at least that I'll leave no stone unturned to ensure it is given a proper airing here in parliament but also that pressure is placed on our government.
But as the cult of the leader continues unabated in North Korea, it seems this most inward looking of nations doesn't bend to world opinion. Kirby says the time has come to challenge this.
JUSTICE MICHAEL KIRBY: There's a realisation this has gone beyond the pale and that there is a very serious problem here that needs to be addressed. And I hope, and I believe, that the United Nations and the countries who are members of the United Nations will answer the test.
Those who poured out their hearts here today will be hoping he's right.
JUSTICE MICHAEL KIRBY: Thank you for staying all day.
KIM SONG JU (Translation): Thank you very much for your interest in North Korea human rights.
JUSTICE MICHAEL KIRBY: It is my duty, it is my duty. Thank you very much.
ANJALI RAO: Michael Kirby's report is due out in March. There's a blog on our website about those making a new life in the UK and the personal cost for them and their families.
Reporter/Camera
YAARA BOU MELHEM
Producer
VICTORIA STROBL
GEOFF PARISH
Editor
DAVID POTTS
Additional Camera
GRAEME JOHNSTONE-ROBERTSON
Translations/Subtitling
SUSAN CHEONG
HAN VITKANG
Original Music Composed by
VICKI HANSEN