EYEWITNESS: A rare glimpse inside the secretive world of communist North Korea

FOR years, North Korea has epitomised the definition of a totalitarian state.

An international pariah nation that sits at the fulcrum of the "axis of evil" - the term coined by US President George W Bush in his State of the Union Address in 2002 to describe governments he accused of helping terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction.

Home to 23 million people, the Communist government of this isolated country strictly controls all aspects of daily life. North Koreans are divided into three socio-political classes: "hostile", "wavering" and "committed", according to how loyal the regime perceives them to be. All media is state controlled. Televisions and radios are fixed-tuned to the state channels since reception of foreign TV is forbidden. Radios must be registered at police stations and are delivered sealed to prevent retuning.

To express independent political views here is to run the wrath of the regime, with the harshest of punishments the most likely outcome. According to international human rights groups, there are perhaps as many as 200,000 political prisoners incarcerated in gulags and labour camps. In many cases, up to three generations of the same family are being detained. Inmates face a regime of hard labour and beatings, and are kept alive on starvation rations.

On Friday, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to impose tougher sanctions on North Korea after its nuclear test on May 25. Yesterday, Pyongyang responded by warning it would start a uranium enrichment programme and weaponise all its plutonium in response to the UN action. In turn, the United States demanded Pyongyang stop its "provocative" actions.

As North Korea continues to make global headlines, most people inside the country have little or no idea of how their country and their "Dear Leader", are perceived by the outside world. Few foreign visitors gain access to the country, and even fewer journalists.

In a rare insight, we provide accounts and pictures by two journalists who made it behind the curtain of secrecy that shrouds life in North Korea.

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THE OFFICIAL VISITOR
Bill Allan reports from Pyongyang, where the Kim cult isolates the North Korean capital and there is no sign of better relations with the West

NIGHTS at the Pyongyang Casino can get a bit lonely for the Chinese croupiers these days. Last weekend, three men who appeared to be North Korean were playing baccarat. They were the only gamblers at the Macao-run casino, leaving the black jack tables empty and more than a dozen slot machines unused.

Outside the small casino, there was little sign of action at the neighbouring massage parlour, karaoke bar and Macao Restaurant that together occupy a basement section in Pyongyang's Yanggakdo Hotel.

Forty-seven floors above the casino, in the hotel's plush revolving restaurant, a group of Germans belted out football songs as they added to the two dozen empty beer bottles on their table.

The previous night, a group of rowdy tourists from the northeastern Chinese city of Changchun enjoyed the same view of Pyongyang's dim lights from the hotel on an island in the Taedong river.

"I lost 800 yuan (£80). It's not too bad," said one woman in the Chinese group as she arrived from the casino.

The Chinese and German tourists are part of a dwindling band of visitors to Kim Jong Il's increasingly isolated nation.

It looked like about 75% of the seats were empty on my Air China flight from Beijing to Pyongyang. My personal guide/interpreter/minder, O Nam Hyok of the Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, soon corrected me, saying the plane was only 25% full.

The first face you see when you arrive at Pyongyang's main airport is that of the Kim Il Sung, who is worshipped as the founder of Communist North Korea, on a giant portrait on top of the terminal building.

Many more statues, paintings, photographs and other images of the Great Leader or his son, the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, decorate the streets, sports stadiums, schools, parks, government buildings and the badges worn by most North Koreans in Pyongyang.

The depth of the personality cult around the Kims is perhaps unprecedented in modern history. Both men have hybrid flowers named after them and they are shown, often in giant photographs, around the city: the Kimilsungia and the Kimjongilia.

The elder Kim's birthday is known as the "day of the sun". This year is called Juche 98 in North Korea, marking the 98th year after Kim Il Sung's birth and named after his Juche ideology of strong national self-reliance.

The cult reaches its pinnacle at the giant Kim Il Sung Mausoleum, which is now closed for repairs, according to North Korean guides. On a visit to the mausoleum four years ago, I saw groups of reverent Koreans in their best clothes standing in silence as the state moved them on travelators towards the 3ft thick blast doors around the inner chamber containing the Great Leader's embalmed body.

Since suffering a stroke last year, the ailing Kim Jong Il, 67, has reportedly anointed the youngest of his three sons as his successor. Kim Jong Un, believed to be just 26, is already being promoted as the "Brilliant Comrade", according to South Korean media.

Amid the bizarre rhetoric and extreme secrecy from Pyongyang, many Western diplomats are forced to rely mainly on reports from South Korean intelligence.

One diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said questions on the leadership succession and the ruling party were "a bit of a black hole".

"We don't exactly know what's going on in their heads," the diplomat said of the North Korean leaders.

Opinion is divided about how North Korea will respond to the new sanctions agreed by the UN Security Council on Friday. North Korea warned earlier last week it would see any new sanctions as a "declaration of war" and take "corresponding self-defence measures", echoing statements it made on the sanctions that followed its 2006 nuclear test. It insists it needs to defend itself against American and South Korean troops.

A potential flood of refugees from poverty, famine and repression is one of China's concerns about greater international pressure on North Korea.

Staff at the World Food Programme and other UN bodies, plus a handful of non-governmental organisations, are almost the only Westerners to have seen first-hand the real situation in the most impoverished areas of North Korea.

The WFP helped North Korea to recover from mass famine in the 1990s, when up to one million people are estimated to have died. Yet the increasing lack of sympathy towards Pyongyang from donor nations has left the World Food Programme with a huge shortfall that is likely to lead to a resurgence of malnutrition this year.

It had hoped to help more than six million of North Korea's 23 million people this year. But it is operating at 10%-15% of its capacity and only provided food for 1.7 million of the most needy people in May, said Lena Savelli, WFP's Beijing-based spokesperson for North Korea.

"It's not an optimistic situation at all," Savelli said.

The guides in Pyongyang try to prevent foreigners from recording images of people who look poor or malnourished. Mr O forbade me from taking photographs from the window of our minibus, even though the new roadside drink and snack stalls, with their blue and white plastic covers, seemed to offer a small sign of positive change in the city.

I was also not allowed to photograph Pyongyang's propaganda billboards, including some showing a giant fist crushing a prone solider with the letters USA on his helmet.

Like that group of German tourists, who make a habit of watching football in obscure nations, I went to see a World Cup qualifier between North Korea and Iran. Two of the West's most reviled pariah nations, the remaining spokes on George W Bush's tripartite "axis of evil", put on a decent game of football that ended goalless and left both teams unsure of qualification from their second-round Asian group.

About one-third of the North Korean fans wore identical red T-shirts and white caps. They were organised into cheering squads, sometimes accompanied by drummers and a brass band in the 30,000-capacity Yanggakdo Stadium.

Apart from a few dozen Iranians, the rest of the crowd, nearly all men, were dressed in dark blue, grey, white or olive shirts. Their only sign of allegiance were the ubiquitous red-flag badges bearing images of the Great Leader.

When they were not busy singing patriotic songs or performing Mexican waves, the North Korean fans booed, jeered and sometimes howled at Iran.

Public Security officers in military-style uniforms cast their stern gazes over the pitch and the crowd.

"Don't shoot them," Mr O said as we passed a group of police as I was taking pictures in the stadium. "They might shoot us," he added by way of explanation.

The guides seemed more cautious this year, imposing more limits on photography and internet usage, and allowing fewer visits to sites unrelated to football.

The streets had a few more people and cars than four years ago, including some Mercedes, BMW and sports-utility vehicles, although Pyongyang's main roads are still often deserted.

Mr O only half-joked that the long queue of cars, jeeps and minivans after the World Cup match was "the first traffic jam in Pyongyang".

The next day, near the Liberation Monument, which marks the arrival of Soviet troops in August 1945, we saw several couples canoodling among the trees and bushes of a largely empty park.

"This mountain is normally busy every day, but today it is spring and the people have gone to help the farmers with planting," Mr O said as we climbed beyond the monument.

In an adjoining park, a group of elderly dancers and a flute-player seemed a little too eager to smile and pose for photographs.

"Why didn't you take a picture of that flute player in the park?" Mr O asked later.

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