The more terrified I became I will be absolutely honest and I think that you have to recognize

you also are aware as a journalist and especially as an American journalist that you are seen as a potential spy working for your government.

It feels like mad autocratic dictators are all the rage right now, with rage being the operative word.

With the madness of Russia right now, the world's eyes are fixed on Ukraine and the Kremlin.

But Vladimir Putin is far from alone in any list of today's ideological maniacs.

Perhaps most mysterious, unknown and scary is Kim Jong-un, the third in a family dynasty that

started by tearing Korea entwined and continues by keeping the world out and its people in.

If your family were unfortunate enough

to have been in the northern part of career

when the country split in 1945,

you'd now be living in a place stuck in time isolated from the rest of the world.

There are some great satellite photos of Korea Night when you see the South illuminated as a symbol of its technological and economic growth.

North Korea is consumed by darkness.

Very few Westerners have been let inside and far fewer have delved beyond the capital city of Pyongyang.

Jean H Lee is an American journalist of South Korean descent who has experienced exactly that.

She'll tell me about how she crossed into the freezing little-known countryside beyond the

surveillance obsessed main city.

She even became the first American to set up a news agency

over there for Associated Press. You may remember how American student Otto Wambia

was imprisoned in 2016 on charges of subversion after he stole or took down a

poster from a hotel as a prank. He was released a year later in a vegetative state and died soon after.

Since then, relations between the US and North Korea intensified and almost no one is allowed in.

...