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From Our Own Correspondent

Life and Death in North Korea

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.41.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kate Adie introduces stories from North Korea, Canada, Guinea-Bissau, Peru and Jamaica. North Korea sealed its borders when the pandemic struck, and little news from the isolated, oppressive state has leaked out since. The BBC's Jean Mackenzie, with Daily NK, an organisation with sources inside North Korea, has managed to make contact with North Koreans who reveal lives defined by fear - and the growing threat of starvation. Canada is on course for its worst year for wildfires on record. Unusually, there have been many blazes in Quebec - a province not used to wildfires, and which subsequently lacks the specialist firefighters needed to tame forest fires. Nadine Yousif hears how they're already exhausted - and it's still only June. Guinea-Bissau is a major hub for drug traffickers from South America transporting drugs to Europe - and this has fuelled high levels of addiction to crack cocaine. Yet the country has only two drug rehab centres - one of them run by a Pentecostal pastor, who claims to cure addiction through prayer. Sam Bradpiece paid a a visit, and found evidence of staff cruelty and residents being chained to bars and cages. Peru has become the world's largest exporter of blueberries - a fruit native to the northern hemisphere, where it thrives in colder temperatures. So how do they grow it in tropical Peru? Stefania Gozzer has been to a blueberry plantation along Peru's arid Pacific coast to find out. The Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in Essex 75 years ago. On board were 802 people from the Caribbean, who had made the voyage to find better jobs, and build a better life - but the Windrush Generation also faced hostility and prejudice. Horatio Clare recently visited Jamaica, and found that amid the warm welcomes was a demand for a different relationship between the UK and its former colony. Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Arlene Gregorius Production Coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Photo: painting of the sealed border of North Korea. Copyright BBC.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts

0:05.1

Today we head to Canada, which has been suffering an unusually high number of wildfires this

0:10.5

year and summer has only just begun.

0:14.2

In Guinea Bessau, a Pentecostal pastor claims to cure drug addicts with the power of prayer,

0:20.7

but we reveal the bleak reality for residential patients, chained in cells, fearing the threat

0:26.8

of violence.

0:28.7

Two buries are booming in Peru after savvy farmers spotted a gap in the market.

0:34.4

We find out how the South American country is now the world's biggest exporter of a fruit

0:40.0

more at home in the northern hemisphere.

0:43.2

And we take a holiday in Jamaica, where the friendly smiles and welcomes afforded British

0:48.6

visitors hide a sometimes strained relationship between the two countries.

0:54.8

But first North Korea, entry to the secret of state is harder than ever since it shut

1:00.8

its borders during the Covid pandemic and fortified its defences even further.

1:07.0

Going to the country as a foreign journalist is virtually impossible these days, but our

1:11.6

correspondent Jean McKenzie has still found ways to get stories out.

1:16.8

By working with journalists from DailyNK in South Korea, an organisation that has sources

1:23.0

inside North Korea, she's been able to communicate with North Koreans about life since lockdown

1:29.5

began, and they've revealed snapshots of an increasingly desperate life for people

1:35.5

across the country.

1:37.6

In the dead of night, two North Koreans are meeting in secret.

1:42.2

One is a source paid to smuggle information out of the most secretive and isolated state

1:47.6

in the world.

...

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