A Good Business

Operating under a pseudonym which means 'no boundaries' - North Korean defector Sun Mu creates political pop art based on his life, homeland, and hope for a future united Korea. His hidden identity is nearly compromised when a massive historical exhibit in Beijing is shuttered by Chinese and North Korean authorities.

No warheads, no jackbooted soldiers, no statues of the god-emperor – instead, this is a poetic, evocative snapshot of everyday life in North Korea, the country ruled by the world’s most paranoid and secretive regime.

Founder of VICE Shane Smith spends an eternity on a train and hops out at the end of the line in Siberia to investigate logging camps that use North Korean slave labor.

Portrait of Mrs. B., a tough charismatic North Korean woman who smuggles between North Korea, China and South Korea. With the money she gets, she plans to reunite with her two North Korean sons after years of separation.

Tracing the footsteps of North Korean orphans who went to Poland during the Korean War, two women, one from the North and the other from the South, bond through the solidarity of wound and forge together a path toward healing.

Korea is a divided nation. Filmmaker Min Sook Lee sets out on a revelatory, emotion-charged journey into Korea’s broken heart, exploring the rhetoric and realism of reunification through the extraordinary stories of ordinary people.

This two-hour special reveals the complicated history, extreme politic, and rigid societal standards that have created a legacy of internal oppression and external aggression. As the North Korean people suffered famine, labor camp and public executions, the Kim regime spent three generations relentlessly pursuing nuclear ambitions. They operate as a criminal syndicate, using counterfeit money, drugs and cyber espionage to fund their war machine. Now, with weapons rivaling the world’s superpowers, their aggressive rhetoric has pushed the world to a crisis point.

This is a journey like no other, after several months of wrangling with North Korean authorities in Paris reporters Michaël Sztanke and Julien Alri obtained a visa for Pyongyang but as soon as they arrived the scene was set by a compulsory photo shoot. Journalists are kept under close surveillance and to go to North Korea is to accept the presence of guides who provide supervision 24 hours a day, their primary role is to protect the countries image. In North Korea’s eyes every foreigner is a potential enemy who must be closely watched, this being said Sztanke and Alri attempt to delve deeper into the inner workings of the hermit kingdom, discovering the real nature of this political regime and how life is for your everyday North Korean.

North Korea has nuclear weapons. How did it manage to get them quietly? Donald Trump is under the impression that as US president he could convince Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, to disarm his nuclear weapons and make peace with South Korea. But how was it possible that one of the poorest countries in the world could acquire the knowledge to produce nuclear-tipped rockets?

A journey through several countries to find those who really know Kim Jong-un, North Korea's leader, in an attempt to profile a contradictory dictator who seems to rule his nation with both disturbing benevolence and cold cruelty while being worshipped as a living god by his subjects in exalted displays of ridiculous fanaticism.

Join National Geographic's Lisa Ling as she captures a rare look inside North Korea - something few Americans have ever been able to do. Posing as an undercover medical coordinator and closely guarded throughout her trip, Lisa moves inside the most isolated nation in the world, encountering a society completely dominated by government and dictatorship. Glimpse life inside North Korea as you've never seen before with personal accounts and powerful footage. Witness first-hand efforts by humanitarians and the challenges they face from the rogue regime.

Verliebt, verlobt, verloren

What happens when a group of international artists travel to North Korea to create art like the regime have never seen before? While the world is on the verge of nuclear war, a group of Western contemporary artists are invited into the eye of the storm. The aim is to collaborate with North Korean artists in a creative exchange project displaying new and challenging art in a country where abstract art is forbidden.

Under the loving but firm guidance of an old fan turned director and cultural diplomat, and to the surprise of a whole world, the ex-Yugoslavian cult band Laibach becomes the first rock group ever to perform in the fortress state of North Korea.

If the cityscapes and patriotic anthems of this film seem a far cry from the bleak landscape of Seoul Train, that's no accident. Dutch filmmaker Pieter Fleury, with the full permission and cooperation of the North Korean government, created this propaganda film that gives us a glimpse of a day in the life of one of the world's most enigmatic societies. A Day in the Life, largely dictated by the North Korean film bureau, follows a typical North Korean family through their daily duties, largely dedicated to the pride in the North Korean nation of comrades and the glory of General Kim Jong Il. The film is meant to extol the success of modern North Korea. But does it? With straight footage and a total absence of narration, viewers may interpret Fleury's film in a slightly different manner than intended

This documentary features about 20 minutes of footage of and from North Korea's aging rolling stock - steam trains being used quite in earnest rather than for the historical interest of kids and hardcore train geeks - and then about six minutes of footage of Pyongyang's subway and trams.

The real crisis in North Korea is not about its reclusive leaders or its nuclear weapons. It is about 24 million people living under the most ruthless system of political oppression ever assembled by humankind. The North Korean people have suffered through crippling poverty, humanitarian disasters, chronic food shortages, and a denial of even the most basic freedoms. This documentary offers a comprehensive overview of the North Korean people's crisis, feature interviews with North Korean refugees who have escaped, their journey to freedom, expert analysis, and insight into some of the grassroots changes happening inside the country.

Getting into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VBS has ever dealt with. They finally said, “OK, OK, you can come. But only as tourists.” At the airport, the North Korean consulate brought us to a restaurant and these women came out and started singing North Korean nationalist songs. We were thinking, “Look, we were just on a plane for 20 hours. Can we just go to bed?” but this guy with our group who was from the LA Times told us, “Everyone in here besides us is secret police. If you don’t act excited then you’re not going to get your visa. So we got drunk and jumped up onstage and sang songs with the girls. The next day we got our visas. A lot of people we had gone with didn’t get theirs. That was our first hint at just what a freaky, freaky trip we were embarking on…

Defilada was made on the occasion of the 40th anniversary celebrations of state's founding in North Korea, which the regime intended to use to eclipse the 1988 Summer Olympics taking place that year in Seoul, South Korea. The North Korean regime invited filmmakers from countries then considered friendly (read: Communist), including People's Republic of Poland, which sent a team under Andrzej Fidyk. The documentary is primarily composed of declarative statements, as well as texts of North Korean newspapers and books. There was no author's commentary. Fidyk commented that he and his team were likely “the most disciplined” foreign team of filmmakers in North Korea, as they did not trouble the regime by looking under the surface - they were content with what they were given and asked to do. (Wikipedia)

North Koreans are breaking down the barriers of the gulag state. Following covert filmmakers, this doc shows real life under the new leader Kim Jong Un, highlighting the contrasting ox-drawn farms to the glittering life of the elite in Pyongyang. The starving children on the streets are of artificial food shortages engendered by corruption. See how USBs, cell phones and DVDs from the South are transforming North Koreans' views of their world.