Inside North Korea | Dan Snow’s History Hit
With closed borders, a totalitarian regime, electricity blackouts and widespread poverty,
North Korea is a brutal place to survive; even looking at a foreign media outlet can get a
North Korean citizen sent to a concentration camp. So why, in 2011 did leader Kim Jong Il
allow Jean Lee, a celebrated American journalist to set up a news bureau in Pyongyang?
In today’s episode, Jean is Dan’s guide to North Korea. She tells him about her extraordinary
experiences living and working in North Korea as the AP bureau chief. She delves into the
history of the Korean peninsula, the Korean War and what made North Korea the country it
is today- including the mythology of the Kim dynasty and the famine of the 1990s.
She also talks about her hit podcast on the BBC World Service – The Lazarus Heist- that
tells the dramatic story of an elite group of North Korean cyber hackers who not only
infiltrated Sony pictures in 2014 but also attempted a one-billion-dollar heist at the
Bangladesh bank two years later.