Starvation, disease and class division are the true realities for those in North Korea away from the palatial surroundings displayed in propaganda pumped out on behalf of their tubby leader Kim Jong-un.
A 28-year-old who escaped the abusive regime to flee to the UK, told Express.co.uk how he became one of tens of thousands of homeless ‘kotjebi’ children – a term which translates as “swallows”.
And he was only convinced to escape the rogue state when he came across a smuggled copy of a James Bond film.
The man, who asked to be identified using the pseudonym John Choi, told Express.co.uk the cold weather and hunger plagued his life on the streets, which was mostly spent sheltering with hordes of other children whose parents had abandoned them or starved to death.
John told Express.co.uk: “It was horrible. In the winter it was so cold that if you poured water from a cup it would freeze before it hit the ground.
“The recent cold weather here reminded me of those freezing times on the streets so I took some hot soup to the homeless people.
“The cold is terrible – you can die overnight from it.”
He said his parents had fled North Korea when the country became gripped by a devastating famine which eventually left more than 500,000 people dead.
Coming from a middle class family, John initially watched on helplessly as his schoolfriends became thinner and thinner.
He said: “I remember in the first year of primary school when I was about seven-years-old some of my classmates became very hungry because their parents can’t afford food.
“My friend suddenly didn’t come to school so we went to his house to find him. His face was swollen because his family had eaten plants because it was all they had. One was poisonous and the poison had made his face swell.”
John’s parents left for China when he was nine and five years later his life was turned on its head once again when he finally realised the truth thanks to an unusual source.
He said a smuggled James Bond video and the help of undercover Christians helped him realise North Korea was not a paradise and the outside world was salvation, not hell.
John said: “I realised everything was a lie the first time I watched James Bond! I was about around 14, someone smuggled a copy from China.
“I wonder now if some of them were Christian because they gave us other things like clothes and Chinese sweets and they invited us for food and told us a bit about what China was like.
“We could also move our TV receiver to get TV from China. I saw South Korean drama and I was puzzled as to how people could have two cars at their house. In North Korea all the cars were owned by the government.”
His decision to flee was also helped by the refusal of army recruiters to accept him due to the actions of his parents.
John said North Korea is a sharply class-based society with an almost caste-system in place. Lower classes – including the children of defectors – are treated like dirt.
He said: “Once you’re in the hostile [lowest] class you can never get out. I wanted to join the military and in the military office they showed me a file with a black stamp, they told me you can’t join the military because your father escaped and betrayed the country.
“This meant I had no future. In the hostile class you have no hope. You have terrible jobs. It’s pretty much modern slavery.”
John, then only 14, decided to flee to discover for himself what life outside North Korea really was like. He now lives in London and fights the bloody Kim dynasty from abroad by spreading the shocking truth of life in the hermit state.