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: The Great Illusion

On April 6, 1994, Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana returned from a meeting in Tanzania aboard a Falcon 50 offered by François Mitterrand, the regime's closest ally. As the aircraft began its descent, two missiles pierced the darkness. The plane crashed into the gardens of the presidential residence. This attack immediately gave the signal. The genocide of the Tutsi minority had just begun. One million dead in three months. A far cry from the "African-style" inter-ethnic massacres presented by the Elysée Palace at the time to minimize the scale of the horror. This genocide had been planned for years, under the eyes of France, deaf to warnings.