Focal Point: Field Trip to the DMZ

Posted By Wide Angle Monday, April 6, 2009 - 1:55 PM Share

As part of our partnership with PBS's Wide Angle, we present this sneak preview of the latest episode of their online-exclusive series Focal Point. The full version of this episode will be online tomorrow on Wide Angle's site.

As North Korea’s relations with its neighbors grow increasingly strained, FOCAL POINT trains its lens on one of the 15,000 North Korean defectors who have made it to South Korea. Twenty-year-old Haejung (not her real name) was smuggled out of North Korea some years ago in the hope of a better life -- leaving her family behind. She now attends Hangyeore High School, a special boarding school an hour outside of Seoul, founded in 2006 to help North Korean teens adjust to life in the South.

Most of the school's 240 students are separated from one or both of their parents back in the North, with little hope of ever seeing them again. They experience severe culture shock transitioning from one of the world's most isolated Communist states to one of the most technologically and economically advanced societies.

In Field Trip to the DMZ, the students make their annual trip to the border, and Haejung dreams of a time when her family and her homelands will be reunited.

EXPLORE:NORTH KOREA

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