Unreported World

Unreported World travels to the remote Chinese - North Korean border, where few journalists have ever set foot. The team is there to report on the plight of thousands of North Korean women who have been forced into prostitution or sold as brides after fleeing persecution and starvation in one of the most secretive and repressive regimes in the world.

The majority of those who try to escape from North Korea to China are women. If they make it past the border guards, who operate a shoot-to-kill policy, they risk being forced to work as prostitutes or sold off by brokers as wives for Chinese villagers. But the women regard this as a 'lesser of two evils' because if they are caught and rounded up, they face being sent back to forced labour camps for interrogation, torture or at worst, public execution. They have no choice but to live under the radar and on the run from people looking to turn them in for a reward.

Reporter Oliver Steeds and Director Sam Farmar begin their journey on the frozen Tumen River, which marks the border between China and North Korea and is used as a crossing point by North Korean escapees. They then meet two young North Korean men who have recently escaped. Like all other North Koreans the team meets, the men ask for their identity not to be revealed, fearing arrest and repatriation. They know the consequences all too well having been caught on a previous attempt and would rather kill themselves than return.

Many escapees try to reach South Korea, where they can claim housing benefit and some financial support ¿ but it¿s a 3,000 mile trip and only five per cent ever make it to the South. The team meets a broker who helps people along this journey. He explains that many carry a knife, not for protection, but to kill themselves if they are arrested.

Moving on, the team arranges to meet secretly a North Korean woman near Yanji who has experienced the horror of the detention centres where more than 8,000 others were processed in the first six months of 2008 and sent back to an uncertain future.

She tells Steeds that male guards strip-searched her, before shackling her and transporting her back to North Korea with her husband and 18-month-old baby. She says her husband was brutally tortured and died, and her child died of malnutrition. With no other choice, she fled back to China, risking her life once more.

The team travels through worsening winter conditions to meet a North Korean woman and her Chinese husband. She says a broker claimed she would get a well-paying job but instead tricked her into a forced marriage. Her Chinese husband explains that with more women leaving rural areas to work in cities, he had little choice and paid £200 for his wife.

Filming undercover and posing as tourists, Steeds and Farmar meet the manager of a karaoke bar in Shenyang that is a front for prostitution. He explains how North Korean prostitutes are sold at a premium, as they are highly sought after by rich Chinese men and South Korean tourists. To stop them fleeing, the pimps pay them in small instalments to keep them hanging on and force them to keep working.

The team moves on to a small village near the border, where he meets a young boy whose North Korean mother has been repatriated. The Chinese Government sends all North Korean economic migrants back across the border, even though they face torture and hard labour. This is in breach of the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, to which China is a signatory. However, he's lucky enough to live with a Chinese guardian who spent his life savings on buying him registration papers after his own daughter died.

Before leaving the country, the team finds one 71-year-old woman who has fled North Korea and been sent back to harsh labour camps three times. Her story underlines just how desperate the situation has become.

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Clips from Episode 6

• Border Patrol

• All Clips (1)