Going undercover, revealing very little

Opinion

Going undercover, revealing very little

Follow-up to BBC documentary adds little but mockery, self-aggrandizement

Gianluca Spezza February 5, 2014

Youtube trailer of “Undercover in North Korea”

Book Review: Undercover in North Korea. Inside the World’s Most Secretive State, by John Sweeney, London, Bantam Press, 2013

One may wonder why John Sweeney wrote a book, and a somewhat lengthy one, on his brief experience in North Korea after the storm caused by BBC Panorama last year. In that episode, the British journalist Sweeney and a small TV troupe joined a group of students from the London School of Economics (LSE) for an undercover trip to the DPRK.

About the Author

Gianluca Spezza

Gianluca Spezza earned his PhD in 2017 from the University of Central Lancashire under the supervision of Professor Hazel Smith, on the strength of research on the cooperation between UNICEF and the DPRK in education and childcare. Dr Spezza is an assistant professor of international relations and a senior researcher at the DPRK Strategy Center at KIMEP University in Almaty, Kazakhstan; he is writing a monograph on education, international cooperation, and human capital in North Korea (Palgrave 2021). His work on the DPRK, articles or interviews, can be found, among others, on the websites of the BBC, The Guardian, The Diplomat, IRIN News, NK News, DR.dk, Newsweek Korea, and El Confidential.

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