This month, Kenneth Bae joins North Korea Unpacked with Jacco Zwetsloot to discuss the 735 days he spent detained in North Korea, how repeated visits to the country shaped his understanding of ordinary North Koreans and what his imprisonment revealed about the state’s security system.

He recounts how he traveled to North Korea 17 times before being arrested on his 18th trip in 2012, after border officials discovered a hard drive containing foreign documentaries about the country. Bae describes the months of interrogation that followed, the threats of execution, the confession he says he was pressured to sign and his