At midday on August 15, 1962, in the depths of the Cold War, a depressed US Army private, James 'Joe' Dresnok, left his post on the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone, a 2.5-mile-wide strip of no man's land that bisects the Korean peninsula into North and South Korea. The 21-year-old bolted across the most heavily fortified border on earth, directly through a minefield, and into another world.
One of four American defectors who crossed over to the hard-line communist North during the 1960s, Dresnok has lived in the North Korean capital Pyongyang ever since, and has not been seen by the outside world for 44 years.
Now, the American defector's astonishing story is being told for the first time in a documentary called Crossing The Line, which has its television debut on BBC4 next week. It is a story of betrayal, kidnappings
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gary jones in Beijing on the US private who crossed the DMZ and never came home |
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and the alleged "breeding" of spies in the most secretive nation on the planet.
Dresnok lives in a small, egalitarian flat - provided by the North Korean government - in Pyongyang with his third wife, the daughter of a local woman and a Togolese diplomat. They have a son, and Dresnok appears content. "I don't have intentions of leaving," he says defiantly. "Couldn't give a shit if you put a billion damn dollars of gold on the table."
The family has little access to information from the outside world. Like every Pyongyang home, the apartment is equipped with a radio that spouts communist propaganda during daylight hours. It can be turned down, but never turned off, though power cuts are frequent.
Occasionally, Dresnok is invited to lecture at Pyongyang's Foreign Languages College, but most of his 
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