MOST SECRETIVE STATE

child slaves to build railway lines in the country’s northern provinces in 2016.

Following 18 months of tense negotiations, we managed to secure visas to enter.

We were assigned senior officials from the Ministry of Information to act as our “guides”.

They attempted to convince us that the pariah state is an all-powerful yet inclusive nation, where everyone lives in “harmony and happiness to serve the country”.

While the Foreign Office advise against all but essential travel to the country, a few thousand people a year can visit North Korea as “tourists”.

Actor Michael Palin, 75, next week releases a two-part documentary that will apparently see him go “beyond the politics” in a bid to discover more about everyday life in North Korea.

But travelling with a tour company, like Palin, is unlikely to reveal the darker side of life that still exists.

The lack of free will was evident from the moment we stepped off the plane. We were given “press” armbands, not permitted to leave our hotel without our minders and kept in limbo over arrangements for our stay.

We would often be kept in the dark for hours and then need to leave at a moment’s notice.

A ban on advertising and state TV stations dedicated to pumping out propaganda dressed up as news and entertainment bolster Kim’s surging popularity and contribute to the desensitisation of the population.

Children are ordered to repeatedly chant the name of the “Supreme Leader”. They devote their lives to serving him and the memory of the “great leaders” Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. This is despite them presiding over years of devastating war, famine and isolation.

City dwellers keep up the pretence of utopia, among the shiny buildings

Pyongyang’s tallest is the 105-storey, 1082ft-tall Ryugyong Hotel. An LED system on the exterior flashes images and propaganda messages that can be seen for miles.

The point bears an image of the North Korean flag as night falls.

But as with most things here, everything is not what it seems.

The building cost £500million but it is just a shell. It has no floors, no interior, no substance. Perhaps the perfect metaphor for the country.

A giant mural of Kim Jong Il stands out on the Pyongyang metro system At the sight of an official, a woman worker busies herself maintaining the grass verge with a stick The 105-storey Ryugyong Hotel looms over the capital, but is still unfinished, despite the work starting in 1987 A lone cyclist makes use of a crumbling empty road on the edge of the capital Pyongyang

Elderly women load rocks from a river bed on to a truck

Commuters emerge from Pyongyang Metro