Students on BBC's North Korea trip 'have received threats' from rogue state as Corporation says decision to go ahead with Panorama film 'went right to the top'
North Korea has threatened to make
public all passport data and personal information of students who
travelled to the country with an undercover BBC team, it emerged today.
The communist state fired off a furious e-mail to students of the London School of Economics (LSE) after it discovered they had entered the country with Panorama reporter John Sweeney who had posed as a history professor to film an expose.
After arriving back in the UK, they were contacted by a representative of the North Korean government complaining that 'Mr John Paul Sweeney is not an LSE History Professor as declared, but a BBC journalist that joined your LSE students group undercover.'
Had the journalists been caught there, the whole group would have faced arrest, interrogation and possible detention.
In the e-mail, extracts of which have been seen by Mail Online, the official went on to say: 'I warn you that I will make public to the world and the international press the lies made in the name of LSE students.
'I reserve the right to make public and publish all personal data, including all your passports, to demonstrate that while we have been direct and honest with you, you have broken the DPRK law.'
Scroll down for video
The director of the London School of
Economics (LSE), Craig Calhoun, earlier said claimed its students had been
compromised by the decision to allow a Panorama team to travel with them.
Mr Calhoun told the Guardian: 'We have received complaints from North Korean authorities – and some of the students who went on the trip have received threats'
He said LSE had heard from other students who were being advised to cancel foreign trips over the summer as a result of row.
He said: 'It affects not just the LSE and North Korea, it affects trips that are not undercover or spying trips.
'Lots of countries will now be problematic because of John Sweeney and the Panorama programme which the BBC has stood by.'
Earlier, the corporation’s head of news programming said the decision to go ahead with a controversial BBC documentary about North Korea in which students claimed there used as human shields went 'right to the top'.
Ceri
Thomas made the comment as he rejected claims that British students had
been forced to run unacceptable risks during undercover filming of the
investigation.
One of the senior executives who signed off the trip was former BBC News director Helen Boaden, who was severely criticised for her handling of the Jimmy Savile scandal.
Ms Boaden was the most senior executive to give her approval on the undercover filming, which was done shortly before her move to take up the role as director of radio at the BBC.
Ms Boaden left as director of News three weeks ago, taking a holiday before starting her new job today.
Her move was prompted by the Pollard report into the BBC's handling of the Jimmy Savile crisis, where she was reprimanded for not taking 'greater responsibility' as BBC News went into 'virtual meltdown'.
Ms Boaden, alongside director of editorial standards and policy David Jordan, signed off the risk assessment conducted prior to the Panorama team's departure to North Korea, the Guardian reports.
The BBC has also refused to cave in to mounting pressure to drop the documentary, which it plans to run tonight.
Sir Peter Sutherland, chairman of LSE's court of governors, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that some of the party had not been fully informed about the plans before leaving.
'I am amazed that the case is being made that in some way these students, misled, going into a most dangerous place - perhaps the most dangerous place on Earth - should be forced to allow a programme to take place that they oppose,' he said.
Three students have since complained and the BBC has agreed to pixelate their images.
Parents and university officials claim the students – the youngest of whom was only 18 – were ‘deliberately misled’ by the BBC and have called on the broadcaster to apologise and drop the documentary.
Mr Thomas denied that briefing of the students had been 'shambolic', insisting they had been repeatedly spoken to individually and as a group.
'We think the risks as we explained them to the students were justified,' he said.
'But I need to be absolutely clear that if we had any suggestion that lives were at risk or anything approaching that - either the BBC team's lives or the lives of the students - then we wouldn't have gone anywhere near this.'
Asked how high up the BBC chain authorisation for the programme had gone, Mr Thomas said: 'This went right to the top.'
Pressed on whether that meant the then-acting director general Tim Davie had signed off on the plans in advance, Mr Thomas replied: 'I can't be sure that Tim Davie did. I know that Tony Hall (the current director general) has been involved in recent days.'
He called the programme an ‘important piece of public interest journalism’.
‘The only people we deceived in the making of this film were the North Korean government,’ he added.
The students were invited on the trip
via an LSE club, only to learn much later it had been organised by
Panorama as a cover for its investigation.
Journalist John Sweeney insisted the students had all agreed to enter the rogue Communist state with him, but admitted he withheld some details of the trip on the advice of BBC risk assessors.
The LSE said its students were not given enough information to give their consent and accused the BBC of taking unacceptable risks at a time when sabre-rattling by North Korea had already raised tensions with the West.
Alex Peters-Day, general secretary of LSE Students’ Union said students and the university had been ‘manipulated’.
‘I think the trip was organised by the BBC as a ruse to get into North Korea and that’s disgraceful,’ she said. ‘They have used students essentially as a human shield in this situation.’
But one member of the party wrote to LSE's student newspaper, The Beaver, to say they had not been informed by the BBC of the risks, the Times said.
The anonymous student was reported as saying: 'Contrary to what the BBC spokesperson insists, I have never been informed of the risks that I faced being in North Korea with the one print journalist who I agreed to travel with.
'I was never told that I could be held in detention or that I risked not being able to return to the country.
'Furthermore, because we were informed that there are only two flights out of Pyongyang to Beijing per week, we would not have been able to leave even if we had insisted on no longer being part of the trip, as the nature of what we had consented to changed.
'Because most of the consenting was
done in private conversations between a student and Tomiko (Mr Sweeney's
wife) or Alexander (the other BBC journalist), what each student
consented to varies.'
Students have since received ‘threatening’ letters from North Korean authorities and one parent has complained in writing to new BBC director-general Lord Hall that their child was put in danger.
The parent wrote: ‘The methods adopted potentially endangered a number of students who believed they were participating in an organised student tour. I am outraged that in this case the BBC, without obtaining “informed consent”... deceived, used and endangered these students to obtain a story from North Korea.’
The row could prove embarrassing for Lord Hall, appointed after his predecessor George Entwistle quit in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal and the botched Newsnight report which led to Lord McAlpine being wrongly identified as a paedophile.
A producer for Panorama resigned earlier this month over claims the programme tried to bribe a security consultant to reveal information about a property developer.
The LSE said it was not given any warning about the BBC’s plans until last week, after the group returned. It said the deception had put the students in danger and had jeopardised the safety of its academics working in other high-risk countries.
The students volunteered for the trip through the Grimshaw Club, a student society linked to the LSE’s department of international relations. Sweeney’s wife Tomiko Newson, an LSE graduate, had organised a group tour of North Korea with the club in 2012 and students were told she was organising this year’s trip.
They were told in London that a
journalist would join them. But they were not told of Miss Newson’s
links to Panorama or Sweeney until they reached Beijing.
There, as they waited to board the flight to Pyongyang, they were told that a Panorama film crew, including the high-profile investigative journalist, would be travelling with them for the eight-day trip.
Journalists are banned from entering North Korea without visas and government minders, so Sweeney posed as a history professor.
The reporter – who was once filmed
ranting at a Scientology leader during a documentary – likened North
Korea to a ‘Nazi state’ and called the experience more frightening than
travelling inside Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
He said: ‘It’s extraordinarily scary, dark and evil.’
Sweeney said the BBC’s ‘high risk team’ had wanted the students to be kept in the dark so they could not be accused of being complicit in the subterfuge if it was discovered by the North Koreans.
‘If we got into North Korea and I got busted and I’m a journalist, then we were worried, properly and rightly, for the students.
'So we did not want to tell them everything that we were doing because it would increase the risk for them,’ he said.
Sweeney said he believed the majority of the students supported the Panorama film and praised them as ‘brave and good people’.
But the parent who wrote to Lord Hall, who asked not to be identified, said their child had not been told of any journalistic involvement until after they had paid £1,969 for their place on the trip.
The BBC admits the group was not told about Panorama’s involvement until they were in Beijing. One said they were told the delay was ‘for your own safety’.
LSE deputy director Professor George Gaskell said: ‘We were told the BBC had undertaken a risk assessment and it had been approved at the highest level.
‘The LSE believes that any reasonable assessor of risk – or indeed any parent contemplating their son or daughter going on such a trip with the involvement of the BBC – would have thought the risks quite unacceptable.’
Gaining false admission to North Korea is punishable by imprisonment and heavy fines.
A BBC spokesman said Mr Sweeney’s wife had organised the trip before Panorama became involved.
'All of the students in the group were of an age to give informed consent being between 18 and 28 years old,' said the spokesman, 'a dialogue with them has continued since their return.
'We do not, and never did, intend to make any reference to the LSE in the programme.The actions of the programme team in relation to its contributors were, we believe, proportionate to the subject matter, as is required in the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines.'
The communist state fired off a furious e-mail to students of the London School of Economics (LSE) after it discovered they had entered the country with Panorama reporter John Sweeney who had posed as a history professor to film an expose.
After arriving back in the UK, they were contacted by a representative of the North Korean government complaining that 'Mr John Paul Sweeney is not an LSE History Professor as declared, but a BBC journalist that joined your LSE students group undercover.'
Had the journalists been caught there, the whole group would have faced arrest, interrogation and possible detention.
In the e-mail, extracts of which have been seen by Mail Online, the official went on to say: 'I warn you that I will make public to the world and the international press the lies made in the name of LSE students.
'I reserve the right to make public and publish all personal data, including all your passports, to demonstrate that while we have been direct and honest with you, you have broken the DPRK law.'
Scroll down for video
Panorama reporter John Sweeney with a North
Korean colonel overlooking the De-Militarised Zone. Three Panorama
journalists are said to have put lives in danger as they secretly filmed
inside the highly authoritarian country
VIDEO Students furious at being used as 'front' for documentary
Today, North Korean soldiers visited the bronze
statues of the country's founder, Kim Il-Sung, left, and former leader
Kim Jong-Il in Pyongyang as the state marked the 101st anniversary of
Kim Il-Sung's birth
Mr Calhoun told the Guardian: 'We have received complaints from North Korean authorities – and some of the students who went on the trip have received threats'
He said LSE had heard from other students who were being advised to cancel foreign trips over the summer as a result of row.
He said: 'It affects not just the LSE and North Korea, it affects trips that are not undercover or spying trips.
'Lots of countries will now be problematic because of John Sweeney and the Panorama programme which the BBC has stood by.'
Earlier, the corporation’s head of news programming said the decision to go ahead with a controversial BBC documentary about North Korea in which students claimed there used as human shields went 'right to the top'.
One of the senior executives who signed off the trip was former BBC News director Helen Boaden, who was severely criticised for her handling of the Jimmy Savile scandal.
Ms Boaden was the most senior executive to give her approval on the undercover filming, which was done shortly before her move to take up the role as director of radio at the BBC.
Ms Boaden left as director of News three weeks ago, taking a holiday before starting her new job today.
Her move was prompted by the Pollard report into the BBC's handling of the Jimmy Savile crisis, where she was reprimanded for not taking 'greater responsibility' as BBC News went into 'virtual meltdown'.
Ms Boaden, alongside director of editorial standards and policy David Jordan, signed off the risk assessment conducted prior to the Panorama team's departure to North Korea, the Guardian reports.
The BBC has also refused to cave in to mounting pressure to drop the documentary, which it plans to run tonight.
Sir Peter Sutherland, chairman of LSE's court of governors, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that some of the party had not been fully informed about the plans before leaving.
'I am amazed that the case is being made that in some way these students, misled, going into a most dangerous place - perhaps the most dangerous place on Earth - should be forced to allow a programme to take place that they oppose,' he said.
Three students have since complained and the BBC has agreed to pixelate their images.
Parents and university officials claim the students – the youngest of whom was only 18 – were ‘deliberately misled’ by the BBC and have called on the broadcaster to apologise and drop the documentary.
Mr Thomas denied that briefing of the students had been 'shambolic', insisting they had been repeatedly spoken to individually and as a group.
'We think the risks as we explained them to the students were justified,' he said.
'But I need to be absolutely clear that if we had any suggestion that lives were at risk or anything approaching that - either the BBC team's lives or the lives of the students - then we wouldn't have gone anywhere near this.'
Asked how high up the BBC chain authorisation for the programme had gone, Mr Thomas said: 'This went right to the top.'
Pressed on whether that meant the then-acting director general Tim Davie had signed off on the plans in advance, Mr Thomas replied: 'I can't be sure that Tim Davie did. I know that Tony Hall (the current director general) has been involved in recent days.'
He called the programme an ‘important piece of public interest journalism’.
‘The only people we deceived in the making of this film were the North Korean government,’ he added.
North Koreans presented flowers at the feet of the statues on the celebratory Day of the Sun
Party officials visited Kim Il-Sung's birthplace
Mankyongdae today while back in Britain, a row over the BBC's
undercover filming in the country raged
March: Students march at a camping site in
Pyongyang as the first term of camping commences nationwide, to
commemorate the 101st anniversary of the birth of North Korea's founder
Kim Il-sung
Journalist John Sweeney insisted the students had all agreed to enter the rogue Communist state with him, but admitted he withheld some details of the trip on the advice of BBC risk assessors.
The LSE said its students were not given enough information to give their consent and accused the BBC of taking unacceptable risks at a time when sabre-rattling by North Korea had already raised tensions with the West.
Alex Peters-Day, general secretary of LSE Students’ Union said students and the university had been ‘manipulated’.
‘I think the trip was organised by the BBC as a ruse to get into North Korea and that’s disgraceful,’ she said. ‘They have used students essentially as a human shield in this situation.’
But one member of the party wrote to LSE's student newspaper, The Beaver, to say they had not been informed by the BBC of the risks, the Times said.
The anonymous student was reported as saying: 'Contrary to what the BBC spokesperson insists, I have never been informed of the risks that I faced being in North Korea with the one print journalist who I agreed to travel with.
'I was never told that I could be held in detention or that I risked not being able to return to the country.
'Furthermore, because we were informed that there are only two flights out of Pyongyang to Beijing per week, we would not have been able to leave even if we had insisted on no longer being part of the trip, as the nature of what we had consented to changed.
In a letter sent to all members of the
university, its management said it was not known to the rest of the
party that they were three journalists working for or with the BBC in
advance of the trip
Students have since received ‘threatening’ letters from North Korean authorities and one parent has complained in writing to new BBC director-general Lord Hall that their child was put in danger.
The parent wrote: ‘The methods adopted potentially endangered a number of students who believed they were participating in an organised student tour. I am outraged that in this case the BBC, without obtaining “informed consent”... deceived, used and endangered these students to obtain a story from North Korea.’
The row could prove embarrassing for Lord Hall, appointed after his predecessor George Entwistle quit in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal and the botched Newsnight report which led to Lord McAlpine being wrongly identified as a paedophile.
A producer for Panorama resigned earlier this month over claims the programme tried to bribe a security consultant to reveal information about a property developer.
The LSE said it was not given any warning about the BBC’s plans until last week, after the group returned. It said the deception had put the students in danger and had jeopardised the safety of its academics working in other high-risk countries.
The students volunteered for the trip through the Grimshaw Club, a student society linked to the LSE’s department of international relations. Sweeney’s wife Tomiko Newson, an LSE graduate, had organised a group tour of North Korea with the club in 2012 and students were told she was organising this year’s trip.
LSE: The BBC has denied claims that it put
students from the London School of Economic at risk when an undercover
journalist accompanied them on a field trip to North Korea
Claims: The BBC says an edition of Panorama
filmed secretly during a study trip to North Korea is due to be
broadcast later as planned
Totalitarian: Kim Jong-un is the dictator of the oppressive and murderous regime
There, as they waited to board the flight to Pyongyang, they were told that a Panorama film crew, including the high-profile investigative journalist, would be travelling with them for the eight-day trip.
Journalists are banned from entering North Korea without visas and government minders, so Sweeney posed as a history professor.
He said: ‘It’s extraordinarily scary, dark and evil.’
Sweeney said the BBC’s ‘high risk team’ had wanted the students to be kept in the dark so they could not be accused of being complicit in the subterfuge if it was discovered by the North Koreans.
‘If we got into North Korea and I got busted and I’m a journalist, then we were worried, properly and rightly, for the students.
'So we did not want to tell them everything that we were doing because it would increase the risk for them,’ he said.
Sweeney said he believed the majority of the students supported the Panorama film and praised them as ‘brave and good people’.
But the parent who wrote to Lord Hall, who asked not to be identified, said their child had not been told of any journalistic involvement until after they had paid £1,969 for their place on the trip.
The BBC admits the group was not told about Panorama’s involvement until they were in Beijing. One said they were told the delay was ‘for your own safety’.
LSE deputy director Professor George Gaskell said: ‘We were told the BBC had undertaken a risk assessment and it had been approved at the highest level.
‘The LSE believes that any reasonable assessor of risk – or indeed any parent contemplating their son or daughter going on such a trip with the involvement of the BBC – would have thought the risks quite unacceptable.’
Gaining false admission to North Korea is punishable by imprisonment and heavy fines.
A BBC spokesman said Mr Sweeney’s wife had organised the trip before Panorama became involved.
'All of the students in the group were of an age to give informed consent being between 18 and 28 years old,' said the spokesman, 'a dialogue with them has continued since their return.
'We do not, and never did, intend to make any reference to the LSE in the programme.The actions of the programme team in relation to its contributors were, we believe, proportionate to the subject matter, as is required in the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines.'