The program is called "On my way to meet you" and its brightest star is twenty-year-old Yeon-mi Park.
The show screens on cable TV in South Korea and is part chat-show, part talent quest and part musical.
But it's not all frothing bubbles.
Yeon-mi uses her star power to let viewers know how...
...difficult life is in North Korea and the message is getting home, where it matters.
These photographs are remnants of Yeon-mi's former life that began in North Korea over twenty years ago.
She's taken a break from the TV studio to visit her mother with her older sister, Eun-mi.
Not so long ago a family gathering like this seemed impossible.
The three of them have survived a painful journey to be here together.
Yeon-mi and her sister grew up under the leadership of Kim Jong-il.
It was the late 1990’s, the time of the great famine.
Yeon-mi’s father was a party member and worked in the capital, Pyongyang.
When Yeon-mi was eight, her father was arrested for smuggling goods to China to sell on the black market.
He was sentenced to seventeen years in a labor camp.
North Korea has never admitted to the horrors of life in its labor camps, not even to their existence.
But Amnesty International has released these surveillance photos of the camps where torture and beatings happen every day.
Yeon-mi’s father was given a brief reprieve from prison for medical treatment. It was then the family decided to escape.
At just sixteen, Eun-mi fled the country with a friend. Her family was devastated.
Desperate to find her sister, Yeon-mi and her parents walked across the mountains to the border…
…where they bribed guards to cross the Tumen river to China.
But there was no sign of Eun-mi.
In the Chinese towns, along the border with North Korea…
…Yeon-mi’s family was destitute and on the run…
…powerless to search any further for Eun-mi.
Stateless, with no identity, they feared being arrested and sent back to North Korea.
And things were about to get worse.
Yeon-mi's father was diagnosed with cancer and was given just three months to live.
In the depth of winter, the temperature at minus 40°, and with only a compass to guide them…
…Yeon-mi and her mother walked for 24 hours…
Through the Gobi desert across the Chinese border into Mongolia.
Yeon-mi and her mother arrived in Seoul after seeking asylum at the South Korean embassy in Mongolia.
The capital is only 50 kilometers from North Korea but the long and treacherous journey…
…had taken them two years and they'd lost two family members on the way.
Five years on, they're still adjusting to their new life.
Yeon-mi joined the TV program three years ago. Today she's pretending to be a child…
…rehearsing a dance to perform for the dear leader Kim Jong-il.
Mocking the regime is dangerous work.
Some of the women have received threats and the North Korean propaganda machine is in overdrive.
Raising the ire of the regime…
…was never the intention, but rather the show's producers hope the program…
…would break down social barriers by helping South Koreans understand the plight of their kinsmen from the North.
Like Mrs. Lee, who was a nurse in the North Korean army for eleven years.
It took her nine attempts before she managed to get to South Korea.
Each time she was sent back to North Korea, she was tortured.
Happy to a multipolar for the paralegal communal hager than young
The TV show has turned Yeon-mi into a celebrity, but instead of wallowing in it she's using her newfound…
…high-profile to carve out a serious career.
She's just landed herself another job, this time as a reporter for…
…New Focus International.
The former propaganda poet, Jang Jin-sung…
is the founder and director of the online news service. In December last…
…year, new Focus broke the story, that Kim Jong-un’s uncle had been executed.
The New York Times celebrated Mr. Jang…
…on the cover of its magazine and not unexpectedly North Korea placed him on its target list.
Yeon-mi’s been recruited to host the organization's new online news broadcast.
Under the bright lights of the TV studio…
…Yeon-mi lived with the heartache of not knowing what had happened to her sister.
She made this dramatic appeal in the hope Eun-mi might see it.
But in reality Yeon-mi was losing hope and had started to believe her sister was dead.
Her older sister Eun-mi had in fact survived but was living in China under such terrible circumstances…
…that even now she finds difficult to talk about.
There's clearly a lot that's too raw to broach but she does open up about the way she was exploited by employers.
When she finally left the job, the restaurant-owner had gangsters track her down.
In January this year, while Eun-mi was at the processing center for North Korean defectors the South Korean intelligence…
…service discovered her mother and sister were living in Seoul.
After seven years of separation it was an emotional reunion.
One that echoes every time they see each other.
And what was that like, when you saw her?
Not surprisingly the two sisters are inseparable these…
…days and enjoying their freedom and the riches of capitalism.
As Yeon-mi star’s rises, it's the family she cherishes the most.
The sisters have embraced their new South Korean stepfather but they'll never stop missing their own.
Her safety and security, now a serious issue…
Yeon-mi refuses to cower to the threats of the regime she abhors.
Yeon-mi and her family have had a harrowing time.
The childhood lullaby is comforting but brimming with sadness and pain.
