N. Korean Famine an Open Wound

A 5-year-old child who has learned to smoke a cigarette with all the mannerisms of an adult while hiding with his parents in an underground shelter is one of the heart-wrenching faces that “Nightline” puts to the ongoing famine crisis in North Korea, in a three-part series of reports starting tonight (11:35 p.m., ABC).

Like an estimated 100,000 refugees, his parents fled repressive North Korea to China, where they had a better chance of finding food. But a shelter in the woods is no place for his newborn sibling, who is given up for adoption, nor for his older sisters, who must go to school. So the girls are sent to an orphanage and the boy soon follows, the cameras following the tear-filled separation from the parents.

The scenes were captured by freelance journalist Kim Jung-eun, a South Korean who recorded the story and others in five visits to China from March 1999 through April 2000. Her resulting film, “Shadows and Whispers,” which “Nightline” has adapted, offers a rare personal glimpse into the world of the illegal refugees, who have more recently been in the news for storming diplomatic compounds in China hoping to find asylum in hospitable countries.

One woman talks about the guilt she feels because “I gave birth to my child but I never had the chance to feed my child a bowl of rice.” Instead, the child, who is left behind at age 4 when the parents escape to China, got a gruel made of grass and flour.

The series’ third night tells the story of children who live on the streets, smuggling money back to their families in North Korea in plastic-wrapped wads that they swallow.

Kim’s affecting film has previously aired on Australian television and at film festivals, winning numerous top awards, but the “Nightline” showing is its American television premiere.