But extraordinary video images smuggled out of North Korea, combined with reports of graffiti and posters critical of the regime, indicate a growing willingness among a previously cowed public to speak out and demand change.
Such dissent would once have been unthinkable in the reclusive state, but now hunger and plummeting living standards are now triggering demands for freedom - something that no North Korean has ever experienced.
Evidence of the rising tide of discontent has been captured on film by a small group of "citizen journalists", who newsgather at great personal risk to themselves. They then carry the footage across the heavily guarded border into China.
In one dramatic clip, a woman who is trying to board a truck to take her to work flies into a rage after a uniformed policeman demands a bribe. She shouts at him and waves her finger in his face until he backs away. Emboldened, other people come to her aid, shouting at the officer
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