Rare is the opportunity to hear a first-hand, uncensored account of life in North Korea. Students had the chance to glimpse at the infamously closed country while listening to Gopalan Balagopal Friday in his presentation “Beginning with Children: Reflections on UNICEF’s work in North Korea,” a part of the Korean Studies Colloquium Series.

From September 2006 until November 2009, Balagopal led the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) office in Pyongyang, where UNICEF has been active since 1997.

Balagopal’s work addressed three major risks for children in the country: food insecurity, institutionalization and degradation in the quality of services such as medicine and water sanitation.

Food insecurity has caused staggering levels of malnutrition: in 1998, 60 percent of children were stunted or underweight.

According to Balagopal, the country’s insufficient levels of medical services was gruesomely illustrated in a 2007 mass outbreak of measles. UNICEF was able to intervene and immunize 16 million of the infected. In subsequent research on the causes of the pandemic, the organization found that 35 percent of the country’s medical equipment was nonfunctional.

Defective equipment also precludes access to clean water.

“The water sanitation systems are antiques–they belong in museums,” Balagopal said.

UNICEF, capitalizing on the possibilities of the country’s hilly landscape, created and installed energy-efficient treatment systems that utilize gravity for power.

The last of these problems–the prevalence of institutionalized children–proved more difficult to address.

“Abolishing all these institutions, we understand, cannot be possible,” Balagopal said. “But we can improve the children’s lives within them.”

One of Balagopal’s most treasured experiences during his three years at UNICEF in Pyongyang involved collaborating with the organization “Art in All of Us.” Through a joint project, North Korean children created drawings and poems to share with children in other countries. According to Balagopal, the children’s work conveyed a surprising hope and desire to help others, despite their own hardships. One girl wrote a poem about flying a kite high enough for South Korean children to see it and be happy.

“Very often you don’t know what these kids are thinking,” Balagopal said. “You tend to demonize everyone, which isn’t always the case.”

Perceptions of life in North Korea can be distorted on a larger scale, as well, Balagopal said, pointing to ongoing problems with data collection.

“There is very little reliable information in the country,” he said.

Balagopal dismissed ambitious figures from a census that stated that as much as 85 percent of North Korean citizens have access to water. However, he affirmed the accuracy of some unsettling information, such as a sharp increase in maternal and infant mortality and stagnant population growth.

UNICEF has been working to compile a more accurate data set–the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey–whose results will not be available until March.

Balagopal said that the success he saw in UNICEF’s work and the optimism he encountered among the North Korean people, assured him that there is hope for the country<\p>–<\p>though the process of improvement may be long and difficult.

“What is it that I remember?” Balagopal asked himself. “Individuals. These people who have so little and are so touched by what we can do.”