President Donald Trump on Monday remembered fallen service members at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, calling their love of country "more deep and more pure than most will ever know." "They marched into hell so that America could know the blessings of peace. They died so that freedom could live," Trump said. Trump also honored those whose loved ones died in combat, acknowledging "the depth of emotion that this day brings each year" to the families of the fallen. The President delivered remarks at Arlington after he solemnly placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and stood in silence as a bugle played "Taps." Trump also honored several living veterans in attendance, including former Republican Sen. Bob Dole and Ray Chavez, both World War II veterans. Chavez, at 106, is the oldest-living survivor of the attacks on Pearl Harbor. The President headed to the US military cemetery after spending much of the holiday weekend golfing and tweeting attacks aimed at the special counsel's investigation, Democrats and the press. The President's first tweet about fallen service members during the holiday weekend came Monday morning in a message that touted the successes of his presidency.
The 'completely childish' man hanged for murder (1)
He was one of the last two men hanged in Britain. A habitual liar convicted of murdering a man who had been his friend, and perhaps his lover. But according to a leading criminal lawyer, who has viewed documents uncovered by the BBC, he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Medical reports released to the National Archives this summer show that Gwynne Owen Evans, who was hanged in 1964 at the age of 24, had serious psychological problems. But his defence team made no attempt to enter a plea of diminished responsibility - a plea that, if accepted would have saved his life.
The crime
Just after three o'clock in the morning, on Tuesday 7 April 1964, Mr and Mrs Fawcett, an elderly couple living in the village of Seaton, Cumbria, were awakened by a series of thuds, a shrill scream, and then more bumps coming from the adjoining house. He called a neighbour, Walter Lister, who walked over to the house and knocked on the door. When no-one answered, he called the police. By 03:25 a group of officers, led by Sgt Park, had entered the house They found the occupant, John West, lying dead at the foot of the stairs, on his back and naked from the waist down. A single 53-year-old man who worked as a driver for a local laundry, West was in a pool of blood, his head covered with cuts. More blood was spattered on the walls, down the side of the stairs, and on the banister. On the floor near the body was a home-made cosh - a piece of rubber tube with a short piece of steel tube at one end, and putty at the other.
Searching upstairs, police found a lightweight raincoat folded on a chair in West's bedroom. In the pocket was a lifesaving medallion inscribed "G O Evans", and a piece of paper with the name Norma O'Brien written on it, next to an address in Liverpool.
That tied Gwynne Evans to the murder.
When police interviewed the 17-year-old O'Brien in Liverpool the next day, she remembered meeting Evans and seeing his medal while visiting her brother-in-law, a soldier at Fulwood Barracks in Preston, four months earlier. Evans had then been in the Army too, but had been discharged shortly afterwards. Police learned that Evans was one of the dead man's friends. The year before he'd been seen chauffeuring him around the neighbourhood, which suggested they were close: West was very particular about his car and hardly anyone else was allowed to drive it. They also quickly discovered that Evans was a local boy - his parents lived in Workington, just down the road from Seaton - and that until recently his name had been John Walby. He'd changed it in a third attempt to join the Army, having been kicked out twice under his original name.
From Evans's parents police had obtained his current address, a small terraced house in Preston, 100 miles (160km) away. He was living there with Peter Allen, 21, Allen's wife and two young children. At the house, though, police found and arrested only Allen. Evans was out with Allen's wife, Mary, in Manchester. When the police tracked them down, Evans had in his pocket a wristwatch that had belonged to West, and Mary had a bloodstained shirt in her basket. It belonged to her husband. According to police records, Gwynne Evans quickly volunteered information about the murder - putting all the blame on Allen. He and Allen had stolen a car to drive up to Seaton to borrow money, he said, as West was an old friend who'd offered to help him in the past. Both Allen and Evans were hard up, with fines and bills to pay.
Allen's wife and children came along for the drive too, and waited, asleep, outside in the car. Evans went in first, by his account, and he told police he just had a chat with West, whom he called Jack. "I had some tea and a cheese bun and as we were talking there was a knock at the door. I honestly didn't know who it was, anyway Jack went to the door and I heard some banging. I went into the hall and I saw Peter hitting Jack with something that looked like a pipe... There was a lot of blood and I shouted to Peter, 'For Christ's sake stop it!'" Evans insisted he hadn't hit Jack himself. "Peter did the thumping," he said. Evans told police the two men had stolen bank books from West's home, and managed to withdraw £10 cash from his accounts. He said he knew the police had found his coat, with the medallion and keys in the pocket.
"If I wanted, I could have said that my coat had been stolen and my keys were in it and no judge in the country would convict me. But I am glad I have got it off my chest," he said. An odd thing to say, but as further questioning would show, characteristic of Evans. That evening, in Preston, Peter Allen was interviewed. Initially, he claimed ignorance of the murder. "You can get a stack of Bibles in here and I'll stand on them and swear I know nothing about it," he told Det Supt Roberts, who was leading the investigation. But just a few minutes later, according to the police notes, Allen struck the desk with his fist, buried his head in his arm and said, "All right. I'll tell you. I'd like to tell the whole flipping world about it." He said it started out as an innocent robbery. Sandy, as he called Evans, was to go in first, and let Allen in. But as Evans opened the front door West came out of his bedroom, and saw him. So Allen hit the older man with his fists. Then, Allen claimed, Evans gave him "the bar" and he set upon West with that too. Later, he revised his statement to say that Evans had also beaten West.
That evening, at a quarter to midnight, the detective superintendent interviewed Gwynne Evans. First, he asked if that was his real name. The reply was surprising. "No, I adopted it after I found out I was born in Innsbruck in 1940 and that both my parents were German," Evans said. This was not true. The post-mortem showed West hadn't only been hit around the head, with a cosh - he'd also been stabbed through the heart. Initially, neither man said anything about that, but according to the police report Evans - unprompted - said: "I don't know anything about a knife. I don't have to use a knife to kill a man. I'm an expert at judo and karate. I never hit Jack- it was Peter that did all the hitting."
He wasn't a karate expert either. Police found Allen's account more credible. It tallied with the crime scene. Allen said Evans had opened the door for him, and West had unexpectedly come out of his bedroom upstairs. Evans, by contrast, claimed both he and West had been downstairs. Police thought it unlikely West would have answered the door without any trousers on, his false teeth were found on the landing at the top of the stairs, and there was blood on the wall by the staircase. Just after midnight, police interviewed Allen's wife, Mary. She said Evans had gone in first, and had come out about two hours later to get Allen. Then the two men had run out. When she asked them what had happened they said West had punched Peter - who'd punched back. Evans, she said, had told her he'd joined in. The two men appeared in the magistrates' court a few hours later, on Thursday 9 April.
Mary Allen then revised her evidence, telling police Evans had stopped the car on the drive back to Preston and she'd seen him throw something away. That afternoon, she showed officers the spot, on the road between Workington and Windermere. A police dog easily found a bloodstained knife. And after reading a local newspaper report of the court hearing, Mary Allen remembered something else. She told police that when they'd all returned to Preston, early on Tuesday morning, Evans had said "he never expected it to go in below the alarm clock". She now realised, she said, that he was referring to the stab wound to the heart.
'Abnormal personality'
After his appearance in court, Gwynne Evans was remanded in custody at Durham prison, where he was seen by the senior medical officer, P J Waddington. There was no evidence of medical disorder, he wrote. Evans was "correctly orientated". In other words, "He knew where he was and he was fully aware of the reasons for his arrest and his committal to prison." Waddington described Evans as being "of spare physique", just over 5ft 9in tall, with no physical ailments except flat feet and some small cuts on his face, possibly from picking pimples.
In another report the following month, he noted that from a very young age Evans had experienced psychological problems. As a boy he'd been referred to a child guidance clinic (elsewhere identified as Dovenby mental hospital) because he was "untrustworthy, lacked moral sense, was untruthful, and inclined to steal". Evans confused truth with fantasy. "Evans believes that he was born in Innsbruck and his reasons for doing so are quite absurd…" the doctor wrote. He said he was married to a German girl, and had two children - which also seemed entirely invented. Evans claimed too that he'd been employed by Securicor for a year, and there become an expert in judo. In fact he'd only worked there for a week; he left as soon as his references had been checked, presumably because they were unsatisfactory. He lied constantly. The doctor said these were for the most part "prestige lies" to enhance his standing. On four occasions he joined the services, only to be medically discharged.
Evans had enlisted at 17 in the Border Regiment, where his fabrications led to him being sent for a psychiatric assessment. "This soldier was sent to me by his training wing officer," wrote one doctor, "on account of his frequent telling of big lies which he apparently believed himself." His first expulsion followed four months later. In less than a year, he signed up for another regiment, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers - but here too, his lies brought about his downfall. Within three months he was before a medical board which recommended discharge on the grounds of "personality inadequacy". His commanding officer remarked: "He is a failure. He cannot make friends because of feeling superior and telling complete fairy tales all the time." The following year he joined the Royal Air Force, but was quickly discharged on the grounds of "nervous instability". In 1963, he signed up for the Army again, under the name of Evans, but was soon found out, and discharged for the final time.
Waddington, the medical officer at Durham Prison, acknowledged Evans's "abnormal personality" and thought most doctors would consider him an individual with a "psychopathic personality, using this term in the broadest sense". But he didn't believe this amounted to an "abnormality of mind" that would substantially impair his "mental responsibility for his acts and omissions" - the legal definition of diminished responsibility under the 1957 Homicide Act. Evans's own lawyers commissioned Dr G F Duggan Keen, an experienced consultant psychiatrist, to examine him. He noted that Evans had been employed in 32 jobs, by his own account, from the age of 15, excluding the spells in the Army and RAF. Many had just lasted a few weeks, due he thought, to Evans's problems forming relationships, and excessive drinking.
After four meetings with Evans, he said there was "absolutely no doubt in my mind that this man is a psychopathic personality". But he could not identify a condition or disease. He said Evans was not "subnormal", nor schizophrenic, nor epileptic. He too concluded that Evans's mental responsibility was not "substantially impaired". Neither Waddington nor Duggan Keen explained why they came to that conclusion, and this surprises Dr Tim McInerney, a consultant forensic psychiatrist at the Bethlem Royal hospital in South London, who often gives expert assessments in murder cases. "If, as an expert now, giving advice to the courts or to a jury as to why I don't support diminished [responsibility] I would have to explain very clearly why I reached that position," he says. The psychiatric reports are cursory by modern standards, running to just a few pages. Though McInerny says that was the style at the time, John Cooper QC, an experienced defence barrister and professor of law, says their brevity strikes him as a cause for concern.
"For those reports to be relied upon without them being tested, without further questions being asked of them, without further experts being used, as far as I'm concerned, is quite startling. And I would say quite startling not just to the modern eye but also at the time." But these psychiatric judgements would play an important role in the events that led to Gwynne Evans's conviction - and his hanging. Trial and sentence Evans and Allen went on trial at Manchester Crown Court on 29 June 1964. The prosecution expected Evans to plead diminished responsibility. They had lined up their own psychiatrist, Dr Begg, who had met Evans twice. Like the other doctors, he said Evans was a "grossly psychopathic personality", and that responsibility for his actions was impaired - but, again, not substantially. However, the following day, without explanation, Evans's lawyers decided to drop the diminished responsibility plea. The note on the Director of Public Prosecutions file reads simply: "Def advise Dim Res not being raised. Dr Begg informed." Each man blamed the other for the murder. The evidence against Allen was much stronger - he admitted beating West and his clothes had been soaked in blood. There was no blood on Evans.
There was, admittedly, evidence incriminating Evans from Allen's wife - but she would have had good reason to try to shift the blame. Evans said he'd been friendly with West, who "was like a father to me", and that he would never have hurt him. However, both agreed they'd been ready to rob West. And unsurprisingly, Evans lied in court - and was shown to be lying. Allen's barrister undermined Evans further by suggesting he'd had sex with West just before the murder, something Evans vehemently denied, but which was supported by medical evidence. At the time homosexuality was illegal, and it's likely this would have lowered the jury's opinion of Evans even further. The trial ran until 6 July. The prosecution argued that the men were acting "in concert" and it did not matter who delivered the fatal blow. Without much deliberation the jury found both guilty of capital murder - that is, murder and robbery. This doesn't surprise John Cooper QC. "Without diminished responsibility, on my reading of these papers, the verdict of guilty was all but inevitable," he says. A successful plea of diminished responsibility, on the other hand, would have saved Evans's life. Evans's mother, Hannah Walby, wrote to him in clumsy round handwriting on blue notepaper: "Please don't give up hope yet." The verdict had been a great shock to her, she continued, and to his brothers and sister. "All is being done possible, you may get a reprieve."
No reprieve
At his appeal, heard at the High Court in July, Evans's lawyers also made no attempt to argue that he was not fully responsible for his actions. Instead his barrister, Guthrie Jones QC, sought to challenge Mary Allen's evidence, on the basis that she was Allen's wife. However, the judge had flagged this up to the jury at the trial, warning them that she was not an impartial witness - so the appeal was dismissed. The only avenue left was a reprieve. On 24 July Evans's solicitor, John Marsham of Midland Bank Chambers in Whitehaven, Cumbria, wrote to the Home Secretary, Henry Brooke. He pointed out that three doctors agreed Evans suffered mental impairment. He referred to a statement - not presented in court - from the father of a girl Evans had been seeing, a Mr Hampton. He'd put an end to their relationship because he had been so concerned about Evans's immaturity. He was "completely childish in everything he did" wrote the lawyer, "he would make toys that a child would make and play with them for hours before pulling them to pieces." Marsham added that Evans had been shown in court to be a liar, which made his conviction "inevitable". "Even in the witness box he could not refrain from telling stupid and unnecessary lies" - a story about being chased by a police car, for example. The letter was dismissed by the Home Office. Officials did nonetheless commission a final medical assessment. Three psychiatrists, Dr Pickering, Dr Mather and Prof Anderson, visited him in prison, on 27 and 28 July.
"He was a pallid slightly built young man, clearly tense, tremulous, with knitted brows throughout the interview," they wrote. He admitted being a habitual liar, and even lying to the doctors themselves. Prison staff also reported that he lied often, to boost his self-confidence. The governor thought him a "happy-go-lucky extrovert liking to stand high in people's favour". No staff thought him insane, as "no sign of fits or transient losses or changes of consciousness were observed". The news that there would be no reprieve reached Evans's family. On 3 August, Mrs Walby sent a letter to the Home Secretary. "I write to you on behalf of my son who is under sentence of Death at Manchester Prison," she wrote. She said Evans had never been in serious trouble before he met "this Preston couple". He had been brought up in the church, a member of the choir and the Boy Scouts, she explained. She pointed out he had been friends with West for five years, often staying overnight at his house. "My son is mentally impaired and I had him under a mental doctor at the age of 8 years but he is not a wicked boy," she pleaded. "Please may God guide you to make a mercyful judgement. I remain, yours respectfully Mrs H Walby."
It had no effect.
Three days later, on 6 August the Home Secretary wrote in red ink on the file: "I regret I can find no mitigating circumstances such as would justify a reprieve in either case. The law must take its course." The two men were hanged, in different prisons, at the same time: 08:00 on 13 August.
I was a mother to 2,000 people
When Lisa Campbell arrived in Greece in November 2015 to help care for the flood of refugees she planned on staying for just a few weeks. She ended up running a refugee camp - until it was suddenly closed last month. What made an American Mormon grandmother of six leave behind her family and her job to deal with the chaos of Greece's refugee crisis? Like most people in the US, I hadn't been aware of the scale of the refugee disaster until the pictures of three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on a beach started being shown on US news in 2015. But it wasn't until I actually got here and saw for myself the piles of life jackets and the boats stacked on the beach that the magnitude of it really hit me. I had taken a leave of absence from my job and planned to be in Greece for 45 days. My assumption was that I would find people who were housed, fed, and had basic services available. That first morning on the island of Lesbos, I went out on my balcony and I could see nine boats coming across from Turkey already. You hear people say that the boats are overloaded, but to see 50 people get off of a boat that would be full with 10 is overwhelming. I can't tell you how many times people would get off the boat and literally kiss the ground. That grabs you. was hard to wrap my head around what I was seeing. I was horrified at the stories that I heard. I was also happy to be able to help, happy to see that these children, once you got them into some dry clothes, were still looking for the first toy they could find. There's probably not an emotion that I didn't experience, standing there day after day on the shore, watching the boats come in. And that's how my journey in Greece started. When I got to the refugee camp in Oinofyta, on the mainland north of Athens, there was nothing there - just tents and army catering. I had no refugee experience, but I'm a do-er. After Hurricane Katrina, I helped start a non-profit called Do Your Part. We had worked in disaster zones before, but this was our first refugee crisis. I just started doing. I organised, planned, and built.
After I had been here for about a month, a donor in the US said he would sponsor me to be here for as long as I needed. So, I called my husband and said, "I want to quit my job and stay in Greece." Soon after, in June last year, I took over as manager of the Oinofyta camp. I was a little fearful to begin with, but I knew in my heart it was the right thing to do. These guys needed someone to care, to fight, and to advocate for them. I ended up running the camp for 18 months, until the Greek government shut it down a month ago. From my perspective, this work is like being a mother. I've raised four children and had several foster children and the job that I do here, even though it involves things like construction and installing electrical equipment, in reality, it's pretty much being a mom.
I'm not a saint. I've learned that love is a choice. For me, some of the more poignant moments have involved people that I don't necessarily really like. When they were informed that the camp was closing, these people came to me and said things like: "You've been like a mother to me, I don't know what I'm going to do without you." And I realised that I had met my goal - which was to take care of them and show them that they were loved. That they're cared about, not forgotten. When the camp was shutting down, we were told that we'd have time to get our stuff out. We had about a quarter of a million Euros worth of property in the camp. Then, the Greek government, in less than 24 hours, gave me three hours to get it all out. When that happened, I posted on Facebook: "I'm done. They win, and everybody else loses." That was probably one of my worst nights. How do you fight bureaucracy like that - bureaucracy that makes absolutely no sense? The next day I woke up to a phone full of messages saying, "What do you need me to do? I will come help." And I thought, "OK, I can do this. We, together, can do this." When we were allowed to get our things, we were also informed that there was a possibility the camp would be reopening. They have not said when, and every time I ask, I get told: "When they run out of spaces in other camps." It's as plainly vague as you can be. I know that all of the Greek islands are overcrowded. I have a camp that within three or four days could serve 500 people. Why aren't the refugees here? The residents of our camp felt like "refugee" had become a dirty word. But they're refugees because they want the same things in life that you and I want. We had engineers, lawyers, teachers, musicians, artists, police officers - people from all walks of life. They were just like you and me. I've been able to introduce many of the Greek people here to the refugees. That's the only way that we're ever going to get over the fear of refugees. I've forged some tremendous relationships that allow me to help people in ways that the large organisations just can't, because they don't have the trust. The Greek people have opened their hearts in so many ways, but their government and the large NGOs are clueless. We had a situation last winter where we had no drinking water because the pipes were frozen. It was on a Sunday. I notified the organisation who were supposed to be in charge, and the soonest, the absolute soonest that they could get us any water in the camp was Tuesday. I said: "You're telling me I have to make people wait 48 hours before they can have drinking water? What are we supposed to do?" I called a local restaurateur I knew and said we needed water. In two hours, I had a truck come in. I've met incredible people here who help me fight for what's right - not just the refugees, but the Greeks too.
Most of us are hardwired to want to provide for ourselves. When your life is spent getting handouts from everyone all day, you lose your dignity. I had this wild idea that it would be great to start a business, sewing bags from leftover tent material. I tell you, those workers were the happiest people in camp because they had a purpose other than sitting there waiting for their asylum interview. They still have that purpose today. We currently employ 18 residents. Last month, I signed the lease on a new building for Oinofyta Wares and they will be moving to the nearby community of Dilesi. We have companies and purchasers in America who want to buy these in bulk now. We are one meeting away from it being registered as a Greek business, and these guys will own it. My father was a naval officer and my husband was in the US Coast Guard, so every two years, our family moved. Part of my life has been learning to say goodbye, which has been one of the harder things here at the camp: the constant rotation of volunteers and residents. The hardest goodbye was to four-year-old Mustafa. He was here with his mother, sister and little brother, waiting to reunite with his father and older brother in Sweden. I knew them for about 16 months, and I grew to absolutely love that little boy. He would sit in my office and say we were both the camp managers. He was a huge personality in a little teeny body.
I was so happy for them when they got their family reunification, and so sad because I knew that the likelihood of me being able to ever see them again was pretty slim. My own kids are all asking the same question now: "Mom, when are you coming home?" I don't know. My volunteer visa expires 22 December, so maybe that's when I come home - because the Greek government won't let me stay any more. I hope that my legacy here is that the people that I have touched, the refugees or the Greek people, will always remember that I cared about them. That they were special and important. That they were worthy of that care. My husband asks me: "What are you going to do when you go home? You've been the mother to more than 2,000 people that have come through this camp." I'm going to stand as a witness. I'm going to talk about what has happened here. I'm going to try to make people understand that we are all human beings.
Rape and no periods in North Korea's army
A former soldier says life as a woman in the world's fourth-largest army was so tough that most soon stopped menstruating. And rape, she says, was a fact of life for many of those she served with. For almost 10 years Lee So Yeon slept on the bottom bunk bed, in a room she shared with more than two dozen women. Every woman was given a small set of drawers in which to store their uniforms. On top of those drawers each kept two framed photographs. One was of North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung. The second was of his now deceased heir, Kim Jong. It was more than a decade ago that she left, but she retains vivid memories of the smell of the concrete barracks.
"We sweat quite a bit.
"The mattress we sleep on, it's made of the rice hull. So all the body odour seeps into the mattress. It's not made of cotton. Because it's rice hull, all the odour from sweat and other smells are there. It's not pleasant."
One of the reasons for this was the state of the washing facilities.
"As a woman, one of the toughest things is that we can't shower properly," says Lee So Yeon. "Because there is no hot water. They connect a hose to the mountain stream and have water directly from the hose.
We would get frogs and snakes through the hose.
The daughter of a university professor, So Yeon, now 41, grew up in the north of the country. Many male members of her family had been soldiers, and when famine devastated the country in the 1990s she volunteered - motivated by the thought of a guaranteed meal each day. Thousands of other young women did the same.
"The famine resulted in a particularly vulnerable time for women in North Korea," says Jieun Baek, author of North Korea's Hidden Revolution. "More women had to enter the labour force and more were subject to mistreatment, particularly harassment and sexual violence."
Trusting defectors
Juliette Morillot and Jieun Baek say Lee So Yeon's testimony accords with other accounts they have heard, but warn that defectors have to be treated with caution. "There is such a high demand for knowledge from North Korea," says Baek. "It almost incentivises people to tell exaggerated tales to the media, especially if that comes with nice pay cheque. A lot of defectors who don't want to be in the media are very critical of 'career defectors'. It's worth keeping this in mind."
Information from official North Korean sources, on the other hand, is liable to be pure propaganda. Lee So Yeon was not paid for her interview with the BBC. To begin with, buoyed by a sense of patriotism and collective endeavour, the 17-year-old Lee So Yeon enjoyed her life in the army. She was impressed with her allocated hairdryer, although infrequent electricity meant she had little use for it. Daily routines for men and women were roughly the same. Women tended to have slightly shorter physical training regimes - but they were also required to perform daily chores such as cleaning, and cooking that male soldiers were exempted from.
"North Korea is a traditional male-dominated society and traditional gender roles remain," says Juliette Morillot, author of North Korea in 100 questions, published in French. "Women are still seen ttukong unjeongsu, which literally translates as 'cooking pot lid drivers', and means that they should 'stay in the kitchen where they belong'." The hard training and dwindling food rations took their toll on the bodies of Lee So Yeon and her fellow recruits. "After six months to a year of service, we wouldn't menstruate any more because of malnutrition and the stressful environment," she says. "The female soldiers were saying that they are glad that they are not having periods. They were saying that they were glad because the situation is so bad if they were having periods too that would have been worse."
Who defects?
Roughly 70% of North Korean defectors are female - a fact some link to higher levels of unemployment among women More than half are in their 20s or 30s, in part because it is easier for younger people to swim rivers and weather an arduous journey So Yeon says that the army failed to make provision for menstruation, during her time in the military, and that she and other female colleagues often had no choice but to reuse sanitary pads. "Women to this day still use the traditional white cotton pads," says Juliette Morillot. "They have to be washed every night when out of men's sight, so women get up early and wash them." And having just returned from a field visit where she spoke to several female soldiers, Morillot confirms that they often do miss their periods. "One of the girls I spoke with, who was 20, told me she trained so much that she had skipped her periods for two years," she says. Though Lee So Yeon joined the army voluntarily, in 2015 it was announced that all women in North Korea must do seven years' military service from the age of 18. At the same time North Korea's government took the unusual step of saying it would distribute a premium female sanitary brand called Daedong in most female units. "This may have been a way to atone for conditions of the past," says Jieun Baek. "That statement may have been to overcorrect for this well-known phenomenon that conditions for women used to be bad. It may have been a way to boost morale and get more women to think, 'Wow, we will be taken care of.'" A premium cosmetic brand Pyongyang Products was also recently distributed to several female aviation units, following a call by Kim Jong-un in 2016 for North Korean beauty products to compete with global brands like Lancome, Chanel and Christian Dior. Despite this, female soldiers stationed in the countryside don't always have access to private toilets, with some telling Morillot they often have to relieve themselves in front of men, making them feel especially vulnerable.
Military service in North Korea
North Korean women must serve a minimum of seven years in the military, and men are required to serve 10 - this is the longest mandatory service in the world It's estimated that about 40% of women aged between 18 and 25 are in uniform - a number that is expected to grow, as military service became compulsory for women only two years ago The government says about 15% of the country's budget is spent on the military, but think tanks say the figure could be up to 40% Gifted students with special skills - for example in sports and music - may be excused military service Sexual harassment, say both Baek and Morillot, is rife. Morillot says that when she broached the subject of rape in the army with serving female soldiers, "most women said it happens to others". None said they had experienced it personally. Lee So Yeon also says that she was not raped during her time in the army between 1992 and 2001, but that many of her comrades were. "The company commander would stay in his room at the unit after hours and rape the female soldiers under his command. This would happen over and over without an end." North Korea's military says that it takes sexual abuse seriously, with a jail sentence of up to seven years for men found guilty of rape. "But most of the time nobody is willing to testify. So men often go unpunished," says Juliette Morillot. She adds that silence about sexual abuse in the army is rooted in the "patriarchal attitudes of North Korean society" - the same attitudes that ensure that women in the army do most of the chores. Women from poor backgrounds recruited into construction brigades, and housed in informal small barracks or huts, are especially insecure, she says. "Domestic violence is still widely accepted, and not reported, so it is the same in the army. But I should really stress the fact that you have the same kind of culture (of harassment) in the South Korean army." Lee So Yeon, who served as a sergeant in a signals unit close to the South Korean border, finally left the army at the age of 28. She was relieved to have the chance to spend more time with her family, but also felt she wasn't equipped for life outside the military and struggled financially.
It was in 2008 that she decided to escape to South Korea.
At the first attempt she was caught at the border with China and sent to a prison camp for a year. On her second attempt, shortly after leaving prison, she swam the Tumen river and crossed into China. There, at the border, she had a rendezvous with a broker, who arranged for her to move through China to South Korea.
The Love Hospital that separates spouses from their lovers
A new industry has emerged in China, helping husbands and wives to separate their unfaithful spouses from their lovers. It's called mistress dispelling, in which clients often pay tens of thousands of dollars to see off unwanted love rivals. A middle-aged woman wearing a funereal black lace dress and large, incongruous sunglasses is ushered into the dimly lit office. She wants her name to remain secret so I will call her Mrs X, but she is happy to talk about her experiences as a client of the Weiqing Love Hospital, Shanghai's best-known Mistress Dispeller service.
In a quiet, quavering voice she tells me that her relationship with her husband has emerged from a crisis stronger than it was in the past. "I thought it was marriage before, but I see now something better, this is real living," she enthuses, though her eyes remain resolutely cast down. What she's describing is the many weeks of marriage counselling she has received, a lesson in positivity and how to be a better, more dutiful wife. Ming Li, a co-founder of Weiqing, counsels women like her (it's overwhelmingly women who seek help) about the secrets of successful wedlock, and how to prevent a husband's attentions from wandering. In many cases, though, it's too late and his attentions have already wandered.
"When I discovered the affair, I confronted my husband," Mrs X says. "We fought bitterly and I kept on asking him, 'Why - why, when I have followed you so many years?' At first he expressed guilt. But after all the fighting, he just didn't want to talk to me any more. That's when I sought help." She opted to pay Weiqing to have the mistress "dispelled". In this case, that involved having operatives persuade the 24-year-old secretary that she could do better than hang around with a man twice her age. Despite costing thousands of dollars, Mrs X is convinced this was a better option than divorcing her cheating spouse.
"We've been through a lot together," she says. "I don't want to give all this up. Separation has never been a concept I have ever thought about. And also I am approaching 50 years old, there's just not a market out there for a woman like me." Ming Li and co-founder, Shu Xin, have been running their Love Hospital for 17 years, seeing more than a million clients, they say. Both put on an effervescent display, keen to describe the joyful possibilities of their brand of marriage guidance, and also the secret weapon - mistress dispelling.
"We have 33 ways to dispel a mistress," Shu Xin explains. "In marriage there are all kinds of problems. And one is having an affair. It's very serious, bad for the family and bad for the stability of society". He goes on to itemise his four main techniques, all of which seem to involve varying degrees of subterfuge: persuading the mistress to fall in love with someone else, getting the husband's boss to relocate him to a different city, getting parents or friends to intervene, and attempting to disgust the mistress by describing the husband's rotten character and nasty hereditary diseases.
I point out this leaves a full 29 other methods.
"Yes but those are a business secret," Shu Xin tells me. "We can't talk about them in the media." The Chinese media are nonetheless full of stories about alleged coercion and bribery, and threats of violence. But the Love Hospital insists it never engages in anything illegal. Another dispeller, Dai Peng Jun, was more forthcoming. He runs his own service in Shanghai as part of a conventional private detective agency. A plain-spoken character, he runs a team of undercover operatives who travel the country helping women separate their menfolk from unwanted "little thirds", as mistresses in China are colloquially known.
"There's one ultimate way of dispelling mistresses," he says. "We befriend them, we get intimate pictures or videos and then we give them to the clients." In other words: honeytraps. When the husband is shown that his mistress is not being faithful to him, he will most often leave her and return to the bosom of the family. Dai argues this represents an important public service, since most wealthy men in China consider it natural to have "a kept woman" on the side. Under Chairman Mao Tse Tung, the age-old Chinese tradition among wealthy men of keeping a concubine was declared degenerate and illegal and the equal rights of women were enshrined in marriage law. But since Chairman Mao's death in 1976, and the immense wealth that subsequent market reforms have brought, rich and powerful Chinese men, including many party officials, seem to have been reverting to the old ways. According to one survey published in the official media, 95% of officials convicted under President Xi Jinping's latest anti-corruption drive, have been found to be keeping one or more mistresses. Three years ago, The People's Daily published "an adultery map", charting where the highest concentrations of philanderers were based. Dai Peng-Jun introduces me to one of his operatives, a specialist "mistress-seducer". He's also called Dai, and he has a sombre manner and reassuringly deep, gravelly voice. He describes his work as a surgeon might a medical procedure. "I act as the bait myself, and the whole team is there on hand to offer expert support," he explains. "I have to understand the different angles needed to please the woman, what she wants. For example if she fancies a luxurious lifestyle, wants luxury products, nice restaurants, we will satisfy her. In my experience most of the mistresses are after financial rewards." Apparently throwing money at the problem works 90% of the time, allowing Dai to manouevre himself into a compromising position with the woman. Once his mission has been completed, he takes the necessary pictures and leaves.
I wonder how he feels about deceiving women for a living.
"We take the measures that are needed," he says. "We represent the rights of the original couple. The client asks us to do what we are doing. And mistresses are the ones who break those standards." It's hard to measure how widespread these dispelling operations have become. In 17 years, Weiqing claims to have carried out more than 100,000. The company is hoping soon to list on the Shanghai stock exchange. Author and social commentator, Zhang Lijia believes the phenomenon can be partly explained by China's divorce laws. Since 2011, any wealth that a divorcing man can show he has brought with him into a marriage does not have to be shared with his ex-wife. Courts will also grant the man's family sole custody of the children, especially in rural areas. "They say that the divorce laws were written to make men laugh and women cry," Zhang says. "Also, outside of the cities it's seen as shameful for a woman to divorce." Mrs X is certainly convinced dispelling her husband's mistress was the only option for her, worth every penny of the thousands of dollars it has cost. Does she still love him, I ask. And isn't it possible that another mistress will come along to replace the one that was dispelled? "Of course I still love him. There are many things I still love about him. And now I know what the problem is with our marriage. I know how to manage marriage." It's hard to challenge such optimism, and the Weiqing Love Hospital sees no reason to. Co-founder Ming Li reassures me her guidance will see them through. "A mistress is a tumour, so the first thing to do is to get rid of the tumour. After this the relationship between the couple is healthier. It's like learning to drive. It's tough to get a driver's licence, but any 18-year-old can get married. We teach them the right path to go down the road with safety."
How do you get work when your cancer won't go away?
David Shutts was a high-achiever - a naval commander who became a champion of British business - until he was diagnosed with cancer. Quickly he discovered employers had little use for him, and the crushing blow set him thinking about a way the talents of people with chronic illnesses could be harnessed. It began as a niggling back pain. Not enough to trouble the doctor with and easy to dismiss as wear and tear or a pulled muscle, so David Shutts ploughed on as usual, meeting the deadlines that kept coming and pursuing an active social life. But it didn't go away, and in two years the pain became constant, accompanied by unexplained weight loss and night sweats that saw him wake every morning in a pool of perspiration. "I'm a bloke," he says, explaining why it took him so long to get checked out. "I just carried on, and it was only when I was unable to operate the garden strimmer because my back was in agony that my wife lost her temper and made me go to the doctor." He was sent for CT scan and when the diagnosis finally came, 10 days after his 50th birthday, it was brutal - a cancerous tumour on the left kidney had spread to the lymph nodes, lungs and bones. It was at stage four on a scale with no more levels, incurable, inoperable and left him, in his own words, "a ticking time bomb". "You know as a 50-year-old with grade four cancer you're not going to live to 100 and that nothing is going to be the same again," he says. In fact, people with this diagnosis are not normally expected to live for more than five years, and - depending on the circumstances - possibly as little as six months.
"It turned out I had all the classic signs of kidney cancer but didn't recognise them. There's a reason why it's called the silent killer, because it's very good at hiding, hard to diagnose and tends to be found when you're looking for something else." Shutts has the confidence and energy you'd expect from a man accustomed to commanding a large team at sea. At the age of 16 he beat 1,500 applicants to land an engineering apprenticeship in the Royal Navy, then rose through the ranks to take the helm of the destroyer HMS Daring - the most advanced warship in the fleet at the time. It was his dream job, but by 2009 - at 45 years old and with an OBE to his name - he was ready for a new challenge. He took a job on land at a maritime logistics company, then moved to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), to work as a regional director. The cancer diagnosis changed everything. For six months Shutts was treated with drugs and radiotherapy that left him feeling "like a wrung-out dishcloth". When he was stable enough to return to work he negotiated a one-day-a-week arrangement with the CBI, but he had a mortgage and bills to pay, so needed more. Something flexible that he could fit around his continuing treatment and the ebbs and flows of his illness. He quickly discovered his options had shrunk dramatically - and that in fact his professional life was at an end. This proved to be the toughest setback of all. "It was the moment I really lost my mojo," he says. "I'm pretty confident and never short of word or two but my self-esteem went completely and I was at my lowest ebb. I've been a chartered engineer, I'd got an OBE for leadership and now I was none of these things, just someone with cancer pretty much ignored and on the scrapheap and feeling like there was really nowhere to go or anyone to turn to. "It was at this point that I really became aware of the true value of work and just how much it offers in terms of self-worth, self-esteem, social interaction." It wasn't just the loss of income, he missed the camaraderie of working life. His mantra had always been "work hard, play hard" and he led by example. All of that was gone. Sadness turned to anger when he thought of the millions of others who, like him, were now sitting at home with valuable skills and experiences that were going to waste, simply because they couldn't commit to full, or even part-time employment.
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