the korean peninsula. ..nestled in the heart of what's otherwise a no—man's land. here, a community of south koreans live in the shadow of their enemy, north korea. as young people shun a life of semi—captivity, its numbers are dwindling, along with the hope korea will ever be reunified. ourjourney into the demilitarised zone begins at dawn. we pass checkpoint after checkpoint accompanied by commander chris mercado. freedom main, this is freedom 6. over.

see this kind of blue archway and the white sign beyond it? we're now entering the demilitarised zone. this is the most militarised border in the world. hundreds of rounds of artillery point in both directions, and securing this level of access is incredibly rare. to our left and to our right, we have active minefields. there's more than two million mines inside of the dmz. freedom main, freedom main. this is freedom 3. as we drive towards north korea, we reach a small cluster of homes. this is the village of taesung, home to 138 people, many now in their 60s and over. kim dong—rae was here long before the korean war would decide the village's peculiar fate. translation: don't get me started on what i went - through during the war.

it was unspeakable. we were caught in the crossfire. both sides were firing at each other with the village in the middle. news archive: communist troops have invaded southern korea. - you could see the bullets flying left and right. a set of documents is signed by general harrison. - when a ceasefire brought an end to the fighting, the demilitarised zone was created to keep the two warring armies apart. all the villages inside this 2.5 mile—wide buffer zone were cleared, but taesung was allowed to remain along with a village to the north to serve as a symbol of peace and hope that one day korea would be reunified. dong—rae's husband was shot in the stomach by north korean soldiers and later died

from his injury, leaving her to raise their six children in a perpetual state of high alert. there are no shops, restaurants or medical facilities here, and dong—rae's life has been stressful and lonely. translation: living here | in the old days was difficult. after the war, there were no cars and a bus only came once a week. and now it's three times a day. what do you leave the village for these days? i have to go out to get my hair done because there are no shops here. i go once every two months. i want to do it every month... ..but it's a hassle. the residents farm for their living. with extreme isolation comes an abundance of land.

one day i was picking up acorns over there, and i saw north koreans. i started screaming. it was so scary. do you pay much attention to whether relations between north and south korea are good or bad? no. we live with our backs to each other, so i don't think about that. the village is secured by an elite battalion of soldiers from the united nations command, a us—led army made up of soldiers from more than a dozen countries. they're supported by south korean troops. usa, numberone! that's right. the villagers are grateful for their protection, and these displays of affection are common.

from the roof of the town hall, we get a clear view into north korea. so from where we're at right now, we can see from left to right and right to left, a heavily wooded area denotes the border between north and south korea. there are no fences, there are no barriers, and there are no walls that separate north and south. so there is nothing to physically stop the north koreans from walking over into this village here. except for us. except for you. that's right. north korea has also been allowed to keep one village inside the dmz — the village of kijong. though no—one is thought to live there now. so we call it propaganda village, largely because we can observe that many of the windows and doors are actually painted on some of the buildings. oh, yeah, you can see some of the buildings here, right? can you? yeah. can you see the windows that are painted on or are you looking at a building that actually has windows?

i'm not sure. it's hard to tell! given the north koreans have decided to abandon this village and they don't have people living there, why do you keep people living here at such obvious costs to you guys and such risk? many people believe that both taesung dong and kijong dong exist in the hope of one day reunifying the korean peninsula. failing that, perhaps one day it could pave the way for the normalisation of relations between the two koreas. what would happen if it disappeared? it would be a very strong symbol, right, that the terms of the armistice are no longer being enforced. as we're preparing to move on, we're alerted to a threat. we were planning just nowjust to walk up here a couple of hundred metres to a field closer to the north korean border. but we've just found out in the last half hour that a group of north koreans have defected directly down here to the south. and so we've just been told by the security team here that it's too dangerous to go there because the north korean

guards, it's likely, are going to be on high alert. and it is a reminder that although in some ways this village feels very peaceful, the situation is incredibly unpredictable. given the risks, it might seem strange anyone would choose to live here. but those who were born here, like park pil—sun, have their history sewn into this land. the ceasefire line cut him off from his brother. translation: my brother lived to the north of the border. - then the korean war happened and the border was blocked so we couldn't visit each other any more. i haven't heard from him since. did you ever think that 70 years later, north and south korea would still be divided? who would have known it would last this long? why have you stayed living in the village all these years? i'm not a well—educated man. i'm not sure what i'd have done for work if i had left.

all i know is farming. my wife has alzheimer's, so i can't go anywhere. she doesn't let me leave at all so we just watch tv together all day. the villagers are under no obligation to live here. habit and necessity are the reason so many have stayed put rather than a belief in the role they're playing. once the risk from the defection has gone, we're taken out to the fields bordering north korea. this is designated a high risk field, meaning these armed soldiers must stand guard while the resident harvests the last of his season's rice. the village mayor takes us as close to the border as we can get.

translation: if you look there, you see the sign where _ the border is. beyond that is north korea. threshing, humming sound what's that we can hear now? that sound ? that's north korean farming equipment. it looks peaceful now, but underneath this, there's an eeriness. people here carry a bit of fear inside them. the residents are on the frontline of escalating tensions between the north and south. earlier this year, north korea branded the south its number

one enemy and said reunification was no longer possible. both sides have increased their military presence inside the dmz, meaning the villagers are offered some serious perks to persuade them to stay here. they don't pay taxes or rent or serve in the military. translation: it isn't a stretch |to call this paradise on earth. | kim kyung—rae fought to save this land at the age of 16, but his six daughters have all left the village, bound for seoul. sleepy taesung can no longer compete with the bright lights and opportunities of modern—day south korea. yoon—kyung is mr kim's third daughter. she left as a teenager to go

to school and never came back. this is a photo of my wedding. and my youngest daughter's wedding. has it been sad for you over the years having all six of your daughters leave the village? i was most heartbroken when i had to send my youngest daughter away. for years, women have been at a disadvantage here. while men were allowed to marry outside the village and bring their wives in, women were not, forcing them to leave to find love. in the past decade, the village has shrunk by a third as the old die and the young leave. as darkness descends, the threat from north korea rises. dog barks

the soldiers go door to door to check everyone's safely inside. the villagers need permission to leave their homes after seven o'clock. this curfew is the most restrictive part of village life. as a young couple with two small children, the shin family is unusual. mi—sun met gyung—ho at a party, and he convinced her to move in. translation: when my parents visited for the first time, -

my dad couldn't sleep when he went home. he said, "isn't this village too scary?" translation: he thought it was dangerous. - the curfew is the hardest thing about living here. when you're young, you want to go out and have fun. but here you can't stay out late drinking and come home in the early hours. do you think young people can be convinced to stay here? it's asking a lot of young people to expect them to live here, given the difficulties. i don't think it will be easy. their children attend the village primary school. there are so few children that most pupils are bussed in from outside. what do you like about living here? do you want to live in this village when you grow up? i want my children to live outside the village,

to live in society and travel. i want them to have lots of experiences. if this trend continues, the village could disappear. the united nations command, which runs the village, is now brainstorming ways to keep it alive for the sake of peace. we're considering potentially reducing the number of days that the villagers are required to stay in taesung dong. but we have to get it right because we can never go back. but an increasing number of south koreans no longer believe in reunification or even want it. and as this dream dies, it's getting harder to convince

people to live here on the front line of a conflict that might never be resolved. translation: taesung village acorn jelly is the best. - mrs kim knows her days here are numbered. i'm quite old now. this is the last time i'll make myjelly so i'm giving it my all. yesterday there was a funeral here. phone rings i got a phone call from a friend. she said, "hey, it's just you and me now. "let's try to hold on for a little longer." but it's really hard at our age. i'll be the first one to go, not the village.

i'm jean mackenzie and i am the bbc�*s sole correspondent covering the entire korean peninsula, so north and south korea. when i arrived in korea, relations between north and south korea were in this really interesting period of flux. and so things on the peninsula felt a lot more volatile than they had done in quite a number of years. and so when i entered that situation and was seeing tensions escalate, i was thinking, "well, who does this actually affect "right here, right now? "who's having to deal with this?" and then i learn about this community of south koreans that live inside the demilitarised zone. right.

we're getting out. good morning. annyeong haseyo. how are you? morning. this isjean mackenzie with the bbc. the demilitarised zone is this strip of land that separates north and south korea, and it is a buffer zone, really, between the two countries. so what you have essentially is two countries that are technically still at war, even though they're not fighting. please do not make any hand gestures to the north and do not go past the soldiers behind you, to your left and right. despite its name, the demilitarised zone is actually one of the most militarised borders in the world. so both north and south korea have hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery pointed in each direction across this strip of no—man�*s land, which is essentially there to keep north and south korea apart. so to enter this strip of land requires an awful lot of authorisation and is quite rare of itself. but to go to this village

is incredibly rare. this is a private community, a quite closed community of south koreans. and so it's not somewhere that journalists can just go to. when we went there, especially for the first time, it felt really special. the demilitarised zone is run by an international peacekeeping force called the united nations command. so they were the people that we had to get our permission from. nobody had actually been given the kind of extensive coverage that we were asking for, which was three whole days inside the village, to really just observe village life... annyeong haseyo. ..and get to know the villagers and the soldiers that are protecting them and understand how the village worked. so we had to try and convince the united nations command

to give us this sort of access. and at first we were told that itjust wasn't going to be possible. we were asking for too much. but over the course of a year, going back and forward and speaking to various people inside the organisation, we finally did get to a point where we were happy and they were happy that we could do this. inside of each of those little pockets of trees — you can see one right over here — in those pockets are actually north korean guard posts. so all the team had to wear one of these, and the reason that we had to wear this was so that the north korean border guards could clearly see that we were media. because they would have been aware of our presence, they would have been watching us. we were a sort of unusual addition to this village. and so those that were surveying the village would have wanted to know what we were about. and we were getting quite close up to the border, so if we hadn't been wearing these, it could have indicated some sort of threat. we did have to ask the unc

if we could keep them at the end. they wanted us to hand them back. but it is always nice for a memento and they were... they let us have them in the end. when you're in the village, i think the thing that struck me is it's so calm and peaceful. and if it weren't for the hundreds of soldiers or the enormous north korean flagpole that looms over everything, you would forget where you were. and it only sort of takes on this eerie quality, i think, when you get right up close to the border. what's that we can hear now? threshing, humming sound for a moment we stopped filming and we all stood there in silence. and then we could hear the sound of north koreans singing over the border,

and we could also hear the sound of their tractors and some of their farming equipment. and that was just remarkable, to just be able to stand there, and not see into north korea, but to hear into north korea. it was interesting to think about being watched by the north koreans, and that isn't something i think i'd considered an awful lot before we went into the zone. but then to be told by the team on the ground that the north korean border guards would undoubtedly be watching us and be aware of our presence was just a slightly eerie feeling, i think. usa, numberone! that's right. so we went into taesung village with the military... ..but they actually had no bearing on who we spoke to. so they didn't tell us who to talk to, they didn't try

and control who we talked to. and when i sat down to do my interviews with people, they weren't present. so they would step outside the room. they would be watching, they'd be keeping us safe, but they weren't. .. they weren't there for the interviews themselves. with this kind of story, you just couldn't do it without the military, and we wouldn't be safe to do it without the military. so, yes, we do have to move around with them, but i didn't feel restricted. i mean, the village itself is tiny. and what we wanted was to get a good sense of the village and we were able to explore the whole of it. and we were able to stay after dark and to see how it operated at night, which was a huge concession from the military.

very, very little actually leaks out of north korea. so, of course, telling that story is challenging, but there are sources of information available to us that make me feel like i'm not just telling one side of the story, no. i mean, we have, often, a kind of deluge of information from the north korean state themselves, who put out things almost daily on state media. and, yes, it's state media and of course it's propaganda, but it's still the north korean government's way of talking to us and telling us their side of the story. so we do have that. and then, of course, we have sources who we speak to who help us better understand what is happening inside the country. and the people, crucially, who are so valuable to us are the people who've managed to escape north korea and who can tell us what things are like from their perspective.

with each year that goes by, i think there is less hope that north and south korea will be reunified. and i think even here in south korea, we see the younger generations being less enthusiastic about the prospect of reunification. but actually, even this year, i think this story has become even more significant because despite reunification maybe looking less and less likely, it's always been the official policy of the north koreans and the south koreans that the two countries would reunify peacefully one day. but this year, the north korean leader, kimjong—un, came out and said for the first time he abandoned this policy of reunification. he essentially said, "look, the south korean people "can no longer be considered our brothers and sisters. "this is a hostile country. this is an enemy state." and so that is a huge ideological shift from the north koreans, and it does change the dynamic here. and it does lead us to think about the village of taesung and what that means for these people living along the border

with north korea. the whole purpose for their village is that they are this beacon of hope for reunification. do i think that in my lifetime north korea will be an open country, that we'll be able to go freely or that north and south korea will be reunified? that's a very different question. and i don't know. hello there. at last some beautiful spring sunshine for much of the uk on saturday including here in cumbria.

it wasn't long before we saw the cloud thicken from the west before outbreaks of rain moving northwards and eastwards. this will come down as rain over wales for a time into central and southern england and eastern england so a soggy start to the day but it is a mild one, milder than it was on saturday morning. temperatures between five and 11 degrees. double figures in the south still. a mild start of the day, more sunshine on offer throughout the day on sunday but also a few showers in the afternoon. it's a very wet start for parts of southern england. the heavy rain clears over the north sea. here it should brighten up by lunchtime and perhaps more sunshine developing. sunny spells elsewhere. coastal and hill fog for a time across the west. it will cloud over northern ireland in the afternoon. outbreaks of rain here, some of the shower is heavy and thundery the northern england

but mild again, we could see 17 celsius in east anglia as we head through the afternoon. looking to the west again as we had through sunday night and into monday, various weather fronts approaching. these are fizzling out. there will be rain in the north and west throughout the night and then it is a bit of patchy cloud as we head through much of monday. for most of us on monday it will stay dry, clouding over, outbreaks of rain over northern ireland and western scotland by the end of the day. the air is still mild. again, temperatures will peak in the teens for many. keeping that mild air heading through monday and tuesday with that southwesterly wind. on tuesday we are likely to see more heavy rain across the north and the west. so for northern ireland and the western scotland. elsewhere i think it'll stay largely dry as we had throughout the day. a lot of the cloud will break up and we will see brighter spells developing. all eyes out towards the southwest by the time we get to the end of tuesday because this rain could cause some problems perhaps on wednesday. but the air is still very mild

on tuesday, 12—16 celsius. it could turn cooler as we head through wednesday and thursday. it stays unsettled, more rain forecast at times. bye— bye.

live from washington, this is bbc news. russia has accused ukraine of disrupting its presidential elections — a ballot where president putin has quashed all real opposition. among those voting are russians living in the estonian border town of narva. the bbc speaks with the country's prime minister about russian aggression in ukraine.

germany becomes the latest country to criticise israel's plans for an offensive in the southern gazan city of rafah and to call for more aid to be allowed in. i'm helena humphrey. it's good to have you with us. russia has accused ukraine of disrupting its presidential elections. voters headed to the polls on the second day of a three—day election that is almost certain to result in victory for incumbent president vladimir putin. but moscow said ukraine is intensifying its terrorist activities to signal to the west it needs more financial assistance and weaponry. russian authorities say two people were killed by ukrainian shelling in the city of belgorod near the border with ukraine. shops and schools were closed in the city. authorities also reported shelling at a voting station in a russian—occupied part of ukraine's zaporizhzhia region. the head of russia's electoral commission said there have been

20 incidents so far of people targeting ballot boxes. protests could to continue on sunday when supporters