While the outside world focuses on Kim Jong-il's nuclear weapons program, domestically he runs the world's most tightly controlled society with an estimated 250,000 people confined in "re-education camps."

Malnourishment is widespread and according to the United Nations World Food Program, the average 7-year-old boy in North Korea is almost 8 inches shorter and more than 20 pounds lighter than a South Korean boy of the same age.