A ten-year undercover operation sits at the center of The Mole: Undercover in North Korea, a documentary built from footage its own subjects didn't know was being filmed. Danish director Mads Brügger frames the project less as journalism-as-usual and more as a slow, high-risk infiltration.
What is The Mole: Undercover in North Korea about?
The film follows two ordinary men who spend a decade working their way into contact with figures connected to North Korea's government, using a fabricated friendship organization as their entry point. Hidden cameras capture meetings, negotiations, and connections that unfold over years rather than weeks, with the two men maintaining their cover across an extended and often dangerous stretch of time. Alongside Brügger, the cast includes activist Alejandro Cao de Benos de Les y Pérez and former MI5 officer Annie Machon, both drawn into the same long-running effort from different angles. Rather than a single dramatic reveal, the documentary builds its case gradually, piecing together footage gathered across a genuinely unusual span of undercover work.
About the cast
Mads Brügger directs and appears on screen, while Ulrich Løvenskjold Larsen and Jim Latrache-Qvortrup carry much of the undercover legwork the film is built around. Alejandro Cao de Benos de Les y Pérez and Annie Machon appear as figures connected to the project's access, alongside Hisham Al-Dasouqi, Kim Ryong Chol, and Anders Kristensen.
Context & significance
The documentary is a co-production spanning Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, reflecting the scale of resources needed to sustain an undercover project across a full decade. It sits within a small tradition of long-form investigative filmmaking where the production timeline itself becomes part of the story, rather than a conventional shoot compressed into weeks or months. The film presents its footage and findings as historical documentation of the period in which it was gathered, without added commentary beyond what the participants themselves say on camera.
Watching The Mole: Undercover in North Korea on Ktime
The Mole: Undercover in North Korea streams on K-Time with a free account login, and the title carries both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles for viewers who prefer to watch in Farsi. The site's Farsi-language interface makes documentaries like this one easy to find alongside other long-form nonfiction in the catalogue.