Original subtitles

Welcome to Global Eye from the BBC World Service,

a new programme bringing you the best

of the World Service's investigative journalism

and unmissable reporting from BBC teams around the globe.

I'm Jean Mackenzie,

the BBC's correspondent in South Korea.

There's been enormous upheaval here after the country's president tried

to orchestrate a military takeover.

It shocked this country to its core and it's only just recovering.

I'll be explaining what happened

and why, and where South Korea goes from here.

And...how do you keep your culture and traditions alive

when nature has forced you to abandon your homeland?

We'll be following the former residents

of a tiny Caribbean island,

fighting to maintain their way of life amidst a climate emergency.

But first, the team at BBC Eye Investigations have worked with

an international consortium of journalists.

They've uncovered disturbing new evidence about

the fate of hundreds of children who ended up in orphanages

in Syria during the rule of Bashar al-Assad,

the former Syrian leader whose regime collapsed last year.

HE SPEAKS ARABIC No!

HE EXHALES DEEPLY

When the fall of the regime in December 2024

arrived, we had an opportunity for the reunification

of these children with their family.

We have successfully reunited 14 of them,

but we still have 104 missing.

So you didn't take any action at the time

to try to find out what was going to happen

to these 104 children who were given back to the security?

The regime and the ministry came to take them.

We don't know where the regime took them.

We have commissioned an external

and independent investigation to know the truth.

And you can see the full investigation,

Syria's Stolen Children,

on iPlayer now, as well as on the BBC website.

I moved here to Seoul three years ago

to report on North and South Korea for the BBC.

The two countries are still technically

at war with each other,

even though they stopped fighting in the 1950s.

And on the surface,

these countries couldn't be more different.

In the North, you have a brutal,

totalitarian dictatorship run by Kim Jong Un.

Its people can't even access the internet.

While South Korea is a peaceful and proud democracy,

famous for its advanced technology and its pop music.

I didn't expect I'd end up reporting on a military coup here in Seoul.

But in December last year, the president,

Yoon Suk Yeol, unexpectedly declared martial law.

He suspended all political activities

and ordered the army to take control.

He had troops storm the parliament

to stop its politicians from getting in.

Mr Yoon claimed he was doing this because the country

and its institutions had been infiltrated

by supporters of North Korea,

and they were trying to turn South Korea into a communist state.

But the reality is that he was a deeply unpopular president

who didn't have a majority in Parliament and was frustrated

because he couldn't govern effectively.

People who knew him told me

that this was a desperate move by somebody

who had become more and more delusional.

That night in December,

people rushed to the parliament here to try to stop this.

They were horrified. Although South Korea is a democracy,

it's a very young one.

It's been fewer than 40 years since people fought

and died to end decades of military dictatorships,

and this night reminded them of that dark time.

Despite the troops, enough MPs managed to get inside

the parliament to vote down the president's order.

Then there were weeks of protests in the freezing cold,

which I covered for the BBC,

until Mr Yoon was removed from office.

Now he's on trial for what he did and could face life in prison.

These windows were smashed in by the troops that night.

And although the period of martial law only lasted six hours,

it was followed by months of upheaval.

People told me they were frightened, because they didn't feel

they could trust their democracy any more.

And society became radically polarised.

The country's only recently started to heal,

with the election of a new president,

Mr Lee Jae Myung, the former leader of South Korea's opposition party.

He's promised to strengthen South Korea's democracy to make sure

the events of that night can never happen again.

One of the first things he's tried

to do is to improve relations with North Korea.

Tensions between the North and South flared up under Mr Yoon,

who was accused of antagonising Kim Jong Un.

But a lot has changed

since the North and South were last on speaking terms.

Mr Kim has signed a defence pact

with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin,

and is helping him fight the war in Ukraine.

And so far, the North has rejected all of Mr Lee's attempts to talk.

But when Mr Lee visited the White House in August,

President Trump praised his attempts to engage with the North.

A lot of leaders - I've gone through a lot of

leaders in South Korea -

you know, it's been quick, you'll be there for a long time.

But in the various leaders that I've dealt with,

they were not approaching it properly,

in my opinion, having to do with North Korea.

But I think your approach is a much better one.

Given their history, President Trump probably has

a better chance of getting Kim Jong Un

back to the negotiating table, but that's far from guaranteed.

For now, the North and South are still poles apart.

And although people here are so relieved

their democracy survived,

they've realised they can't take

their hard-fought freedom for granted.

Now, here's some more of the best BBC World Service content

you can catch this week.

Every month, World Questions gives voice

to people's concerns about the burning issues

affecting their country.

This month, Jonny Diamond is in Athens to debate solutions to

the country's falling population and the pros and cons of mass tourism.

And you can hear stories

from our 42 Language Services in the Fifth Floor Podcast.

This week, they're exploring the new

trends and technologies used by Colombian drug cartels -

from recruiting their own scientists, to using cutting edge,

remotely-operated submarines.

Listen to both of these programmes on BBC Sounds,

or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Next, here's a thought-provoking tale from BBC Mundo,

our Spanish service, which covers Latin America.

The indigenous Guna community have inhabited

the Caribbean island of Gardi Sugdub for more than 100 years.

But, now rising sea levels mean their home is under threat,

so the government of Panama

is relocating people to the mainland.

Could this be a model

for others facing climate emergencies in the future?

The indigenous Guna people have lived on this island

for over 100 years.

Here they found refuge, after escaping

from Spanish colonisers

and from subsequent wars with rival tribes.

Since then, Gardi Sugdub, which in Guna means "Crab Island",

has not stopped growing and expanding.

But overcrowding was not the only problem on the island.

The sea level also became a risk factor.

Experts estimate that it might be completely

uninhabitable by 2050,

and that the other islands of the Guna Yala archipelago

are likely to suffer the same fate in the coming decades.

300 families were displaced from the island of Gardi Sugdub

to Isberyala, a new site on the mainland.

A forced exodus that has been described

as one of the first relocations due to climate change in Latin America.

Most of them decided to leave,

but there are not enough houses in the new site for everyone.

The relocation plan began more than ten years ago

when there were fewer inhabitants.

Some families were separated.

Isberyala took more than a decade to build.

The government invested $50 million.

The Inter-American Development Bank

also contributed financially.

The work of the community

has also been essential in this project.

There is no medical centre in Isberyala.

This is one of the biggest debts of this displacement.

But the Guna people who moved away

make efforts to maintain their identity.

Thanks for joining me in Seoul.

Global Eye will be back again next week. Goodbye.