North Korea claims to boast a powerful army with 1,000,000 highly-trained soldiers but one defector has revealed the reality is far different than despot Kim Jong-un would like the world to believe. 

Former soldier Joo-il Kim exclusively told Express.co.uk life in the army was a hellish experience - one which eventually convinced him to escape across the border. 

Now living in London and speaking from his Free NK newspaper office in New Malden, London, he revealed soldiers were not just failing to protect the country but actively destroying it. 

He said soldiers were all but abandoned by the government, with malnutrition common. The starving soldiers were kept disciplined by regular beatings and kept fed by pillaging local villages. 

Mr Kim said: “Before I went into the military I thought I was living in the best place in the world. After I went to the military I saw the real face of the North Korean army and society. 

“What I learned in textbooks was the soldiers were helping people. What I saw in reality was there were thieves everywhere, soldiers were beating people, even some soldiers were dying from starvation.”

He said female soldiers were so malnourished their periods would stop and they would lose their hair. 

These sights, Mr Kim said, sowed the seeds of doubt that everything he had learned about North Korea and the rest of the world might not be true. 

He said: “Growing up in North Korea is not any other place in the world. 

“We were brainwashed, literally, to believe North Korea is the best place in the world and our leader was the best person in the world.

“I didn’t doubt anything about the system, about the values they were teaching me. That’s why I was a model student, why I went up to a high-ranking military academy.” 

He rose through the ranks in the army which allowed him certain perks, including an ability to travel across the country - something the vast majority of North Koreans are barred from doing. 

He said these journeys showed him the issues he was experiencing in his unit, which was located near the DMZ, was actually happening across the rogue state. 

Mr Kim said: “First I thought it was an isolated system to my own unit. But after I went up to a higher ranking I was able to travel. I could see it was not isolated, it was happening all across the country. I could see it was a real big problem. 

“I never witnessed any soldiers helping out residents. Rather I witnessed soldiers robbing people of their belongings, their food. 

“Even some soldiers took apart people’s houses to bring out materials to build their own barracks. Destroying everything. 

“Soldiers don’t produce anything, they just use up. The government doesn’t provide them with anything so they have to steal from the people.”

He said a propaganda billboard in the capital of Pyongyang, which was designed to brainwash citizens, actually gave him the final push he needed to flee. 

Mr Kim said: “In Pyongyang there is a huge sign which said ‘We serve the nation - there is nothing to envy in the world’. Looking at the sign I had a huge question erupting inside me: ‘Really? What is outside this country? What is in the world?’

“I was curious. I longed to know the outside world. My whole world was collapsing because of my doubts.”

Mr Kim had seen enough and knew he had to flee North Korea. Read about his terrifying flight for freedom here.