BBC insists Panorama North Korea programme will go on

The BBC says an edition of Panorama filmed secretly on a university study trip to North Korea is due to be broadcast as planned despite claims students may have been put in danger.

Three BBC journalists accompanied 10 London School of Economics students and spent eight days in the country.

The university and its students' union have demanded the corporation withdraw the programme.

"There were 10 students. We told them there would be a journalist on the trip and, if that journalist was discovered, it could mean detention and that it could mean arrest."

Nine of the students were aged 21-28 while one was 18, he said.

The LSE has complained that the students were not told there was an undercover team of three, filming a high-profile documentary.

The programme North Korea Undercover is set to be broadcast amid rising tensions in the region caused by the secretive state testing a nuclear device and missile technology.

Alex Peters-Day of the LSE students' union said the programme should be dropped because students were lied to and could not give informed consent.

Panorama reporter John Sweeney spent eight days inside the country for the programme, travelling with his wife and a cameraman.

But the BBC said the film was strongly in the public interest.

But BBC head of news programmes Ceri Thomas said the North Korean government was the only party the corporation had deceived.

"We have a duty to give enough information to people on a trip like this so they can give us fully informed consent," he said.

Thomas admitted the students had initially been told there was one journalist but that, when they were in Beijing before they flew into Pyongyang, they were told there would be three journalists.

He said North Korea was "one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet which is threatening nuclear war in the Korean peninsula".

The "public interest arguments" for making and showing the programme were "overwhelming", he added.

He said three of the students had since asked "that their images be taken out" and that they would be "pixellated or blobbed".

Students' union general secretary Ms Peters-Day - who was not on the trip - told the BBC News Channel: "One of the students made it absolutely clear that she was not made aware of what happened.

"For us, this is a matter of student welfare - students were lied to, they weren't able to give their consent."

She said all the LSE's future research was "now at risk".

"I think the trip was organised by the BBC as potentially a ruse for them to get into North Korea and that's disgraceful.

"They've used students essentially as a human shield in this situation."

LSE pro-director Prof George Gaskell said students had been put in a "potentially extremely dangerous" situation.

The university had been told last week that the BBC had used the party as cover for Panorama filming during the eight-day trip, he added.

He said he was glad LSE staff had not been left "wondering about how we were going to get these students out of solitary confinement in some North Korean jail".

"I think there is less danger to students than there is to my colleagues," he added.

"Some of my colleagues at the present are in Africa, China and various other sensitive countries.

"If their independence and integrity is challenged, they may find themselves in considerable risk."

Meanwhile Universities UK, the umbrella body for UK universities, said it regretted "the BBC's approach in this matter".

"Universities must be able to work with integrity and operate in sensitive areas of the world," chief executive Nicola Dandridge said.

She added: "The way that this BBC investigation was conducted might not only have put students' safety at risk, but may also have damaged our universities' reputations overseas."

Panorama reporter John Sweeney said the majority of the students he had travelled with supported the programme.

"What the LSE is saying we dispute," he told BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House programme.