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A prominent North Korean defector has revealed he decided to abandon his country after watching a pirated DVD of the film Titantic.

Ex-political prisoner Jung Gwang-il fled to Seoul from Pyongyang in 2004 to escape the secretive regime then led by Kim Jong-il - the dad of current supreme leader Kim Jong-un.

He declared his plans to escape to South Korea were hatched when he watched the Oscar-winning disaster movie starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio .

Jung described the film was the "most subversive thing" he had seen after he watched a pirated Chinese DVD smuggled across the border, The Times reported.

(Image: Reuters)

He said he was left mesmerised by the film's love story and added he assumed director James Cameron had built an ocean liner and sunk it instead of using special effects.

He told the Times: "In North Korea, and in North Korean films, love is reserved to the party and leader.

"Love is political because it means putting feelings for an individual before loyalty to the state."

Jung has identified foreign films and television programmes, which are outlawed in North Korea, as a key weapon in the fight to overthrow the regime instead of military force.

(Image: Handout)

He said action dramas, instead of political material, persuaded him he was being lied to by his government, The Times reported.

James Bond films, Vin Diesel adventures and South Korean soap operas were among the shows he watched illegally in his homeland.

He now heads up the No Chain organisation which smuggles information from the outside world into North Korea.

Jung hopes information through pirated content could spearhead a "change in mentality" similar to that displayed in East Germany, which led to the tearing down of the Berlin wall.

He added: "We want to use information to overthrow the regime, rather than military force, because that would bring so many casualties."