North Korea's Arirang Mass Games in Pyongyang become the entry point for Vice founder Shane Smith and his crew, who spend a year and a half negotiating with North Korean officials just to get inside the country. The film follows their preparations: interviews with North Korean refugees now living in South Korea, a tense discussion about bribing a consulate official in China, and a border crossing through the DMZ. Along the way the crew gets stuck in an airport in northern China, where officials confiscate their passports and cash before marching the group to a restaurant. There, women appear and start performing North Korean nationalist songs while the rest of the diners quietly leave, revealing themselves as secret police watching to see whether the visitors play along. The crew joins in, singing and dancing, and gets their visas the next morning while others in their tour group are turned away. It's the first of a three-part series, and this opening chapter is entirely about what it takes just to reach the border.