That’s an information invasion, not a military one. It’s led by North Koreans who have escaped, and it has the potential to transform North Korea–as I describe in my new book, Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia’s Underground Railroad.
You can’t make a phone call to North Korea, or send an e-mail, or even mail a letter. Yet the exiles have found creative ways to get information back home. They hire Chinese couriers to go to North Korea, knock on the door of a relative and deliver a verbal message. Or they have the courier give the relative a Chinese cell phone. The relative then goes to a border area at an appointed time, turns on the cell phone, captures a Chinese signal, and waits for a phone call from his daughter or sister or whoever who has fled to South Korea.
Some exiles have founded organizations dedicated to getting information into the North: radio broadcasts; flash drives containing information and dropped by balloon near university campuses, where professors and students are likely to have access to computers (though not the Internet); DVDs containing South Korean soap operas smuggled into the North. I interviewed a young dancer from Pyongyang who told me how she decided to leave after watching an illegal videotape of a South Korean TV show. She couldn’t believe her eyes at first –the food on the table, the rich lifestyles, the freedom of speech. She realized that the propaganda she had been hearing all of her life was a lie.
This is all changing North Koreans’ perception of the world — and of their own country. The U.S. needs to do more to encourage this information flow. Information helped bring down the Soviet Union. It can help bring down the brutal regime that runs North Korea.
Hmm… countrywide WiFi…surreptitious countrywide WiFi…
This could be more fun than pirate radio.
The Norks would jam it of course; it might take a while though…
Thank you all for your insightful comments. I admire Franklin Graham. It is possible that, unlike other aid organiztion, some of the aid his organization sends actually reaches some needy people. but I doubt it it helping to open the country. The restrictions imposed on the workers for the aid organiztions are usually strict and might include such prohibitions against sending in Korean speakers.
One of the first acts of Kim Jong Eun, the young new dictator, was to issue a shoot-to-kill order on the border. No North Korean was to be allowed to get out. I don’t see any indication that he is a kinder, gentler Kim.
Do you know if the regimes grip has loosened with the power change?
One of the things that has always struck me about North Korea is just how firmly and ruthlessly the North Korean regime holds on to its people. The description of their concentration camps are more horrifying than one could imagine. The great fear I have always had is that their cult like government has everyone too well brainwashed, for any sort of outside dribbles of information to really erode the edifice of their tyranny.
Miss Kirkpatrick:
Could you comment on whether you feel that the work of Franklin Graham and his organization, Samaritan’s Purse, are playing a significant roll in opening up contact with the people of North Korea.
Thank you for a response.
What about taking the excess print runs of South Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese and US mail-order catalogs for consumer goods and foods? Showing the people of North Korea the abundance that exists just across the border would help build the pressure to change, even if only by inducing more of them to try to leave.
It would be too much to hope for a kinder gentler Kim. I was hopping he would just be less in control. I figure the moment regime’s grip slips just a little, freedom might be able to wedge itself in and plant roots…
I would suspect that the biggest loss of control has been the famine. While the government had been able to feed the population regularly and semi-adequately, its hold over the nation was excellent. However, when the food distribution collapsed, so did a modicum of control over the people. What seems to have cropped up in places distant from Pyongyang have been markets. As they developed, they also included increased exposure to things NOT North Korea – and to information. You can only keep people in the dark for so long, then things start deteriorating. Especially when you have a command economy.
I suspect that the military isn’t nearly as committed nor fearsome as westerners have characterized it. It was, after all, involved in large scale black market sales of rice when the 90’s famine hit. And if that’s true, they can be bribed – and so ends your absolute control on information.
Still, I take your point as important. Radio Free Europe greatly helped, and something like that might be helpful here too. People already surreptitiously watch some S. Korean TV. They cannot survive – it’s only a question of how many unfortunate people must die first.