Escape from North Korea (39 page)

The survey, conducted by the InterMedia Institute, found some refugees who said they had zero access to any type of media while in North Korea. But it also found that a high percentage of respondents had owned media devices when they lived in North Korea. Radios were the most commonplace, and a majority of respondents—57 percent—owned a radio. Thirty-five percent had a color TV, and 13 percent had a black-and-white TV. Sixteen percent owned video CD players, a now mostly obsolete technology that preceded DVD players. Fifteen percent of respondents owned VCR players, and 4 percent owned DVD players. InterMedia concluded, “The fact that some people owned these modern technologies in North Korea showed that the influence of the outside world is penetrating into North Korea.”
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Of the two hundred North Koreans surveyed in China, InterMedia reported that seventy-four people had listened to foreign radio broadcasts in North Korea. Most of those who had listened to foreign radio broadcasts at least once continued to listen regularly, data that support anecdotal evidence that the information habit is addictive. Once people start to listen, they find it hard to stop. Recent arrivals—identified as those who left after 2006—were more likely to have listened to foreign radio broadcasts in North Korea, a finding that suggests that North Koreans increasingly are disregarding the law.

Almost all—98 percent—were aware of the harsh punishments meted out for listening to foreign radio broadcasts or watching foreign
films. More than a third—35 percent—knew someone who had been punished for doing so. Yet that didn't seem to deter them.
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In the specific case of Free North Korea Radio, the survey showed that listeners in North Korea spent at least thirty minutes every time they tuned in to the station. Some spent up to an hour. The majority said they understood the Korean language spoken by the presenters, most of whom were from North Korea and spoke with North Korean accents. Most interesting of all, more than three-quarters of listeners found Free North Korea Radio “somewhat trustworthy” or “very trustworthy.” Since the content of Free North Korea Radio and the other refugee-run radio stations often contradicts what North Koreans are taught, it is noteworthy that listeners placed so much confidence in the radio's reporting. Listeners reported similarly high degrees of confidence in the reporting of Radio Free Chosun and Open Radio North Korea. InterMedia concluded that all three radio stations have their niche in North Korea and complement each other.

There is a vacuum of news and information in North Korea, and the refugee-run radio stations play a critical role in opening up the country. They are feeding North Koreans' hunger for information.

Meanwhile, inside North Korea itself, it is courageous local journalists, armed with miniature cameras and flash drives, who are helping to set their country on the path to freedom. Incredible as it may seem in a country where journalism as it is practiced in modern democracies is punishable by a trip to the gulag or public execution, such reporters are a growing phenomenon. Armed with satellite phones, easy-to-hide miniature cameras, and USB drives, these brave journalists are getting videos, photographs, and written information out of North Korea.

Several news organizations support reporters working clandestinely in North Korea. One is
Rimjin-gang
magazine, a division of
AsiaPress International, based in Osaka. The founder and editor of
Rimjin-gang
is a Japanese journalist by the name of Jiro Ishimaru.
Rimjin-gang
is the Korean name for the Imjin River, which begins in North Korea and runs south across the demilitarized zone. The name is a metaphor for the magazine's mission of North Korean journalists sending information to the South. “I came to realize that outsiders attempting to shed light on North Korea hit a wall that is simply impossible to breach,” Ishimaru said. “No one can report on a nation better than its own people.”
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Ishimaru runs a staff of eight reporters. For security reasons, each reporter operates independently. They have no knowledge of one another's identity or the stories their colleagues are reporting. The reporters are men and women who want to do something meaningful with their lives. They are patriots who want to help their country, Ishimaru said. They believe that “if you don't do something, you are just a slave.”

Ishimaru recruits
Rimjin-gang
's reporters in the border regions of northeast China from among the refugees who have fled North Korea. He and colleagues from South Korea give the budding journalists a crash course in the basics of journalism and teach them how to use essential technology. The fledgling journalists then go back to North Korea with enough money to travel around the country, pay bribes if they get into trouble, and hire help when they are ready to return to China. In North Korea, they operate under cover of their “real” jobs—housewife, truck driver, factory worker, etc.—but secretly they are taking photographs or videos and compiling information they write up when they are back in China.

It is next to impossible for ordinary North Koreans to get close to military installations, the gulag, or the Kim family. So
Rimjin-gang
's journalists have set more realistic reporting goals for themselves. They focus on three areas: day-to-day life in North Korea, especially the regime's complicity in the starvation of its people through the withholding of food; the illegal market economy; and
everyday corruption. By the end of 2010, they had produced more than one hundred hours of video on these subjects. One tape showed bags of rice labeled “WFP”—for the United Nations World Food Program—being sold in a marketplace rather than distributed to the needy. Another showed uniformed soldiers using a military truck as a private bus service for paying customers. A haunting third video showed a gaunt, disoriented young woman rummaging through a barren field in search of something to eat.
Rimjin-gang
later reported that this woman died of starvation.

Free North Korea Radio also has underground reporters in North Korea. Its journalists employ similar methods to obtain information. Like the
Rimjin-gang
journalists, they cover stories, secretly take photos or video, and then transport the tapes and flash drives across the border to China. The information they gather is then broadcast back into North Korea. There is no dissident movement in North Korea, and better information is a necessary prerequisite. In late 2009, after the regime introduced monetary reforms that wiped out the value of many people's savings, Free North Korea Radio was one of the first news organizations to report on the popular discontent that ensued. North Koreans who tuned into Free North Korea Radio heard that many of their countrymen shared the dissatisfaction they felt. They learned they were not alone.

Free North Korea Radio also broadcasts guidance for North Koreans who are thinking of trying to escape. One such story advised North Koreans to beware of the man-traps that border guards had built along the banks of the Tumen River, hoping to snare people in the process of leaving. The traps were primitive but effective—deep holes in the ground covered with brush. If someone fell into the trap, he would be unable to climb out of it. An added cruelty was the sharp spikes in the trap that would pierce the captive as he fell. Free North Korea Radio broadcast warnings about the man-traps, and the reporter's video was posted on the radio's website, where North
Koreans living in China might see it and warn family and friends who were thinking of leaving.

Some of Free North Korea Radio's programming targets the North Korean refugee community in China, where access to radio and the Internet is relatively free and where the Korean-language radio stations have a wide listenership among refugees. It invites listeners to send in comments. It broadcasts a phone number and an email address that listeners who want to escape from China can call on for assistance. Callers are directed to someone who can help them find a way to reach the new underground railroad.

North Koreans' hunger for information has created a market that Chinese entrepreneurs are seizing. Their motive is profit, not propaganda. Traders cross the border into North Korea, where they sell cheap Chinese radios that are small enough to be hidden easily but powerful enough to be tuned to foreign broadcasts. The radios cost about three dollars on the local black market. Listeners can pick up signals that allow them to listen to Korean-language stations from China as well as broadcasts from Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and the refugee-run radio stations out of Seoul.

Traders also peddle secondhand video cassette players and video CD players from China. In China, VCR players and VCD players mostly have been replaced by newer DVD technology. Enterprising merchants buy the discarded VCD and VCR devices from their Chinese owners and sell them across the border in North Korea. They also sell the video cassettes and video CDs to play on the devices. It's against North Korean law to possess an unregistered VCD or VCR player or to watch South Korean videos, but the law-enforcement system has broken down enough that more North Koreans are taking the risk, assuming that if they get caught they can bribe local officials to look the other way.

The latest episodes of popular South Korean soap operas turn up in North Korean markets within twenty-four hours of airing.
Entrepreneurs in northeast China put satellite dishes on their roofs so they can download the shows from Korean-language TV stations, make copies, and rush them across the border into North Korea. As one refugee said, yes, North Koreans are scared to risk watching South Korea TV shows, but “the temptation to see the video, the soap opera, is much bigger than the fear of punishment.” Korean-speaking visitors to Pyongyang report that the widespread familiarity with the illegal South Korean soap operas has created a new fad in the capital: speaking in a Seoulite accent.

A time-honed method of sending information into North Korea is via balloon. Balloon propaganda dates back to the early 1950s, when the governments on both sides of the newly created DMZ launched giant balloons carrying propaganda leaflets that were dropped on the other side of the border. The balloon war raged until the early 2000s, when peacemaking efforts spearheaded by then President Kim Dae-jung put an end to the government-sponsored launches. Rough estimates put the number of leaflets dropped by balloon by both Koreas at two and a half billion.

Kim Dae-jung's balloon ban did not apply to nongovernment groups, and religious and civic activists kept up the barrage of balloons flying north across the DMZ. Today the balloons have gone high-tech. They are equipped with GPS-guidance devices that enable operators to drop the contents over targeted areas. They carry DVDs, CDs, and USB drives, as well as printed material and food. Dropped leaflets are typically printed on a waterproof plastic film to make for easier reading. It is a crime for North Koreans to pick up and read the leaflets or eat the food that falls out of the sky. But anecdotal evidence from refugees who have escaped suggests that some do. In 2008, Pyongyang threatened South Korea with military
action if it didn't stop the private balloon launches—a sign that the balloon drops might be having the desired effect.

The balloon drops typically contain information about current events. In 2011, that included news of the poor state of Kim Jong Il's health and the Arab Spring democracy uprisings in the Middle East. After North Korea bombed a South Korean–held island near a disputed sea border in 2010, killing four people, the South Korean government resumed its official balloon drops. In early 2011, it reportedly sent balloons to North Korea carrying food, medicine, and leaflets with news of public protests in Libya against Moammar Gadhafi, the country's longtime dictator.