Freedom Rising, Cont.
The balloon people (officially, Fighters for a Free North Korea) have become much more sophisticated in the content of their payloads:
Activists on Saturday let loose 10 giant balloons filled with radios, DVDs money and leaflets into North Korea in defiance of threats from Pyongyang. Around 200 hundred people, mostly defectors, gathered at a public park in Imjingak near the North-South border to release the balloons, which carried slogans such as “Abolish gulags” and “Down with Kim Jong-Il’s Dictatorship.”
The leaflets contained the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations and criticism about North Korea’s communist regime. Park Sang-Hak, an activist and former defector from the North, told AFP that the DVDs had a documentary about Pyongyang’s human rights abuses and “seedy aspects” of leader Kim Jong-Il’s private life. [AFP]
South Korea says it asked the defectors to stop sending the leaflets but never sent the cops out to stop them. And if Seoul wanted to find a justification for that, I suppose it would.
The balloon people are my heroes. For any foreigner with an irrepressible urge to take direct action to help North Koreans, this is a far better way to do it than making yourself a hostage. Contribute here.
They are my heroes, too. They are also poking effective holes in Juche’s hermetic seal.
And their motives are far more altruistic than Chinese merchants and people smugglers (effective and helpful as some of them are in breaching the information curtain.
To OFK’s point that “hostages” are less effective, let us recall this about Robert Park’s incursion into the world’s largest prison:
Largely ignored by the media is the fact that the operation was conceived by Park’s missionary organization Pax Koreana in December as a 2-pronged attack. Prong one of course, was Park‟s defenseless incursion into North Korea proclaiming Jesus Christ‟s love and demanding the opening of the DPRK‟s borders for humanitarian assistance. The second prong involved the launching of 150,000 leaflets across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) by helium balloons on January 27th that explained the reason for Park’s incursion into North Korea and denounced Kim Jong Il’s excesses.
Park’s crossing alone without the 150k leaflets would be one thing; but the leaflets explained who he really is and what he really came to do and the word will eventually spread. I doubt most Nork’s buy his “change of heart” published in the KCNA’s propaganda.
“that the DVDs had a documentary about Pyongyang’s human rights abuses and “seedy aspects†of leader Kim Jong-Il’s private life. “
Where can I get me a copy of this DVD with English subtitles?
T