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.