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Category: Subversion

July 19, 2011

Reunifying Korea, One Shot at at Time!

You may remember that several years ago, a liquor distributor in the United States tried to introduce North Korean soju into the U.S. market. That effort failed long before President Obama reimposed trade sanctions on North Korea, partially because of the importer’s legal troubles, but probably also because the stuff supposedly tasted awful. Apparently, North Korean consumers share that assessment, because the same brand of South Korean soju that once kept me fully occupied as a prosecutor and defense counsel...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics/Subversion
June 15, 2011

State Department Funds Global Internet Revolution

I believe that history will eventually record this little-noticed policy decision as the game-changer in America’s half-century standoff with North Korea. No one can predict when we’ll see the result, but for all their imperfections of vision and execution, the Obama Administration and Secretary of State Clinton in particular deserve tremendous credit for this. The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek...

Categories Subversion/Technology
February 20, 2011

Mesh Networking: Another Way to Bring Cell Phone Service to North Korea?

This video gives a simple explanation of the concept of mesh networking, which allows android phone users who download some additional software to connect with each other wirelessly without a base station or cell phone towers. An Australian group known as The Serval Project is trying to raise funds to test and prototype the technology, and OFK reader Josh Hansen wrote me a few weeks back to start a discussion about the potential this technology could have for bring cell...

Categories Subversion/Technology
February 8, 2011

South Korea should close Kaesong and encourage remittances.

The Chosun Ilbo reports that as the North Korean diaspora swells, those who have escaped are forming stronger financial links with their hungry families in the homeland. And this has some people concerned: North Korean defectors settled in South Korea are sending some US$10 million a year to their families back home, it was reported on Sunday. The amount is expected to grow as there are more than 20,000 North Korean defectors in the South and the number is increasing,...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics/Refugees/Regime Change/Subversion
January 8, 2011

South Korean Hackers Hit North Korea’s Twitter, YouTube Accounts

Someone is sending birthday greetings to Kim Jong Eun, the guy who may or may not be North Korea’s next figurehead, but who certainly has tremendous potential as an anti-regime propaganda foil. Most YouTube viewers won’t notice a key detail about this crude (and rather clever) animation — it’s hosted on the pro-North Korean “uriminjokkiri” channel. Mr. Kim, you’ve been hacked: Hat tip to argfoub. The Washington Post’s Chico Harlan reports that they’ve also hit North Korea’s Twitter account (the...

Categories Humor/Satire/Kim Jong Un/Propaganda/Subversion
December 20, 2010

North Korea Furious About Leaflets That Only Reinforce Loyalty

So … if the leaflet drops merely reinforce the loyalty of North Koreans to the regime, then what is the regime so upset about? The North’s official Web site, Uriminzokkiri, said the bills are “nothing more than waste paper” and that the leaflets do little to undermine the pride of its people in the communist regime. “Such confrontational madness will only snap up the extraordinary alarm and ire of our army and people,” it said in a commentary. North Korea’s...

Categories Subversion
December 16, 2010

Clandestine Broadcasters Want Access to Medium Wave Frequencies

Until now, I did not realize that the South Korean government’s practice of bogarting all the good radio frequencies was imposing such a high cost on dissident broadcasting to North Korea. This week, some of those broadcasters have joined to rally for access to medium-wave frequencies. In the current times, I can’t see why the South Korean government wouldn’t agree to this: Four radio stations broadcasting programs to North Korea joined hands in a live event at Cheonggye Plaza in...

Categories Subversion
November 27, 2010

North Korea: Sorry We Shelled Your “Human Shields”

You have to admit that it was pretty diabolical of Lee Myung Bak to have planted those human shields in their own villages and homes years before he was even inaugurated. In fact, the two civilians who were actually killed were construction workers on the ROK Marine post, but the given the North’s shelling of civilian neighborhoods, it’s lucky there weren’t a lot more “human shields” killed: The North really does have a special gift for adding insult to injury....

Categories Propaganda/Subversion/U.S. Military/Yeonpyeong Attack
October 15, 2010

Lack of Money Is the Root of All Evil

While most of the media are fixed on the movement of stage props on reviewing stands in Pyongyang, mine remains in North Korea’s outer provinces, markets, and ratlines across the Yalu. These, after all, are the things that will drive real change in North Korea. A new report from the Korea Times suggests that increasingly, money smuggling has become an engine of regeneration for North Korea’s free markets: It is common for North Korean defectors here to send money to...

Categories NK Economics/Refugees/Subversion
July 7, 2010

Son Jong Nam, R.I.P.

It is a terrible thing to say, but I will say it: it is better that Son Jong Nam is dead than that he still endures torture in North Korean captivity. Truthfully, I had long assumed that Son had died, even by the time I wrote this post in late 2007. Now, Son’s brother has told an AP reporter that his brother is dead. Like most North Koreans, Son Jong Nam knew next to nothing about Christianity when he fled...

Categories Deprogramming/Religion/Resistance/Subversion
June 14, 2010

Psyops Updates

Kim Jung-Wook, the Joongang Ilbo’s Washington Correspondent, thinks that the Cheonan Incident has revived the U.S.-Korea alliance, but frankly, the end result may well be the exact opposite. No, the incident didn’t raise tensions in a way that makes obvious the many conflicts in the two states’ interests, and yes, President Obama has shown more backbone than the North Koreans probably expected. The problem with this theory is that so far, there has been no significant response to the attack...

Categories Deprogramming/North-South/Propaganda/Subversion/The Fifth Column
May 29, 2010

Is the ROK Goverment Warming Up to N. Korean Defectors’ Leaflet Campaign?

The ROK government is still sending people to question the balloon people, but it’s not the Unification Ministry anymore. Even the Lee Administration clearly wasn’t comfortable with their activities. Now, however, it’s the boys from ROK Army psyops that are asking the questions. Although it’s not completely clear from this Joongang Ilbo article, I take this as a good sign: “Only a while ago, we had officials from the Unification Ministry telling us to refrain from sending leaflets,” said Park...

Categories Propaganda/Subversion
May 25, 2010

Kim Jong Il Obviously Fears Rantings of Obscure U.S. Imperialist Running Dog

So no sooner do I publish my Capitalist Manifesto than I read that the Anjeonbu, notorious for operating all of North Korea’s large kwan-li-so prison camps except Camp 18, has been sent out among the provinces as a counter-subversion force: According to sources, special police squads have been formed in each province under the People’s Safety Ministry (PSM) to take action to block out information on foreign countries and root out anti-regime suspects. A source from Shinuiju reported on Tuesday,...

Categories Subversion
May 25, 2010

That’s More Like It: South Resumes Propaganda Broadcasting to North Korea

While most of the reporting has focused on the rather futile gesture of blaring propaganda from loudspeakers, it seems that South Korea is doing something else that’s more likely to reach a wider North Korean audience: South Korea’s military resumed radio broadcasts airing Western music, news and comparisons between the South and North Korean political and economic situations late Monday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military also planned to launch propaganda leaflets by balloon and other methods...

Categories Propaganda/Subversion
May 18, 2010

Balloon People Keep Up the Pressure

“We’re going to send 500,000 propaganda leaflets, 1,000 CDs showing footage of a skirmish between South and North Korean Navies in waters off Yeonpyeong Island, 1,000 radios, and 3,000 one-dollar bills on three to four occasions until June 7,” said Choi Sung-yong, the leader of a group named Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea. “We have to let North Koreans and the international community know that the explosion of the Cheonan was a terrorist attack launched at Kim Jong-il’s orders....

Categories Propaganda/Subversion
May 5, 2010

Anti-Castro Group Working to Put Cheap Cell Phones into the Hands of Cubans

Another interesting cell phone idea: An anti-Castro blogger is asking readers to donate old cell phones: Cell Phones for Cuba takes old cellphone donations and using a recycling entity here in the States, uses the moneys generated from the usable parts of the old phones to purchase new, unlocked phones that work in Cuba. And then through various entities and other means, get said new cell phones into Cuba and into the hands of the Cuban people. I’ve heard that...

Categories Subversion/Technology
May 2, 2010

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...

Categories Propaganda/Subversion
April 26, 2010

More Blockade-Running Technology: Cheaper Satellite Phones

After this post on DIY cell phone base stations generated interest from readers, I followed one suggestion in the comments to see whether satellite phones have gotten any cheaper recently. They have, and how. This model is currently selling for under $235 new on Amazon.com. I have to think that they could be acquired for even less in volume through sources in India or China. Can anyone out there find a better price?

Categories Subversion/Technology