Posted on 03/28/2003 10:03:35 PM PST by HAL9000
U.S. activist plans to send thousands of radios into North Korea to challenge government's information monopoly
SEOUL, South Korea, Mar 29, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- No independent radio or television. No propaganda-free newspapers. No public Internet access. Few North Koreans know what is really happening in their homeland or outside.
Their communist government controls the national media and bars citizens from accessing foreign broadcasts.
A Korean-American human rights activist hopes to lift the curtain of censorship by sending thousands of tiny, solar-powered radios into North Korea so people can listen to foreign stations.
Pastor Douglas Shin plans to attach the lightweight radios to helium-filled balloons and release them from South Korea in June to float on seasonal winds blowing into the North across the world's most heavily guarded border. Wherever they eventually land, he hopes people will pick them up and use them.
"I am going to give the North Koreans their ears," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Los Angeles. "Right now they are deaf because their ears are plugged up."
It's a risky project. Most of the radios will break when they hit the ground, Shin admits, despite being protected with bubble-wrap. The winds could change direction and blow the balloons out to sea.
And whether people will pick them up and use them is not clear. Anyone caught with a foreign-made radio faces severe penalties. Shin says he has heard of people being executed for such an offense.
A spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry said he didn't believe there was a regulation against sending balloons to the North but said the government wouldn't help.
"There is a definitely a need for access to free information in the North. But I'm not sure this project will have much impact," Kim Jung-ro said. "Most North Koreans would not keep the radios. They would report them to the authorities."
The project comes as Washington is pressuring North Korea to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons programs. North Korea has accused Washington of planning to invade once it's done fighting in Iraq.
Few North Koreans are believed to tune into foreign news. Their state-made radios are set so they can only receive particular local stations.
Shin expects to have enough money contributed by individuals worldwide to send up to 10,000 radios, costing about US$3 each, northward on balloons in June.
"If realized, it would be a great thing," said Lee Joo-il, a North Korean defector now working for the Seoul-based Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights. "North Koreans are brainwashed, living without any information."
Maybe some Freeper engineers can suggest out a better way to wrap these radios, or achieve a gentler landing than having the balloons suddenly break in the upper atmosphere where they rise and swell beyond the breaking point. Parachutes maybe? A slow leak in the balloon (as from a pinhole in scotch tape stuck on the balloon)?
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