North Korean defectors are on a crusade against North Korea

North Korean defectors have an information campaign directed at the people from the land they left behind. 

Defectors are on a crusade to covertly flood the North with flash-drives and hydrogen balloons full of news bulletins and documentaries to counter Pyongyang propaganda as tensions escalate with the U.S. over NoKo's nuclear and missile programs.

These crusaders of information are being privately assisted by US-based Human Right Foundation with the ultimate goal of bringing down the Kim regime from within. By messaging directly with North Koreans and providing illicit information, they hope to influence thinking and be the catalyst of dissatisfaction.

About 10,000 flash-drives have been successfully smuggled into the North as Pyongyang's relations sharply deteriorated over the year, said Alex Gladstein, HSF's chief strategy officer.

They are trying to reach 100,000 flash-drives by mid-2018 and are working furiously to get to that target. Military and diplomatic strategies are useless against a lunatic like Kim.

According to Gladstein, this information war was "the only way to inspire change." It's goal is to liberate minds, since they cannot liberate bodies from the clutches of the regime.

"We're creating little windows to the outside world so that the North Korean people can make decisions for themselves about what they want to do with their lives," he said.

Gladstein noted that there is a large appetite for information in North Korea shifting from popular Hollywood and South Korean soap operas to news, educational material and documentaries. Content is chosen by defector focus groups.

The regime seems to be threatened by this, calling them "scum" and "enemy zero."

The memory sticks, also known as "Flash-drives for Freedom," are smuggled at great risk through China's towns that border North Korea, and the black market for goods and information is growing logarithmically. The project has already smuggled about 2 million hours worth of footage, 48m hours of reading material, and they have reached out and touched about 1.1 million North Koreans over the past few years.

When the project first began in 2013, they used hydrogen balloons packed with DVDs, dollar bills and leaflets from the northern town of Paju across the demilitarized zone (DMZ). This is still in use but only when wind conditions are favorable.

The group's approach was implicitly endorsed by Thae Yong-ho, the regime's highest profile defector in 2016. Thae was number two at North Korea's London embassy.

Mr. Thae urged Washington legislators on the House Foreign Affairs Committee to strike at the "Achilles heel" of Kim Jong-un by strategically targeting his people with tailor-made information that would make them question their crappy living conditions.

"We cannot change the policy of terror of the Kim Jong-un regime, but we can educate the North Korean population to stand up by disseminating outside information," Thae said.

We know the information is getting to people in the North. The recent defection of a young soldier who was shot five times as he ran across the border proved this when he woke up from his life-saving surgery and told his doctors that he liked South Korean girl bands.


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