The United States may be hooked on "internet freedom" as its method of choice for undermining dictatorships. But activists in South Korea are using a hybrid of old-school and new technologies to get the word out in North Korea against Kim Jong Il and his pals: balloons packed with paper and digital propaganda. They're easy to produce and distribute – but potentially dangerous.
South Korean activists floated another cluster of balloons packed with pro-democracy and anti-regime news into North Korea today, defying the Hermit Kingdom's threats to shell them into oblivion for the aerial info-war tactic. Voice of America's ace Asia correspondent Steve Herman tweets that this latest balloon salvo also carries some nastygrams making fun of Kim Jong Il and his family.
Though it's one of the poorest countries on earth, some North Koreans do have access to DVD players and televisions, sometimes used for the illicit viewing of popular South Korean soap operas. For them, the balloons released today contain anti-regime DVDs. Printed leaflets – 200,000 of them in today's release – and radios are packaged in as well, accessible to the millions of North Koreans who can't afford more advanced technologies.
Activists have used a variety of methods to make sure the balloons pop over a specific target. Senders have used everything from acid timers that eat through the payload's tether after a given period to electric and clockwork timers in order to hit a target area. One anti-Kim group has even used GPS devices to track the balloons – which seems like it could risk either North Korean GPS jamming or tracking by North Korean authorities.
Activists have been sending balloons across the border for years, floating things like bible verses into the North's notoriously closed dictatorship. South Korean authorities tried to prevent the releases following a 2004 agreement with the North.
But The New York Times quotes an anonymous South Korean Unification Ministry as saying authorities have been content to turn a blind eye to the launches ever since a North Korean submarine sank the South Korean ship Cheonan in March 2010.
Threats are a familiar currency for North Korea, often printed and only occasionally acted on. The balloon launches are starting to garner their fair share of them.
North Korea has pledged to lob artillery at the senders to get them to stop. In March, North Korea's official Korea Central News Agency mouthpiece carried a threat to "blow up through sighting firings the bases for the anti-DPRK psychological warfare including the spots from which leaflets are scattered" and said they're helping to bring the Korean peninsula to the "brink of war." Only last week, the "North again promised to be merciless" in its response to the balloon barrages.
The launches and the threats they provoke do raise concerns. North Korea's been pretty aggro as it undergoes a leadership transition, shelling a South Korean island near the two countries' disputed border and showing off a new nuclear weapons facility. Provoking the North with a balloon bombardment during this sensitive time might provide some inspiration to North Koreans – but it might also provoke another showdown with an increasingly itch-trigger-fingered North.
See Also:
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- North Korea's Viral Vids Will Send You Screaming to Your Secret Bunker
- U.S. Ships in Sim North Korea Missile Smackdown
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