KOREA DEFECTORS
(MURTHY+ROTHMAN) -- PBS NHWE SUN DEC 18, 2016
KARLA MURTHY: North Korea has been ruled by the totalitarian regime of the Kim
family dynasty for the last seven decades...handing power down from
grandfather….to father...and now son, Kim Jong-Un.
The Kim regime has
maintained its grip on North Korea by imprisoning its enemies and by
controlling and censoring the mass media -- newspapers, TV, radio, with only a
privileged few getting access to the internet.
TV shows on state-run
media tout the achievements of North Koreans and their leader. Even at
the border, anthems praising the Kim regime are blasted into South Korea, as we
saw and heard on our recent trip there. But in the last few years, North
Korean defectors based in in South Korea have been undermining the country’s
information blackout.
Just a few miles from
here, nearly 25 million North Koreans are living under total government
censorship. Activists have been smuggling in foreign TV shows, movies, e-books
to give North Koreans a view of the world outside their tightly controlled
borders.”
One of those activists
is Kang Chol-Hwan, a North Korean defector.
In 1992, Kang says he
bribed a border guard and fled across the border into China -- the route most
defectors use to escape.
KANG CHOL-HWAN: We are people who lived in absence of freedom. We know how
precious it is. I want to give all these people their freedom, and the
opportunity to live has humans. These are my friends, my family, and my fellow
North Koreans.
Today, he’s the director
of a non-profit called the North Korea Strategy Center based in Seoul, South
Korea’s capital. Formed in 2007, his group pays Chinese smugglers to send USB
drives filled with prohibited, outside media into North Korea.
He says, even though
North Koreans lack internet connections, they can watch smuggled movies and TV
shows on their computers or on Chinese video players with USB ports, like
these, called “Notels.”
KANG CHOL-HWAN: We send various content from stories on human rights, general
information on South Korea, to images depicting the average American.
KARLA MURTHY: Or a fictional version of the average American: TV shows like
“The Mentalist” and “Desperate Housewives.” Kang says scenes like this one from
“NCIS” that show police officers reading suspects their rights are especially
useful.
KANG CHOL-HWAN: It helps them to realize that in the outside world, even the
criminals have rights.
KARLA MURTHY: There are a handful of groups like Kang’s operating under
the belief that exposing North Koreans to outside media weakens the regime.
KANG CHOL-HWAN: What North Korea really fears, is their people becoming aware of
their suppression.
KARLA MURTHY: Your strategy of sending these USB sticks over there, how do you
know that strategy is working?
KANG CHOL-HWAN: We regularly monitor the response through those who are able to
move across the China-North Korea border more easily. If we find that a
television drama that we sent has been banned, we know that it has been
impactful.
KARLA MURTHY: In fact, government interviews with defectors entering the country
reveal that most were exposed to some outside media in recent years.
Kang Chol-Hwan also
knows from personal experience how outside media can dramatically alter one’s
world view. As a young man in North Korea, he got a hold of a smuggled
radio that picked up “Voice of America” and other broadcasts from South Korea.
He says that was how he
learned the truth about the Korean War -- that North Korea had instigated it- a
fact the regime kept from its citizens.
KANG CHOL-HWAN: In North Korea, we’re taught that it was the U.S. and South
Korea, who attacked the North. I never had any doubts about this information
before. But after listening to the radio, I learned what the North Korean
government had been telling us about the war was not true. This myth allowed
the North to hold the South responsible for the war.
KARLA MURTHY: Would have happened if you were caught listening to foreign
broadcasts?
KANG CHOL-HWAN: You would have been branded as an anti-revolutionary. Then, you
would be sent to an internment camp, but if you were repeatedly caught, you
would be executed.
KARLA MURTHY: Kim Heung-Kwang knows that risk well. He’s also a defector living
in South Korea. But in the North, he actually worked for a government task
force that went door to door confiscating smuggled outside media.
KIM HEUNG-KWANG: When we caught these perpetrators, I felt a sense of protecting
our nation’s morals, and making the nation safer.
KARLA MURTHY: He says many people he caught spent months or years in prison
camps, which he now regrets.
KIM HEUNG-KWANG: Once, we received a call that three university-aged kids were
watching a movie on a CD. When we got to the house, they didn’t open door for
us. So we broke down the door to get inside. These kids were not criminals;
they didn’t steal, or murder anyone. It was done just to prove that they were
in possession a foreign movie. And it was done in such brutal fashion. When I
think about it now, I am very ashamed.
Over time, Kim began to
take a huge risk... keeping and sharing the media he’d confiscated. He also
started reading banned books- like All the Shah’s Men about the 1953 coup in
Iran- that made him question the regime. Then in 2003, Kim was caught by
the government for lending movies to a friend. He was sentenced to a year
of hard labor.
KIM HEUNG-KWANG: At first, I thought that I had made a mistake. I thought that as a
government official who was in charge of protecting North Korea’s laws, I had done
a poor job.
But, time on the farm
was strenuous, and unrelenting. I began to question why I was suffering so
much.
KARLA MURTHY: When he was released in 2004, Kim says, he decided to defect...
taking another risk by bribing a North Korean border guard to let him cross
into China. Today, Kim runs “North Korean Intellectuals Solidarity,” another
group that traffics outside media into North Korea.
Kim takes a different
approach by making his own videos recording of South Korean homes and markets
to show North Koreans how well other people live. Also a computer science
professor, he’s developed a stealth USB drive that can avoid detection by
appearing empty when initially connected to a computer.
KIM HEUNG-KWANG: But the North Korean government became aware of this stealth
drive and created a program that was able to detect this USB. In
retaliation, I created software that would block the program, and it eventually
became game of cat and mouse.
KARLA MURTHY: Do you worry that you’re putting North Korean’s lives in danger
if they get caught with some of these materials?
KIM HEUNG-KWANG: All North Koreans know the risk of all their actions. Despite the
potential punishment they know they will receive, there are many people who
actively search for these materials.
Yeonmi Park grew up in North Korea and says watching outside videos
changed her perspective of the world. She says, as a child, all she
learned from watching state-run media was love for the Kim regime and North
Korea.
YEONMI PARK: They don't show us if our team loses. We win the Olympics. We win
the, you know, World Cups. We win everything.
Park says North Korean
school children are fed a steady diet of anti-American propaganda and are
taught to refer to Americans as “bastards.”
YEONMI PARK: In math book says, you know, there are four American bastards.
You kill two of them. Then how many American bastards left to kill. a And as a child I had to say, "Two American
bastards." And that was my education.
KARLA MURTHY: But Park saw a different view of the outside world through DVDs
her parents were able to buy on the black market…Hollywood movies like “Pretty
Woman,” and “Titanic.” She says watching these movies were more than
entertainment; they made her think differently about her life in North Korea.
YEONMI PARK: I never heard my father was telling my mother that I love you. But
in the movie man tells woman I love you. Right? And those things were never
allowed for us to express to each other than the dear leader. So of course
watching this information helped me to understand the outside world a little
bit, that I realized there was some humanity out there.
KARLA MURTHY: That understanding gave her hope for a better life. After
her father was imprisoned by the government for smuggling industrial metals,
her family fell into poverty and faced starvation. In 2003, when she was
13, Park’s family paid a smuggler to sneak them across the border into china.
YEONMI PARK: I think that was the most horrifying part in my journey -- the
uncertainty, that you don't know when you will be safe again in your lifetime.
So we were just running and hoping somehow things might work out.
KARLA MURTHY: It took two years travelling through China, sometimes on foot,
but eventually, they made it to South Korea.
Today, Park is studying
at Columbia University in New York City, with access to a world of
information...
YEONMI PARK: Every story was propaganda to brainwash us about the Kim
dictators….
KARLA MURTHY: And she’s become a human rights activist, speaking out against the
North Korean regime. She also wrote a memoir about her escape.
YEONMI PARK: Now I am free. And I have to learn all about freedom. What does it
mean, actually?
KARLA MURTHY: Park says although the Hollywood movies she watched as a child
didn’t fully prepare her for life outside the country, they can be a spark for
her fellow North Koreans.
YEONMI PARK: Other lives can be possible on this Earth. But they just don't
have information right now. They don’t know who they are. And they don't know
what they are capable of. So we just have to show them what they can be.
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|
TIMECODE |
LOWER
THIRD |
1 |
0:56 |
KARLA MURTHY Special Correspondent |
2 |
4:48 |
KIM HEUNG-KWANG North Korean Defector |
3 |
7:58 |
YEONMI PARK North Korean Defector |