Norks losing control of message

Washington Post:

Trained as a military propagandist in North Korea, Kim Seong Min has turned his skills against the government that once forced his allegiance. From a small radio studio in Seoul, he and a handful of other North Korean defectors deliver daily broadcasts to people who remain behind in the isolated communist state run by Kim Jong Il.

"To give food provisions, if the Kim Jong Il regime still exists, is merely prolonging their lives in a state of slavery," said Kim, founder and director of the station known as FNK, for Free North Korea Radio. "But broadcasts . . . give an opportunity to change their own future, and provide food for the spirit."

The North's estimated 23 million people have little accurate information about the outside world. Listening to foreign news sources is illegal, part of a government effort to block infiltration of subversive ideas. But as more North Koreans buy low-cost radios brought in from China, violating that ban has become easier.

Kim said he fled to China in 1996 after attempts to contact a relative in Seoul were discovered. As an illegal immigrant, he was apprehended by Chinese authorities, jailed and severely beaten. Sent back to North Korea for public trial (and almost certain execution), he made his second escape, he said, by jumping off a train traveling 50 mph. For the next eight days, he ate grass roots and rode atop train cars to get back to China, where he lived for several years before making his way to Seoul.

Now he passes his days trying to hasten the end of the government he built his career promoting. FNK's two-hour daily broadcasts are a rare entity -- by North Koreans, for North Koreans.

All told, Seoul has three privately run radio stations targeting the North: Open Radio for North Korea, Radio Free Chosun and Kim's FNK, the only one run by defectors, with the help of a committed South Korean staff. Washington-based Radio Free Asia and Voice of America also broadcast to the North.

"The problem in North Korea is the mind-set," said Tae Keung-ha, president of Open Radio for North Korea. "Isolated for half a century, they have no ability to compare their situation with other countries and other people."

His station's broadcasts avoid overtly political messages in favor of cultural subjects. While for some North Koreans, "politics is a matter of life and death," others turn away from it, he noted. "We want to broaden our base as much as possible. For that purpose our radio programs are soft."

Kim Yun-tae, director of Radio Free Chosun, said his station takes a similar approach. "At first we were doing more propaganda broadcasting, but we changed our minds," he said. Added Kyounghee An, the station's international manager, "We don't think we can cause the collapse of the regime directly. . . . We think after listening, people can compare their real situation to Kim Jong Il's propaganda and can change their minds, step by step."

Radio Free Chosun broadcasts North Korean domestic news as well as stories of escapes, revisions to North Korean textbooks and dramas about Kim Jong Il.

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Of the three, FNK is the most openly hostile to the North Korean government. In the words of vice director Lee Kuem Ryong, North Korea "is a big jail for everyone in the country."

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Determining how many people are listening to the stations' broadcasts is impossible. Though jamming is an impediment, improved signals and electricity shortages that stop the jamming limit North Korea's ability to block broadcasts completely.

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There is much irony in that last quoted paragraph. The Norks have become too poor to jam propaganda broadcast. If it were not for the misery inflicted on the people of North Korea, it might be nice to keep that regime around to demonstrate to the left just how bad communism is in its purest form.