An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth... "Sending USBs to North Korea via drones"

Pro-North Korea Activists Say "True Fear of Kim Jong-un"

[Asia Economy Reporter Jang Hee-jun] In response to North Korea's drones violating our airspace, there have been calls to send drones carrying portable storage devices (USBs) containing external information into North Korea. The influx of external culture, including South Korean content, is the factor North Korea fears the most.

Lee Hyun-seung, a researcher at the Global Peace Foundation and a defector from North Korea, tweeted on the 27th, "The best defense is a good offense," and strongly recommended, "Instead of shooting down drones, now we should send millions of USBs containing knowledge and information via drones to show Kim Jong-un what true fear is."

David Maxwell, a senior researcher at the U.S. Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also stated, as reported by Radio Free Asia (RFA) on the 29th, that "we should purchase 1,000 commercial small drones and send them to North Korea along with USBs containing (external) information."

Suzanne Scholte, president of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, also expressed full support for sending drones to North Korea, arguing that "North Korean people need to know the truth."

'Crash Landing on You' Sent to North Korea... Execution if Watched?

The organization of North Korean defectors, the Free North Korea Movement Alliance, announced that on April 25-26, they sent 1 million leaflets containing photos of President-elect Yoon Seok-yeol and others to North Korea by attaching them to 20 large balloons in the Gimpo area of Gyeonggi Province. The photo shows the leaflets sent by this organization. [Photo by Free North Korea Movement Alliance]

Earlier, last month, the U.S. international human rights organization 'Human Rights Foundation' announced that it had sent 2,000 USBs to North Korea. This organization has sent flash drives, SD cards, and USBs to North Korea throughout this year under a program called 'Flash Drives for Freedom.'

Program manager Lee Sung-min explained, "We carried out these activities in cooperation with local organizations led by defectors."

Lee estimated that if one storage device is shared by 10 North Korean residents, up to 20,000 North Koreans may have accessed external information. He said the storage devices included movies, documentaries, content created by defectors, and reading materials in PDF format, citing South Korean dramas such as 'Crash Landing on You' and 'Descendants of the Sun,' as well as Hollywood movies like 'Top Gun' and 'Titanic' as examples.

The influx of external culture that induces ideological relaxation is the factor North Korea fears the most. To prevent this, North Korea enacted the Anti-Reactionary Thought and Culture Elimination Law in December 2020, which includes punishment provisions that impose the death penalty on distributors of external videos, including South Korean content.

In fact, news surfaced that in October, two teenage youths who watched and distributed South Korean movies and dramas were publicly executed.

Meanwhile, on the morning of the 26th, five North Korean drones were detected violating our airspace. Among them, one drone entered Seoul airspace but did not reach the Yongsan area where the presidential office is located, according to military authorities. The military deployed Air Force fighter jets and Army aviation assets to attempt to shoot down the drones but failed. Following this incident, President Yoon Suk-yeol ordered the early establishment of a drone unit and the preparation of countermeasures against unmanned aerial vehicles.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.