Western movies, TV shows, documentaries, news—despite a ban on foreign media in North Korea, many of its citizens are able to watch all this stuff. And activists have found plenty of ways to smuggle digital contraband into the “darkest place on Earth.” Dissident groups like the North Korea Strategy Center, North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, and Fighters for a Free North Korea use low tech tricks to pass pamphlets, USB drives, and SD memory cards with information and entertainment across the border. Few North Koreans can get online, but millions have access to TVs, computers, or video players, called notels, that have USB and SD ports. So, for activists hoping smuggled data will help bring down Kim Jong-un's regime by showing life outside the DPRK, the main question isn’t whether the media can be seen but what to smuggle and how. Here’s a sampling of contraband material that permeates the border and how activists sneak it in.
TV Shows and Movies
To show citizens what life is like outside the Hermit Kingdom, the North Korea Strategy Center smuggles American films and TV shows, including hits like The Hunger Games, 22 Jump Street, Desperate Housewives, and Friends, across the border. A North Korean fan favorite? Scandal.
Pop Culture From the South
The NKSC also sends over South Korean comedies, dramas, and soap operas, like We Got Married, to counter the North’s propaganda by showing the abundance of wealth and freedom in the South.
Political Pamphlets
Fighters for a Free North Korea drops hundreds of thousands of waterproof political leaflets to draw attention to the injustices of the Kim dynasty’s rule. “Let us fight until the day we die for freedom,” one states.
Sober-minded Documentaries
Kim Heung-kwang, a defector who founded North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, creates and stars in short documentaries to educate North Koreans on democracy, the Internet, and life outside the DPRK.
Facts About the World
Educational material, Wikipedia-like explainers, and ebooks like Rising Age are slipped onto thumb drives by many groups.
### How It Gets Smuggled In
Trucks
Stash USB sticks and SD cards in Chinese cargo trucks that legally haul supplies across the Chinese/North Korean border.
Tires
Crawl under a border fence, walk into the Tumen River, and throw tires strapped with packages of USB drives toward the opposite bank. Hope that a lucky passerby picks up the digital loot and sells or shares it.
Balloons
Launch balloons with a timer and chemical fuse set to release political pamphlets, dollars, and USB drives once they’re over the border.
Boats
Pass material from tourist boats to North Korean fishermen who are sympathetic to the cause, disguising the transaction as an innocent purchase of the day’s catch.
HandOffs
Arrange a meetup via walkie-talkie on the banks of the Tumen River. Bribe border guards on both sides liberally. The smuggler wades or swims across to grab the goods.
Buckets
Throw a rock tied to the end of a rope across the river. Smugglers on the opposite side then reel in a plastic-wrapped bucket of contraband.
Read our April cover story on the North Korean data-smuggling movement.
Michael Marsicano
