North Korea is an enigma at many levels. The Hermit Kingdom is famous for being a land without internet, but it is also a place where cyber-activism on behalf of freedom is being pioneered.
The answer to that particular enigma is the humble flash drive in the hands of dedicated activists.
Although not invented as a tool of revolution, devices such as USB flash drives and SD cards allow for vast amounts of information to be easily smuggled into the world’s most closed society. And the way that these devices are being used in North Korea offers a glimpse of how digital media can still be a weapon in the arsenal of freedom in the case of the world’s most repressive regimes.
The USB drives are a significant form of sharing information in North Korea, according to North Korean defectors who have settled in South Korea by the tens of thousands. Though prohibited by the regime and sanctioned by the threat of prison, millions of citizens have devices with USB ports. The defectors therefore organized to smuggle glimpses of the world “on the outside” into the tightly controlled Orwellian world of North Korea to neutralize the omnipresent propaganda of “Outstanding Leader” Kim Jong Un.
For years, human rights activists have smuggled USB devices over the border of Kim’s Mordor via drones, balloons, or by floating bottles. Their tactic may have been informed by the lesson of Cold War Germany: no matter how high their walls, Communist authorities couldn’t stop the broadcasts of West German TV drifting daily over the barbed wire into East German homes, where the scenes of West German grocery shelves sounded the death knell of communism long before the Berlin Wall came down.
However, the North Korean defectors had to buy the flash drives at cost, and they had limited funds. A former North Korean death camp survivor named Jung Gwang-Il believed he had a solution. Jung, the founder of “No Chain for North Korea,” went to Dalhousie University in Canada for help. Faculty at Dalhousie helped students set up drop boxes on campus that solicited donations of flash drives. On each box is a poster of North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un’s face. His mouth has been symbolically cut out into a USB port, a slot that is large enough to slip drives into the donation boxes.
The idea caught on immediately.
Human rights advocate Thor Halvorssen, a Jung supporter, leads Flash Drives For Freedom, a campaign that exhorts people around the world to donate their own USB drives. Halvorssen urges a flood of information to the North Korean people as the best way to liberate the world’s most infamous totalitarian country.
Halvorssen’s Human Rights Foundation reportedly has funded individuals and groups in South Korea to smuggle more than 100,000 flash drives and computer memory cards into North Korea, reaching 1.3 million citizens. He explained, “We believe North Korean defectors can assist in bringing change through education and information. As information spreads and people realize that they deserve individual rights and freedom, they will be less likely to obey authority.” Defector Jung agrees, saying “Outside information is the greatest fear among dictators.”
No wonder oppressive regimes such as North Korea’s devote so much effort to keeping their citizens in a state of ignorance. Totalitarian regimes know better than most the truth of the adage that “knowledge is power.” The digital age is giving us an expanding array of ways to press the knowledge of freedom and universal rights into the darkest corners of our world. If the chains of mental bondage can be broken in the Hermit Kingdom, then they can be broken anywhere on Earth.
Matthew Daniels, Chair of Law and Human Rights at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of the forthcoming book, Human Liberty 2.0. Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
