Baek - North Koreas hidden revolution: how the information underground is transforming a closed society

NORTH KOREAS HIDDEN REVOLUTION

Map of the divided Korean Peninsula
Illustrations copyright 2016 by C. Scott Walker, Harvard Map Collection

Copyright 2016 by Jieun Baek.

Map on page ii frontispiece illustrations copyright 2016 by C. Scott Walker, Harvard Map Collection. Photographs on page 98 illustrations copyright 2016 by Jae Hyeok Ahn. Map on page 243 illustrations copyright 2016 by Catherine Myong.

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Both my grandfathers were born in North Pyongan Province and fled south right before the Korean War divided the country. They spent their lives praying that they would be able to reunite with their families in North Korea. Though they passed away with their prayers unfulfilled, their dream of reunification lives on.
I dedicate this book to them.

CONTENTS

AUTHORS NOTE

In 2007, when I was a junior at Harvard College, I received an interview request from a Voice of America reporter. Voice of America is one of several programs that broadcast daily into North Korea. It is difficult to know how many people are listening, or how long the average listening session is, since conducting in-country surveys is impossible: the North Korean government will not allow independent surveyors unfettered access to its population. But it is clear that increasing numbers of people do listen to these programs secretly, and that the programs do affect some of them. Some defectors have said that they regularly tuned in to Voice of America broadcasts even though they were aware of the risks involved: North Korean citizens who are caught listening to foreign radio programs can be punished with severe interrogations, imprisonment, or even execution.

The interviewer asked me to describe an event that my student organization, Harvard Undergraduates for Human Rights in North Korea (H-RINK), had hosted with a defector. The defector had recounted his escape from North Korea to several dozen undergraduates. I remember thinking about how I could answer the reporters questions about why I was interested in human rights issues in North Korea, what impact events to raise awareness could have, and why Americans like myself were interested in participating in such student organizations. I considered the stark contrast between the risks that listeners inside North Korea were taking to listen to this program, and the simplicity and safety that enveloped my fellow students and me. If my grandfathers had never escaped from North Korea, I could easily have been a listener from inside the regime rather than in front of the microphone in Cambridge.

Over the past eleven years, I have spent countless hours with hundreds of North Korean defectors in South Korea and the United States. My personal experiences with defectors from all walks of lifefrom orphans who spent years in political prison camps, to professors, to military and government officialsinspired me to write about the information flowing covertly over the border and how it is changing North Korean society. Through my work, Ive been able to continue speaking with missionaries, journalists, activists, members of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and academicsas well as students who are not North Korean, but have been inside the country and witnessed the effects that such information has had on North Korean society. Both primary and secondary sources have helped me describe how foreign media and information make their way into North Korea, and how they may be instrumental in someday bringing down one of the most brutal and repressive regimes in modern history. At heart, then, this is a story of the transformative power of media and information, as well as the resilience of the human spirit to survive and find freedom.

The stories of defectors are portrayed as accurately as possible based on my interviews, conversations, and personal relationships with them. Most of their stories have been recorded, and they have given me written permission to retell them. All requests for having names and identifying traits anonymized, altered, or omitted have been honored.

A note about terminology referring to North Koreans who have escaped: the words refugees and defectors are commonly used to describe them, yet North Koreans do not simply migrate to third countries, and defector is becoming an obsolete term in South Korea because of its strong political connotations. The Korean word for North Korean defectors is Tal-buk-ja, or Tal-buk-min, which means people who fled the North. But new terms are being coined, too: in 2005, South Koreas Ministry of Unification announced the use of Sae-Teo-Min, meaning people of new land. Buk-han-tal-ju-min, a more recent term, means people who renounced North Korea. Indeed, some North Koreans did actively denounce North Korea as a government, but others dislike the strong political connotation with their new demographic identity. Some younger North Koreans prefer former North Koreans, resettlers, new settlers, or Buk-han Chool-shin, which means of North Korean origin. With these considerations in mind, this book is for an English-speaking audience, and I have decided to use the term defectors to refer to North Koreans who escaped North Korea.

Please also note that a Korean name consists of a family name followed by a given name. For example, in Korean, my name is Baek Ji-Eun. In the United States, however, I follow the American tradition of using my given name followed by my family nameJieun Baek. Readers will see mostly the Korean style for names in this book, depending on the context.

This book is intended for a general audience and therefore will use popular English spellings for Korean terms. While writing this book, I tested different versions of romanization of Korean terms with non-academic readers (including Revised Romanization and McCune-Reischauer), and most overwhelmingly preferred popular English spellings for accessibility purposes. For example, to refer to North Koreas capital city, I use the spelling Pyongyang rather than the McCune-Reischauer romanization of the term, which is Pyongyang, or the Revised Romanization of the term, which is Pyeongyang.

I hope this book will inspire readers to learn more about North Koreans who are taking extraordinary risks to fulfill their insatiable curiosity about the world that exists beyond their own borders.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Names marked with an asterisk have been altered. Personages who appear briefly only once or twice are not included.

Jeong Gwang-Seong: Male, twenty-seven years old, from Horyeong City in North Hamgyong Province. Currently a university student in South Korea majoring in political science and diplomacy.

Kim Ha-Young*: Female, twenty-three years old, from Musan City in North Hamgyong Province. Currently a university student in South Korea, majoring in political science.