We Need More Science: Here’s How Activists Smuggle Friends Into North Korea

Here’s How Activists Smuggle Friends Into North Korea

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Michael Marsicano

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Michael Marsicano

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Michael Marsicano

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.