SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Kim Seong-Min, a prominent North Korean defector who used radio broadcasts, USB sticks and a network of sources in the secretive country to inform the North Korean public about the truth of their authoritarian government, has died. He was 63.
The founder of the Seoul-based Free North Korea Radio was pronounced dead at a Seoul hospital on Friday, years after fighting a lung cancer which recently spread to his liver, his former colleagues said. They said Kim was cremated and his remains were placed at a columbarium near the border with North Korea,
“We, North Korean defectors, lost one of our leaders. We aren’t sure if we’ll have such a leader again. He was truly our hope,” said Choi Jung-hoon, a defector who worked with Kim for seven years.
Shortwave radio broadcasts
Kim, a former North Korean army captain who arrived in South Korea in 1999, began shortwave radio broadcasts into North Korea — where most of people have no official access to foreign news — in 2005. It was the first such South Korean civilian radio station run by a defector.
His station’s news has included everything from success stories of North Korean defectors in South Korea and the purported luxurious life styles of the North’s ruling Kim family to political news in South Korea, the U.S. and elsewhere.
Before the 2012 U.S. presidential election, Kim told The Associated Press that his station recorded a special program explaining a U.S. election system and comparing it with a North Korean system, where a sole candidate wins nearly 100% of the votes cast at each district in parliamentary elections.
“We also explained that in South Korea it’s hard for one candidate to win more than 50% of votes cast, as there are diverse opinions. (In the U.S.), challengers often compete against an incumbent president, and we stressed that’s something that couldn’t happen in North Korea,” Kim said.
Kim’s station also threw plastic bottles containing USB sticks with world news and South Korean TV dramas and K-pop songs into the sea to let them float toward North Korean shores on the tides. He had sources in North Korea who used illegal mobile phones to sneak news from the country before his station relayed them back to people in other parts of North Korea.
Kim frequently appeared at rallies, forums and TV programs to criticize North Korea’s widely condemned human rights records.
‘Help people understand’
Kim’s works angered North Korea, which maintains an extremely tight control on the spread of outside information to its 26 million people as a way to bolster the Kim family’s grip on power. North Korea’s state media called Kim “a human garbage.” Kim also received parcels carrying dead mice and dolls stuck with knives, likely from pro-North Korea groups in South Korea.
In another interview with the AP in 2014, Kim discussed the accuracy issue of North Korea news, which outsiders like him obtained via phone talks with their contacts in the North but often turned out to be false.
“There are lots of stories about North Korea, and I think all of them are good as long as they don’t praise that country,” Kim said. “I think they will help people understand the North’s dictatorship.”
Kim told his colleagues that he felt deeply fulfilled whenever some North Korean defectors told him that they had listened to his radio broadcasts in the North.
Among them is Lee Si-young, who worked with Kim for about 10 years and became new head of their radio station in December, after Kim’s condition worsened. Lee said when she first met Kim, she could recognize his voice as he appeared at radio broadcasts that she had listened to.
“I was so excited to meet here and work with him,” she said.
Aimed for ‘a liberal unification’
Civilian campaigns to transmit outside news to North Korea have suffered a major setback after the current liberal South Korean government, led by President Lee Jae Myung, began cracking down on them in a bid to ease tensions with North Korea since taking office in June.
Lee Si-young said her group stopped floating plastic bottles, while other organizations suspended flights of large balloons with propaganda leaflets and USB sticks across the border. Lee’s government halted key government-run radio broadcasts into North Korea, but hasn’t asked civic groups to do the same.
The Free North Korea Radio station airs broadcasts two hours a day. Lee Si-young said Kim took part in broadcasts until July and told her and others that “our efforts to send outside news to North Korea must not be ceased until one last defector is left.”
Monday’s broadcast posted on the station’s website still uses Kim’s pre-recorded opening comments.
“Hello, North Korean compatriots. Now, we’re beginning Free North Korea Radio broadcasts from Seoul, the capital of Republic of Korea,” Kim said. “Our objective is overthrowing the dictatorship by Kim Jong Un and achieving a liberal unification on the Korean Peninsula.”
