The Price of News in North Korea

Have you ever wondered how we get up-to-date news out of North Korea and at what price? 

In the past we got all of our information from defectors, the rare visitors to the North or by government intelligence organizations but according to Sohn Kwang-joo, the chief editor of Daily NK, technology now allows us to glimpse into North Korea with relative impunity at great risk.  According to Choe Sang-hun’s New York Times (January 25, 2010) article:

“Technology made this possible,” said Sohn Kwang-joo, the chief editor of Daily NK. “We infiltrate the wall of North Korea with cellphones.”

Over the past decade, the North’s border with China has grown more porous as famine drove many North Koreans out in search of food and an increasing traffic in goods — and information — developed. A new tribe of North Korean merchants negotiates smuggling deals with Chinese partners, using Chinese cellphones that pick up signals inside the North Korean border.

These phones have become a main tool of communication for many of the 17,000 North Korean defectors living in the South trying to re-establish contact with their families and friends in the North.

PHONES AND FREE-LANCE JOURNALISTS

How do the North Koreans get these phones?  According to Mr. Sohn, who once was a reporter for the Dong A Ilbo, he sends South Korean volunteer “correspondents” who pose as students, tourists or businessmen to the North Korean border where they meet with North Koreans crossing into China.  These “correspondents” then try and convince the North Koreans to become their stringers.  Mr. Sohn admits that ”it’s dangerous work, and it takes one or two years to recruit one.” Not sure if he means the volunteer “correspondent” or the stringer.

According to David McNeill’s article with Irish Times (March 15, 2010), Kim Seong-min, the manager of Free North Korea Radio (FNKR) in Seoul, has 10 North Korean “freelance journalists [who] provide reports from behind the bamboo curtain…” 

FNKR provides them with small digital recorders, which are used to record interviews, and mobile phones with signals that work across the Chinese border – Pyongyang’s fledgling mobile- phone system was bought from Egypt and is incompatible with the South Korean network.

The recordings are smuggled across the Chinese border and transported back to Seoul via a network of spies.

Sometimes recordings don’t have to be smuggled back – which probably makes it a lot safer for the stringer.  According to Kim Heung-gwang, who heads North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity (NKIS), “some informants have become so adept with technology that they send text-messages, audio files and photos to Seoul by cell phone.”

Who are these North Korean “free lance journalists” or stringers?  FNKR claims that its “free lance journalists” are at least two soldiers, a university professor, a teacher and a North Korean security agent.  Ha Tae-keung, who runs Open Radio for North Korea(ORFNK), has 15 stringers as does NK Daily.  Mun Seong-hwi, one of NK Daily’s Seoul-based journalists, has three underground North Korean stringers who do not know he (and, by extension, they) works for NK Daily and he carefully notes:

“We don’t know, and never ask, each other’s real name,” Mr. Mun said. “That’s safer for them. Their safety is my biggest concern.”

THE RISKS AND RESULTS

It probably goes without saying that Mr. Mun doesn’t know his stringers’ occupations nor does he want to know.  Just how dangerous is free lance journalism in North Korea?  As reported in a previous posting on Marmot’s Hole, we know that the North is cracking down on cell phone use thus making it even more dangerous for the stringers and informants.  Here are some examples of the risks.

The AP (Washington Examiner, March 4, 2010) reported the January execution by firing squad of a possible stringer.

Kim Heung-gwang (NKIS) lost one of his stringers who ”was stopped last May while trying to smuggle out a video in a small camera hidden in a cosmetics bottle. She is believed to have killed herself in police detention.”  Kim Seong-min (FNKR) revealed that:

In 2007 many of the station’s original team of stringers were caught and tried as spies, then sent to labour camps – or perhaps executed. “We don’t know what happened to them exactly,” he says, adding that the detections “devastated” him.  “The stress of knowing that could happen again is very hard to bear. Honestly, I often just want to quit.”

That is a powerful statement considering Kim Seong-min had once served as a propaganda officer in the North Korean army before being accused of spying.  He was tortured and then sentenced to death but made a desperate leap from the train taking him to his execution and managed to eventually make his way to South Korea.  You can read about his past and his 2009 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award here.

It should be noted that the stringers are not the only ones at risk.  FNKR’s manager has two armed bodyguards and at least one NK Daily journalist in Seoul goes by an alias and appears to be camera-shy.  But the sacrafices and risks that the stringers take are questioned by some in mainstream media.   According to the New York Times’ piece:

“You wonder whether they should let their sources take such risks,” Chang Yong-hoon, who covers North Korea for the mainstream news agency Yonhap, said at a recent forum on the news services. “They’ve produced as many erroneous reports as they have real scoops.”

Kang Chol-hwan, a former North Korean prison camp inmate who now writes for the mainstream daily Chosun, said there are “information brokers” in North Korea who sell exaggerated and fake news to outside media. Lee Chan-ho, a chief analyst at the South Korean government’s Unification Ministry, warned that the “flood of raw, unconfirmed reports” complicates the effort to understand the North.

Mr. Ha, of Open Radio for North Korea (ORFNK), conceded that point: “Because our sources have never been trained in journalism, exaggeration is a problem for us. Some demand more money for information. We try to cross-check our reports as much as possible.”

World Focus (February 4, 2010) did an interview with Barbara Demick and this is what she had to say:

Regarding the underground news agencies, I’ve found that their reports are plausible, but a little exaggerated. For example, Good Friends’ NK Today was the first to report the famine in the 90s, but I think their claims of the death toll were overstated. These agencies have on occasion given vague reports of protests that I think have a kernel of truth — but are also exaggerated.

For example, I have never interviewed a defector who personally witnessed any kind of public protest in North Korea, although I think there have been localized incidents at the markets where vendors complained to market management or resisted arrest by the police. There have also been a fair number of incidents in which security officials were murdered.

On the ethics of the agencies paying informants, I think it would be unethical for them not to pay — in that these people are risking their lives. According to Choe Sang-hun’s recent piece [above], some of the informants are actually considered to be reporters who are working. But there is no doubt just the same that paying taints the quality of information. It creates an incentive for them to tell you what they think you would want to hear. We don’t pay for interviews with defectors, although when I interview them I am usually with a missionary who might be providing food and clothing.

THE MONEY

What do the North Korean stringers get for thier risks?  FNKR pays its stringers about $100 (USD) per month.  Daily NK pays its “free lance journalists” about $150 (USD) every two or three months.  ORFNK did not say how much it pays but did note that it “pays a bonus for significant scoops.”

How are these media groups financed?  FNKR says that:

The station was initially funded by defectors and sympathisers but the money ran out quickly and it found itself swimming against the political zeitgeist: the South’s “sunshine policy” of burgeoning co-operation with its temper- amental northern neighbour meant propaganda and provocation was out; rapprochement was in. Squeezed between the hawks who call the sunshine policy appeasement, and the doves who support its quiet efforts towards transformation, Kim – a natural dove – leaned right.

Unable to support itself it has turned to Japanese activist for money and, perhaps not very surprising, the State Department.  NK Daily and ORFNK acknowledge that they “receive U.S. congressional funding through the National Endowment for Democracy, as well as support from other public and private sources.”  But doesn’t being funded by the American government mean a loss of liberty (ironic huh) to transmit or publish what you want?  According to Kim Seong-min (FNKR):

“I’m asked about interference a lot, but it’s not an issue. There has been just one clash. We ran a programme carrying testimony by defectors who spoke of their treatment – being beaten by guards at the Chinese border and so on. One defector said he was going to shoot Kim Jong-il. The Americans told us to delete that programme or they wouldn’t pay.”

The State Department might have a little more control over FNKR considering it uses transmitters in Guam (was told this by them a couple of years ago but will use this wiki link for those sticklers for citations).

World Focus (see link above) has some great links to media groups dealing with North Korea.