Activists aim to trickle food, information into North Korea

GANGHWA ISLAND, SOUTH KOREA — The water bottles, filled with rice and worm medicine and ointment and USB sticks containing movies and songs and President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, were carried away by the currents. Their destination: North Korea.

Twice a month when the tides are right, activists led by Jung Gwang-il, a former North Korean political pris- oner turned human rights advocate, toss hundreds of bottles into the Han River to be carried downstream in the hope that some will end up in the hands of North Koreans, who are hungry for both food and information.

“I want people in North Korea to know that even the president of the United States is concerned about human rights,” Jung said as he prepared to cast 400 more bot- tles into the river. “I want to encourage them to stay the course against North Korean regime.”

The USB sticks in these bottles contained subtitled footage of Trump’s January address, in which the pres- ident called North Korea’s dictatorship “cruel” and “depraved.”

Jung, who met Trump in January and has a picture of the two of them together on his South Korean messag- ing app profile, supports the president’s “maximum pressure” approach to dealing with Kim Jong Un.

Through his organization, No Chain for North Korea, he’s trying to apply his own form of pressure on the Kim regime by breaking the information blockade.

Besides Trump’s address, the USB sticks also hold YouTube videos showing what life is like for young people in the United States, as well as the movies “The Wall,” an Irish movie about a North Korean poet, and “The Interview,: the comedy about assassinating Kim Jong Un that is believed to have led North Korean hackers to attack Sony Pictures in 2014.