Jung Gwang-il fled North Korea in 2003, having served years of hard labor in a North Korean gulag for a crime — spying for the Chinese government — that he didn’t commit. Jung said he would rather die trying to escape to South Korea than remain a slave in his own country. When he arrived in Seoul, he was astonished to discover that he no longer needed to pray incessantly for the health of Kim Jong-il and that forced labor was illegal. Even in the relative safety of South Korea, Jung remained haunted by the memory of friends and family he left behind.
Almost 5,000 miles away, Meron Estefanos boarded a plane in her native Eritrea en route to Sweden to escape the now 24-year dictatorial rule of President Isaias Afwerki. While Meron enjoyed the freedoms of European life, the humanitarian crisis in Eritrea became even more dire. Meron resolved to find a way to help.
Jung and Meron believe that information weakens authoritarian regimes, so they decided to confront the Eritrean and North Korean governments by breaking their information monopolies. Their weapons of choice? USB memory sticks and satellite radio.
Illegal smuggling is a thriving industry in North Korea, and Jung leveraged his knowledge of existing black market networks to ship memory sticks into North Korea. Encoded on a few ounces of cheap plastic were news reports, films from the West, art, music, and literature — rarities in North Korea, where possession of any contraband items can lead to prison, or worse.
Meron wanted to start a revolution. But she didn’t know how to spread her message in a country with one television station and one radio station (both state-run) and where fewer than 1% of the population has internet access. She decided to create a daily radio show that covers global news as well as information about the lives of emigrating and missing Eritreans. Because of Meron’s work, Eritreans learned about the Arab Spring and the fall of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi for the first time. They called in to uncover the fates of their loved ones who had defected.
Protesting is illegal in Eritrea, so Meron collaborated with diaspora groups to create ways for her fellow Eritreans to express themselves, even in the safety of their own homes. Instead of asking people to show up somewhere and protest, Meron did the opposite — she asked people to stay home on Friday nights. This simple act, a sort of domestic sit-in known as Freedom Friday, inspired more Eritreans to risk the consequences to have conversations about the future they want for Eritrea.
Meron and Jung believe that if North Koreans and Eritreans can discover for themselves what the world is like outside of their own borders, they can take action and change their countries from the inside. They are using technology to spread their messages of justice and hope — one listener at a time.
We traveled to the Oslo Freedom Forum to meet with activists, journalists, lawyers and technologists courageously fighting for freedom in diverse communities around the world. “Internet Without Borders” is a four-part video series exploring how technology can defend human rights.
— Jamie Albers, Jigsaw
