One of the main weapons civilians have against the North Korean regime is the ability to break the North Korea people out of their isolation. So a group of students are doing exactly that by broadcasting towards the North

Student broadcasting clubs at 14 universities are attempting to narrow cultural gaps between the two Koreas and to let North Koreans know what’s going on outside their tightly controlled country.

Student Media Without Borders is providing their production to Open Radio for North Korea, a Seoul-based radio station working to improve human rights of North Koreans.

“There’s been a constant flow of goods and economic cooperation since the inter-Korean summit in 2000. Now we need to further it into that of culture and spirit. The people of North Korea have a right to know what’s going on in the world,” said Kang Won-cheol, co-director of the SMWB, which was officially launched last month.

Kang, 26, a business administration major, is a North Korean defector. After living 21 years in the North, Kang came to South Korea via China in 2001. He leads a student defectors organization in Seoul.

“When I arrived in China, I listened for the first time to South Korean broadcasts with a shortwave radio receiver. That’s when I first learned that we (North Koreans) can actually go to the South,” Kang said.

In South Korea, Kang heard other defectors talking about listening to South Korean radio programs in the North, sometimes in groups.

“I feel sorry for those stuck in a society of prisons and censorship, without any idea of what’s going on in the world. Radio is a great medium for these people to learn what is really happening in the outside world. Nobody would know it better than I do, that’s why I decided to take part in this,” he said.

Read the whole thing. It turns out the South Korean government will not fund this program because it will only fund programs agreed upon by both the South AND North Korean government. Perhaps a change in power is in order. Otherwise, it is largely an American funded initiative, with sponsors from Congress to NGO’s like Freedom House.

What drives a photographer to go back into North Korea (albeit in Shiniuju, a few miles from the border), take pictures of a bunch of people in what I presume in plain sight, and head back out to publish them on a website?

SEOUL(Zenit.org): The process for the beatification of 36 North Koreans martyred during the 1949-52 Stalinist regime of Kim Il-Sung has opened.

The announcement was made Thursday by the Order of St. Benedict Waegwan Abbey in South Korea, which exercises ecclesial jurisdiction over the North Korean Abbacy of Tokwon.

According to Abbot Simon Petro Ri Hyeong-u, apostolic administrator of the Territorial Abbacy of Tokwon, “The community of Order of St. Benedict Waegwan Abbey is full of aspiration to honor the witness of faith shown by our predecessors.”

The initiative also has a political value, according to www.AsiaNews.it. Until now, the Seoul government has exerted its influence to avoid the commemoration of these martyrs in order not to provoke a diplomatic incident with the present regime in the North, led by Kim Jong-il, Kim Il-sung’s son.