Around 10,000 USB sticks – or flash drives – are smuggled into North Korea every year, and two US charities are looking for more.
While the laws on using mobile phones in North Korea have been relaxed since 2013, the country still heavily censors the level of information available to its citizens.
Roughly 10,000 USB sticks containing Hollywood movies, South Korean soap operas and the Korean-language version of Wikipedia are smuggled into the country every year. It is illegal content and severe penalties await anyone found smuggling in the flash drives.
Now Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer of the non-profit Human Rights Foundation, has stressed the importance of educating the North Korean people.
“After food and water, the next thing people in North Korea want is knowledge,” he told the BBC. “We really believe education is the solution in North Korea.
“For many of us flash drives are becoming an obsolete technology – we have the cloud, and we can share things. But every single flash drive could save someone’s life.”
Both the Human Rights Foundation and Forum 280 work with the North Korean Strategy Center (NKSC), in Seoul, which distributes the flash drives.
“It’s always been a challenge to get people to understand why North Koreans’ access to information is important, and this gives us a physical representation,” Sharon Stratton, from the NKSC, told Wired.
“It’s literally a key that will unlock a new world for North Koreans.”
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