SOUTH KOREA: A campaigner from South Korea has recently announced that he is planning to drop the DVD’s of Sony’s The Interview towards North Korea in which the assassination attempt of Dictator Kim Jong-un has been showed, which has increased tensions between North Korea and US as it can put North Korea’s leadership in danger if released once.
The comedy depicting an assassination attempt on Kim has heightened tensions between North Korea and the U.S., with Washington blaming Pyongyang for crippling hacking attacks on Sony Entertainment. Pyongyang denies that and has vowed to retaliate.
Activist Park Sang-hak said he will start dropping 100,000 DVDs and USBs with the movie by balloon in North Korea as early as late January. Park, a North Korean defector, said he’s partnering with the U.S.-based non-profit Human Rights Foundation, which is financing the making of the DVDs and USB memory sticks of the movie with Korean subtitles.
Park said foundation officials plan to visit South Korea around Jan. 20 to hand over the DVDs and USBs, and that he and the officials will then try to float the first batch of the balloons if weather conditions allow.
“North Korea’s absolute leadership will crumble if the idolization of leader Kim breaks down,” Park said by telephone.
If carried out, the move was expected to enrage North Korea, which expressed anger over the movie. In October, the country opened fire at giant balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets floated across the border by South Korean activists, triggering an exchange of gunfire with South Korean troops.
But it is not clear how effective the plan will be, as only a small number of ordinary North Korean citizens are believed to own computers or DVD players. Many North Koreans would not probably risk watching the movie as they know they would get into trouble if caught. Owning a computer requires permission from the government and costs as much as three months’ salary for the average worker, according to South Korean analysts.
Not everyone supports sending balloons into the North, with liberals and border town residents in South Korea urging the activists to stop. North Korea has long demanded that South Korea stop the activists, but Seoul refuses, citing freedom of speech.
Park said the ballooning will be done clandestinely, with the pace picking up in March when he expects the wind direction to become more favorable.
The Human Rights Foundation said it was committed to sending 100,000 copies of The Interview as well as other films to North Korea in 2015, according to a statement provided to Gawker.
“As one of the human rights organizations that consider property rights to be a fundamental and key component of a free society, HRF does not engage in nor does it encourage the violation of copyright or intellectual property rights,” the statement reads. “In the specific case of The Interview, we were approached by an executive from the company involved in the electronic distribution of this film and are currently in useful communications to explore the options available to make distributing this film in North Korea a reality.”
