He Defected From North Korea, Then Informed Its Citizens

Kim Seong-Min, a prominent North Korean defector who used radio broadcasts, USB sticks, and a network of sources in the secretive country to inform the North Korean public about the truth of their authoritarian government, has died. He was 63, reports the AP. The founder of the Seoul-based Free North Korea Radio was pronounced dead at a Seoul hospital on Friday, years after fighting a lung cancer that recently spread to his liver, his former colleagues said. They said Kim was cremated and his remains were placed at a columbarium near the border with North Korea. "We, North Korean defectors, lost one of our leaders. We aren't sure if we'll have such a leader again. He was truly our hope," said Choi Jung-hoon, a defector who worked with Kim for seven years.

Kim, a former North Korean army captain who arrived in South Korea in 1999, began shortwave radio broadcasts into North Korea—where most of people have no official access to foreign news—in 2005. It was the first such South Korean civilian radio station run by a defector. His station's news has included everything from success stories of North Korean defectors in South Korea and the purported luxurious lifestyles of the North's ruling Kim family to political news in South Korea, the US, and elsewhere. Kim's station also threw plastic bottles containing USB sticks with world news and South Korean TV dramas and K-pop songs into the sea to let them float toward North Korean shores.

Kim's works angered North Korea, which maintains extremely tight control on the spread of outside information to its 26 million people as a way to bolster the Kim family's grip on power. North Korea's state media called Kim "human garbage." Kim also received parcels carrying dead mice and dolls stuck with knives. Civilian campaigns to transmit outside news to North Korea suffered a major setback after the current liberal South Korean government, led by President Lee Jae Myung, began cracking down on them in a bid to ease tensions with North Korea. The Free North Korea Radio station airs broadcasts two hours a day. A rep said Kim took part in broadcasts until July and told her and others that "our efforts to send outside news to North Korea must not be ceased until one last defector is left."