
We Hacked North Korea With Balloons and USB Drives - vonnik
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/we-hacked-north-korea-with-balloons-and-usb-drives/283106/
======
systematical
Does this strike anyone else as a bit careless and/or reckless? Lets think
about this...

You are a citizen of North Korea and one of these USB or DVDs lands on your
property (and you don't even know its there). A police officer happens to see
it and picks it up. A day later you are arrested and thrown in jail for being
an enemy of the state. Who else gets arrested with you? Your friends? Your
family? Co-workers?

So given the potential harm this could cause is it worth it? Whats the ROI on
this? This weather balloon filled with propaganda could be the equivalent of a
Drone raid gone bad on some poor individuals life.

P.s. You didn't "hack" shit. Stop misusing that word please.

~~~
windsurfer

        hack 1  (hk)
        v. hacked, hack·ing, hacks 
        3 b. To gain access to (a computer file or network) 
        illegally or without authorization: hacked the firm's 
        personnel database.
    

I'd say they gained access to North Korea without authorization. This is
hacking.

~~~
grrowl
I hacked the bus to get to work this morning.

2014: The year of everything being "hacked"

~~~
coolnow
2013 was strife with pointless "hacking" of X.

------
natrius
_" [North Korea] has no Internet."_

One of the most entertaining mindfucks (and there were many) on my trip to
North Korea was being shown a "classroom" at Kim Il Sung University with a
poster explaining IP and DNS, as if the students would ever have internet
access. ([http://i.imgur.com/suTx2Rv.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/suTx2Rv.jpg))
They also let us do whatever we wanted in a computer lab full of Red Star OS
machines ([http://i.imgur.com/7VyHVQP.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/7VyHVQP.jpg)),
but once I saw how terrifying a console looks to the untrained eye, I gave up
trying to traceroute everything I could to avoid the labor camps. I did get to
connect my phone to a North Korean wifi network
([http://i.imgur.com/UfyjdfP.png](http://i.imgur.com/UfyjdfP.png)), which was
as neat as it was pointless.

If you've ever thought about going there, do it. Pretty soon, there won't be
anywhere you can go in the world to be ineptly propagandized, and it's a
beautiful thing.

[http://www.youngpioneertours.com/](http://www.youngpioneertours.com/)

~~~
brador
Doesn't the money you paid to visit help fund the oppressive regime?

~~~
scotty79
Isn't it true about any money that goes into North Korea?

~~~
iwwr
They also receive substantial amounts of international aid and profit from
endeavours like Kaesong. In the grand scheme of things, the petty revenue from
tourism doesn't matter.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region)

------
VladRussian2
> The episode underlined how many South Koreans regard the human rights
> struggle in the North as merely a distraction and an annoyance.

or may be they just don't want to burn angry giant troll's whiskers with all
the downside while no meaningful upside to be reasonably expected.

~~~
wodenokoto
That one annoyed me too. The police stopped them on the grounds of actual
threats of war and his reply is that they are not taken seriously.

------
MrZongle2
"Until this year, the U.S. government provided support for these groups
through the National Endowment for Democracy and the State Department’s DRL
programs. The majority of this funding however, has been cut in the last
year."

I wish the author had gone into the reasons why, or even if nobody in the
State Department would comment on it.

~~~
yahelc
Chances are it's a boring answer -- lots of things were blindly cut due to the
sequester.

------
grizzles
I've been thinking about this exact idea. Shocked that someone actually went
out and did it. My idea was drones releasing paper helicopters with short
messages, using the design of maple tree seeds. In my version of the idea it
was immediately prior to a military strike to topple the regime with minimal
casualties. Messages like: "Stay away from military bases / groups of people".
"Don't fire on invading troops." "Fake illness/injury to avoid service." and
most importantly "Don't take up arms". A bit of a shame it doesn't look like
there is going to be a follow up. The evidence seems to suggest that
encouraging domestic dissident movements doesn't usually effectuate short term
political change.

~~~
astine
Leaflet dropping is actually fairly standard practice and has been so for
decades. The US invasion of Iraq did the same thing:
[http://www.psywar.org/apdsearch.php](http://www.psywar.org/apdsearch.php)

~~~
dba7dba
N Korea has been sending leaflets to S Korea, well back when N Korea really
was the better Korea (in terms of economy).

Up until around 1970's N Korea had better economy than S Korea. Shocking, I
know.

~~~
scotty79
I think that regimes (communist ones) were pretty decent economically and
technologically, even better than other countries at the same time because
they heavily invested in large scale infrastructure and basic education. They
introduced electricity and literacy to their rural populations very
successfully.

But since they were regimes they had technological embargo placed on them so
they couldn't use international exchange to acquire new technologies and they
fell behind technologically and as a result economically and finally crumbled.

~~~
dba7dba
Sorry but wrong.

N Korea was better off economically in 1950 -70s, mainly because of the
infrastructure Japan had set up with the goal of using that region as a
staging ground for invading Manchuria/China.

S Korea has better infra and education than N Korea.

------
akavel
Does anybody know of an NGO (1 or more), that could be supported by
individual, with money originating in EU, the NGO doing activities towards
helping people suffering under North Korean regime, which are somehow
verifiable/verified? I suppose this is hard (impossible?) to at the same time
have little publicity (helping kinda covert operations), but still enough
publicity to get "confirmed" by some reputable organization, but maybe here I
could find someone who could help me with that? I would be very grateful for
any advice... I have this thought for quite long; I've learned somewhere about
some organizations, e.g. "Open Doors" (?), but I'm uneasy about paying
somebody based only on his own claims...

~~~
tootie
[http://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/](http://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/)

They were featured in this PBS Frontline special that also covered the balloon
launch.

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secret-state-of-
nort...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secret-state-of-north-korea/)

------
omegaworks
This has been done before, and it's not pretty.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_leaflet_propaganda](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_leaflet_propaganda)

------
huskyr
This blog post about North Korea by Sophie Schmidt, the daughter of former
Google CEO Eric Schmidt, is pretty interesting too, with lots of weird tidbits
about the use of technology:

[https://sites.google.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/home](https://sites.google.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/home)

------
Renaud
I wonder if there shouldn't be a place for an activism Kickstarter where an
NGO could pitch projects, such as financing a radio station or releasing these
balloons, and get them financed by a wider, worldwide audience.

------
tootie
PBS Frontline covered this event as well as other efforts to smuggle popular
media into North Korea as well as getting documentary footage out. Well worth
watching. It was pretty gut wrenching and uplifting.

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secret-state-of-
nort...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secret-state-of-north-korea/)

------
riobard
I'm wondering how many people near the border have access to computers that
can read those DVDs and USB drives?

The article did mention that “DVDs, USBs, and even laptops are making their
way over the Chinese border into the hands of North Koreans”, but there wasn't
any estimation of how many people actually have access to those, and of those
who do, how many belong to the ruling class?

~~~
tptacek
The PBS Frontline episode from yesterday makes it seem as if thumb-drive video
playing computers are common (perhaps only among the upper class, though) in
NK.

~~~
ekianjo
In a country where you can't even get reliable food supply and where you
suffer from frequent black-outs, let me doubt about that.

~~~
phaer
I would say one time supply of cheap(!) video game equipment is far easier to
finance and organize than a reliable distribution of food and electricity for
almost 25M people, so i doubt that argument. And I would be anything but
surprised if only 1 million or less people would have access to those
machines, but my guess would be that a political chance depends more on
(semi)-privileged people like those in Pyongyang than on the population of the
country side which has even less possibilities of resistance and reform.

~~~
XorNot
Well it's not like this is a personal tech revolution. These devices are going
to financed and shared out amongst whole communities.

------
Freeboots
I'd like to see these pro democracy leaflets if possible, Im interested to see
what aspects of society/culture are displayed.

~~~
vxNsr
Yeah, it would be kinda cool to see what it is you guys sent them.

------
easy_rider
Too bad you can't eat a CD.

------
jablan
What's the point of the dollar bill? An epitome of democracy?

------
aortega
Nice "hacking". If I were South Korea I would buy some weapons before sending
cute balloons to a country run by a lunatic that can squash you in a single
night.

