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Inside the North Korean Data Smuggling Movement
Sparrowvsrevolution writes A new Wired magazine story goes inside the North Korean rebel movement seeking to overthrow Kim Jong-un by smuggling USB drives into the country packed with foreign television and movies. As the story describes, one group has stashed USB drives in Chinese cargo trucks. Another has passed them over from tourist boats that meet with fishermen mid-river. Others arrange USB handoffs at the Chinese border in the middle of the night with walkie talkies, laser pointers, and bountiful bribes. Even Kim assassination comedy The Interview, which the North Korean government allegedly hacked Sony to prevent from being released, has made it into the country: Chinese traders' trucks carried 20 copies of the film across the border the day after Christmas, just two days after its online release.
This exact same topic was covered in Frontline's special on North Korea over a year ago. Their point of contact was Jiro Ishimaru of Asiapress who was sneaker netting USBs over the border. They even took a video of people trying to watch on a tiny screen and having to shut everything down whenever they heard someone outside.
The documentary also touched on humanitarian issues as much as it could using a secret camera. Sad stuff. Great thing to watch. Occasionally you can catch it streaming on Netflix but it seems to not be available right now.
My work here is dung.
That's what I think when someone gives me a USB stick with propaganda on it, or advertisements as they call it.
Even if people cannot change the circumstances of their existence, they are able to change their thoughts and opinions and recognize that what they're being told to think doesn't match up with reality. People who lived behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War realized that they were being fed a line of BS and were eager to read western literature and listen to western music when they could find it, even if they weren't going to get Soviet tanks to leave by force.
I once read that sometimes the secret service in N. Korea would switch off the electricity of a block of houses and then do a raid. DVD players would be stuck with the disc inside, and if it turned out to be a western movie then the owner had a real risk of being executed. The solution was to use UPS. Of course usb sticks are easier to conceal.
We still do the same from Hong Kong into mainland china, smuggling in every thing their crazy censorship government doesn't want them to know, like tianamen massacre (6/4) and scandals with government official
ASAP
Weren't they mailing stuff in air using baloons from south Korea in past? Just mail the USB stick too!
AKA the CIA
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
ASAP
I'm sure we could if we wanted too, but ask yourself a few "what happens then" questions and I think it will be pretty easy to figure out why he's still alive. What's the point of killing this guy if his replacement isn't any better and in the fight to see who's left in charge a lot of people die? Then there is the question about what this means for the Korean War, which is technically still NOT over. North Korea might (Or likely would) see this action as a provocation and reignite the war. Now THAT would not be a pleasant turn of events, even if the conflict would likely be pretty short and one sided.
No, Kim lives.... As much as we might want change in NK, I don't think killing Kim is the way to get the change we want..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Do you really think they are talking about 20 copies on the same thumb drive. They are talking about 20 thumb drives, probably on 20 different trucks to reduce the chances of it not making it to its destination.
I gather you did not read the article, since the guy who came up with that trick is the subject of the article.
'Chinese traders' trucks carried 20 copies of the film across the border the day after Christmas, just two days after its online release.'
So that would be 20 times about 2GB, which easily fits on one 64G usb-stick the size of an inch. What did they need the trucks for ?
There were extensive liner notes.
Dark Reflection
Clearly you've never seen how much packaging online retailers like Amazon can use for such a small object during the holidays!
Literally.
And before you say "Well his smarter generals will just take over"
I will counter with a quote from The Engineer "how am I go to stop some big mean mother hubbard from tearing me a structurally superfluous new behind.....the answer use a gun...and if that don't work, use more gun."
If one doesn't work, apply a second, third, fourth...twentieth. Don't worry, we can always make more.
The Chinese media distribution system is days more efficient at distributing movies than Hollywood is.
Chew on *that*, MPAA!
The only thing smuggling The Interview into North Korea will accomplish will be to convince North Koreans that the United States is completely nuts.
We are almost as evil as Kim Jong Un.
Why not just give them weapons and intel?
*** Don't be dull.***
As the saying goes, never underestimate the bandwidth of a truckload of usb drives.