Activists are planning to smuggle up to 20 million radios tuned to the Voice of America into North Korea as part of efforts to destabilize the communist regime.
The campaign is aimed at giving North Koreans access to uncensored information about their own country and helping achieve regime change, Douglas Shin, a Korean-American Christian missionary involved in the campaign, said Monday.
The activists, who help North Korean refugees, say they plan to smuggle the radios, which will be solar-powered, from China via boats.
North Koreas face severe restrictions on their movements, and the frequencies of radios sold there are fixed to government-run broadcast stations, according to the activists.
VOA is an international multimedia broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government. It was pivotal in disseminating Western information to people in communist bloc nations during the Cold War.
Shin said that although only 10 percent of the radios may end up in the hands of North Koreans, they could still have an impact on democratizing North Korea by providing the people with uncensored information about their own country.
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