SEOUL, south korea — Video secretly taken in North Korea shows public executions by firing squad. The country is said to begin a currency revaluation that turns disastrous. Leader Kim Jong Un is reported to have thrown South Korean leaflets containing rumors about his wife in his aides’ faces.
The first two stories seem to be true. The third, who knows? All came from people in North Korea, through networks of defectors determined to get out information on the authoritarian, highly insular country they left behind.
Their words and images are snapped up with enthusiasm, and often credulously, by South Korean and international media desperate for news from the poorly understood country.
The sources might not be particularly well-informed: They could be ruling-party officials or factory workers. Or smugglers, professors or soldiers.
Generally, they are in it for the money, not a desire to force change in their homeland, according to the defectors they communicate with.
Whatever their motives, the risks they face are the same. Defectors say the firing-squad and currency stories came from sources now dead because of their work.
The North inspires fervent curiosity and global headlines thanks largely to its tight control on information, its dogged pursuit of long-range nuclear weapons and its widely condemned record on human rights.
For outsiders it can be a breeding ground for groundless rumors, as it was recently during nearly six weeks in which Kim Jong Un stayed out of the public eye. After rumors ranging from a coup to gout brought on by a cheese addiction, he emerged limping but still clearly in power.
Leading defectors’ organizations say they are not responsible for many of the most sensational rumors, which could come from South Korean officials, businessmen doing business with the North or someone else. But that doesn’t mean the defectors are always right, either.
In the months after the North’s December execution of Jang Song Thaek — an uncle of Kim Jong Un who had been widely regarded as the country’s No. 2 official — a defector’s organization reported on its website that another top official, Choe Ryong Hae, had been detained for unclear reasons.
Those reports, cited by many news outlets, appeared doubtful days later when state TV aired photos of Choe accompanying Kim on an inspection trip.
Kim Seong-Min, a well-known defector who heads the organization involved, Free North Korea Radio, said he thinks Choe was at least investigated, if not detained.
Kim is unperturbed as long as the information helps expose North Korean wrongdoing. And he has worked to help North Koreans bolster their reports by smuggling in illegal cellphones and camcorders for them.
“There are lots of stories about North Korea, and I think all of them are good as long as they don’t praise that country,” Kim said in a recent interview. “I think they will help people understand the North’s dictatorship.”
