"RadioGuy" wrote in message ...
SEOUL, South Korea - (KRT) - The U.S. government is preparing to smuggle
tiny radios into North Korea as part of a newly financed program to break
down the country's isolation.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/new...0167061.htm?1c

Any ideas as to what kind of radios? Maybe like the RadioShack 'Flavor'
radios the US dumped on Haiti perhaps?

RG




U.S. set to sneak radios to N. Korea
Smuggled receivers would get non-official broadcasts, but ally S.
Korea has concerns.


By Tim Johnson
Knight Ridder Newspapers
November 13, 2004


SEOUL, South Korea -- The U.S. government is preparing to smuggle tiny
radios into North Korea as part of a newly financed program to break
down the country's isolation.

Washington will spend up to $2 million annually for four years to
boost radio broadcasts toward North Korea and infiltrate mini-radios
across its borders.

North Korea, probably the most isolated country in the world, has only
radios that are rigged to capture broadcasts lionizing the nation's
Stalinist leadership. The broadcasts also blare from outdoor
loudspeakers.

The U.S. plan to smuggle small radios into North Korea is outlined in
the North Korean Human Rights Act, which President Bush signed into
law Oct. 18. The sweeping act provides money to private humanitarian
groups to assist defectors, extends refugee status to fleeing North
Koreans and sets in motion a plan to boost broadcasts to North Korea
and get receivers into the country.

North Korea's Kim Jong Il regime says the radios will air "rotten
imperialist reactionary culture" to undermine the country.

The human rights act, in its broad scope, also has encountered
opposition from President Roh Moo-hyun, South Korea's center-left
leader. Officials under Roh say the act will stiffen Pyongyang's
resistance to the world and hinder already stalled talks to get North
Korea to abandon its efforts to build a nuclear arsenal.

They scoff at the U.S. plan to smuggle in radios, saying it's a
good-hearted idea but one that will worsen the plight of North
Koreans. Anyone captured with a radio, they said, might face prison.

Supporters of the tactic argue that it offers a ray of hope to a
populace that's hungry for news amid food shortages and an acute
humanitarian crisis.

"There's an incredible desire among North Korean people to know what's
going on," said Suzanne Scholte, head of the Defense Forum Foundation,
a nonprofit group that focuses on U.S. policy toward North Korea.

A small number of clandestine radios are in the country, sent in by
helium-filled balloons deployed by South Korean religious groups or
brought in by traders across North Korea's border with China.

"Some people listen to South Korean broadcasts under their blankets,"
said Lee Gui-ok, a young North Korean mother who fled to China in 1999
and later moved to Seoul.