Awareness: Flash Drives For Freedom

We take information for granted. The internet is almost a basic human right for us nowadays, In the western world, a child’s punishment can be the wifi being turned off, no Netflix for you. Unfortunately, this isn’t a luxury that is afforded to everybody globally.

In fact in North Korea a punishment for a person having access to a film can be a public execution.

A brief history of North Korea.

Many people are unaware of the origins of North Korea ( as we are of most countries). North Korea isn’t an incredibly old country, existing since the end of World War II when the Soviets and the Americans both refused to leave, they split the country in half – the Americans took the South and the Soviets took the North.

The Soviets being communists, they installed a Communist leader Kim Jong Il, since then there has only been two other leaders, both relatives of the first ‘supreme leader’.

Children aren’t asked their favourite colour. The term love is only used to describe their feelings toward the Supreme Leader. There is elation across villages when the government decide to turn the electricity on for a short period of time. The conditions in the country are horrendous, and access to information is almost impossible. Citizens don’t have access to the internet, they have only one radio channel.

So what’s Flash Drives For Freedom?

Flash Drives for Freedom is an organisation that smuggles information in to North Korea. Information is an incredibly valuable asset, globally, but even more so in North Korea. People used to cross the border into China to purchase DVD’s (they wouldn’t stay in China because if caught they would be repatriated to North Korea and sent to a gulag, which is as sinister as it sounds). DVD’s could take months to watch with the limited access to electricity however, the authorities began switching the electricity off and then raiding homes to check the contents of the DVD players – people were executed for watching dubbed versions of ‘The Titanic’.

This is where Flash Drives come in, they can be removed and easily hidden!

Can we help?

Of course we can help, and we should. We’re a company that literally exists because of information. It’s our business to collect information, display information and create information. We live in a free country where we have access to any kind of information and we’re free to express ourselves.

The people of North Korea cannot, but with our help we can provide them with information, with truth and with hope. With enough information the people of North Korea could potentially rise up, free themselves, with awareness that they’re being treated sub humanly.

Okay so there’s a few ways of helping:

1. Donate money to Flash Drives for Freedom here.

2. Send blank Flash Drives or SD cards to us or drop them off. We’ll have a drop box in our offices. Once we have a handful of drives we’ll send them off to Flash Drives for Freedom.

3. Send drives or SD cards directly to Flash Drives for Freedom, their European address is at The Hague: Hague Humanity Hub, Fluwelen Burgwal 58, 2511 CJ The Hague The Netherlands

Flash Drives for Freedom have already smuggled over 2.1 Milliom hours of footage into North Korea, the work they do is incredibly risky – if caught they could be arrest or even executed.

For more information visit https://flashdrivesforfreedom.org/

JC.