Dissident Activity Reported in N. Korea
Mon Jan 17,11:31 PM ET
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SEOUL, South Korea - A human rights group claimed Tuesday that it has obtained video footage showing dissident activities in North Korea (news - web sites), with demands for freedom and democracy written over a poster of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il.
If authentic, it would be the first time images of dissent in the highly secretive North have come to light. But there was no way to independently confirm the validity of the footage.
The 35-minute videotape, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, shows written statements posted on a wall, urging North Koreans to fight to retrieve freedom and democracy.
A man is heard, but not seen, reading a statement, demanding Kim Jong Il be removed from his post. "The North Korean people are suffering from hunger and poverty because of Kim Jong Il's dictatorship and dogmatic politics," the man says.
The tape was delivered to the Seoul-based Citizen's Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees, and became public after the Coalition handed over the footage to an Internet news site that specializes on North Korean affairs.
The Coalition said the footage was taken by the Youth Solidarity for Freedom at a North Korean town near the border with China.
The Kim family has ruled North Korea for more than a half century, creating a powerful personality cult. Portraits of Kim and his father hang side-by-side on the walls of every house.
Recently, however, observers of the world's most reclusive regime have noted possible signs of subtle cracks in Kim's grip on power.
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First signs of protest in world's top secret state
(Filed: 18/01/2005)
The first known visual evidence of dissent within the world's most secretive state emerged yesterday when video footage taken in a North Korean factory showed a portrait of the dictator, Kim Jong-il, defaced with graffiti demanding freedom and democracy.
The 35-minute video clip, said to have been taken in November, was posted on the website of an opposition group based in South Korea. It shows a poster of Kim scrawled over with the words: "Down with Kim Jong-il. Let's all rise to drive out the dictatorial regime.''
Poster of Kim Jung-il
A defaced poster of Kim Jong-il in a factory in Hoeryong
Still frames captured from the clip and a partial transcript were made available by the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, a group of defectors and refugees who have settled in the South.
According to another opposition group in South Korea, the footage was taken in the north-eastern border city of Hoeryong and was passed to activists in China.
The Citizens' Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees, based in Seoul, said the act of dissent against the paranoid leadership of the totalitarian state and its broadcast abroad suggested the first signs of an attempt to forge a domestic movement against Kim.
Such an act would be considered a grave crime in the North and would mean a death sentence without trial for the perpetrator, said Do Hee-youn, who heads the group. "It's no ordinary group of people who took this video," he told Reuters news agency.
The video, which also shows street scenes outside the factory, is accompanied by the voice of a narrator.
"The gentle and ordinary people of North Korea need a new leader," a male voice says. "There is a great potential for democracy in this country."
Kim inherited the leadership of the world's most reclusive communist state in 1994 on the death of his father, Kim Il-sung.
