It's a good thing that there are kind, compassionate people who are doing something about it — through the use of USB sticks. What they do is they smuggle USB sticks inside the North Korean territory and try to make sure that it reaches as much people as possible. It's to enlighten them what's outside their prison called North Korea and be aware of the possibilities. These USB sticks contain western media: movies like Hunger Games , TV series like Friends and Desperate Housewives. Some of them even already watched The Interview. But they didn't like it. They felt insulted and considered it as mockery. Hunger Games is one of their favorites.
Most of these smugglers also came from North Korea and they were very lucky to escape. But the downside is, some of their relatives are still there, trapped. All they can do is to continue smuggling these USB drives and hope that it will spark people's minds to do something.
But these USB sticks come with a price. If we have drug pusher problems here in our country, Kim Jong-un's worst enemy are "USB stick pushers". Some North Koreans sell these sticks for a living and people there are hungry for these western media so they don't mind the expense. It's a contraband and it's quite pricey. If they get caught, they get punished (through torture and sometimes death penalty). I can't imagine living in that kind of place. I can't imagine that possessing a small thing containing some harmless movies will get you killed.
Now I feel guilty whenever I'm bored. We have lots of potential stuff to do right in front of us. We have books to read, we have cable, some of us have 1TB external hard drives filled with movies and TV series (their USB sticks only have 16GB capacity) and here we are, complaining that we have nothing to do when we should be thankful. This could be simple and ordinary for us, but not to them. When North Koreans watch these movies and there are scenes taking place in a grocery store, they pause the movie and take time to examine what's inside the store. That's how deprive they are of the outside world. And this makes me really sad. We should count ourselves really really fortunate.
I hope in the near future, North Koreans will be able to experience how it is to be free; and be able to watch Titanic in peace and not worry about getting caught; or worse, killed.
P.S.
When I watched the movie The Interview, I thought North Koreans perceiving Kim Jong-un and his family as heavenly beings is just an exaggeration. But it turned out to be true. They see Kim Jong-un as some kind of a god. But they have heard rumors that he has some health issues and it makes them question Kim Jong-un's "heavenliness". Kim Jong-un, please, just die already. 😡