WHEN PROPAGANDA BACKFIRES - HUNGER STRIKE IN NORTH KOREA?
by Richardson ~ July 7th, 2005. Filed under: Hunger & Famine, North Korea.North Korean defectors reportedly had an adverse reaction when they learned that going on a hunger strike is a form of protest in South Korea:
A North Korean propaganda film about the repatriation of a spy — Lee In-Mo — who had languished for years in a South Korean prison may have a short shelf life, according to defectors now living in the South. “What we could not believe in the movie was that Lee and others were conducting hunger strikes in the prison,” said one defector about the movie. “Refusing to eat was a form of resistance in the South? Boy, South Korea must be a paradise. That’s what we said among ourselves” [emphasis added]
Lee, 76, was a North Korean spy dispatched during the early days of Korean War (1950-53)… He was captured at the age of 33 and spent 42 years in South Korean prisons… Lee was released for ill health and old age.
If true, it is rather amazing that the government department that thought up the film project did not realize what the general population might think about that. Probably more than one lesson in that story. More on North Korean government propaganda.
