Each night, Lee Si-young sits in a tiny, self-effacing office in Seoul, bounded by radios and recording paraphernalia. For two hours, she and a tiny team of defectors risk everything to broadcast uncensored news into North Korea—a place where simply listening to an unauthorized radio could land someone in prison.
For nearly twenty years, Free North Korea Radio (FNK), the station Lee heads, has been a lifeline of information for North Korea’s 26 million people. But lately, Lee feels a growing sense of alarm. Government-funded broadcasters in the United States and South Korea, once pillars of this mission, have gone silent due to funding cuts and policy changes.
“Our frustrations with the U.S. and South Korean governments are growing,” Lee said, her voice heavy with concern. “We’re afraid they’ve abandoned North Korean residents.”
Inside North Korea, all radios and TVs are locked to state-controlled channels. Yet, as renegades narrate, residents usually find a way to ‘go around’ these restrictions—adjusting radios, hiding smuggled devices, and surreptitiously turn on their radios at night. These transmissions provide citizens a glimpse of the world outside their government, fresh outlooks about the Kim reign, existence abroad that shows freedom, and stories of other North Koreans who were able to flee.
But the spread of these programs has shrunk. A recent study by 38 North, a respected academic site on North Korea, estimated that foreign radio broadcasts into the country have dropped by 85% following cuts by U.S. and South Korean authorities.
Two major U.S.-funded broadcasters—Voice of America and Radio Free Asia—were forced to stop their Korean-language programs after President Trump signed an executive order dismantling the agency that funded them. In South Korea, President Lee Jae-myung’s government suspended cross-border radio broadcasts and turned off frontline loudspeakers that had once blasted K-pop and global news into the North, aiming to reduce tensions. Activists were also barred from sending balloons or USB drives across the border.
FNK, with its five-person team—all defectors themselves—remains one of the few beacons of independent news reaching into North Korea. “We have to decide whether to tell North Koreans that paused broadcasts will return or admit we’re one of the few who survived,” Lee said, the weight of responsibility evident in her eyes.
Others are trying to find new ways to pierce the information blockade. Lee Young-hyeon, a defector-turned-lawyer in South Korea, recently launched Korea Internet Studio—a website and mobile app aimed at North Koreans abroad. The platform offers practical guidance: how students can succeed in foreign schools, what gifts laborers can send home, and even lessons on cryptocurrency.
“The goal is not to incite an uprising,” Young-hyeon said. “It’s to show North Koreans that there is a world where they can enjoy some freedom and rights.”
The obstacles are immense. Since 2020, North Korea has tightened its grip on information, punishing citizens with years of hard labor for consuming or spreading foreign media. Detractors question whether these external transmissions and ‘swelling’ crusades have ever truthfully paved the way for change, considering that they provoke tension.
Thus far, those who have paid attention to the broadcasts, they were remarkable and haunting. Paek Yosep, who absconded in 2003, recalls being stunned by news of anti-regime gripes in Seoul—something inconceivable under the North Korean administration. Kim Ki-sung, another defector, says the broadcasts helped shape his decision to flee. “I learned South Korea was rich, bustling with cars, full of opportunity,” he recalled. “Even if only one person listens today, we must keep broadcasting.”
In a country where access to information is literally a matter of life and death, the voices of a handful of determined defectors continue to pierce the silence—reminding the world that even in the darkest corners, hope can travel on the airwaves.
