The Guardian: NK ‘Resistance Cell’ Took Execution Video

The Guardian, via SMH, reports that the North Korean excecution video, which you can now see with English narration, courtesy of The Korean Mediator, was the product of an organized North Korean resistance movement:

The footage, secretly filmed in March, is evidence of a resistance network. “If he [the cameraman] had been caught, the punishment would almost certainly have been death,” said Jung-Eun Kim, an American-Korean journalist who has spent seven years monitoring the growth of the resistance movement.

The man behind the videos is the former head of a North Korean resistance cell. He fled in January and is hiding in Bangkok, and does not want his name to be used for fear of reprisals against his wife and child, who are still in North Korea.

However, in an interview with the British television station Channel 4, screened on Monday, he said he ordered the filming of the executions in Hoeryong, in the north-east of the country.

The footage records the summary trial and execution on March 1 of two factory workers, Choi Jae-gon and Park Myeong-gil (another, shot on March 2, shows the execution of another man). Other videos show corpses on the streets of Pyongyang, the illegal sale of rice donated by the World Food Program, and casual brutality on trains.

But while the films expose cruelty and corruption, it is the countertrade in smuggled South Korean movies, showing how well people live under capitalism, that the cameraman believes are the greatest threat to the dictatorship.

If true, the choice of a camera as the weapon of choice is an exceptionally intelligent one for the time being. I doubt that an AKM or RPG could do nearly as much damage at this point. But eventually, film alone will not bring down this regime.