Revolution in the Sky

The No-Tech Tactics of North Korea's Most Wanted Defector

By Adam Higginbotham June 05, 2014

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Photograph by Adam Ferguson for Bloomberg BusinessweekNear the DMZ in South Korea, a balloon is readied for launch


Park Sang Hak rides in a minivan down the highway, speeding past signs for Pyongyang. “That’s North Korea, over there,” he says, pointing past a razor wire fence, across the Imjin estuary, to a pastoral green landscape beyond. The van pulls into a parking lot, where Park greets the rest of his team from the Fighters for a Free North Korea (FFNK). They are all defectors from the North. There are his mother, his sister-in-law, and his wife, who wears a purple anorak and matching full-face plastic visor to protect her from the sun. At the wheel of a small blue cargo truck is his younger brother. Marching across the asphalt at double time are members of a like-minded volunteer group, the People’s Liberation Front (PLF), six men and three women who represent the shock troops in the day’s operation. Former officers in the North Korean army, clad in berets and gray-camouflage fatigues, they’d seem more intimidating if the women’s combat boots did not have high heels.


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