'Dissident activity' revealed in N Korea

The shaking digital video camera scans a rundown factory wall, zooming in on what many outsiders would consider impossible in totalitarian North Korea. But the handwritten red-on-white poster is unmistakably clear:

“Down with Kim Jong Il! People, let’s all rise up and drive out the dictatorship!”

“Why is Kim Jong Il so intent on blocking reform and openness?” said a leader of the North Korean group Youth Solidarity for Freedom in a spoken statement recorded on the videotape.

“People, let’s stage both violent and non-violent struggles,” it said. “It’s a legitimate struggle if you refuse to go to work when your factory does not provide food and living allowances.”

The statement urged North Koreans to wake up from the ”personality cult that has made us fools.”

If verified, the footage would be the first concrete evidence of political unrest in the isolated North.

There have been occasional reports of armed rebellion, food riots and anti-government leaflets, but they cannot be independently confirmed.

The footage was taken near the Chinese border in Hoeryong town, according to defectors from there who saw the tape.

There was speculation that footage of two anti-government posters – hung on an abandoned factory wall and a bridge – may have been staged. But the South Korean group said it was real.

“We stand by its authenticity. This shows that the people who made the videotape were daring and organised enough to do this kind of highly risky work,” said Do Hee-yoon, head of the Seoul-based Civil Coalition for Human Rights of the Kidnapped and Defectors from North Korea.

Such an act is punishable by death in the North, he said.

Do said his group obtained the tape through an intermediary in China in early December.

He said that his information on the North Korean group was limited, but that “outside forces” are helping Northern dissidents expand their operations from provinces near the borders with China and Russia – traditional anti-government hotbeds – deeper into the country and even to the capital, Pyongyang.

The filming was done with “equipment provided by outsiders,” Do said, without elaborating.

The tape comes after the US Congress in October enacted the North Korean Human Rights Act, which lets Washington spend up to US$24m (€18.3m) a year to promote human rights in the North.

Pyongyang recently condemned what it said was US ”psychological warfare,” accusing Washington of plotting to topple the government by flooding the country with tiny radios that can receive outside broadcasts.

Experts differ widely on whether Kim Jong Il faces a serious challenge to the grip on power he inherited from his late father, President Kim Il Sung.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun says he sees little chances of North Korea collapsing.

Chinese Ambassador Li Bin in Seoul was quoted last week by the South’s JoongAng newspaper as saying: “To think that North Korea will collapse is far-fetched speculation.”

Last week, Pyongyang told a visiting US Congressional delegation that it was willing to become a “friend” of the United States, as to rejoin nuclear disarmament talks if Washington doesn’t “slander” its leadership.

But there are also signs of the North growing uneasy over its inability to revive its devastated economy and stem a steady outflow of people fleeing hunger. Most defect to South Korea, though return home from China – an ally of the North – with news of outside prosperity.

Pyongyang recently stiffened penalties for anti-government activity and distributing outside broadcasts. China has moved more troops to its North Korea border to boost control there, possibly in preparation for political unrest in the North.

In addition to the posters, the video footage shows a purported dissident leader reading a long statement in front of a Kim Jong Il portrait.

Across Kim’s smiling face is scribbled a slogan: “Kim Jong Il, who are you? We demand freedom and democracy. Reform and openness is the only way for our survival.”