Park Jung-oh has been performing a strange ritual, with some ups and downs, for almost a decade. After carefully studying the tides in the Pacific, he approaches the coast of South Korea to throw the bottles and more rice-filled bottles into the sea. He does this about twice a month. With the determination of a professional shooter. He even founded an organization with his wife, Kuen Saem, that allowed him to rely on the help of volunteers and double his efforts. In a single night in December 2023, they managed to throw hundreds of bottles into the waters of the Yellow Sea.

It sounds strange, but Park’s work is neither an extravagant hobby nor a comprehensive attempt to pollute Korea’s shores. Changing the world is what he’s been trying to do with a clean shot for almost a decade. At least for North Korea.

A bottle, rice and USB. Two-liter plastic bottles are what Park throws into the sea from South Korea’s northern coast to spots almost bordering the border, such as Seongmodo Island. Although at first glance they resemble the containers we use to bottle water or other liquids, theirs are special bottles. Put grains of rice, a USB stick, and a dollar inside before you throw them away to see how the waves carry them away.

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Watch out for the tides. That’s not all Park and his other teammates do. In addition to filling the bottles, they are also busy with another task to which they pay at least as much or even more attention: examining the sea. And thoroughly, paying attention to high and low tides and their directions. The purpose of all this is to ensure that the bottles fall into the water on the day and time most suitable for their purpose.

This is so important to them that they consulted the Korea Institute of Oceanography and Technology and fishermen familiar with the Yellow Sea before embarking on their mission. “They advised me to carefully verify these three factors, date, time and tide direction,” he says Korea Times.

But for what? It may seem discourteous to throw plastic bottles into the ocean, but Park has good reasons: solidarity. Its purpose is for these containers, thrown from the coasts in the north of South Korea, to reach the coasts of neighboring North Korea, which is under the control of Kim Jong-un, with the help of the tides. There Park hopes that at least some of its boats will find their way into the hands of local people who can benefit from them. According to his calculations, on days when conditions are good and tides are right, it takes only four hours for bottles full of rice to cross the border.

Maybe not all bottles reach their destination, but Park has received many awards throughout her years of activism. feedback of North Koreans finding strange solidarity capsules. “I once heard of a North Korean woman who was suspicious of rice, so she steamed it and gave it to a dog. Since it was good, she tried it and thought the quality was very good. She eventually sold it for a good price, and they bought a lot of cheaper produce,” Park said recently. To the BBC. In another case, it was a family of nine who had left their country to send their thanks to Kim Jong-un.

Well measured content. Everything that goes into the bottles has been inspected to perfection. The main ingredient is about a pound and a half of rice, which Park and his collaborators are trying their best to make sure their North Korean neighbors can eat.

Just a year ago, CNN warned that Kim Jong-un’s country was facing its worst food crisis since the famine of the 1990s, echoing the concerns of Peterson Institute for International Economics analyst Lucas Rengio-Keller. supply had fallen “below the amount needed to meet minimum human needs.”

Rice grains… and much more. Medicines and surgical masks were also placed in bottles during the pandemic. It is common for them to also attach SD cards or USB drives where they have previously saved different files: K-pop songs, Korean dramas, copies of the Bible, videos comparing the two Koreas… The files they want to give their neighbors to the north the keys to what life is like on both sides of the border. “My wish is that they find them and realize that they were deceived by their regime,” he admits.

“Many people think that there is no electricity in North Korea, but I have heard that there are a lot of solar panels coming from China that can be used to charge batteries, especially during the summer months,” says Park. This, in addition to the proliferation of electronic devices such as computers and mobile phones, is expected to help North Koreans take advantage of their cards. Sometimes he also adds a dollar bill to the bottles so families can exchange them.

A valuable perspective. Park is not your average activist or your typical South Korean who decides one morning to help families on the other side of the border. If Kuen Saem has devoted his time, effort, and resources to crafting bottles for nearly a decade, and even started an organization to do it more effectively, it’s because he has a particular sensitivity to everything going on in North Korea. His family comes from there.

His father abandoned and the family was forced to pack up and leave the country, as Park did 26 years ago. The man, now almost 60, tells the BBC how he remembers images of the famine and accounts of soldiers arriving armed with guns into North Korea’s Hwanghae province to seize rice crops.

Against wind politics and tide. To achieve their goal, Park and his collaborators had to contend with more than tides, wind or the cost of filling hundreds of bottles with rice, USB drives and other objects. In 2020, with liberal Moon Jae-in at the head of the South Korean government, a law on “inter-Korean relations” was passed that prohibits activists from sending anti-North Korean propaganda materials to the North. Failure to comply with the rule required imprisonment. This new panorama complicated Park’s project.

“It was the hardest time for North Korean defectors. I was tried eight times as the police tried to find fault with me and filed charges against me whenever they detected a minor crime on my part,” he says.

Obstacle resistant. Park continued to throw rice bottles into the sea in 2020 amid tensions with Pyongyang. And in the article dedicated to him and talking about his current activism, the BBC says he has “clearly been unable to do so since June” of that year. He even states that he and his wife had to send bottles “secretly due to the ban” during the pandemic period.

The reversal of this veto does not mean that Park no longer faces difficulties: He says he noticed a change in the treatment of locals after the 2020 law, and it also became harder to find donors. “They are worried about another possible change,” he assumes. But the activist says he will not give up. His struggle was echoed in international media such as the BBC and Reuters agency, and he continues to climb the shore, looking towards his former homeland.

Pictures | Kuen Saem – Send Rice and Information Directly to NK Contacts (Facebook)

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