Pyongyang has intensified its rhetoric against UMG [Unification Media Group], a South Korean civic broadcaster that launched recently, criticizing it for five consecutive days starting on December 7th.
The North has called the unification broadcaster a “psychological warfare scheme designed to distract the other side’s mind ahead of warfare,” and referred to its work as “confrontational broadcasts aiming to stir up an atmosphere of combat.”
I would like to be clear: UMG does not aim to treat 23 million North Korean people as enemies and create confusion. It would like to help North Koreans come to know the real world by treating them like independent human beings and delivering information that evolves at a rapid pace. The goal is not to create confrontation, but let people in the South and North know about what’s happening in both worlds, so that we may bring down the spirit of confrontation persisting on for seven decades.
The North Korean leadership has likened UMG to “slander toward the North and betrayal to the nation’s spirit of longing for unification at the earliest date possible.” Again, let me reiterate that UMG has no intentions of slamming the North. Instead, it would like to convey how important the lives and freedom of the North Korean people are. The station strives to look for ways to end the tragedy of division and identify the means to build an era of unification-- together--as well as ensure that 23 million North Koreans stand tall as the owners of their country and live like human beings.
If North Korea truly thinks of its people as its “highest dignity” and hopes for reconciliation and unification, it should support UMG, which stands ready to work for realization of that goal instead of its disparagement.
It costs 10,000 KRW to create one minute of material to transmit to the North Korean people. Supreme Commander Kim Jong Eun is known to have spent 600 million USD on luxury goods such as alcohol or gems in one year. I would like to ask that he spend just 10,000 KRW less and wire it to UMG [bank details available below]. What Supreme Commander Kim Jong Eun cannot do, UMG will do for him: send out a broadcast for the freedom of North Koreans and unification of the Korean Peninsula.
048-080465-04-065
Swift Code: IBKOKRSEXXX
[INDUSTRIAL BANK OF KOREA]
762301-04-185408
