Defector flew drones carrying flash drives into North Korea

NEW YORK, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- North Korea human rights activists in South Korea flew drones carrying flash drives across the China-North Korea border, a North Korean defector said Thursday.

Jung Kwang-il, a defector and activist in Seoul who endured several years of hard labor in a North Korean prison camp, said his organization, No Chain, has been flying drones into North Korea since April, South Korean newspaper Segye Ilbo reported.

The drones carried information about the outside world, and a total of 2,000 flash drives were sent into North Korea from a location in China, Jung said.

Yonhap reported the drone missions are part of a larger effort to infiltrate North Korea with information and media that could be detrimental to the Kim Jong Un regime.

North Korea has denounced previous balloon launches of anti-Pyongyang leaflets, and has accused defectors in the South of "spreading hatred and loathing between a common people."

Jung made the unprecedented statement on his group's drone program at the United Nations ahead of a U.N. Security Council meeting on North Korea human rights.

The meeting was held after a vote was passed and the United States presided over the meeting after China said it would be inappropriate for the council to discuss the human rights issues of any country.

South Korea's U.N. Ambassador Oh Joon said during the meeting North Korean defectors who leave their country face serious challenges, South Korean newspaper Hankook Ilbo reported.

Quoting Hyeonseo Lee, a defector who published the memoir The Girl with Seven Names, Oh said that leaving North Korea is different from simply leaving a country, and is rather like leaving a universe, from which one cannot be completely free of its gravitational forces.

Oh said the international community should continue to help North Koreans fleeing their country, but ultimately help them live safely and with dignity in their own homeland.