The other side of stories

They were just a jumble of conversations overheard on a train.

But for South Korean radio station founder Young Howard, they represented breaking news from a hostile, inaccessible land.

When North Korea recently defied international calls for restraint and launched a rocket, purportedly to put a satellite in orbit, it was not long before a covert correspondent there was on her mobile phone to editors in Seoul.

People were celebrating a colossal success, she whispered. “If we have starved, it has been in sacrifice of this glory,'' she quoted the train passengers as saying.

“The Americans cannot dismiss North Korea's new weapon.''

Howard knew differently: American intelligence reports said the rocket never made it into orbit. Within hours, Open Radio for North Korea was broadcasting its own report to listeners across the border.

“News out of Pyongyang violates the basics of journalism,'' Howard said. “We tell the other side of the story.''

Howard's station is among a half-dozen Seoul-based operations that each day dispatch news and opinions into North Korea.

Some, such as Open Radio, are the work of concerned outsiders.

Others are run by defectors, many of whom use pseudonyms because they know vengeful officials could persecute family and friends left behind.

Many are small shops with a few reporters, editors and newsreaders. They broadcast only a few hours each day over shortwave radio bands, operating on shoestring budgets with private donations.

Considering the shortage of radios in North Korea and the penalty for owning one, the broadcasters don't know how many people actually hear their voices.

For Howard, it is like putting a message in a bottle and tossing it out to sea.

“We don't expect any answers,'' said Howard, 40, the father of three who was born in Busan, South Korea.

“We're just putting information out there in the hope that people's loved ones will hear.''

By far the most popular programme for Howard's station is Unsent Letters, which broadcasts messages from outsiders seeking to get word to friends and family in North Korea.

The missives often are sentimental reminiscences, bits and pieces of memory, emotion.

Experts are divided on the role the radio stations play in the lives of North Koreans.

Some call them tools of change while others say their operators are frustrated defectors shouting into the wind.

Howard launched his station in 2005 and faced problems from the start.

The South Korean government resisted giving him a licence, worried that the upstart anti-Pyongyang stations would further complicate relations between North and South.

North Korea presented problems as well.

Early on, Howard said, a Russian company, under pressure from Pyongyang, cancelled a contract to transmit his broadcasts.

Today, Howard transmits from an undisclosed country.

With a staff of 15, Open Radio for North Korea broadcasts seven days a week, offering hourlong programmes with material from volunteer producers.

Defectors-turned-radio-journalists insist the medium is the best way to influence events back home.

Kim Dae-sung, station director for Free North Korea Radio in Seoul, says his life changed in 1996 when, as a young engineer in the North, he bought a radio on the black market.

He became addicted to the radio's connection to the world outside.

“I would see things that were wrong in North Korea but I couldn't speak out,'' said Kim, who uses a pseudonym.

“The radio spoke out.'' His radio also showed him a way out.

One report mentioned a South Korean consulate that had just opened in a nearby city in China.

He defected there and years later settled in Seoul.

More than half of his 20 radio station employees are fellow defectors.

“Radio changed my life, my philosophy, my ideas,'' Kim said.