A North Korean signal corp soldier has been sent to political prison, along with her family, for tuning in to Radio Free Asia (RFA) while on duty. She was arrested in mid-June after she forgot to change the frequency from RFA after her shift was done. The soldier admitted to routinely listening to RFA broadcasts during her shifts.
North Korean law implicates the soldier's family as guilty by association. Multiple sources of RFA confirmed her punishment as reported through internal military communications.
RFA is funded by the United States and broadcasts 6 hours of Korean-language programming daily over North Korea from the Northern Mariana Islands. North Korea's strict restrictions on outside information encourages soldiers who have access to listen into RFA or other frequencies when they have long shifts without supervision.
One former North Korean signal corp officer who defected to South Korea admitted that he had "decided to escape North Korea because I was influenced by RFA" in an interview with RFA.
