Park Sang-hak

Park Sang-hak
Park Sang-hak (2014)
Born	North Korea
Residence	South Korea
Nationality	South Korean
Education	College
Occupation	Activist
Known for	Founder of Fighters for a Free North Korea

Park Sang-hak is a North Korean democracy activist and is the chairman of Fighters for a Free North Korea.

Born in 1968 at Hyesan, Park grew up in a privileged family in North Korea. After graduating college, he was given a job at the government propaganda office in Pyongyang. He met with other members of the community every Sunday to engage in “self-judgment.”

Park worked at the propaganda office until 1999. In that year, his father "decided he had had enough". During the late 1990s many top intelligence officers had been purged, and Park's father, who at the time was posing as a businessman in Hong Kong, feared the regime would have him killed if he returned to North Korea. He sent a message to his family through a broker, ordering them to flee to China.

After bribing North Korean guards to look the other way, Park and his brother swam across a river into China, while their mother and sister floated across the river using an inner tube. They were picked up on the other side of the border by a car, as arranged by his father, and the whole family flew on false passports to South Korea.

Following the family's escape, an uncle of Park's in North Korea was beaten to death in retaliation for their defection.

In 2006, Park became the chairman of the Democracy Network against North Korea Gulag. As of 2013, he is the chairman of Fighters for a Free North Korea.

In April 2015 Park Sang-hak was detained as protestors clashed with South Korean police over their attempts to airlift thousands of copies of The Interview into North Korea.

Fighters for a Free North Korea is known for periodically launching balloons carrying human rights and pro-democracy literature, DVDs, transistor radios and USB flash drives from South Korea into North Korea. Over two million such balloons have been launched. The balloons, which generally reach the Pyongyang area after three to four hours in the air, are timed to release their materials in the Pyongyang area.

According to the Wall Street Journal, supporters of the balloon campaign say that it "is one of the most effective tools for change inside North Korea, where information about the outside world is highly restricted". Critics of the campaign, reported the Journal, "oppose the move for causing inter-Korean frictions".

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