On Thursday, March 21, Cheollima Civil Defense released a video on YouTube showing a person, whose face has been blurred, removing portraits of current leader Kim Jong-un's grandfather and father from a wall and smashing them on the ground. The video has got more than 20,000 views on YouTube.
The 34-second clip that has been doing rounds on the internet, captions in Korean and English put into words the scene as occurring recently on "our homeland's soil", followed by captions - "Down with Kim family rule!" and, "For our people, we rise up! Long live Free Joseon!"
"A shadowy dissident group dedicated to overthrowing the North Korean regime has released footage purporting to show a person inside the totalitarian state destroying portraits of national founder Kim Il-sung and second-generation dictator Kim Jong-il," reported the South China Morning Post.
As we all know that free speech does not exist in North Korea. It is not only forbidden to express reservations about Kim's divine status; staying alive requires regularly proclaiming one's devotion. Thus, desecrating the image of the ruling Kim dynasty is considered a heinous crime across the country.
Ken Eom, a former North Korean military officer who defected to South Korea in 2010 said, "Without question, you'd be executed by firing squad."
However, Eom said he had serious doubts that the video was filmed inside the North, especially as the room resembles an institute where North Koreans are forced to study the Kims' family history.
Free Joseon is the name that Cheollima, which describes itself as a government in exile, intends to use for a future state after the "liberation" of the North, which the Kims have ruled with an iron fist since 1948.
The group also advertised that it would sell 200,000 "visas" using the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrency to visit Free Joseon – the name the movement plans to give North Korea upon its liberation. The visas are expected to go on sale on the website from Sunday, March 24, at a price of one unit of Ethereum digital currency per 1,000 visas.
