Searching for the Next Soundbyte

In the past few weeks, nine North Korean refugees have sought asylum at the Danish Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam, while another 11 hopped on a small barge and crossed over during the evening of October 1st into South Korean waters. Both of these cases hint at a key piece of the puzzle in keeping the struggle against the Hermit Kingdom‘s human rights violations on the front U.S. burner: the visually arresting soundbyte.

Just the other day, a woman who defected from North Korea with her husband and son in 1998 – they bribed guards with cigarettes and then evaded gunfire – said the arrest at the border on March 17th of Laura Ling and Euna Lee was ultimately a good thing. Coming just a few days after Ling restated the @CurrentVanguard mission as being to shine a light on dark places, this woman said the incident had shined a light on the issue.

But how to keep it going? Monday, October 5th will mark two months since Laura, Euna and Bill combined for the best ever North Korea humanitarian crisis soundbyte; in the interim, discussion has gradually shifted to things like how the trio would make a great Halloween costume theme for the appropriate two-women, one-male adult trick-or-treaters. Hilarious and very true, but this is not the sort of coverage that is going to keep the land-of-no-Halloween-treats in the minds of you, me and our neighbors.

All this to say that it’s too bad, at least to my knowledge, that there is no ready footage of those eleven barge-riding North Koreans or nine Hanoi Hilton-ing defectors that could be rebroadcast on U.S. cable news channels. Images of overloaded boats headed for South Florida helped brand the Cuban refugee crisis and as we move forward on the North Korean front, the media mill will need to be fed in order for coverage to reach beyond the nuclear politics of it all.

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Filed under: Media