Holding signs and pretending to be dead, 12 students raised awareness for human rights violations in North Korea yesterday.
As students milled about Hornbake Plaza at 12:50 p.m. yesterday, they had to carefully step around 12 students lying on the ground in an effort to raise awareness for human rights violations in North Korea.
At the sound of a whistle, the students in Liberty in North Korea at UMD dropped the signs they were carrying and pretended to be dead from 12:50 p.m. to 1 p.m. The purpose of the event, called Operation: Drop Dead, was to show — and tell — students that for more than 50 years, some villages in the country have lacked basic necessities for survival.
“In North Korea, the people are basically the living dead,” said junior government and politics major Matt Parsons, who helped orchestrate the event. “They have no rights, no freedoms. They just do what the government tells them, and it’s wrong.”
LiNK at UMD is an offshoot of LiNK, a national grassroots movement devoted to raising money to help North Koreans escape an oppressive government, according to LiNK’s website. In the mid-1990s, more than one million died in the country from starvation and thousands were imprisoned in concentration camps. “Very little has changed since then,” according to the organization’s site.
Through education, LiNK at UMD President Sophia Wu said the students can help create change.
“We want to increase awareness about the human rights crisis for people on campus,” Wu said. “People can pass by and read about the facts without taking time out of their own day. We are making it easier for people.”
Signs strewn across the plaza helped draw many passing eyes toward the event, Parsons said. The messages included, “If I was going to die anyway, I might as well die trying to escape,” “Punishable by law: singing a foreign pop song, listening to non-state radio, watching non-state TV” and “the average monthly salary in North Korea: one cent.”
LiNK at UMD hopes to be able to help those in North Korea by reaching out to students to donate.
“We are definitely increasing our fundraising activities,” Wu said. “We are collaborating with a bunch of advocacy groups on campus. We just want to encourage people to join the movement. We have all of our rights here and should be working to help others who don’t have them elsewhere.”
Formed in 2003, this university’s branch of the organization raised about $300 for the refugees last year and has significantly increased its goal to $2,500 this year — which is enough to help one refugee leave the country and provides him or her with food, shelter, transportation, money to pay government fines and other basic necessities for the journey, memebers said. In total, the national organization’s refugee fund boasts $10,923.61 as of yesterday.
“I want to help people become more aware of the issues in North Korea,” said junior bioengineering major Nick Lee, who participated in the event. “Their lives pretty much suck compared to what people think, just because they don’t know. It’s devastating.”
romas@umdbk.com
