Inside the control room of a recording studio, the On-Air light above the soundboard is switched off, and radio producer Han Jae-deok turns up the audio of an interview he recently conducted with a North Korean refugee. The woman on the recording explains how she escaped to South Korea.   

“Every North Korean defector’s story moves me, and I think it moves others, too,” he said. “Especially North Korean people.”

Han knows a lot about his intended audience — listeners above the border. 

He’s also a defector and arrived in South Korea three years ago after escaping a construction site in Russia, where North Korean workers were sent to earn money for Pyongyang.

Han is now among a dozen North Koreans employed as announcers, producers and writers by the Unification Media Group and its partner news service, The Daily NK.

The civic group broadcasts three hours of programming each day into North Korea, where human rights advocates say foreign media is banned and consuming it is punishable. It also smuggles SD cards loaded with their newscasts, music and other South Korean entertainment into the North from China.

The broadcaster estimates that tens of thousands of North Koreans have heard their content, although it requires an illegal device to pick up their signal.

But earlier this year, the Unification Media Group faced what staff say was its “biggest crisis” since the station began broadcasting in 2004.

Following Donald Trump’s inauguration, the group was notified that grants it received through the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy were being suspended. And according to Lee Kwang-baek, the group’s president, US funding accounts for nearly 100% of the organization’s total operating costs.

The grants were eventually restored, though it took a US federal judge’s order as well as some convincing, Lee explains.

“We made the case that if we lost this funding, it would be difficult and take many years to rebuild our network of contacts in North Korea,” Lee said. 

But unlike previous grant cycles, the Unification Media Group must reapply for financial support after one year. And that’s left Lee and his team uncertain about how much longer they can stay on the air.

He said he doesn’t know another country or donor who could fill that gap if Washington rejects future applications. And he adds that it’s unlikely the South Korean government under President Lee Jae-Myung, who took office in June, would step in.

“During previous liberal administrations, the government has seemed apathetic toward North Korean human rights groups or has worked against us,” Lee said.

John Delury, senior fellow at the Asia Society in Seoul, says US support has long ensured that some groups critical of Pyongyang could continue their work regardless of whether liberals or conservatives were in power in South Korea.  

“If you’re trying to implement in reality, on-the-ground peaceful coexistence, then that means you have a hard time supporting, or even allowing, groups that want to actively take measures to subvert the North Korean regime,” he said. “Including in the information domain.”

Delury says these groups that have struggled due to Seoul’s “dramatic policy shifts” now worry US support is no longer a guarantee.  

Last month, the South Korean military shut down its 15-year-long radio broadcast, “The Voice of Freedom.” That followed an earlier decision to turn off loudspeakers that blasted anti-North Korean broadcasts across the Demilitarized Zone.

These moves, Delury said, could signal that President Lee Jae-Myung hopes to resume engagement with Pyongyang after several years of scant dialogue..  

An official from Seoul’s Unification Ministry, the department responsible for North Korea policy, states in an email to The World that the government supports the activities of some human rights groups. But, the “right to know” of North Koreans must be balanced with efforts to improve inter-Korean relations.  

Radio producer Han Jae-deok says now that Seoul has ended its own broadcasts into the North and the US has stopped its Korean-language radio services via the “Voice of America” and “Radio Free Asia,” it’s more important than ever that groups like his are able to keep their microphones on.

“We are a unique media,” the North Korean defector said. “No other organization can play the same role as us.”