Saturday, January 28, 2012

Socks from Heaven: South Korea Sends Warm Socks to the North via Balloons


An activist group in South Korea has sent over one thousand pairs of warm, wooly socks to the long-suffering citizens of North Korea...attached to enormous balloons.

Crates of the socks were sent high up into the heavens attached to five balloons while the breeze was blowing in the right direction toward the North Korean border from the South Korean city of Paju. The Seoul-based activist group called North Korea Peace also attached "innocuous non-political" messages with the socks. "We're not interested in sending political messages or sparking any troubles there. All we want is that people in the North wear warm socks over their frozen feet," states North Korea Peace spokesperson Sunny Kim.

Socks are apparently so hard to come by in North Korea, that they are often traded for cash. One pair of warm socks can be traded for 22 lbs. of corn, which can sustain an individual for approximately one month. Information sneaking out of the communist nation tells of a nightmarish existence for the North Koreans, including millions of deaths each year from starvation, disease, and exposure.

Relations with the two countries continue to be strained, even in the light of former North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's death last month of a heart attack at the age of 69. Power has since been transferred to Il's son, Kim Jong Un.



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