Lee Sang-yoon is always ready to fly to China tiffany sale on short notice on a courier mission that even UPS and other top global shipping companies can't match.
He is not an ordinary delivery man.
What Lee brings to South Korea from his frequent trips to China is documents or USB drives that his "helpers" have smuggled out of North Korea. They include video footage shot undercover and other sensitive materials that could make him a public enemy of the North's communist regime.
The young North Korean defector is one of a group of newly emerging warriors who risk their lives for the mission, driven largely by their strong wish to let the world know of what they believe is worsening conditions in their former communist homeland.
Such covert courier missions drew fresh attention in the intelligence world last month when Lee's South Korean missionary group unveiled a North Korean police document, which, among other things, chronicled several cases of cannibalism amid an acute food shortage in the communist country. The document was later shared with government analysts.
The secret effort to glean intelligence through interaction with North Koreans has gained new urgency in recent years, especially after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il suffered an apparent stroke.
In an age of spy satellites and the Internet tiffany earring, North Korea largely remains as an intelligence black hole, as the isolated country keeps a tight lid on almost all information and denies its people access to the outside world.
Still, the wall of secrecy has begun to crack, as some North Koreans fed up with chronic poverty are willing to trade sensitive information for money, according to North Korean defectors and South Korean activists.
"Those who have access to sensitive documents in North Korea know that they can make money by selling them," said Rev. Kim Seung-eun, the head of Caleb Mission, a small South Korean church that claims it has "helpers" inside North Korea.
The new development is drawing a growing number of intelligence operatives to China's northeastern areas near the border with North Korea, a key conduit for leaked documents and secret footage, according to North Korean defectors.
"I can go to China right away, if necessary," Lee said in a recent interview in the Caleb Mission's small office in Cheonan, some 90 kilometers south of Seoul.
Lee said he has brought documents and USB drives in "countless times," and is determined to continue to do it, though he said he always fears that he may be arrested by Chinese police and punished.
The interview was frequently interrupted, as Lee was answering phone calls from his fellow couriers and North Korean contacts in the border areas dealing with the latest delivery of a package from North Korea.
Mobile phones smuggled from China have played a key role in arranging the risky business and leaking sensitive news on North Korea to the outside world, defectors said.
In a separate interview in Seoul, tiffany necklaces Park Byung-ho, another North Korean defector, said he used to obtain North Korean documents through ethnic Koreans in China, but now he prefers phone contacts to disseminate news quickly.
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