There is no active civil society in North Korea. When North Koreans settle in South Korea, they start learning about liberal values with which they organise their own civil (and uncivil) movements, directly targeting North Korean citizens and the regime.
Focusing on ‘balloon warriors’ who have been flying air-borne balloon leaflets to North Korea at the borders between the two Koreas, I argue that North Korean ‘civil society in exile’ has an element of a subversive liberal project, fuelled by political conservatives and Christian evangelicals whose aim is a regime collapse in North Korea which is unlikely to be achieved.
