Kang Min-kook was a truck driver in the North Korean army when he tuned the radio and discovered, to his surprise, that it could pick up messages from the outside world.

Years later, he now credits those South Korean broadcasts with opening his mind to the lies of the Kim regime and inspiring him to escape in Aug. 2024, making him one of the most recent soldiers to flee across the inter-Korean border.

Since then, the 20-something has completed the South’s resettlement program and pursued educational opportunities that were not available to him in the North.

But while he expressed