It’s a simple USB stick, much like the one you probably have sitting somewhere at the bottom of your backpack. But to the people in North Korea receiving it, the tiny device may provide their only glimpse into the outside world.

In the reclusive state, citizens have no access to the Internet and only one TV channel, which is run by the government. The state-controlled media has told its people that North Korea has discovered a cure for cancer and AIDS, that Kim Jong Il invented the hamburger and that country is rated the “happiest place on Earth.”

The real picture is much more bleak. A 2014 United Nations report found evidence of mass starvation, public executions, torture, forced abortions, slavery and “disappearance of persons” in the rigidly stratified society.

A man named Kang Chol-hwan is fighting the rigid regime with something he knows it fears: information. More specifically—getting it into the hands of its citizens.

His team at the North Korea Strategy Center, where he is the executive director, is loading up USB sticks with Hollywood movies and documentaries, Korean dramas, eBooks, newspapers on PDFs and an offline wikipedia, and smuggling them into North Korea. (According to the organization’s program officer, The Hunger Games and Desperate Housewives are a couple favored shows.) From 2008 through 2015, the organization has sent 18,500 USBs, along with DVDs and small radios, into the country.

A fundraising campaign has been launched to help them send 6,000 more in six months. The mission of the North Korea Strategy Center is to advocate for free media and press in North Korea.

Kang was a child prisoner at Yodok political prison camp in North Korea, sent there with his family after his grandfather was accused of treason by the Kim regime. He recalls constructing a building out of clay when he was 10 years old:

“… there were dozens of kids, and while digging the ground, it collapsed, and they died. And the bodies were crushed flat. And they buried the kids secretly, without showing their parents, even though the parents came. They shouldn’t force the children to work again, but they did. Even though at that moment they could notice the bleeding and dead kids. The kids were crying. It was the first atrocity I witnessed.

After escaping, Kang became a journalist, author, and human rights activist, publishing the The Aquariums of Pyongyang, the very first survivor’s account of North Korea’s concentration camps.

Today, many North Korean defectors are sharing their stories, including Joseph Kim, who resettled in the US and answered questions in a Reddit AMA last year.

On Wednesday, Kang did an AMA, discussing his experience as a prisoner and his thoughts on how to bring down the regime.

Here are some highlights.

On daily life in the work camps, and what happens when people are caught with the USB sticks

On the government surveillance system

On how much exposure North Koreans have to the outside world

On the misconceptions people have of North Koreans

On the strategy behind spreading information via movies, videos and digital media rather than balloon “flyers”—something South Korean activists have done. (North Korea has retaliated, sending back balloons filled with cigarette butts and used toilet paper.)

On the ultimate end game and what needs to happen for the North Korean people to be free

See the full AMA here.