Palisades Park, NJ — Uri Tours, the largest American provider of North Korea travel, creates Art Prize® driven Kickstarter® campaign to encourage communication between the people of the United States and North Korea via postcards.
Uri Tours, started by a Korean-American family, has been specializing in DPRK travel for the last 10 years. The company is launching a Kickstarter® campaign to help connect the people of the United States with North Korea. The campaign will involve “backing” a postcard on Kickstarter® for $10-$30. In order to start the dialogue, Uri Tours is asking backers to share something about themselves and asking the postcard senders in North Korea to do the same. The stories of both author and recipient will later be turned into an art installation that will be entered into Art Prize® 2016 in Grand Rapids, MI.
“We want to help show people that there’s more to this country than politics and government. It’s not all marching and guns and nukes. There are real people with real lives.” said Andrea Lee, Founder and CEO of Uri Travel. “When asked about what she would say to critics who might suggest that the postcard senders do not represent the real people of North Korea, she responded “We won’t pretend that they represent all 24 million people living there, but they are still hard working, everyday people just like us. We will have critics, but we believe that some dialogue is better than no dialogue at all.”
The Kickstarter® campaign started on July 8, 2015 and the postcards are timed to deliver in October on the 70th anniversary of the division of Korea into North and South, following the end of WWII and the liberation of Korea from Japanese occupation. The goal of the project is to start a conversation between people of two historically conflicted countries, the U.S. and the DPRK, and to bring the focus back on the people, not on governments.
How this Kickstarter® campaign is different from others:
1) Their backers set the goal. The campaign goal is set at a low $1,000, which represents about 11% of successful Kickstarters. The campaign team explains “We did not set a low goal because we are thinking small. Each postcard is another connection and we will make this as big as our backers let us.”
2) Their campaign engages more than big cities where the majority of Kickstarters are funded. The team’s social media efforts will focus on “50 states in 50 days,” asking at least one person in each of the 50 states to join the effort.
3) Backers themselves actually become part of the art. Backers submit photos of their postcards to form the basis for the art piece.
About the company
Uri Tours is the largest provider of North Korea travel in the U.S. and the exclusive Sales and Ticketing Agent of Air Koryo in all of the Americas. They have been facilitating travel for Americans to North Korea for over 10 years. Visit uritours.com for more information.
For more information, media inquiries only, contact:
Andrea Lee
Uri Tours
201-588-3874
nkpostcards@uritours.com
Campaign: www.kickstarter.com
