Foreign Media in North Korea - How Kpop is Challenging the Regime
Movies, TV shows, and music hold power. They’re a way for us to connect through common experiences, reckon with different sides of humanity, and revel in the beauty of being here at all. They transport us to another time and place- perhaps one of our imaginations- and most importantly, allow us to dream and imagine a limitless future.
In recent years, South Korean media and entertainment has gained international recognition. People like Hyun Bin and Son Yejin, the stars of popular Korean drama Crash Landing on You, have become household names, while Parasite swept the 2020 Academy Awards and music from K-pop groups like BTS are charting globally.
Meanwhile, just across the border, North Korea remains one of the most closed societies in the world. Yet even in the “hermit kingdom,” foreign media is accelerating empowerment of the people and change within the country!
Forced Isolation and the Regime’s Information Monopoly
The North Korean government has maintained power for decades through a system of imposed isolation, relentless indoctrination, and brutal repression. A complete monopoly on information and ideas within the country has been key- outside media threatens to challenge the legitimacy of their propaganda, and by extension, their control.
The 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea reported an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion as well as of the rights to freedom of speech, opinion, expression, and association.
The regime employs a range of strategies to enforce information control:
- Restricting movement across borders and within the country
- Random house searches
- Severe punishment, including public executions, to deter foreign media consumption and sharing
- Sophisticated digital surveillance
- Jamming phone signals and locating users through signal triangulation
- Mobile OS file signature system that only permits government-approved apps and files
The Spread of Foreign Media
Despite this isolation and unparalleled internal restrictions, the North Korean people have been quietly changing their country from within, including through foreign media access. Through market activity and the movement of people and goods across the Chinese border, they have forced the gradual opening up of their society. Movies and music are smuggled into the country on USBs, SD and MicroSD cards, and small portable media players, offering illicit access to information from the outside world.
With lights off and windows shuttered, North Koreans will watch foreign media despite the risks. If all else fails, bribes are a way for people to reduce punishment if caught. Most North Korean police and government officials rely on bribes to survive, and some defectors complain that they are actually the biggest consumers of foreign media because they confiscate so much.
Information Technology in North Korea
Within North Korea, a broad range of information technologies are available, although they should be registered with authorities. Laptops and computers officially run on a government operating system, Red Star OS, while the North Korean intranet, Kwangmyong, is air-gapped from the internet and heavily surveilled. However, in practice, many North Koreans have non-networked devices used for games, editing software, watching videos, and to copy, delete and transfer media on removable devices.
Mobile phones are also common with approximately 6 million on the North Korean network, meaning roughly 1 in 4 people have one. These North Korean phones generally cannot make international calls and the operating system limits users to approved state media (programs have been developed to bypass this security). On the other hand, smuggled Chinese phones can be used in border regions on the Chinese network. These have been crucial for staying in touch with relatives who have escaped or defected, who often send back money and information from the outside world.
Radios are the only channel of foreign media and news available real-time across the country. While they should officially be registered and fixed to North Korean stations, it is relatively easy to tamper with radio sets to pick up foreign broadcasts. In border regions, some TVs can also pick up live programming from South Korea and China. Traditionally, TVs were connected to DVD players, but newer LCD televisions also have direct USB input ports.
How Foreign Media Changes Perceptions
Among foreign media, entertainment from South Korea is particularly attractive, produced in the same base language by people with the same ancestry. They contain glimpses of rich and free realities just across the border. In comparison, domestic North Korean media seems old-fashioned and disingenuous, designed to reinforce the regime’s ideologies.
As North Koreans learn more about life, freedom and prosperity in the outside world, and their own relative poverty, the regime’s ideology and control are eroded.
“At first you see the cars, apartment buildings, and markets and you think it must be a movie set. But the more you watch, there’s no way it can be just a set. If you watch one or two [movies] it always raises these doubts, and if you keep watching you know for sure. You realize how well South Koreans and other foreigners live.”
– Danbi, escaped North Korea in 2011
Empowered by foreign media, North Koreans are exploring their creativity and potential through everyday acts of resistance- using South Korean slang, copying fashion styles, and sharing pop culture references. In this culture war, Kim Jong-un has called for crackdowns on "unsavory, individualistic, anti-socialist behavior" among young people to restrict freedom of expression.
Foreign media also facilitates shared acts of resistance. People will swap USB devices with trusted friends and neighbors, increasing confidence in one another through a symmetrical transaction. Some people may also watch and discuss movies and shows together, increasing the media’s subversive influence and creating social networks.
The Regime’s Response
During the pandemic, we’ve seen unprecedented levels of isolation and restrictions, closing off the country more than ever before. To buttress control, Kim Jong Un has simultaneously increased crackdowns and punishments on foreign media consumption. In December 2020, the “anti-reactionary thought law” made watching foreign media punishable by 15 years in a political prison camp.
While the situation is harrowing, the government’s extreme response underscores the power of foreign media. The regime recognizes that social changes driven by North Korean people are a threat to their authority and control in the long term.
Accelerating Foreign Media Access and Change
Moving forward, increasing access to outside information is one of the most effective ways to help the North Korean people and bring forward change.
Information and technology support for North Korean people has historically been an under-utilized and under-invested strategy. LiNK Labs is our area of work focused on this opportunity- we’re developing technologies, networks, and content to empower North Korean people with access to information and ideas from the outside world.
Spring in My Homeland, North Korea: A Glimpse of Reunification in 2045
By: Eunsook Jang
Eunsook Jang holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Korea University and a master’s degree in International Development from Brandeis University. A Fulbright Scholar and LiNK US Scholarship grantee, she is currently a research intern at the Hudson Institute, where her work focuses on post-conflict recovery, economic development, and human development. Her recent publications include “Slipping through the Cracks in South Korea: The Uncertain Futures for the Children of North Korean Defectors” with the Migration Policy Institute, and “Why Strengthening RFA Is a Strategic Imperative for US Policy on North Korea” in The Diplomat.
In the spring of 2045, on a flight from Incheon to Pyongyang, Emma's hands tremble. Her husband Sam reaches over and, steadily, holds them without a word. She turns to the window and stares into the pale clouds below the wing.
“I’ve waited 30 years for this day,” she whispers. “But now that I’m here… it doesn’t feel real. I hope this isn’t a dream.”
“Maybe it’s both,” Sam replies. “The dream became real.”
She closes her eyes. In 2015, at just fifteen years old, she crossed the frozen Yalu River in a dark March morning, leaving without saying a proper goodbye to her mother. That guilt, its intensity, has never faded, not even after thirty years. It simply learns to live quietly beside her.
“Will Mom recognize me?” she asks. “We parted when I was fifteen. I’m forty-five now.”
“She will,” Sam answers. “How could a mother not recognize her daughter?”
Emma says nothing. Will I... be able to recognize her? She does not say it aloud this time.
An announcement comes through the cabin speakers: "This is the first return flight for North Korean defectors to their hometowns. We know how much you have endured. We will carry you safely home."
It is a rare moment of comfort from a South Korean voice. Moments later, the plane lifts into the sky.
An hour later, the plane lands in Pyongyang. Emma weeps quietly, overwhelmed by the thought that across so short a distance, lives in the South and the North had been so utterly, irreconcilably different. For thirty years, she had not been able to cross it, that gap, so small.
From Pyongyang, the journey to Hyesan continues by bus. As the skyline of Pyongyang passes past the window, its taller buildings, its broad avenues, Emma allows herself the fragile hope: perhaps Hyesan has developed too.
After five hours on the road, the bus arrives at Hyesan Station. The apartments and the lay of the land are almost entirely unchanged from when she had left thirty years earlier, as if time had refused to move, as if it had been waiting for her. Emma found herself hoping the same might be true of her mother.
A thirty minutes' walk from the station: that is where her mother's house is.
As if drawn by a magnet, her feet start moving on their own.
Sam asks if they are going the right way. Without hesitation, "Yes," Emma replies. "I used to walk this road every day as a child. It’s still in my body."
He points to a bus queue down the street. "There's a bus queue over there. Want to take it part of the way?" She shakes her head gently. "If you don't mind, I'd like to walk." "Then we’ll walk," he replies without hesitation. Emma feels another surge of gratitude, grips on his arm and follows her memory home.
Since Emma left her hometown in 2015, the North Korean regime has conducted ten more nuclear tests as of 2045. And yet the face of this neighborhood has not changed by a single detail. The freedom and human rights that should have been the people's return on those tests have been vaporized into the air.
They arrive at a fork in the road. To the left, an alley leads toward the house. A familiar-looking house comes into view, enclosed by a wooden fence. She stops and stands motionless. It is the house, it is her house.
Several minutes pass. Then the door opens. Emma feels her breath catch. For a second, she forgets how to move.
After thirty years, she is here.
This is what the micropolitics of reunification looks like. Grand narratives, speeches, and legal texts may provide its official language, but its lived realities lie in moments, in feelings, like this: a mother and daughter recognizing each other after thirty years apart.
Author’s note: I dedicate this piece to my father in South Korea, who has never once wavered in encouraging my studies, as if realizing through me the freedom to pursue the dreams that were taken from him. And to my mother, who remains in North Korea: This piece is my proof that your daughter has not turned away from your suffering, but is working, in her own small way, to fight against it. I hope to see you, even if only in my dreams tonight. I love and miss you beyond my expression.
–
Eunsook is a participant of the LiNK English Language Program (LELP), which serves to not only help North Korean defectors build confidence and skills in English, but develop their capacity as advocates for this issue. To that end, we partnered with select LELP “columnists” to write and polish personal essays through multiple rounds of external feedback and revision. Our goal is to have more North Koreans share their stories directly and lead efforts to change the narrative.
We believe the North Korean people can achieve their liberty in our lifetime.
Opportunities like LELP invest in the people building that future now. Help more North Koreans find their voice, reach their goals, and lead change on this issue.
