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.
North Korean Refugee Stories: Meet Yoon Suk
Yoon Suk has vivid, happy memories of growing up in North Korea. She was raised during a time when state-socialism was relatively functioning, and the government could provide basic necessities to its citizens. She remembers wearing beautiful nylon (a highly-sought after fabric back in the earlier days of North Korea) uniforms with bows and red, patent-leather shoes to school. She also had a passion for the arts and performed frequently on stage. But as she grew older, the shine in her shoes began to fade and the hunger in her belly began to grow.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea lost crucial sources of subsidized trade and aid and the North Korean economy crashed. It was during this time that Yoon Suk got married, but what should have been a happy time in her life ended up being far from it. The regime’s mismanaged agricultural and environmental policies were confounded by harsh weather, plunging the country into a severe famine that lasted for years. Yoon Suk and her husband struggled to survive on the meager rations they received—and they were not alone. During this period, an estimated one million people died from starvation, while many of those who survived suffered immensely.
Yoon Suk, knowing that she had to do something to keep her family alive during the most difficult years of the “Arduous March,” turned to the jangmadang—small, illegal markets where people sold and traded anything they could for food. Yoon Suk was like many North Korean women in this new reality, abandoning her traditional role for market activities. Unfortunately, running her modest merchant business was more challenging than she had anticipated and she struggled to keep it afloat. As the situation grew worse, she discontinued her business and looked for other ways to support her family, which had grown by two with the birth of her sons. It was during this time that she learned that life might be better in booming China.
As recently as three decades ago, Chinese people were on average poorer than their North Korean neighbors. But China’s economic reforms have produced wealth and opportunities that are the envy of nearly all North Koreans today. Since North Korea’s economic collapse, which lead to unprecedented cross-border movement and inflows of Chinese goods and media, North Koreans have gained a painful awareness of just how far their formerly impoverished Chinese neighbors have come.
But it’s extremely risky for North Koreans to escape their country. The North Korean regime makes it illegal to leave without explicit permission and if Yoon Suk was caught trying to escape, or caught in China and sent back, she would be punished severely. Yet, the opportunity was too great to pass up and she fled for the first time in the mid-2000s.
Once she arrived, alone in a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language, Yoon Suk was sold to a Chinese man as his bride. China’s lack of marriageable women, particularly in rural areas of the northeast, creates high demand for female North Korean refugees like Yoon Suk. Without legal status and no protection from the authorities, these women are often kidnapped by sex traffickers and sold, sometimes for as little as $200.
Even though she was now living with a Chinese man, Yoon Suk still wasn’t safe from the watchful eye of the Chinese authorities. North Korean refugees’ well-founded fear of persecution if repatriated means that they should be protected under international refugee law. However, the Chinese government labels them as “economic migrants,” so they can forcibly send them back, as per their agreement with the North Korean regime. Yoon Suk was caught by Chinese police not even a month after arriving and was forcibly repatriated back to North Korea. There, the authorities sent her to a prison camp, where she was abused, beaten, and starved.
After all she had gone through, Yoon Suk was still undeterred from finding freedom outside of North Korea. She escaped again to China shortly after her release from the prison camp. She was sold off three times by traffickers, again under the pretense that she was going to be given work. With the last husband, she had her beautiful daughter.
Yoon Suk wanted to give her daughter a better life, and knew that would not be possible in China. Without the proper documentation, her daughter would have difficulty even going to school and would be denied the opportunities available to other Chinese children. Yoon Suk and her daughter escaped China together through Liberty in North Korea’s network and are now on their way to safety in South Korea.
Yoon Suk is excited for the life and opportunities that lie ahead of her. She’s a talented cook and wants to explore the option of obtaining a culinary certificate in South Korea. She also has high hopes for her daughter, who loves art just like her mother did as a young girl, and wants to enroll her in dance and painting lessons. Yoon Suk’s greatest wish is to reunite with her two adult sons someday. She often dreams about appearing on TV to send a message to her sons, showing them she’s alive and well.
Thank you for helping supply the funds for Yoon Suk’s rescue. Your efforts have changed her life and have provided the opportunity for her to enjoy her new LIBERTY.
Fundraise or donate to help rescue more North Korean refugees today!
