Yoon Ha's Story: Part 3 - Making it to South Korea
This is the third part of a three-part story. Read part one about the hardships Yoon Ha experienced growing up in North Korea, and part two about being trafficked in China.
After connecting with LiNK’s network, I had to hike up more mountains to get out of China. It was very difficult being eight-months pregnant. My legs hurt and began to swell up a lot. It was really dark and I fell a few times. It was so hard - I was completely exhausted.
There were other North Koreans escaping China with me and they were pulling me and helping me up. Whenever I wanted to give up, they encouraged me.
“We must go. We must go to South Korea to live. To live…”
I felt like it was my responsibility to keep going and to survive for myself and my daughter. The journey getting out of China was so tough. I was worried that my unborn baby might have died because I didn’t feel the baby moving in my stomach for a while.
After many months in government processing and after going through the Hanawon resettlement education center, I was finally able to live freely in South Korea. I was overjoyed.
Thankfully, my baby survived and I had a beautiful baby daughter right after I came to South Korea. More than a year later now, I am thankful that she is growing well and is in good health.
In North Korea, the police oppressed me, keeping me from doing what I needed to do to survive. And in China, the police were trying to find North Korean refugees who were living in hiding. They wanted to send us back to North Korea, even though they knew we would be brutally punished by the regime. Whenever the police came around, I locked all the doors and hid in fear until they left town. So at first, I was scared of the police in South Korea.
I got to know my assigned police officer and realized he is just a person like me and we are not that different. (Every resettled North Korean refugee in South Korea is assigned a police officer for their first five years. They check in on them on a regular basis, and provide basic legal advice and special protection if necessary.)
We talked openly and he shared about the challenges he had when he was younger. He calls me once a week to see how my daughter and I are doing. He has brought us fruit and diapers for my daughter. He is so sweet. He also helped me with paperwork, paying bills, and getting my phone fixed when it broke. I really appreciate him and now he feels like a friend to me.
Thanks to people like him, I can sleep well.
I have been surrounded by many good people from my church community, the Hana Center (the local South Korean government resettlement assistance center) and my designated police officer.
It felt so good to talk freely with many people in my first language--Korean. I had lived in China for many years and when I first went there, I knew no Chinese. I struggled so much with communicating and I couldn’t talk to people freely either because of the fear of getting caught.
Now I can talk to anyone without worrying about getting caught.
I am so glad I came to South Korea. My life here is much better than my life in North Korea or China. I feel very safe and free in South Korea.
I am still learning the meaning of freedom as I experience it in this new society. I can do what I want and go where I want to go. I can go somewhere just to have fun and no one stops me.
That is freedom to me, and I am living it right now.
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.
