The North Koreans are fighting a losing battle against the information age (via The Marmot’s Hole):
The construction of cellular relay stations last fall along the Chinese side of the border has allowed some North Koreans in border towns to use prepaid Chinese cellphones to call relatives and reporters in South Korea, defectors from North Korea say. And after DVD players swept northern China two years ago, entrepreneurs collected castoff videocassette recorders and peddled them in North Korea. Now tapes of South Korean soap operas are so popular that state television in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, is campaigning against South Korean hairstyles, clothing and slang, visitors and defectors have said. […]
More than showing middle-class family lifestyles, which can be staged in a studio, the soap operas also provide images of a modern Seoul – the forest of high-rise buildings, the huge traffic jams, the late-model cars.
With such images showing a stark contrast with primitive conditions in North Korea, Mr. Kim ordered the formation of a special prosecutor’s office last November to arrest people who deal in South Korean goods, largely videotapes, or who use South Korean expressions or slang, analysts in South Korea say.
To crack down on home viewing of imported videotapes, the North Korean police developed the strategy of encircling a neighborhood in the evening, cutting off electricity, then inspecting players to find videotapes stuck inside, according to Young Howard, international coordinator of the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, a Seoul-based group. Recent defectors have also told Mr. Howard that police cars with loudspeakers have patrolled neighborhoods, warning residents to maintain their “socialist lifestyle” and to shun South Korean speech and clothing and hairstyles, he said. […]
Draconian controls on internal travel and on travel to China have been breaking down…and hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have traveled to and from Korean-speaking areas of China, exposing them to a thriving market economy and more South Korean television broadcasts.
“They are gradually learning about South Korean prosperity,” Dr. Lankov [a North Korean expert who writes for NK Zone] said. “This is a death sentence to the regime. North Korea’s claim to legitimacy is based on its ability to deliver the worker’s paradise now. What if everyone sees that it is not delivering?”
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