North Korea put on a propaganda show regarding the recent shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. It featured a few military men of unknown rank. One of them glorified North Korea by dramatically announcing: "Facing the enemy's provocation, we shouted, 'Let's dedicate our lives to fighting the enemy and giving them a merciless death for our dear leader and supreme military commander.""
His comments remind us of Soviet commissars who were responsible for maintaining a unit's level of official propaganda. Commissars were largely responsible for the pathetic performance of the Red Army in the first year or so of WWII; their role was diminished after the first year because Stalin finally realized just how counterproductive they were. In the Red Army, the authority of the commissars was reinforced by the use of NKVD blocking units, the purpose of which was to machine-gun retreating Soviet soldiers as seen in the beginning of the movie Enemy at the Gates. As in the Soviet army, it is likely that these North Korean fanatics are not in the majority.
During the latter days of the Cold War, Estonians were able to watch Finnish television because Tallinn, the capital, only lies about 50 miles away from Helsinki, the capital of Finland. This exposure to Western television went a long way towards hardening Estonian attitudes against Soviet totalitarianism. Of course, one major difference between the occupation of the Baltic Countries and the kingdom in North Korea is that the rulers in the former were foreigners and occupiers, and the rulers in the latter are natives. This is one explanation why Russians are homesick for the return of the Soviet Union, while all of the native residents of Eastern Europe will fight to the death before they will allow the Soviet Union to reform in their countries.
In early October 1989, just a few weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the GDR celebrated its 40th anniversary in 1989. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was hailed with cries of "Gorbi, save us!" He had announced many times that the Soviet Union would no longer use violent force to retain the republics; he would not emulate the Chinese actions at Tiananmen Square. Even though East German Stazi forces were still willing to crack heads, the game was up and the people knew it.
Radio Free Asia reported that Kim Jong-un just might really be as nasty as his father. He has directed that surveillance inside North Korea be increased, with the traditional system of five families spying and informing on each other replaced by a three-family system.
North Korean security forces sent to the border are taking bribes to allow defectors to cross, but the bribes have become very expensive: $3500. This increased price is effective at reducing the number of ordinary North Korean defectors, but as Radio Free Asia reported, three high-level officials recently defected. One of the officials was being groomed to become a member of the Workers' Party Central Committee, but he was caught watching a South Korean soap opera and severely criticized by the party.
The North Korean propaganda machine is the best the world has ever seen, possibly explaining why we see North Koreans crying at the sight of their fearless leaders, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un. The conventional wisdom is that this machine is simply too efficient for the usual method of transmitting subversive shortwave radio broadcasts into the dark territory, as the people discount them as mere words far below the importance of their homegrown agitprop.
According to the DailyNK (read here and here), many North Koreans in the south of their country already watch South Korean television. Televisions manufactured in North Korea have a preset tuner, allowing for the watching of only the one official channel. But Chinese-made sets are available for sale with the usual multi-channel tuners. North Korean authorities attempt to disable the tuners by installing a physical block over the infrared receiver for the remote control, but North Koreans easily remove that.
The practice of watching of South Korean VCDs and DVDs is so prevalent that some people have the equipment to duplicate them and distribute them, probably as a side-business. A former North Korean woman said: "North Korean citizens, when someone comes to visit them while they are watching South Korean dramas with their doors locked, hide the VCDs while the other person goes to the door. They switch on a North Korean VCD as if they were watching a North Korean movie."
She also said: "Even the National Security agents and the Safety agents watch South Korean dramas and most people are watching them in secret. No matter how much the authorities regulate, it is difficult to control the practice. Once people are exposed to such a culture, it is not easy to stop. They are not going to stop watching them."
One North Korean man said: "In fact, most young people listen to South Korean radio. You can easily tell who watches South Korean TV just by listening to what they say . . . However, North Korean people cannot openly talk about South Korean TV due to the increased surveillance by the authorities."
His comment about how young people already listen to South Korean radio is important. It is always the young people who are most concerned about improving their situation, as they will live their entire lives under the system. The recent protests in Belarus were almost entirely composed of students and other young people fed-up with a system that beats and arrests opposition candidates and expels student protesters from their university. Not surprisingly, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were the first two leaders to congratulate Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko on his great victory.
The DailyNK also reported that North Korea is aware of the subversive nature of South Korean DVDs and is cracking down on them. North Korea is using smugglers that it already caught as stool pigeons to catch more. However, the prevailing wisdom is that this practice will only reduce smuggling by a small amount. One source pointed out that "Since some smugglers are cooperating with the NSA now, the number of river crossers might decrease for a while, but it will come back to normal. Those smugglers who report to the NSA will lose customers, and those who don't will have more."
So if many North Koreans already watch South Korean television, who are the people seen crying in video reports like that of CBS News? Are these North Korean versions of Glenn Beck and John Boehner who cry at the drop of a jingoistic hat? Are they specially chosen for their nationalistic fervor? Are these the spoiled children of leaders? And what percentage of the population do they represent?
We need to make it easier for North Koreans to watch South Korean television to educate them as to the backwards nature of their country and groom them for the eventual collapse of the Kim Jong-il / Kim Jong-un dictatorship.
It would be easy to adapt televisions which only receive only one channel, the official government channel. Knowing how backwards the country is, it is likely that these televisions receive the sole channel via an antenna. Just like our recently departed analog televisions, these sets can be easily modified to accept other analog signals. All it would take it a small box with a tuner and rotating dial. The box would need to be properly engineered, including a plug-in antenna. We could supply these adapter boxes for very little money so that more North Korean households could watch South Korean television. Each adapter would need to include instructions so that someone finding one would know how to install it.
The distribution of these television adapters would be the most difficult part, as North Korea would punish those attempting to dispense them. We would need to employ a variety of techniques, most prominently using smugglers to sell them along with their other wares. Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, noted that, unlike in the Soviet Union, family members do not turn each other in to the authorities, so once an adapter entered an apartment, it would remain hidden and safe for use.
It would be best if China worked with us and placed a container of these television adapters at every point where North Koreans travel to and from China, but China has proven that it is not interested in working with the West as documented in my blog series North Korea is China's useful idiot.
But then again, perhaps interfering with North Korea's suicidal dance is a waste of time. The Washington Post reported that the border between China and North Korea is a thriving commerce zone with Chinese merchants selling North Korean liquor, blueberry wine, ginseng, stamps, music CDs, fruit, clothing, plastic bowls, and chopsticks. Some Chinese traders have lost millions of dollars in goods or equipment due to North Korea's expropriation or theft. Many now insist on cash-up-front transactions and mostly conduct business on the Chinese side of the border, where they say they have more protections.
North Koreans know the 1950-1953 Korean War as the "War To Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea," displaying an amazing ignorance of the actual cause for the war. On the border, restaurants serve traditional North Korean delicacies like dog meat hot pot, stewed dog leg, and spicy deep-fried dog, and singers in traditional North Korean costumes bring customers on stage to help sing a Chinese martial song popular during the war, the "Chinese People's Volunteer Battle Song."
The latest example of China's attitude towards the West was demonstrated in Radio Free Asia's article Birth Defects Grip Coal Province. Evidence is mounting that China has a serious problem with birth defects in areas with extreme pollution, especially in the coal-producing northern province of Shanxi which is reeling from the highest birth defect rate in the country.
Radio Free Asia attempted to investigate the situation, but the Chinese official who answered the phone refused to be either interviewed or named. He said: "You are calling from a foreign media outlet to which we cannot speak over the phone. To interview us you have to have a permit letter from the provincial department of propaganda."
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