North Korean psy-ops against subversive TV

More bad news for the Korean Wave—sales of Korean films and TV shows have been plummeting in Japan for some time, but at least that’s the result of natural market forces.

Lady Vengeance

But as this article from the Yeonhap News Agency reports, the North Koreans are worried about the spread of South Korean culture through videocassettes and DVDs.

Not only are the films and programs themselves popular—face it, the only alternative is filmed coverage of the Dear Leader’s visits to factory, farm, and military unit—but they spawned a craze for South Korean hairstyles and fashions. According to an anonymous South Korean official:

This year, North Korean authorities waged what they call ‘psychological warfare’ against ‘exotic lifestyles’ by cracking down on South Korean pop culture.”

No one explains how cutting off the source of supply constitutes psychological warfare, but then again, this is the North. And as a translator, I’d be interested to know what word the North Koreans used that was translated as “exotic”. I can think of several adjectives to describe the lady in the poster above, but exotic isn’t one of them.

This article from AFP-Jiji goes into more detail, describing how new technology was the driving force behind the fad. Not only has modern technology been smuggled in, but northeastern Chinese upgraded to DVDs and brokers sold the old VCRs to the North.

An article in the local Nishinippon Shimbun in Japanese had even more information. First, the youthful Northern in-crowd got so carried away with themselves that they socially ostracized those who weren’t hip to the latest movies and programs. Some things seem to be universal. Also, they were the only ones to mention the cutoff of cross-border trade, which left a lot of angry Chinese merchants who didn’t get paid for delivered products.

Of course, developments such as these do not bode well for the future of the regime. When a government has to resort to psy-ops to counteract the subversive influence of popular TV programs, it becomes a question of when, not if.

And what is the problem with today’s mass media that we have to read three reports to get enough information to fill one article?