[imText1]On the evening of the 29th, North Korea’s Chosun Central TV broadcast a news program called “South Korea facing threat, suffering civilians.”
The program, which ran for 10 minutes as part of a regular evening newscast, mostly featured edited scenes of poor South Korean citizens leading difficult lives taken from a range of South Korean TV footage. It was an extremely rare example of North Korean public TV broadcasting images of any other country, let alone South Korea.
The North probably broadcast the images of South Korea in a futile attempt to stymie the increasing yearning for South Korea among North Korean citizens who are tired of chronic economic difficulties and poorly thought out national mobilization projects.
It is particularly interesting to note that North Korea chose to edit images from South Korean broadcasts. Previously, on the rare occasions when Chosun Central TV relayed news of South Korea, it did so through the narration of announcers, but did not broadcast images themselves.
This time, they even showed still photos of last year’s candlelight protests against the South Korea-US free trade agreement and the blaze at Sungnyemun.
The reason why the North Korean authorities refrain from publicizing images that capture the reality of South Korea or foreign countries is, of course, to avoid comparison with their own circumstances, and to limit the risk of unintended consequences.
But in the past, when the difference between North Korea and the capitalist South was less extreme, the authorities were marginally more liberal.
The event that first allowed North Korean citizens to see the lifestyle of South Korean people directly was the “Gwangju Democratization Movement” of 1980. At the time, North Korean citizens were shocked by the scenes of protesters broadcast on North Korean TV.
The North Korean narration said, “The starving, poorly dressed South Korean working masses have wielded their power to drive out the American puppet regime,” but the reality of the scenes was clearly very different.
The “shabby” and “starving” South Korean citizens all appeared healthy, while the glasses, wristwatches and shoes were all luxury goods by comparison with what they were used to. The high-rise buildings and apartments of Gwangju also defied the preconceptions of the North Korean people.
Their suspicions grew with the “June Protests” for South Korean democratization in 1987, which was also broadcast on the news. People could not take their eyes off the even more impressive high-rises and well-paved Seoul roads, as well as the attire of both protesters and police. Some of the citizens even had the presence of mind to note that the police were using tear gas, not guns, to subdue the protestors.
Defector testimony attests to the fact that Im Soo Kyung, who defied a South Korean government ban to attend the 13th World Youth Students Festival in 1989, also helped the drip-drip transformation of the minds of the North Korean people. At the time, the North Korean authorities even felt compelled to try and suppress the rising popularity of the white training pants Im wore.
So, due to ideological and population control concerns, the North Korean authorities had to spend a considerable amount of time deliberating whether or not to broadcast South Korean or international news. Until the early 1990s, the North mostly chose to broadcast images related to South Korean protests, but little else, and showed only those international issues beneficial to them.
But the incident which put an end to North Korean broadcasting of international news images altogether was the coup d’etat which took place in March 1993 during the process of Madagascan democratization.
At the time, the North regularly dispatched agricultural and scientific technology teams to countries such as Mozambique and Angola, casting them domestically as primitive states unfamiliar with rudimentary farming techniques.
However, the reality of Madagascar depicted in the news images threw North Korean citizens into a state of confusion. Images of speedboats ferrying soldiers around left citizens incredulous and asking, “When did African countries become like this?”
Furthermore, images of soldiers carrying high-tech wireless communications equipment caused uproar among the soldiers in the North Korean military. Even now, the North Korean military cannot provide such equipment to most low-level units.
After that domestic backlash, the North Korean authorities cancelled programs relaying South Korean and international news, and have done so ever since.
That being the case, what kind of influence will the program, “South Korea Facing Threat, Desperate Citizens,” have on North Korean citizens?
First off, such broadcasts are supposed to instill images of South Korea first and foremost as a place completely uninhabitable by humans.
South Korean movies and dramas have gained popularity in the North since 2000, and negative stereotypes about South Korea among North Korean citizens are actually on the rise as well. The circulation of so-called “gangster movies” has caused citizens to imagine South Korea as a place where gangsters get into knife fights in broad daylight and inflict reckless violence on themselves and others.
However, the more the North Korean authorities air images of “desperate” South Korea like this, the more the mindset of North Korean citizens will flow in a third direction.
Among the images of South Chosun, one cannot see images of begging children. Nor can one see images of persons passed out on the sides of the railroad from starvation or exhaustion. This will not have gone unnoticed by North Korean viewers on Wednesday night.
Ultimately, images of South Chosun will only stimulate dark memories in the people. The painful memories associated with the “March of Tribulation” linger long in their hearts and minds, and it is not to the advantage of the Pyongyang regime to encourage them.
