The young woman smiles at the camera as she walks through a colorful park. “Spring has come to my hometown,” she says in English, looking up at the blossoming trees around her. Up to this point, she could have been anywhere in the world. Her next sentence, however, changes everything. She boasts: “I am so proud of my Pyongyang,” making it clear that she lives in North Korea, one of the most isolated countries in the world.
Since it was uploaded to YouTube two weeks ago, this 2:59-minute clip has racked up over 6,500 views. The woman, who calls herself Yonmi, is featured on the YouTube channel “New DPRK” – one of several, sometimes multilingual social media accounts that have popped up on the internet over the three past years. Interestingly, the channel is registered as South Korean but its contents are obviously produced in – and most likely by – Pyongyang.
A total of 126 Korean, English and Chinese-language videos are currently uploaded to “New DPRK,” some of which are educational, some about Korean food, and some are held in a vlog-style similar to Yonmi’s. The playlist “North Korea kids” shows seemingly happy girls like Ri Su-Jin slurping noodles, playing soccer in school tournaments or joining the Korea Children’s Union.
The short-films seem to attract attention: Since the first was published on Oct. 11, 2019, the channel has garnered over 26,400 followers and more than two million views in total.
North Korea’s other face on social media
North Korean propaganda on social media is not new – besides YouTube, it has been spread on most popular Western platforms for years.
The DPRK ventured out into the social media world in the summer of 2010, initially on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and later on Instagram, Flickr and Pinterest. The accounts, all carrying the handle Uriminzokkiri (English: “We the [Korean] People”), are linked to a state-controlled news website by the same name and syndicated from other DPRK news outlets like the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) or the state newspaper Rodong Sinmun. Their output is correspondingly militant and strikes a very different tone than the more recent Youtube videos.
North Korea’s Twitter account, which is still active, quickly gained popularity after it was opened. It racked up more than 8,500 followers in its first week, despite posting some 30 tweets praising former dictator Kim Jong-Il and vilifying South Korea and the US for their joint military exercises. Now, nearly 13 years into the account’s existence, its followers have nearly doubled.
Uriminzokkiri‘s Facebook and YouTube accounts also spread propaganda and were quite popular. More than 130 videos had been up on the YouTube channel, many of them clips that condemned and taunted South Korea and the US. The Facebook profile, which already had 50 friends a day after it was launched, reportedly stated it was looking to network with “men” favorable to the regime. Both accounts were eventually suspended by the respective companies – not in connection with UN sanctions, but rather because their content did not comply with their policies.
On photo and video platforms like Instagram, Uriminzokkiri’s profiles are not nearly as successful but they still regularly post a variety of motifs ranging from romantic landscapes and striking architecture to military parades, propaganda posters, missile launchings and party congresses.
While the platforms are state-run, the average North Korean does not have access to Uriminzokkiri‘s social media profiles or the website.
Glossy videos, propaganda messages and a cry for affection
In contrast to the overtly propagandistic outputs of Uriminzokkiri, the much friendlier and more gregarious face of North Korea’s current YouTubers could be a new attempt to humanize the country and gain sympathy in the West without attracting the attention of content moderators. Park Seong-Cheol, a researcher at the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, told CNN that North Korea was “striving to emphasize that Pyongyang is an ‘ordinary city.’” The leadership was “very interested in how the outside world views them,” he added.
Ha Seung-Hee, research professor of North Korea studies at Dongguk University, shared his suspicion with CNN that North Korea could want to portray itself as a “safe country” and instrumentalize an improved image to promote tourism. In 2021 alone, the DPRK recorded estimated economic losses of USD 175 million from the lack of visitors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to figures from 38 North.
The catch: North Korea needs to become more attractive as a tourist destination than it currently is. It is common knowledge that tourism – like everything else in the country – is tightly controlled by the regime and is only possible through supervised tours, where visitors are chaperoned by guides from the Ministry of Tourism and shown a carefully choreographed version of the DPRK. Other deterrents may be that most Western countries advise their citizens against travel to the secretive state. Most international journalists as well as South Koreans are routinely denied entry, and the US State Department has banned all US nationals from visiting North Korea following the death of Otto Warmbier in 2017.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un might therefore have felt that his country needs to refute its bad image in a modern way. The vlog videos on YouTube started appearing after he ordered his propaganda officers to be “more creative” and “discard” old propaganda frameworks, Ha stated to CNN.
Yoon Min-Woo, a professor at the department of police administration at Gachon University, goes a step further. He fears the videos could mainly be targeting well-educated middle-class women in South Korea to make them more receptive to the North’s side of the historic inter-Korean conflict, polarize public opinion and perhaps even influence key elections in South Korea.
“North Korean authorities are primarily targeting the South Korean public, but also Korean communities and foreigners in North America, Europe, and South America to arouse friendly feelings toward North Korea and reinforce conspiracy theories,” he told Radio of Free Asia (RFA). The new videos could be modeled after Western videos to capitalize on the global surge in popularity and interest in South Korean language and culture sparked by the country’s entertainment industry.
The truth behind the videos
Though the new YouTube videos of North Korean influencers seem happy and cheerful, Yoon believes that the regime has not changed and that viewers need to be aware of the control the regime likely exerts over its creators. “It is unlikely that a person will independently upload a video to YouTube, given that North Korean authorities strictly restrict the citizens’ access to the Internet,” he said to RFA.
The fact that the videos ultimately do not correspond to reality is made clear by the example of Song A. The eleven-year-old YouTube vlogger from Pyongyang made her debut in April 2022 and has since gained 30.700 subscribers with 15 videos. “My favorite book is ‘Harry Potter’,” the fifth-grader claims in her introductory video in fluent British English, showing the book to the camera – a remarkable detail given the harsh penalties for consuming Western cultural goods under the 2020 “DPRK Law on Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture.”
Song A’s videos give a rosy picture of daily life in Pyongyang, featuring amusement parks, Bingsu ice cream and dance lessons. However, experts warn that they are extremely misleading and do not represent normal life in North Korea. Thae Yong-Ho, a North Korean diplomat turned defector, recognized Song A as the child of his colleague Im Jun-Hyok, with whom he worked at the North Korean Embassy in London until 2016. In an interview with NK News, he also revealed her family’s status as part of North Korea’s wealthy elite. He claims Song A’s grandfather Pak Myong-Guk is a senior official in the foreign ministry and her great-grandfather Ri Ul-Sol was a military commander, who once guarded the Kim family.
While luxuries such as air conditioning and the facilities shown in the YouTube videos do exist in North Korea, they are generally only accessible to “special people in a special class” like Song A, researcher Park Seong-Cheol told CNN. These facilities are also not in regular operation as the videos of the eleven-year-old suggest. North Korea experiences frequent power shortages and blackouts. In fact, only about 26% of the population has access to electricity, according to 2019 estimates from the CIA World Factbook. The power supply in North Korea would thus not be sufficient enough to run an amusement park continuously. “I’ve heard that they would only operate it on the weekends or on a special day, like when they film a video,” Park said.
Is North Korea making money off its propaganda on social media?
Apparently, the creators of the YouTube channel “New DPRK” have realized that they can earn foreign currency with its videos. Tests conducted by this reporter with various YouTube analysis services have shown that the channel is indeed “monetized” or, in other words, able to generate revenue from its uploads.
The online tool “Is this channel monetized” estimates the channel “could have made anywhere between USD 1,141.99 and 45,679.58” in total, averaging between “USD 317.95 and 12,717.81 per year.”
Song A’s profile, on the other hand, is not currently earning any money from its content.
RFA has inquired with the United Nations (UN) whether the North Korean YouTube channel’s revenues violate ongoing UN sanctions, to which the organization responded it had yet to review the case.
Edited by Robert Lauler.
