{"id":55306,"date":"2023-06-07T17:00:25","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T08:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/?p=55306"},"modified":"2023-06-07T09:01:17","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T00:01:17","slug":"why-north-korea-so-much-trouble-cracking-down-south-korean-dramas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/why-north-korea-so-much-trouble-cracking-down-south-korean-dramas\/","title":{"rendered":"Why N. Korea has so much trouble cracking down on S. Korean dramas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As the coronavirus pandemic gripped the world in November 2020, two cars with Yanggang Province Ministry of Social Security and Yanggang Party Committee license plates came to a stop in front of the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Taedonghan County Ministry of Social Security.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just a little while earlier, three couples in their early to mid-60s had been arrested for watching a South Korean drama while in quarantine for being suspected of having caught the coronavirus. These sorts of incidents were hardly uncommon at the time, so what <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">had happened that would merit members of the provincial police and provincial party committee making a trip down to a county branch of the Ministry of Social Security?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the North Korean government focused its efforts on quickly closing off its national borders and preventing the spread of disease. As part of this process, the authorities often blindly forced anyone suspected of contracting the disease to self-quarantine and t<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">horoughly enforced orders to stay inside for the full quarantine period.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For North Koreans who earned a living day to day, this quarantine period was often incredibly difficult to endure. However, for privileged North Koreans whose food supplies continued to be guaranteed by the state &#8211; members of the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Central Party Office No. 6, noted socialist patriot<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">s, and families of discharged military officers &#8211; quarantine offered a golden opportunity to avoid inspections and watch South Korean dramas without much fear of being caught.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of the three couples who had been arrested, one was affiliated with <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Central Committee Office No. 6, one was related to a noted socialist patriot,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and one had a family member who was a discharged military officer. The couples had all been brought in within one to two days of each other after quarantine officials repeatedly heard suspicious sounds audible from outside the thin walls of the families\u2019 homes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Upon investigating the incident, the police found that these members of the \u201ccore class\u201d had violated the rules of self-quarantine to pass round and t<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">alk all about South Korean dramas and how much they had related to what they had seen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The investigators deemed the incident serious enough to report to their superiors, and both the Yanggang Province police department and party committee sent representatives down to deal with this unusual incident involving members of the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">supposedly ideologically unimpeachable<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> core class.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>South Korean drama mesmerizes members of &#8220;core class&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The representatives from the provincial security office and party committee interrogated the couples on an individual basis, but the couples all<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> told <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">investigators that \u201cit was [their] first time watching a movie or drama from South Korea, and they had strongly recommended the drama to each other for its fascinating portrayal of how people in a different society [South Korea] face their aging lives.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Which drama had been so fascinating that these couples simply had to recommend it to each other? The drama was none other than South Korean drama \u201cDear My Friends,\u201d a show depicting the candid lives of a group of friends in their golden years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The three husbands, who had previously been friends, had broken self-quarantine regulations to secretly meet up and exchange <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">storage devices<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> containing the drama. It was revealed that the husband connected to <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Central Committee Office No. 6 h<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ad been the first to acquire the drama through a Chinese trader.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The three wives admitted they had watched the drama together with their husbands during quarantine, and even went so far as to confess that \u201dthe drama had really resonated with them, and if they hadn\u2019t been arrested, they had planned to watch it again.\u201d The wives also revealed that they had spoken about the drama amongst themselves and how \u201cthankful they were to live blessed lives just like the characters in the drama.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The county and provincial branches of the Ministry of Social Security, along with the Yanggang Province\u2019s party committee cadres, who heard these confessions were shocked and perplexed by the confessions. The investigators decided they needed to know more in detail about the drama in order to hand down proper punishments. After obtaining permission from the provincial party committee, two cadres then proceeded to take the confiscated storage <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">devices <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and watched the entire drama start to finish.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A few months later, the three couples were given six months of reform through labor &#8211; a relatively light sentence due to their membership in the core class.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ultimately, the incident illustrates that despite their &#8220;superior ideological background,&#8221; even members of North Korea&#8217;s \u201ccore class\u201d are helpless to the charm of<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> sentimental South Korean dr<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">amas. Perhaps the reason that the North Korean regime cracks down so fiercely against the \u201cKorean Wave\u201d is because North Koreans can be just as attracted to cultures outside their own as everyone else in the world is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Translated by Rose Adams. Edited by Robert Lauler.\u00a0<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Daily NK works with a network of sources who live inside North Korea, China and elsewhere. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK\u2019s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/faq\/\">here<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><i>Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/20230526-3\/\"><i>Read in Korean<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the coronavirus pandemic gripped the world in November 2020, two cars with Yanggang Province Ministry of Social Security and Yanggang Party Committee license plates came to a stop in front of the Taedonghan County Ministry of Social Security. Just a little while earlier, three couples in their early to mid-60s had been arrested for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":55309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[644],"tags":[786,1177,1656],"class_list":["post-55306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-analysis-and-opinion","tag-ideology","tag-culture","tag-dprk"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.7 (Yoast SEO v28.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why N. Korea has so much trouble cracking down on S. Korean dramas - North Korea News \u2014 Daily NK | Latest DPRK Updates 2026<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailynk.com\/english\/why-north-korea-so-much-trouble-cracking-down-south-korean-dramas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why N. Korea has so much trouble cracking down on S. Korean dramas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As the coronavirus pandemic gripped the world in November 2020, two cars with Yanggang Province Ministry of Social Security and Yanggang Party Committee license plates came to a stop in front of the Taedonghan County Ministry of Social Security. 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