The Hidden People of North Korea (32 page)

Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) broadcast to North Korea on several frequencies. According to its charter, VOA “will present the policies of the United States clearly and effectively, and will also present responsible discussions and opinion on these policies.” VOA, known in North Korea as Sori Bangsong (“radio voice”), broadcasts in English and fifty-two languages, including Korean, with programs originating in Washington, D.C. As of early 2009, VOA programs were being transmitted to North Korea for five hours a day on AM and shortwave frequencies (from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. to midnight, local time), and VOA also hosts a website in Korean. VOA programming includes world news, U.S. headline news, correspondents’ reports, editorials, news about Koreans in the United States, health news, economic news, an English lesson, and stories from North Korean defectors.

Radio Free Asia, like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (beamed at Europe, central Asia, and Russia), is intended to function as a surrogate radio station that broadcasts information domestic Asian stations neglect to air.
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The International Broadcasting Act of 1994, under which RFA was created, charges its radio broadcasting stations with the mission to “provide accurate and timely information, news and commentary about events in the respective countries of Asia and elsewhere, and to be a forum for a variety of opinions and voices within Asian nations whose people do not fully enjoy freedom of expression.” Programming originates from Washington, D.C., with transmitters in about a dozen locations in Asia and Europe. As of early 2009, RFA was broadcasting to North Korea for five hours a day in AM and shortwave, from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. and midnight to 4 a.m. A typical hour’s programming includes world news, commentary, features, book reading, interviews, and an English lesson; like VOA, RFA has a Korean-language website.

The ROK public broadcasting system, Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), runs Social Education Broadcasting (Sahoe Kyoyuk Pangsong), which formerly beamed antiregime programs into North Korea. However, since the advent of the Kim Dae-jung administration in 1998, broadcasts hostile to the Kim regime have been banned. In 2004 KBS adopted new policies for its stations, making Social Education Broadcasting a “national network channel” whose purpose is to foster national reconciliation rather than broadcast news reports critical of North Korea.
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At least up to 2007, it appears that the ROK government operated two “gray” (disguised source) radio stations broadcasting to the North, Echo of Hope (Huimangui Meari Pangsong) and Voice of the People (Inminui Sori Pangsong), but the government does not comment on them.
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Several other radio stations specifically target the North Korean people. The Korean station of Far East Broadcasting (known to Koreans as Kukdong Pangsong) is operated by a nondenominational Christian organization that broadcasts in 150 languages, including Korean, from thirty-two transmitters around the world.
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Radio Free North Korea (Free NK or Chayu Pukhan Pang-song) began regular shortwave broadcasting in early 2006 and by early 2009 was on the air five hours a day. Operated by defectors, the website’s offices have come under pressure from a minority of South Koreans for “obstructing” Korean reconciliation. The North Korean government strongly objects to the broadcasts, claiming that they violate the June 15, 2000, agreement signed at the inter-Korean summit talks that calls for Korean reconciliation. Radio Free Chosun also began broadcasting in 2006, with ninety minutes of shortwave broadcasts daily as of early 2009. Open Radio for North Korea, which also began regular shortwave broadcasts in 2006, lets members of the public, including a consortium of university radio stations under the name Broadcasting without Borders, air messages to North Korea.
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It has been reported that all three stations are financially supported in part by U.S. government money channeled through Washington’s private, nonprofit National Endowment for Democracy.
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In a February 2003 survey of 103 defectors conducted by the KBS Broadcasting Institute, 87 percent of respondents said they had listened to or knew about KBS’s Social Education Broadcasting; 6 percent listened to Far East Broadcasting and 2 percent to Radio Free Asia. Some 40 percent reported listening to the KBS station once or twice a week, and the same proportion said they listened every day. Asked how they learned about KBS broadcasts, 50 percent said they discovered the station by accident, whereas 15 percent said the station was recommended by others. North Korean listeners liked “information about the ROK” most about the station.
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Somewhat surprisingly, a similar survey conducted in 2005 found lower exposure to South Korean media: 24 percent of this sample reported being exposed to foreign media, with the most popular medium being radio and the most popular radio stations being Social Education Broadcasting (9 percent) and Radio Free Asia (3 percent).
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On July 31, 2003, the DPRK government closed down its “black” radio station, Voice of National Salvation, which had been broadcasting programs in the South Korean dialect since 1970 (a black station is disguised to appear as if it is broadcasting from the country of its target audience, in this case, South Korea). The stationed signed off with the following words:

Our nation is now welcoming the 15 June era of reunification [referring to the June 2000 Korean summit meeting] in which the fellow countrymen will become one under Great General Kim Jong-il’s military-first politics based on love for the country and people.… The North side, on the occasion of the 15 August Independence Day, proposed to stop all broadcasts that slander the other party.… The Editorial Bureau of the Voice of National Salvation, while extending full support to, as well as fully sympathizing with, the North’s proposal, in response to such a proposal, inform all of you that we will actively and totally end our broadcast starting 1 August. From the bottom of our hearts, we extend our thanks to all of you who gave unsparing support to our broadcast and earnestly enjoyed listening to it and wish that greater results are seen in the future struggle. Good-bye, everyone.
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The DPRK asked the ROK government to make a corresponding gesture by ending broadcasts aimed at the North, although North Korea’s Voice of Korea, formerly known as the Pyongyang Broadcasting Station or Radio Pyongyang, continues to broadcast propaganda targeted at the South Korean audience. The North Korean request was widely interpreted as a sign that the Kim regime was increasingly concerned about outside information reaching the North Korean people, especially in the wake of U.S. propaganda attacks on Iraq and calls in the United States to increase RFA broadcasts to North Korea. The Kim regime also realized that Internet sites provide a better medium for propaganda aimed at South Korea’s computer-savvy younger generation.
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Pursuant to its National Security Law, the ROK government has occasionally attempted to prevent its citizens from visiting these pro– North Korean websites, but the attempts are largely futile.

A good indication of the threat posed by international radio to the Kim regime can be found in North Korean press comments. Although the press occasionally complains about VOA, Pyongyang’s reaction to RFA is altogether harsher. The North Korean people are told that in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, thanks to Radio Free Europe, “large numbers of people, such as the youth ...were imbued with illusions about capitalism,” resulting in the collapse of communism and a worse life for everyone.
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The United States stands accused of attempting to “disintegrate and transform us internally through shoving in numerous pocket size radios on the one hand and on the other hand through airing Radio ‘Free Asia’ programs in the Korean language day and night,” thereby “falsely trumpeting the temporary difficulty we are experiencing due to natural disasters as if our system itself has ‘huge shortcomings’ or ‘problems.’ ”
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Regardless of the warnings issued to them by their government, North Koreans continue to listen secretly to foreign radio broadcasts. Foreign-made videos on tape and disk smuggled in from China are now widely available on the black market. Pornographic videos make up some of this trade, but videos of South Korean television dramas are even more popular, and few people see anything wrong with watching them. The dramas are enjoyed for the stories they tell and for the scenes of South Korean life they offer. People pass them around and watch them at home behind closed doors. Those caught viewing or possessing foreign videos have their video equipment confiscated and are typically sentenced to a few days or weeks of labor “reeducation,” although the punishment can be more severe for repeat offenders. Payment of a bribe to the police is usually sufficient to avoid any punishment at all, and the police keep the videos for their own viewing pleasure. Members of the North Korean elite class, supposedly the core supporters of the Kim regime, are the most likely to listen to foreign broadcasts and watch foreign media because they have the money to buy radios and televisions, and equally importantly, they can afford to bribe the police if they are caught.

Foreign communications reach North Korea in unconventional ways. Through the 1990s, some eight hundred loudspeakers along the ROK’s side of the Demilitarized Zone broadcast music and political commentary across the border, targeted primarily at North Korean soldiers. Messages were also shown on a hundred giant electric signboards, the largest of which could be seen for a distance of fifteen kilometers. The North had its own speakers and signboards, but they were less effective, especially as the electricity shortage became severe in the 1990s. In 2004, the ROK government responded positively to the DPRK’s proposal that both sides discontinue border broadcasts and signboard communication, although many South Koreans considered this a bad deal because the South was arguably winning the propaganda battle.

Another unconventional communication channel formerly used by the ROK government to target the North is the balloon drop. During the Cold War, the government would send up flights of small balloons to drift over the North carrying leaflets and small consumer goods such as candy and nylon stockings. In recent years, private human rights and missionary groups in South Korea have taken to flying these balloons, dropping hundreds of thousands of anti–Kim Jong-il leaflets along with small radios, small Bibles, food packets, nonprescription medicine, items of clothing, and cash. One group claimed to have sent two hundred large balloons with over a half million leaflets in 2007 alone.
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The South Korean police often try to prevent balloon flights, although it does not appear that they have a legal right to do so. The ROK’s unification ministry explains, “Domestic law does not ban such activities, but we urge them [South Korean activists] to stop immediately because they may strain the inter-Korean relationship.”
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In the past, North Korea sent its own balloons into the sky to drop pamphlets on South Korea, and some of these balloons have drifted to Japan. In the mid-1990s, balloons with timer devices and vials of harmless liquid drifted over Japan, presumably from North Korea.
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North Koreans can also learn about the outside world from the thousands of Korean and Chinese Korean traders who regularly cross the northern border. Information also comes from conversations with tourists, whose numbers have increased in recent years, although for the most part the tourists are kept well away from ordinary North Koreans. As inter-Korean relations have warmed, the number of South Koreans allowed into the North has increased dramatically. According to the unification ministry, between 1989 and 2005 a total of 168,498 South Koreans visited the North, not counting those on group tours to the Mt. Kumgang reservation.
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During the same period, 5,243 North Koreans visited the South, all on official business.

At Mt. Kumgang, tourists can converse only with tour guides, who are trusted party members or Koreans from China, and these conversations must be conducted with great care to avoid violating DPRK government rules that prohibit remarks critical of North Korea. In June 2000 a South Korean housewife conversing with a North Korean forest ranger said that just as she was enjoying her tour at Mt. Kumgang, the ranger might enjoy life in South Korea after reunification. Apparently, the suggestion that a North Korean might one day want to visit or live in South Korea is considered a serious offense, and she was arrested for spying and detained for several days while her six-year-old son had to return to South Korea without her. After undergoing stressful interrogation and threats of a long prison term and receiving the death penalty, she was released.
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How Information Travels

A brief summary of communication flows in North Korea might look like this: most communications from the outside world are blocked, communications from the leaders to the people are ignored as much as possible, communications from the people to their leaders are not to be trusted, and communications among the people are restricted.

It is difficult to get a sense of the nature of personal communication in North Korea’s relatively closed society. Because of security restrictions and infrastructure problems, most communication is face-to-face. Mail is easily examined by the authorities, and ownership of private telephones is limited to upper-level cadres and wealthy traders. There are no reports of anything like the samizdat that existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the communist era.