The Hidden People of North Korea (27 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

The Information Environment

Although the Kim regime has gone to great lengths to restrict the information available to its people, information control is breaking down. North Koreans today live in two information environments. The regime has fashioned the public environment of party speeches, propaganda banners, and communist-inspired culture for its own purposes, and it is filled with falsehoods. People treat this environment the way most Westerners treat their commercial environment—by ignoring it as much as possible. And then there is the hidden information environment of news and entertainment that seeps in from outside North Korea’s borders. Because this information is hard to come by, it is much sought after. Even Western-style television commercials and print advertisements are eagerly viewed by those few North Koreans with access to them. The question of how much impact this information has on people will be taken up in chapter 6, leaving this chapter to survey the official and unofficial sources of information available to the North Korean people.

People need information to navigate their social and physical environments and make optimal choices; information is also sought for its entertainment value. Systems theorists have observed that closed systems, which do not communicate well with the environment, eventually falter and die because they cannot adapt to the larger systems of which they are a part.
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These systems may be countries or companies or social groups. Open systems have a better chance of surviving, but they are vulnerable to change imposed upon them by their environment. The Kim regime has struggled with the trade-off between the benefits of open and closed systems. North Korea cannot survive by relying solely on its own knowledge and inventions. Yet, information from the outside world inevitably provides a standard against which North Koreans can compare their difficult lives. How can Kim Jong-il let in the information necessary to make his economy competitive without introducing ideas that challenge the official ideology? The attempted solution is to drape what Kim Il-sung described as a “mosquito net” around the country, letting in some things and keeping out others.
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One reason that Kim and his associates have been able to stay in power for over half a century is that they have been able to control information channels. A former North Korean has characterized the people as twenty-three million frogs living at the bottom of a deep well. The people not only lack knowledge about what is going on outside their country but are even ignorant about what is happening within North Korea. Without information about alternatives, including alternative political systems and standards of living, their options for change are limited. Since it began publishing its annual world index of press freedom in 2002, Reporters without Borders has placed North Korea dead last on the list every year except in 2007 and 2008, when it was next to last (after Eritrea and just ahead of Turkmenistan, Burma, Cuba, Vietnam, and China). By monopolizing information, the political elites have erected a protective wall around themselves. At the center of things, Kim, who has more knowledge than anyone else, including about what the other elites are doing, has built an inner wall around himself to guard against coups, much like the keep or inner tower within a walled castle.

North Koreans live in a propaganda-rich, information-poor environment. During the Cold War, citizens of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had much more information available to them about life outside their country than do North Koreans today. In the heyday of communism, perhaps only the Chinese and Russian peasants were as ignorant of the outside world as today’s North Korean villagers. To be sure, not all North Koreans are unin-formed about what is going on in their country and the world. Those in the upper political class have more knowledge about international events than do the peasants, and Kim Jong-il has full access to the international media. Below them, most party cadres get their news from the government-controlled media, supplemented by whatever they pick up from rumor and clandestine listening to foreign radio broadcasts. Ordinary North Koreans must rely on radios with dials fixed to the government station and televisions that can only receive the nearby government stations to get the news, and electricity shortages prevent even those who have radios and televisions from using them much of the time.

Because the government owns and operates the radio and television stations and the newspapers, they provide a single source of information, with one media channel reinforcing another. Consequently, North Koreans cannot judge the reliability of one news medium by comparing it with another. And not only are most North Koreans deprived of reliable information, but they are saddled with large amounts of misinformation. For example, North Koreans are told that in 1945 Kim Il-sung won the war against Japan and that several years later he successfully defended North Korea against a joint American–South Korean invasion that started the Korean War. They are also told that in his day Kim Il-sung was recognized throughout the world as one of the great leaders of the twentieth century and that Kim Jong-il holds that position today.

Authorized Sources of Information

The Role of the News

The role of the media in a communist state is to make people loyal supporters of the regime. As Lenin said, “Newspapers are free not for the sake of the circulation of news but for the purpose of educating and organizing the working masses toward the attainment of goals clearly defined by the thoroughgoing leadership of the party.”
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Article 67 of the constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) provides for freedom of the press, publication, assembly, demonstration, and association, but “freedom” in North Korea is defined as what “corresponds to the interests of the popular masses”—and party officials decide what is in their best interest.
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The DPRK has never been shy about admitting that the primary role of its media is to indoctrinate.
Nodong Sinmun
, the party newspaper, calls the press a “sharp ideological weapon dedicated to staunchly defending and safeguarding the leader” and urges the press to “dye the whole society one color, the color of the revolutionary ideology of the great leader.”
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The Kim regime places great faith in its media’s ability to transform people from what it calls “egotists” into socialists loyal to the Kim family. Countless articles have emphasized the important role the media play in molding people’s socialist outlook, with several themes predominating: obey the leader and the party without question, protect the leader with your life, adhere to the military-first policy by supporting the army, be optimistic about the country’s future, work hard for the good of the community and country, do not be tempted by capitalism and its products, be proud of Korean culture and hold to the traditional ways, hate the Americans and Japanese, and if you are a bureaucrat or manager, get out of your office and go among the people to lead them by setting a good example. Yet, despite this flood of propaganda, the North Korean people have actually become less socialistic and more capitalistic with each passing year. It is probably not wrong to infer from the media’s repetition of propaganda themes that their opposite is closer to reality: people do not obey the leader and the party when they can get away with it, they harbor ill will toward the military, they work for themselves rather than the community, and they are mightily attracted to the products and pleasures of capitalism. The only propaganda themes that seem to strike a chord are nationalism and hatred of the Americans and Japanese.

The North Korean press publishes little news about the outside world except items that reflect badly on other countries—the better to foster the belief that North Korea is the finest place in the world to live. Any foreign news story that does make it into the media is likely to be brutally short. For example, following a visit to Pyongyang by a former official of the Clinton administration, North Korean domestic radio broadcast this item: “Bill Richardson, governor of the state of New Mexico of the United States, and his party left Pyongyang on 20 October. They were seen off at the airport by functionaries of the relevant sector.”
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Why Richardson was in Pyongyang, how long he had been there, and whom he was talking to—none of that is supposed to be the business of the North Korean public.

Nor are the people given any substantive information about their own leaders and government. Promotions, demotions, and dismissals of officials are rarely mentioned, and when a top official dies, the news report is usually limited to a few lines noting that Kim Jong-il sent a wreath to the funeral. It is unusual to run across a story about accidents or crimes inside North Korea. Even during the period from 1995 to 1998, when hundreds of thousands or even millions of people were dying of starvation, no casualty statistics were published in the press, which simply observed that the country was experiencing a “food problem.” Occasionally, the media will mention a domestic tragedy if it has produced a hero worthy of emulation. For example,
Nodong Sinmun
published an article titled “Phoenixes Who Overcame Difficulties with Faith” about how, in a mine disaster in October 2006 (the report coming two months after the fact), two miners survived and “overcame the crisis of death with ideology and faith” by singing “Where Are You General, for Whom We Yearn?” and reciting the poem “Please Forgive.”
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It should be added, however, that the media seem to be opening up in recent years. For example, the press covered the 2007 summer floods quite extensively— although, of course, the damage was attributed to an act of nature rather than to mistakes the party has made in managing the environment.

Like all organizations in North Korea, the print and electronic media operate under the dual control of the party and the government. Party officials vet items for broadcast or publication carefully because if a published item reflects badly on the leader or the party, those responsible for its publication may lose their jobs and possibly even be thrown into prison. According to a former scriptwriter at the Korean Central Broadcasting Station (KCBS), news writers and editors receive monthly topic lists from the Korean Workers’ Party’s (KWP) Propaganda and Agitation Department. Before being published, news items are submitted to an in-house review panel and then sent to the director of the news organization. From there, stories work their way through layers of officials until they reach the General Bureau of Publications Guidance and the appropriate news department of the Propaganda and Agitation Department. Editorials and important commentaries are in all likelihood submitted to Kim Jong-il for his personal review and approval. Owing to this extensive review process, news articles may not be timely, but they do provide a reliable glimpse into what the authorities are thinking. Foreign news items are sometimes published days or even weeks after the events they report, giving the North Korean propagandists time to evaluate the events and decide how best to present them. According to a former North Korean journalist, most newspaper copy is submitted a month ahead of time, and over half of the typesetting is completed several days before publication.
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