The Hidden People of North Korea (29 page)

The editorial’s tone is upbeat and militant. Every year the claim is made that a foundation for success has been laid and now is the time to build on that foundation. The country is said to have reached a “turning point,” after which things will get better. People are told that they have everything they need to achieve a brighter future, if only they will give “fuller play” to the correct policies laid down by Kim and the party. Unfortunately, every year turns out to be pretty much like the year before, with little or no economic progress. Consequently, people pay no more attention to the New Year’s editorial than is absolutely necessary.

Radio, Television, and the Third Broadcasting System

For most North Koreans, televisions, especially color sets, are still luxury items. There may be only four million radios and a few million television sets in the entire country of twenty-three million people, although no statistics are available. In Pyongyang and other major cities, most households have a television; in the countryside, perhaps only one in ten or twenty do. Radios manufactured in North Korea have analog dials soldered to receive only the broadcast frequency of KCBS, which has transmitters throughout the country.

KCBS and Korean Central Television (KCTV), its companion television station, carry more domestic news and less international news than KCNA provides to the international audience. In addition to KCTV, which offers news and other programming on weekday evenings and during the weekend, Mansudae Television provides entertainment programs on weekends and holidays, and Korean Educational and Cultural Television broadcasts programs for three hours on weekdays and longer on weekends. The PAL television signal broadcast by North Korea (also used in Europe and China) is incompatible with the NTSC South Korean television signal (also used in the United States and Japan). For comparison purposes, here are the major news stories carried by KCBS and KCTV on December 18, 2003, the date for the preceding list of articles from
Nodong Sinmun:

KCBS (eighteen-minute news cast)

• Kim thanks officials for planting trees and protecting historical relics.
  
• The twenty-fourth anniversary of Kim’s work on “living in our own style” is celebrated.
  
• The works of Kim and his father are displayed at the
  Juche
  exhibition hall.
  
• New Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia greenhouses are built.
  
• People visit the Kim Jong-suk relic room at a museum on the occasion of her birthday.
  
• ROK authorities are denounced for their antireunification act of suppressing students.
  
• Japan’s budget for a missile-defense program is denounced.
  

KCTV (twenty-nine-minute news cast)

• One of Kim Jong-il’s books is published in Angola.
  
• Various countries, including Egypt, celebrate the eighty-sixth birthday of Kim Jong-suk and the twelfth anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s appointment as KPA supreme commander.
  
• Kim thanks a boat crew for their accident-free work at Kumgang.
  
• People are shown listening to a lecture at the Historic Place of Revolution on the occasion of Kim Jong-suk’s eighty-sixth birthday and Kim Jong-il’s appointment as supreme commander.
  
• Archive footage shows on-the-spot guidance at a food institute given by Kim and his father.
  
• The winner of the Kim Il-sung poetry prize and his family are shown enjoying a “birthday table” of food sent by Kim Jong-il.
  
• A video shows progress in land rezoning work in North Hamgyong Province.
  
• A video shows progress in the construction of the Orangchon Power Plant.
  
• A video celebrates the year-end acceleration of production at the Nanam Coal Mine Machinery Complex.
  
• The operation of the Tokchon Chicken Plant is shown.
  
• Medical researchers at the Academy of Koryo Medicine talk about their recent achievements.
  
• A “meritorious” technician is shown working in a laboratory at the 5 October Automation Apparatus Plant.
  
• A visiting delegation of Vietnamese is shown paying their respects to the late Kim Il-sung and reviewing exhibits on display at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace.
  
• Representatives from various countries are shown laying wreaths at the statue of Kim Jong-suk on the occasion of her eighty-sixth birthday.
  
• The announcer claims that in 2003 the world’s progressive people supported the DPRK’s anti-U.S. policy.
  
• A DPRK foreign ministry spokesperson reports on the interest of various countries, including the Czech Republic, Russia, and China, in the resumption of the Six-Party Talks on the nuclear issue.
  ¹⁵
  

Radio and television programming is not devoted exclusively to news, but it
is
mostly about politics in one way or another. Documentaries tend to be about the Kims. Interview and discussion shows highlight the virtues of Kim Jong-il’s military-first politics. Children’s stories and songs likewise provide political teachings. One can imagine who “The Boy General” is about. “Chodong and His Father” discusses “the need to assist the army,” and “A Boy Defeats Robbers” teaches that “one can find a way to beat any formidable enemy [for instance, the United States] and emerge victorious.” Cartoon shows, including
Three Ant Brothers
and
The Clever Raccoon Dog
,try to impart the values of hard work. Since 2001, a few children’s stories and cartoons from the West, such as episodes of
Tom & Jerry
and programs based on “Cinderella” and
Alice in Wonderland
, have appeared on North Korean TV, apparently in line with Kim Jong-il’s instruction that people be cautiously exposed to information about the outside world.

Songs (or “paeans,” as the press has been known to call them) extolling the virtues of Kim Il-sung include “Long Live Generalissimo Kim Il-sung,” “Our Leader Is Always with Us,” and “Song of the Sun Will Be Everlasting.” And plenty of songs praise Kim Jong-il, including “We Will Death-Defyingly Defend the Nerve Center of the Revolution,” “The General Is the Banner of Victory,” “The General Leads the New Century,” “Peerless Patriot General Kim Jong-il,” and “We Will Display Victory While Flying the Supreme Commander’s Flag.” In addition to dominating the airwaves, these songs are sung at concerts and in schools, and children sing them (under the direction of the class leader) as they march to school in the morning.

North Korea’s “third broadcasting system” is a wired network of speakers in homes, public buildings, and outdoor spaces. Third-broadcasting messages differ from those on radio and television largely in that they are tailored to specific locales and less concerned about promoting a positive image of the country. People are instructed about how to behave when a visiting foreigner is expected in the neighborhood, or they might be warned to be on the lookout for those responsible for a rash of local burglaries. The messages are sent out for about two hours a day, and the volume on home speakers can be turned down but not off, although electricity shortages and the general deterioration of North Korea’s communication infrastructure have hampered the operation of the speaker system. In a tape of a town meeting smuggled out of the country in 2006, the mayor warns people that an official will be coming around to homes checking that the speakers are properly installed, and if residents do not admit the official, they will be suspected of hiding illegal radios, operating an illegal gambling den, or even of being spies.
¹⁶

Intranet and Internet

Kim Jong-il is eager to have his people adopt the latest technology as a means of reviving the economy, although how people might actually get their hands on it remains a mystery. Perhaps only 5 percent of the population has access to a computer, and probably no more than a few thousand have access to the Internet. Thousands more use computers at schools and workplaces to log on to the
Kwangmyong
(“brightness”) intranet, where they can retrieve information and communicate by e-mail. A 2001 article in
Nodong Sinmun
is purportedly written by an intranet user who does not forget to thank Kim Jong-il for this electronic miracle: “Filling the computer screen with this endless joy, I just want to write my first letter to the great mentor, our close parent, who has brought us all to the summit of modern civilization, carrying us in his bosom.”
¹⁷

North Korea is unable to manufacture its own computers because it lacks the technology to make critical components. Apart from manufacturing constraints, the international Wassenaar Arrangement forbids countries from exporting technology that could have military uses to North Korea, although some countries, most notably China, are lax in their export controls, and the North Korean residents of Japan seem to have been particularly helpful in transferring technology and equipment to North Korea over the years. Only about 10 percent of offices in North Korea have computers. Most elementary schools lack computers, but middle schools are likely to have a handful. Local colleges also have only a few, and a university may have a few dozen. Individuals who wish to purchase a home computer must apply for various permits, and the cost is far beyond what the average Korean can afford.

By 2002, fiber-optic cable connected North Korea’s major cities, and the intranet operates on this network, overseen by officials of the State Security Department (SSD). So far as we know, the network is not connected to the Internet, which makes use of different telephone links, although a few portals allow intranet e-mails to be forwarded to the Internet. Kim Jong-il is probably the only person in the country who can surf the Web free of SSD monitoring. When U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang in 2000, Kim gave her his e-mail address, although whether they communicated is not known. Some government administrative and economic organizations, as well as North Korean trading companies, maintain Web pages on the intranet, and the electronic version of
Nodong Sinmun
may be found there as well.

The “.kp” domain has been set aside for North Korea, but there are no servers in the country, so there are no “.kp” addresses. North Korea’s “official” websites are located on servers in China, Japan, and Germany. Several dozen websites showcasing the Kim regime’s ideology are sponsored by North Korea or by sympathetic groups and hosted on foreign servers.

North Korean scientific articles occasionally cite Internet addresses, which scientists may have accessed directly or by way of the intranet, and North Korea is believed to have a robust computer-hacking program, which must function through the Internet. A former North Korean professor of computer studies claims that skilled North Korean hackers, trained at North Korea’s top technical schools such as Mirim University and Kim Chaek University of Technology, are sent abroad by the military to work undercover in other countries, especially China.
¹⁸

Because information and technology can be used against the regime as well as for the good of the country, Kim Jong-il can hardly afford to let the general public get their hands on such politically powerful tools. Moving information around on the North Korean intranet is safer for the regime than letting people go on the Internet. Even the communist leaders of China, who continue to try to censor what their people can access on the Internet, have resigned themselves to a large measure of exposure to the international community. The North Korean press complains about the alleged oppressiveness of the South Korean “puppet” regime, while inadvertently revealing just how much freedom South Koreans enjoy. For example, KCBS has reported that South Koreans are using Internet sites to protest the American military presence in South Korea. What must North Koreans think about their own level of technology and degree of freedom when they cannot even gain access to a computer, much less use it to protest against anything?

Books

For a country of its size and with its high literacy rate, North Korea publishes relatively few books, which is hardly surprising given the chronic paper shortage and the authorities’ reluctance to put nontechnical written material into the hands of the people. Apart from technical works, most books, like newspapers, are unabashed instruments of propaganda. The most popular book topics are the life and teachings of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. In 2008, fourteen years after the Great Leader’s death, the number of volumes of his collected works had reached seventy-four, and more were being released all the time.

Most foreign-language books are kept in special reserve sections in libraries and are available only to party cadres on a need-to-know basis. The Kim regime is particularly proud of the library at the Grand People’s Study Hall in Pyongyang, but few ordinary Koreans spend any time there. When a French visitor asked how many volumes the study hall had, he was told thirty million. When he asked how many of the books were in the catalog, he was told twenty-five hundred.
¹⁹
So the number of volumes is presumably somewhere in that range. A German visitor to the study hall was told that the two Kims had written over 10,800 works, a figure that his Korean hosts stuck too under further questioning.
²⁰
According to KCNA, Kim Jong-il performed “great ideological and theoretical exploits which ordinary people could hardly accomplish in all their life” by authoring more than fourteen hundred works (“treatises, talks, speeches, conclusions, and letters”) during his four years as a student at Kim Il-sung University.
²¹

Among the hundreds or thousands of books written about the Kims,
Collection of Legends of the Great Man
recounts “77 legends about the gifted intelligence, lofty outlook on the people, and noble traits displayed by leader Kim Jong-il.”
²²
Books in the socialist realism tradition include such titles as
Song of Humankind
, “based on the fact that President Kim Il-sung visited the Kangson Steelworks and called on its workers to bring about a great revolutionary upsurge in socialist construction,” and
Arms
, which “shows the validity and vitality of the
songun
[military-first] politics pursued by leader Kim Jong-il.”
²³
Novels such as
Breath of Land
and
Swaying Abele
“depict farm and railway workers’ efforts to implement the policies of the Korean Workers’ Party.”