Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia

SOUTH KOREAN
POPULAR CULTURE AND
NORTH KOREA
Edited by
Youna Kim
South Korean Popular Culture
and North Korea

Over recent decades South Korea’s vibrant and distinctive populist culture has
spread extensively throughout the world. This book explores how this “Korean
Wave” has also made an impact in North Korea. The book reveals that although
South Korean media have to be consumed underground and unofficially in North
Korea, they are widely watched and listened to. The book examines the ways in
which this is leading to popular yearning in North Korea for migration, defecting
to the South or for people to just become more like South Koreans. Overall, the
book demonstrates that the soft power of the Korean Wave is having an under-
mining impact on the hard, constraining cultural climate of North Korea.

Youna Kim is Professor of Global Communications at the American University of

Paris, France, joined from the London School of Economics and Political Science
where she had taught since 2004, after completing her PhD at the University of
London, Goldsmiths College. Her books are Women, Television and Everyday Life
in Korea: Journeys of Hope (Routledge, 2005); Media Consumption and Everyday
Life in Asia (Routledge, 2008); Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of
Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters (Routledge, 2011); Women and the Media in
Asia: The Precarious Self (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); The Korean Wave: Korean
Media Go Global (Routledge, 2013); Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and
Society (Routledge, 2016); Childcare Workers, Global Migration and Digital Media
(Routledge, 2017).
Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia

Series Editor
Stephanie Hemelryk Donald

Editorial Board:
Gregory N. Evon, University of New South Wales
Devleena Ghosh, University of Technology, Sydney
Peter Horsfield, RMIT University, Melbourne
Chris Hudson, RMIT University, Melbourne
Michael Keane, Curtin University
Tania Lewis, RMIT University, Melbourne
Vera Mackie, University of Wollongong
Kama Maclean, University of New South Wales
Laikwan Pang, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Gary Rawnsley, Aberystwyth University
Ming-yeh Rawnsley, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Jo Tacchi, Lancaster University
Adrian Vickers, University of Sydney
Jing Wang, MIT
Ying Zhu, City University of New York

The aim of this series is to publish original, high-quality work by both new and
established scholars in the West and the East, on all aspects of media, culture and
social change in Asia.

For a full list of available titles please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Media-

Culture-and-Social-Change-in-Asia-Series/book-series/SE0797

57 North Korean Graphic Novels

Seduction of the Innocent
Martin Petersen

58 Cultural Policy in South Korea

Making a New Patron State
Hye-Kyung Lee

59 Television in Post-Reform Vietnam

Nation, Media, Market
Giang Nguyen-Thu

60 South Korean Popular Culture and North Korea

Edited by Youna Kim

61 Russian Nationalism
Imaginaries, Doctrines, and Political Battlefields
Marlene Laruelle
South Korean Popular Culture
and North Korea

Edited by Youna Kim

First published 2019 by Routledge
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 2019 selection and editorial matter, Youna Kim; individual chapters, the
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Notes on contributors viii

Introduction: Hallyu and North Korea – soft power of

popular culture 1
YOUNA KIM

PART I
Popular culture as soft power 39
1 Soft power and the Korean Wave 41
JOSEPH NYE AND YOUNA KIM

2 The Korean Wave as a powerful agent: hidden stories

from a North Korean defector 54
THAE YONG-HO

3 Popular culture in transitional societies: an Eastern

European perspective 67
NIKOLAY ANGUELOV

PART II
Circulation of meaning 81
4 Black markets, red states: media piracy in China and
the Korean Wave in North Korea 83
WEIQI ZHANG AND MICKY LEE

5 The Korean Wave: a pull factor for North Korean

migration 96
AHLAM LEE
vi Contents
6 Hallyu in the South, hunger in the North: alternative
imaginings of what life could be 109
SANDRA FAHY

7 South Korean media reception and youth culture in

North Korea 120
SUNNY YOON

PART III
Contesting voices 133
8 Other as brother or lover: North Koreans in
South Korean visual media 135
ELAINE H. KIM AND HANNAH MICHELL

9 Discursive construction of Hallyu-in-North Korea in

South Korean news media 149
KYONG YOON

10 Webtoon and intimacy: reception of North Korean

defectors’ survival narratives 162
JAHYON PARK

11 Revealing voices? North Korean males and the

South Korean mediascape 176
STEPHEN J. EPSTEIN AND CHRISTOPHER K. GREEN

Index 189
Acknowledgments

In today’s digitally connected mobile world, the primary site for the development of
shared global consciousness is located in the mundane, representational domain of
the mass media and popular culture, mobilized through information and communica-
tion technologies. My research interest in the Korean Wave popular culture and North
Korea was initially developed in 2007 with a chapter I contributed to a cutting-edge
volume Media on the Move: Global Flow and Contra-Flow (Routledge, 2007) edited
by a colleague of mine in London; and since then it has been continually expressed
in my edited books The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global (Routledge, 2013)
and Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society (Routledge, 2016). As
always, my publisher Routledge has been wonderfully supportive and coopera-
tive, for which I remain truly grateful. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to Peter
Sowden, Stephanie Donald, Rebecca McPhee, Stephanie Rogers, Natalie Foster
and Felisa Salvago-Keyes for showing interest in this book project and thoughtfully
assisting me throughout the publication process. The review comments were very
useful, invigorating and insightful.
I am grateful to Anthony Giddens for his valuable advice and friendship, as
always. Inspiring conversations with him, as well as his influential body of writing
on globalization, self and social change have been sources of reflection in my work
so far including this one. I also want to extend my personal gratitude to Ien Ang,
Charles Armstrong, Chris Berry, Chang Kyung-Sup, Chua Beng Huat, Nick Couldry,
Michael Delli Carpini, Terry Flew, Koichi Iwabuchi, David Kang, John Lie, Marcus
Noland, Kent Ono, Eugene Park and Daya Thussu for their insightful works, encour-
aging words and helpful recommendations that have facilitated the research process.
This research was supported by the Academy of Korean Studies Grant (AKS-
2018-R01). I warmly thank my dedicated PA and friend Diane Willian for helping
me wherever I am.
I am deeply appreciative of the contributors in this book for collaborating so
willingly and delightfully. Thank you all.

Youna Kim
Paris
Contributors

Nikolay Anguelov is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the University of

Massachusetts, the USA. Born in Bulgaria, he consumed illegal tapes of music
shows and movies from the outside world and experienced turbulence with the
regime change. He is the author of Economic Sanctions vs. Soft Power: Lessons
from North Korea, Myanmar and the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015);
The Dirty Side of the Garment Industry: Fast Fashion and Its Negative Impact
on Environment and Society (CRC Press, 2015); Policy and Political Theory
in Trade Practice: Multinational Corporations and Global Governments
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). His research is interdisciplinary, with a focus on
diplomacy, international trade and cross-cultural communications.
Stephen J. Epstein is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the Victoria
University of Wellington in New Zealand, where he directs the Asian Languages
and Cultures Program. He has published widely on contemporary Korean soci-
ety, literature and popular culture. He has also coproduced two documentaries
on the Korean underground music scene and published several translations
of Korean and Indonesian fiction. His latest books are A Sourcebook of the
Korean Wave (co-edited with Yun Mi Hwang) and the short story collection
Apple & Knife by Intan Paramaditha.
Sandra Fahy is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Sophia University,
Tokyo, where she teaches in the Graduate Program in Global Studies and the
Faculty of Liberal Arts. She received her PhD from the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London. She is the author of Marching
through Suffering: Loss, Survival and North Korea (Columbia University
Press, 2015), and her second book, Without Parallel: North Korea’s Our Style
Human Rights, is currently under review. She has published articles and policy
pieces in Anthropology Today, Food, Culture and Society, Natural Hazards
Observer, Health and Human Rights Journal and Asia Policy.
Christopher K. Green is a researcher in Korean Studies at Leiden University in
the Netherlands, where he works on the political and historical sociology of
North Korea, and Senior Advisor for the Korean Peninsula at International Crisis
Group. He has published widely on North Korean politics, economy, ideology
 Contributors ix
and PRC foreign policy vis-à-vis the DPRK, as well as contemporary broadcast
media portrayals of resettled North Korean migrants. He is the former Manager
of International Affairs for Daily NK, a periodical covering North Korean affairs
based in Seoul, and translator of the memoir of a senior North Korean defector,
Hwang Jang-Yop.
Elaine H. Kim is Professor of the Graduate School and Professor Emerita of
Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at the University of California at
Berkeley. She is an award-winning writer, editor and scholar recognized in the
intersections of ethnic studies, diaspora studies, literary and cultural studies,
feminism, and cinema in particular. A prolific and influential scholar, she has
authored and co-edited many books including Dangerous Women: Gender and
Korean Nationalism and Writing Self, Writing Nation. Her creative documen-
tary films include Slaying the Dragon Reloaded: Representing Asian Women
Beyond Hollywood.
Youna Kim is Professor of Global Communications at the American University of
Paris, France, joined from the London School of Economics and Political Science
where she had taught since 2004, after completing her PhD at the University of
London, Goldsmiths College. Her books are Women, Television and Everyday Life
in Korea: Journeys of Hope (Routledge, 2005); Media Consumption and Everyday
Life in Asia (Routledge, 2008); Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of
Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters (Routledge, 2011); Women and the Media in
Asia: The Precarious Self (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); The Korean Wave: Korean
Media Go Global (Routledge, 2013); Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and
Society (Routledge, 2016); Childcare Workers, Global Migration and Digital
Media (Routledge, 2017).
Ahlam Lee is Assistant Professor of the Leadership Studies Doctoral Program
at Xavier University, the USA. Previously she was a post-doctoral researcher
at the University of Pennsylvania after receiving her PhD in Educational
Leadership and Policy Analysis from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in
2011. She is the author of North Korean Defectors in a New and Competitive
Society: Issues and Challenges in Resettlement, Adjustment and the Learning
Process (Lexington Books, 2015). Her research focuses on the psycho-social
and educational issues of North Korean refugees in their new homes.
Micky Lee is Associate Professor of Media Studies and Director of the Asian
Studies Program at Suffolk University, Boston. Her latest books are Bubbles
and Machines: Gender, Information and Financial Crises, Understanding the
Business of Global Media in the Digital Age, and Wong Kar-Wai: Interviews.
As a feminist, a Hong Kong citizen, a British national, and a US resident, she
has written globally about new information and communication technologies,
international communication, feminist political economy, and the intersection
between finance, information and the media. Her research articles have been
published in leading journals including Media, Culture & Society and Feminist
Media Studies.
x Contributors
Hannah Michell is Lecturer of Korean Pop Culture in the Asian American Studies
Department at the University of California, Berkeley. With an academic back-
ground in Philosophy and Anthropology from the University of Cambridge
and Creative Writing from City University, she is the author of a novel, The
Defections (2014). Her debut novel has been reviewed positively in The
Guardian (“reveals herself not only as a perceptive observer of character, but
a writer capable of exploring big ideas”), The Times (“stunning”), and others.
Joseph Nye is Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus and former Dean of the
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is an expert on poli-
tics, leadership, Asia, international relations and security. His renowned books
include Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (Public Affairs,
2004); Power in the Global Information Age: From Realism to Globalization
(Routledge, 2004); The Powers to Lead (Oxford University Press, 2008); The
Future of Power (Public Affairs, 2011).
Jahyon Park is a PhD candidate in the program of Asian Literature, Religion
and Culture at Cornell University and focuses on Korean film and media.
Previously she obtained a BA from Columbia University and an MA in Asian
Studies from Cornell University. Her research interests are the representation
and the reception of gender images in contemporary Korean media, and par-
ticularly the reception of new media webtoons and their transmedia content
as television dramas and films, to complicate the genre logic and reception
theory. She was awarded a research travel grant from Cornell University,
and organized a research conference “Gendered Worlds: Desiring East Asian
Popular Culture.”
Thae Yong-Ho, North Korea’s former deputy ambassador to the UK, is one of
the highest-ranking officials ever to defect from North Korea. As a diplomat,
his goal is to do everything possible to pull down the Kim regime to save not
only his family members but also the whole North Korean people from slavery.
He is the author of a bestseller book about North Korea, The Secret Code of
the Third-Floor Secretariat, which has immediately drawn attention in South
Korea. Born in 1962 in Pyongyang, North Korea, he holds a bachelor’s degree
in International Politics from Pyongyang University of International Relations
and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Beijing University of
Foreign Language Studies, China.
Kyong Yoon is Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the
University of British Columbia, Canada. His research interests include trans-
national digital media, popular culture, Korean diaspora, digital Asia, infor-
mation and communication technologies and social change with an emphasis
on the Korean peninsula and beyond. He has published widely on the digital
media and youth culture, and his recent studies of Hallyu have been pub-
lished in international journals such as New Media & Society, International
Journal of Communication, Journal of Intercultural Studies and Popular
Music & Society.
 Contributors xi
Sunny Yoon is Professor of Media and Communication at Hanyang University,
Seoul. Her research areas include audience studies of Korean media in the world
including Western and Eastern Europe as well as East and Southeast Asia, with
a focus on social change and subculture in relation to the Korean Wave in vari-
ous nations. She is a pioneering author who conducted research on the recep-
tion of the Korean Wave among North Korean young people and published an
article in the Korean Journal of Journalism and Communication Studies. She
is the author of two books (in Korean), Media Industry and Cultural Studies
and Feminist Perspective of New Communication Technology, and has pub-
lished various articles on youth culture, cinema and audience studies in major
academic journals both nationally and internationally.
Weiqi Zhang is Assistant Professor of Government at Suffolk University, Boston,
and associated with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies of Harvard
University. His research interests include international relations, political and
economic transition in East Asian countries, particularly focusing on the politi-
cal economy of development with an emphasis on China and North Korea. He
visited North Korea in 2016. His research publications and conference pres-
entations have addressed issues concerning the Communist Party of China,
market transition, and the assessment of the varieties of capitalism on national
innovation style.
Introduction
Hallyu and North Korea: soft power of
popular culture
Youna Kim

North Koreans love the fact that South Korean TV drama is not about politics, but
about love and life, the fundamentals of human existence anywhere in this world.
(a North Korean defector, Radio Free Asia 2007)

Listening to South Korean songs just makes me feel good. I hum a song without
realizing it. Our songs are all about political ideas.
(a North Korean defector, Daily NK 2011b)

Why are we poor?

(North Koreans starting to question, after watching South Korean culture,
Korea Herald 2009)

Since the late 1990s South Korea (hereafter Korea) has emerged as a new center for
the production of transnational popular culture, exporting its own media products
into Asian countries including Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
The spread of Korean popular culture overseas is referred to as the “Korean Wave”
or “Hallyu” – a term first coined by Chinese news media in the middle of 1998 to
describe Chinese youth’s sudden craze for Korean cultural products. Initiated by the
export of TV dramas, it now includes a range of cultural products including Korean
pop music (K-pop), films, animation, online games, smartphones/tablets, fashion,
cosmetics, food and lifestyles. While its popularity is mainly concentrated in neigh-
boring Asian markets, some of the products reach as far as the USA, Mexico, Egypt,
Iraq and Europe. This is the first instance of a major global circulation of Korean
popular culture in history (for details, see Y. Kim 2013).
The impact of the Korean Wave culture has reached into communist North Korea.
In 2005, a 20-year-old North Korean soldier defected across the demilitarized zone
and the reason given, according to South Korean military officials, was that the
soldier had grown to admire and yearn for South Korea after watching its TV dra-
mas which had been smuggled across the border of China (New York Times 2005).
Cases of defections have continued to arise in a digital age as the circulation of the
Korean Wave culture has proliferated through advanced media technologies and
mobile phones, which may encourage people to imagine the outside world and trig-
ger a new wave of migration (Daily NK 2011a; New York Times 2016; Washington
2 Youna Kim
Post 2017). Despite tight controls set by the regime, copies of TV dramas, movies
and music are increasingly smuggled across the border of China into North Korea,
and in some parts of North Korea people have good reception of Chinese TV sig-
nals and watch South Korean dramas directly. North Koreans caught consuming
the South Korean media can be subject to severe punishments, imprisonment, or
even execution in public. South Korean dramas have become so widespread across
North Korea that since 2004 the regime has launched a sweeping crackdown on
university students – the biggest audience. Information technology and digital youth
make North Korea’s isolation more difficult in the light of new images, concepts and
lifestyles from South Korean popular culture.
Why popular? What does it mean socially, culturally and politically in North
Korea in the digital age? This book explores the influence of South Korean popular
culture in North Korea and social, cultural and political change at this important
historical moment. The book considers the significance of popular culture and
information technology as a resource for soft power with its potentials and limits,
complexity and implications at multiple levels. The emerging consequences at
macro and micro levels deserve to be analyzed and explored in an increasingly
global environment. The Korean Wave has become a cultural resource for the
growing mass-mediated popular imagination, which is situated within a broader
process of global consumerism and a new sphere of digital culture.
This book will suggest that it is myopic to disregard popular culture as a
merely trivial, playful culture or as unworthy of serious consideration. Popular
culture can take the serious and often oppressive regulation of the conduct of
everyday life, and turn it on its head. In such spaces of popular culture, oppressed
individuals such as North Koreans can suspend the regularities of the daily, take
pleasure, and in some transcendent way, play with the categories and concepts of
the world over which they otherwise have no influence. Experiencing the Korean
Wave popular culture is not simply to entertain themselves nor simply a form of
escapism. At moments of particular relevance and resonance, meaning-making
through popular culture lives in the community of its users and enters into life.
Although the experience of popular culture may be hidden and unmarked, there
are moments that stand out and are imprinted in users’ memories; the memories
of popular culture are intimately linked to their muted biographies. Although the
experience of popular culture may not lead to dramatic social or political change
in the short run, and although the importance of the transformations generated
by popular culture in the long run are problematically obscured by the atten-
tion to short-run immediate effects, people’s mundane changes, imagination and
critical reflection triggered by popular culture and expressed in the practices of
everyday life can be the basis of social constitution or political subjects. It is
wrong to assume that, because its political regime and authoritarian control has
not changed significantly, then North Korea must be a static society in which citi-
zens are devoid of agency or in which sociocultural change and such imagination
is insignificant. North Koreans, too, are the agents of change with normal aspi-
rations, hopes and desires, constituting a hidden yet potential force for internal
change despite long deep-seated oppression.
 Introduction 3
This book importantly recognizes an intersection between South Korean
popular culture and the mobilization of inner self and possible social change to
emerge within communist North Korea, where real-life situations are felt to be
particularly constrained and mobility in a variety of capacities and forms becomes
all the more important. The people’s capacity to make sense of the meanings of
everyday life, or the grounds of what they do, what they think and what they
feel, has become dependent on the unofficial mediation of South Korean popu-
lar culture which is increasingly present in the daily exigencies of people now.
Despite the regime’s strict control on the flows of media culture and information
from the outside world, its people eventually learn about South Korean society
and life conditions, ways of living and being that differ from their own. Such
cultural encounter can evoke utopian feelings of possibility acting as temporary
answers to the specific inadequacies of society and showing what solutions feel
like. Changes in awareness, knowledge and attitude towards their society may not
always produce an easily observable specific action and social transformation, but
new possibilities may arise from a heightened capacity for reflexivity, questioning
and re-thinking of the taken-for-granted social order and the conditions of their
existence. Increased flows of transnational media culture are important resources
for the triggering and operating of everyday reflexivity (Y. Kim 2005, 2008 and
2013), perhaps even more so in an extremely rigid and repressive society such
as North Korea where other sources of reflexivity might not be readily available.
The significance of media cultural consumption practices can be understood as a
creative, dynamic and transformative process, often involving active and intended
engagement. The appeal and plausibly powerful capacity of popular culture can
invite new cultural dynamics, challenge and social change in North Korea.
As this book will demonstrate, in today’s digitally connected mobile world
marked by the expansion of markets, networks, consumers and plurality of cul-
tures in a force of globalization and interdependence, the Korean Wave popular
culture can be an increasingly important resource for soft power – a cultural
weapon to entice, attract and influence people without the use of violence, military
or economic force in order to obtain preferred outcomes, even from one of the
world’s most closed and isolated societies. Soft power is the ability to achieve
goals, long-term diffuse effects rather than short-term immediate effects through
attraction rather than threat or coercion, and attractive culture is one of the soft
power resources creating general influence in international relations (Nye 2004
and 2008). The Korean Wave is not just a media cultural phenomenon but
fundamentally about the creation of soft power, favorable nation branding and sus-
tainable development (Y. Kim 2013). In the past, national images of Korea were
negatively associated with, and limited to, the demilitarized zone, division and
political disturbances, but now such images are gradually giving way to the vitality
of trendy transcultural entertainers and cutting-edge technology in a digital world.
The Korean government sees this phenomenon as a way to sell a dynamic image of
the nation through soft power; the culture industry has taken center stage in Korea,
with an increased recognition that the flows of popular culture not only boost the
economy but also strengthen the nation’s soft power. This book equally recognizes
4 Youna Kim
the complexity and paradox of soft power within the contexts of inequalities and
uneven power structures of the Korean peninsula in the international landscape.

Popular culture as soft power

The Korean culture industry was developed for socioeconomic, cultural and
political reasons in the late 1990s (Y. Kim 2007 and 2013). Since the 1997
Asian financial crisis, the Korean government has thoroughly re-examined the
process of modernization and targeted the export of popular media culture as a
new economic initiative, one of the major sources of foreign revenue vital for
the country’s economic survival and advancement. Korea, with limited natural
resources, sought to reduce its dependence on a manufacturing base under com-
petitive threat from China. Trade experts have called for the nation to shift its key
development strategy to fostering overseas marketing for culture, technology and
services, including television programs and distribution services. The government
has striven to capitalize on Korean popular culture and given the same national
support in export promotion that was once provided to electronics and cars. The
Korean Wave started from the efforts of private sectors, but the government has
played a key role in the speed of growth. A systematic political infrastructure set
by the government and institutional strategies developed by the industry have
combined to produce the pretext to the rise of the Korean Wave.
The Korean culture industry has been developed as a national project com-
peting within globalization, not against it. In the late 1990s, the rise of Korean
popular culture was facilitated by the opening of the Korean market to global
cultural forces. Historically, Korea faced Japanese colonialism (1910–45), the
arbitrary division by foreign powers into opposed states, the North and the South
(1948), the Korean War (1950–53), and the military rule and successive authori-
tarian regimes (1961–93) that involved infringements of freedom in political,
cultural and artistic expression. Globalization had long been accompanied by the
fear of Western cultural invasion, and the fear was amplified by the uncertainty
of the competitiveness of Korean popular culture. Japanese popular culture was
equally feared and banned in Korea due to colonial history between the two
countries. Only in 1998, more than 50 years after Japanese colonial rule ended,
did the Korean government begin to lift a ban on cultural imports from Japan.
At the same time, in 1998, the government carried out its first five-year plan to
build up the domestic culture industry and encourage exports. By the time nearly
all restrictions on Japanese culture had been lifted (January 2004), the Korean
Wave had spread across Asia. The sense of crisis coming from the opening of the
market to the West and Japan has rather strengthened and benefited the Korean
culture industry. The postcolonial periphery has strengthened its national culture
industry to compete against the dominant flow of Western media products, while
consolidating a growing position in the regional market.
The first major, yet unplanned and accidental, impact of the Korean Wave started
with the transnational circulation of Korean television dramas that were not pro-
duced for international audiences but for domestic audiences. Television dramas
 Introduction 5
have been the major driving force of the Korean Wave, accounting for about 90%
of the total television program exports (Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and
Tourism 2013). For example, the Korean Wave reached its peak when a romance
drama, Winter Sonata (2002), became a transnational phenomenon (Y. Kim 2007).
This tragic love story features beautiful winter scenery and pure love between a
young woman and her boyfriend suffering from amnesia. The hero’s unconditional
love for a woman – faithful and devoted to one lover, sensitive and understanding
of woman’s emotional needs – captivated many audiences transcending national
and cultural boundaries. The Korean Wave reached a new peak with the airing of a
historical drama, Jewel in the Palace (2003) which was sold to over 120 countries
in Asia, the Americas and Europe. Set in Korea’s Chosun Dynasty (1392–1910),
this drama depicts a story about a female royal physician, who endures and upholds
all the virtues of Confucian values such as persistence, self-sacrifice, optimism and
hope. A military romance drama, Descendants of the Sun (2016), has been another
global hit, while raising issues of an obsession with Korean television dramas and
the continual influence of the Korean Wave culture (BBC 2016; CNBC 2016). One
unique feature of this television drama is its military setting with patriotism, and
the military theme has resonated because the armed forces have historically played
a significant part in South Korea with the looming threat of war with North Korea.
Compared to Korean television dramas, K-pop music is a much more
deliberately planned industry targeting international audiences from its start
(Y. Kim 2013). Most K-pop stars including idol groups are not accidentally dis-
covered but have been recruited and systematically produced by entertainment
management firms and their “star system” that was born in the early 1990s and
consolidated in the mid-1990s (Shin 2009). K-pop is not just a random response
to neoliberal globalization, but a systematically planned, monitored, manifesta-
tion of “entrepreneurial self.” Young talents have been recruited, sometimes
from the early age of 12, and trained to become multi-purpose, transnational
performers who “can do everything” through Spartan training. Years of train-
ing include singing lessons, synchronized dance moves, acting, and learning
foreign languages (English, Japanese or Chinese). The success of K-pop stars,
such as Girls’ Generation, Super Junior, EXO, BTS and so on, is a direct out-
come of the star system’s rigorous training to deliver a very polished and easily
identifiable show. K-pop is not just music but a complete show, close to total
entertainment that is uniquely appealing to international fans. K-pop perform-
ers exemplify sort of pop perfectionism – catchy tunes, good singing, attractive
bodies, cool clothes, mesmerizing movements and other attractive attributes in
a non-threatening, pleasant package (Lie 2012). This pleasurable experience
can make fans feel how difficult it is not to enjoy it, even when they may be
fully aware of its addictiveness and extremely photogenic, visual illusion.
The growing interest in the Korean Wave has triggered an increase in foreign
tourists visiting the locations where their favorite television dramas and acts had
been filmed. Each year, about 13 million foreign tourists visit Korea, and two-thirds
of the visitors are influenced by the Korean Wave (Korean Ministry of Culture,
Sports and Tourism 2016). It has also prompted an interest in learning the Korean
6 Youna Kim
language, culture and society; each year, about 100,000 international students come
to Korea, and a significant motive is their sudden interest in, and imagination about,
Korea generated by the Korean Wave culture (Yonhap News 2013; Korean Ministry
of Education 2016). Popular culture, which was once considered as emotional,
low culture in Korea, is now a potent force providing significant underpinning for
the generation of high value and meaning for the nation. It has also improved the
national image and led to heightened market awareness of general Korean products.
Overseas sales of Korean consumer goods, including televisions, mobile phones,
cars, clothing and cosmetics, have risen from the strategic appropriation of popu-
lar culture. Korean products are reaping benefits from the enhanced Korean brand
value springing from the success of popular culture as a cool national brand.
The success of Korean popular culture overseas is drawing an unfamiliar
spotlight on a culture once colonized or overshadowed for centuries by power-
ful countries. The Asian region has long been under the influence of Western and
Japanese cultural products. Korea was once thought to be sandwiched between
Japan and China and relatively invisible until it made itself known through the
Korean Wave popular culture (Le Monde 2011). The immediate profits or effects
created by the Korean Wave phenomenon are important, but the improvement of
national image, though intangible, is considered as more important. The Korean
Wave popular culture is an important resource that can create soft power, a non-
coercive and attractive image of the nation as a whole, while at the same time
generating potential tensions and conflicts with other dimensions (Joseph Nye and
Youna Kim, Chapter 1 in this volume). The Korean government has been involved
in promoting the global circulation of the Korean Wave popular culture to re-invent
the nation as a more favorable and lasting brand, which can be perceived as promot-
ing an imperialist form of state-led nationalistic soft power. Korea may be the first
nation to consciously recognize, and more importantly, form official policy and
take action towards becoming a dream society of icons and aesthetic experience
(Dator and Seo 2004). In the era of neoliberal globalization, characterized by mar-
ket deregulation and reduced state intervention in economic and cultural affairs,
the Korean government has pursued a proactive, not passive, cultural policy (Jin
2006). The focus on “culture” by governments in Northeast Asia is the product of
a neoliberal ideology espousing a global free-market and the linking of globalized
consumerism to individual freedom and social well-being (Berry et al. 2009).
The rise of the Korean Wave is a labored coincidence and amalgamation of
the strategic export policy at a time when the Asian media market is rapidly
growing, fueled by the emergence of the affluent urban middle class in Asia and
the globalized consumer culture. The media culture and technological change is
socially constructed and does not emerge itself without the involvement of the
users who have to accept it as relevant in everyday life (Y. Kim 2008). The global
expansion of the Korean Wave today can be attributed to the power of digital
media and information technologies – aided by fans’ participatory culture and
voluntary labor in prompt uploading, forwarding and sharing with wider audi-
ences, while shaping the production, distribution and reception of the Korean
Wave cultural contents (Y. Kim 2013). What is significant here is the active role
 Introduction 7
played by marginal, largely invisible yet devoted fans in shaping the Korean
Wave’s staying power. It is the power of digital fan labor, both material and
immaterial, that encourages fellow fans and new users to participate in transna-
tionally imagined fan communities. While the rise of satellite broadcast fueled
the spread of the Korean Wave in the 1990s, digital networking services and
video-sharing devices, as well as mobile phones, are now playing a primary role
in expanding “digital Hallyu.” The Korean Wave popular culture may allow fans
to imagine new identities and practices at the heart of their social realities, hier-
archies and inequalities. Fan culture can be seen as alternative spaces of identity
in which a different voice can be raised and a self can be expressed, contested,
re-articulated or re-affirmed in relation to global cultural Others.
South Korean popular culture has gained growing recognition, visibility and a
noticeable success in winning the hearts and minds of fans from all over the world;
the world’s most reclusive country North Korea is no exception. North Korean
defectors generally acknowledge that nearly all of their friends living inside the
country have consumed South Korean popular culture, or that a majority of North
Koreans have secretly watched South Korean drama or film at least once, indi-
cating that exposure to the outside culture is not just limited to escapees from
North Korea (Wired 2015; CNN 2017; Washington Post 2017). North Koreans
publicly hail their leader and state propaganda during the day and privately watch
South Korean dramas and films at night under blankets. The exposure to South
Korean popular culture, as a powerful influencing agent, is slowly bringing the
Kim regime down from the inside although it appears stable from the outside,
argues Thae Yong-Ho, North Korea’s former deputy ambassador to the UK who
defected with his family to South Korea in 2016 (Thae Yong-Ho, Chapter 2 in
this volume). Defectors tend to believe that external culture and information can
be the key to catalyze the slow erosion of the repressive regime and rule and
bring about change in North Korean society from the inside. The spread of South
Korean popular culture among the North’s citizens brings with it a growing influx
of challenging information from the outside world, which is considered as one of
the worst crimes in the country.
The North Korean leader urges authorities to stop South Korean culture
from permeating into the country by denouncing it as the “imperialist move
for ideological and cultural infiltration,” while at the same time the state media
criticize the popularity as the “yellow dust of capitalism” and “bourgeois, delin-
quent styles” (JoongAng Daily 2014; Wired 2015). The leader officially calls
for a need to completely end the spread of South Korean culture by launching
a special task force and rigorous controls like mosquito nets with multiple lay-
ers to monitor and prevent capitalist ideology. This imperative reaction can be
seen as the North Korean regime’s war on culture at an important juncture in its
history in an increasingly porous world. Through the unexpected and growing
cultural flow, North Korea has become vulnerable to its Southern neighbor’s
soft power – an emerging power based on aesthetic appeal rather than military
force. South Korea’s popular culture is a conduit of soft power transcending
long-standing historical divisions with its Northern neighbor (You 2017).
8 Youna Kim
Advanced media technologies in a digital age and increasingly digital forms
of media consumption break through border barriers, making it more difficult for
North Korea to prevent its citizens from accessing South Korean popular culture.
A move towards digital media devices at all levels of society has been driven by
ordinary citizens, as these devices have become available, affordable and proven
well-suited to the North Korean context. Small portable devices such as USB
drives and SD cards contain huge amounts of illegal media content and can be
easily concealed, circulated and smuggled across the border. The overwhelming
majority (98%) of USB owners are reportedly using their USB drives to dis-
creetly store some form of illegal media, South Korean dramas or music (98%) in
stark contrast to North Korean entertainment (9%), and furthermore such illegal
media content is shared with family (91%) and friends (64%) via USB drives
(Kretchun et al. 2017). USBs can be conveniently used on non-Internet enabled
devices and create an informal, offline information network. Most North Koreans
view the illegal content of USBs on a small, inexpensive, Chinese-made portable
video player called the “Notel,” or “Note-Tel” – the combined “notebook” and
“television” multi-media player. The Notel serves as a crucial and multi-purpose
nexus that can accept USB sticks and SD cards, can play DVDs, and can receive
a television signal. As one of the most popular means of enjoying South Korean
popular culture, the Notel importantly has a rechargeable battery to deal with
frequent blackouts in North Korea.
North Koreans’ methods of accessing external culture and information have
expanded from radio and television broadcasts to DVDs, Notels, MP3 players,
mobile phones, computers and tablets, significantly transforming the nation’s
media landscape (38 North 2016). MP3 players are used by young people primarily
to listen to South Korean pop music. The spread of illegal Chinese mobile phones
along the North Korean border has made direct person-to-person contact with the
outside world possible, and has greatly increased the efficiency of cross-border
trade and person-to-person information flow (Kretchun and Kim 2012). In order
to curb the rising use and smuggling of illegal Chinese mobile phones, in 2008 the
North Korean government in a joint venture with the Egyptian telecommunication
firm Orascom introduced its own domestic mobile phones and service provided by
Koryolink. Out of the approximately 25 million population of the country, more
than 3 million people now own mobile phones and share the devices with their
family members. The proliferation of both legal and illegal mobile phones provides
a potential for the wide spread of information, mobile communication and greater
horizontal interpersonal connection between North Korean citizens, who have
been isolated from each other by the regime’s strategy of controlling society. Even
rumors or news that the state media do not report can be circulated rapidly to those
who are otherwise unable to gain information outside their own neighborhoods.
Mobile phones have immediately become a status symbol, a sign of prosperity and
power, and the most prevalent example of conspicuous consumption on the streets
not only in Pyongyang but also in other major cities (Y.-H. Kim 2014). Especially
among the youth, mobile phones function more as a personalized mobile entertain-
ment device than a mobile communication tool, for taking photos, playing games,
 Introduction 9
listening to music and watching videos, including South Korean pop songs and
dance videos particularly popular among young users.
There are approximately 3.5 million computers and 5 million tablets in the
country (Wired 2015; 38 North 2017a). North Korea’s restrictive private Internet
known as “Kwangmyong” (“bright”) was established in 2000, with no access to
global websites outside of the country (Seliger and Schmidt 2014). This nation-
wide Intranet is freely offered to those with access to a computer, and includes
a search engine, an email program, a variety of homepages and news about the
country’s leader. North Korean tablets were produced around 2015, providing
basic apps such as a camera, gallery and browser but with an extra level of control
over what content can be accessed (38 North 2017a). Arguably the world’s most
secretive government, North Korea has shifted its digital strategy from attempt-
ing to totally deny its people access to information technologies to controlling
and monitoring their use, thereby actively shaping and directing the country’s
inevitable digitalization in its own best interest. North Korea remains largely iso-
lated from the global information economy, but it has recently shown signs of an
emerging cyber-structure and population of netizens (Warf 2015). Internet con-
nection is a prime resource for the government; the public face of the link is the
propaganda websites that funnel news and information worldwide, but the link is
also used for business transactions and emails between North Korean companies
and the rest of the world (North Korea Tech 2017b). North Koreans who work
abroad can easily access the virtually global Internet, although the regime pre-
vents them from accessing and conveying outside information and culture. Tens
of thousands of North Koreans now work outside the country, in lumber yards and
garment factories and on construction sites, in China, Russia and other countries,
earning foreign currency for the regime (Washington Post 2017). Generally, those
with greater financial means have greater access to sources of outside information
and media culture, and elites are the earliest adopters of new media technologies
(Kretchun and Kim 2012).
Consumers of the foreign media now include a growing number of ordinary
North Koreans in addition to the country’s high-ranking intelligentsia, elites and
their kids in urban areas, and the demand for information is increasingly tilting
away from news and towards new forms of entertainment and consumer culture
(38 North 2016). With increasing numbers of people coming online through
mobile phones, computers and tablets with a desire to embrace a more open
world, monitoring the users’ online activities, new cultural connections and
broader networks is increasingly difficult for the regime. The growing forces of
South Korean popular culture via digital media technologies and such soft power
resources have already begun to penetrate the North, and potentially stand a bet-
ter chance of fostering changes within the nation than does more immediate and
coercive action. The effective weapon against the North appears to be the less
formal forces of consumer capitalism and soft power – particularly the soft power
of South Korean popular culture – whose penetration of the North offers for the
first time a legitimate threat to the regime’s grip on power (Lerner 2015). Today’s
revolutionary digital technologies, combined with an unprecedented concomitant
10 Youna Kim
economic and cultural globalization, are changing the nature of political power
and conflict and creating an international commodity boom, popular cultural con-
vergence and homogenizing consumer culture around the world (Iverson 2017;
Press-Barnathan 2017). The spread of the foreign media intersected with con-
sumer culture has profoundly influenced the aspirations and attitudes of citizens
inside the world’s closed societies such as Eastern Europe and North Korea as
well (Nikolay Anguelov, Chapter 3 in this volume). Although more constrained
North Korea is at a different stage in its digital cultural development, and although
there is no politically and systematically organized dissent at the current time,
the country cannot be confident any longer of its immunity from the globalized
influence of ubiquitous cultural flows and the possibility of bottom-up change.
Low-level dissent or criticism of the regime, until recently unthinkable, is becom-
ing more frequent now; the North Korean elite are outwardly expressing their
discontent towards the young leader and the dynastic rule as the circulation of
outside information, new cultural awareness, capitalist elements and a more inde-
pendent way of thinking are growing potentially in an emerging digital society
(Al Jazeera 2017). Recently, the regime’s control has sometimes appeared tenuous
as the sociopolitical and cultural norms of everyday life so assiduously cultivated
by North Korea are increasingly in flux, and the regime confronts new challenges
to maintaining a rigidly controlled public sphere in a fluid and interconnected
world of globalization (Dukalskis 2017).
Historically, the two Koreas have responded to the challenge of globaliza-
tion in radically different ways; North Korea appears to have resisted the global
capitalist economy almost to the point of economic dysfunction with a political
mythology, while South Korea is often seen as the twentieth century’s most
successful example of a third-world country benefiting from globalization to
achieve advanced industrial power in an unprecedentedly compressed time
frame. This extraordinary divergence of what was once a unified nation, with
a single language and common sense of history and cultural identity, may be
the most striking example in the world of how different responses to forces
of global change can produce diverse, and even dangerous, results (Armstrong
2013 and 2014). North Korea’s historical trajectory is distinctive, following
its own governing principle of “Juche” (self-reliance ideology, subjecthood or
being a master of one’s own fate) that is a product of North Koreans’ experi-
ences with colonialism, the Korean War and economic development (Suh 2013).
North Korea during its revolution from 1945 to 1950 embarked on an alterna-
tive path to modernity, opposing both colonial and capitalist modernity (S. Kim
2013). Since its founding in 1948, the North Korean state has been ruled exclu-
sively by the Kim family, and the regime’s unifying principle is not nationalism
but loyalty to the Kim family. There are cult phenomena in every society, but the
degree and scope of the cults of the North Korean leaders are too extreme and
too pervasive to be compared with the cults that have existed in other societies
(Lim 2015). The puzzle of the North Korean political system is not the practice
of the extraordinary cult of personality, but the extraordinary continuity of this
practice and the fact that this particular mode of rule has shown a remarkable
 Introduction 11
resilience, defying the contrary historical trend found in most other revolutionary
societies (Kwon and Chung 2012).
The economic imbalance between the North and the South is far larger than
that between any two contiguous states on the globe. North Korea stopped pub-
lishing statistical yearbooks in the early 1960s, and since then they have failed
to regularly provide economic data including essential statistics on growth rates
and per capita income (B. Kim 2017). The secretive nation’s GDP per capita is
estimated to be barely over $1,000 annually, placing North Korea among the poor-
est in the world and revealing stark contrast with the living standards of South
Korea. The greater the imbalance in relative military and economic power, the
higher the incentives for the weaker state to develop nuclear weapons and author-
ize nuclear postures as demonstrations of resolve in crises (Kim and Cohen 2017).
North Korea has long demanded diplomatic recognition that would provide des-
perately needed legitimacy to the regime. These actions are manifestations of a
highly calculated, rational survival strategy. North Korea is neither irrational nor
undeterrable; because they are not irrational, there is a basis for diplomacy and
some form of conditional engagement with North Korea that has empowered itself
militarily but starved its citizens (Cha and Kang 2003). As both a rather small state
and a rational actor, North Korea has started to mainstream parts of its behavior
in order to ensure its survival (Grzelczyk 2018). Coercive measures such as sanc-
tions seldom cause a change in the overall nature of the regime and the political
leader in the targeted nation, but rather can lead to unintended negative humanitar-
ian consequences for the population they intend to help (Anguelov 2015). Because
authoritarian regimes such as North Korea can repress and impose costs on their
populations, and may even be incentivized to do so by sanctions, they constitute
hard targets (Haggard and Noland 2017). The regime’s survival is the supreme
goal of North Korean policy makers (Lankov 2015).
The traditional ideology of a “Powerful and Prosperous Nation,” a hardline
“Military First” approach to governance, and the state propaganda of continuity
and of the necessity of regime survival have been pervasive in the North Korean
media landscape. The political has taken hold of national life, demonstrating the
excess of the political; whether it be media culture or mass-participation games, it
is the political meaning bestowed upon them that supersedes all other concerns in
the nation (Ryang 2012). The only legal media in North Korea are state-run and
state-sanctioned, including the newspaper Rodong Sinmun and Chosun Central
TV, and report almost exclusively on the achievements of the leader. It is a coun-
try that writes its own history, a mix of hyperbole, legend and myth constructed
for both domestic and international consumption, and it seems to exist in a state
of paranoia about its perceived enemies and about its chances for regime survival
(French 2014). Literature, particularly the world of novels, poems and biogra-
phies, plays a central role not only in North Korean arts but also in the social
structure of the country, providing a perfect narrative format through which writ-
ers expound upon the great deeds of the leader (Jang 2014). Film, in combination
with literature, newspapers and broadcasts, is an indispensable propaganda
tool for instilling loyalty in the masses, for maintaining internal stability and
12 Youna Kim
for resisting the infiltration of imperialist ideas and culture (Schonherr 2012;
Jackson and Balmain 2016). All music in North Korea, whether it be military,
orchestral or pop, is produced by the government to make legitimating ideol-
ogy a part of everyday life. Every scene of life has been scripted, every public
performance rehearsed, and every political proclamation calculated to convince
and coerce its entire citizens, who live in a kind of national theater, cast in the
role of players and audiences alike (MacLean 2017). Knowing that their every
move is watched, North Koreans act out of their lives as if on a stage and per-
form deferential rituals in a highly choreographed manner. The state-sponsored
propaganda represented in massive parades and collective performances is meant
to become inscribed onto the bodies of North Koreans through repeated viewing
and participation, blurring the boundaries between illusion and reality and shap-
ing everyday practice (S. Kim 2010).
North Korea’s aspiration to shape a collective and powerful nation has also
been demonstrated in the socialist preoccupation with technology as an ulti-
mate tool for national development and micro-coordination. Like other socialist
states, North Korea has always been obsessed by technological advance which
is expected to promise a way out of perennial economic difficulties (Seliger and
Schmidt 2014). Cyber operations can be seen as an extension of North Korea’s
broader national strategy, and the country as an emerging actor in cyberspace
is heavily invested in developing its cyber capabilities for both political and
military purposes (Jun et al. 2015). In a digital age North Korea has become
increasingly active on the Internet for global users, opening official government
pages on video-sharing service, launching state propaganda websites and offering
news reports, photographs and videos in a variety of foreign languages includ-
ing English and Spanish (BBC 2011). It uses YouTube as a primary distribution
network for its propaganda, although in 2016 and 2017 some of the North Korean
propaganda channels were terminated for violating YouTube’s community guide-
lines (Guardian 2017). Since mid-2000s, global users’ access to North Korean
media culture has improved greatly as North Korean films, television and music
videos usually of staged concerts are available on globally circulated digital plat-
forms and through increased marketing and merchandizing via North Korean
government websites (Jackson and Balmain 2016).
North Korea, too, is actively attempting to improve its international image and
possibility for soft power through its culture and cultural diplomacy, albeit lim-
ited within government perspectives. Promoting soft power as an integral part of
not only its survival but also its development strategy, North Korea has started to
pursue a strategy of diplomatic diversification that includes a more sophisticated
understanding of power than previously considered (Grzelczyk 2018). While stud-
ies on North Korea have generally drawn attention to the regime’s political profile
and precarious relations with China and Russia, or with nations seeking to cooper-
ate on weapons of mass destruction, little attention has been paid to how North
Korea also engages in seemingly peaceful ways with the world, with both state and
non-state actors. In a similar vein, Western media reportage conventionally sug-
gests that South Korea tilts towards soft power with its “Hallyu” popular culture
 Introduction 13
and North Korea towards hard power with its “Powerful and Prosperous Nation”
military discourse. The existing research on North Korea’s international rela-
tions has tended to focus on hard power and the official state-to-state diplomacy
and neglected how the North Korean government approaches the outside world
through forms of soft power as well, such as state-directed popular music, tour-
ism and cultural diplomacy. Performing arts have been at the forefront of cultural
diplomacy activities. Orchestra musical exchanges with Western Europe, joint
film projects with China and photo exhibitions overseas are part of North Korean
soft power strategy which aims to complement and assist the country’s diplomatic
goals (Cathcart and Denney 2013). The North Korean government, which has been
so adept at managing its image within the country, has attempted to change its
international image by developing and leveraging its soft power resource with the
introduction of Moranbong Band, perhaps the most hybridized pop band in North
Korean history (Sino-NK 2013). Moranbong Band, the latest soft power export
from North Korea, made its debut in 2012 and was initially seen as the North
Korean response to the famous K-pop girl bands of South Korea (New York Times
2015). Replicating the success of South Korean K-pop, Moranbong Band con-
sists of all-female members dressed in sparkling Western-style mini-dresses and
formed directly by the leader to convey an image of “material well-being of the
regime” (Lim 2017) and to appeal to foreign audiences in a way similar to Hallyu
popular culture via digital marketing, although the emergence of this North Korean
band as a new popular cultural phenomenon has not captured the attention of the
global consumer community. The North Korean government has also launched
its official tourism website targeting foreign travelers in the world and promoting
its tourist attractions in Korean, English, Chinese, Russian and Japanese (North
Korea Tech 2017a). Government-run restaurants around the world, particularly
throughout East Asia, are global trade networks and another space for foreign con-
sumers to experience North Korean culture. In accessing the global economy, in
contrast with their paranoid and isolated image, both the North Korean state and
North Korean citizens have proven pragmatic, entrepreneurial and adaptable today
(Hastings 2016). The politically reclusive and secretive state, and one notorious
for isolating its own citizens from all sources of outside culture and information,
is nonetheless driven to respond to the outside world willingly or unwillingly and
create soft power resources, while formal and informal, state and non-state, licit
and illicit lines are increasingly blurred.

Circulation of meaning
North Korea still remains the most closed and repressive media cultural envi-
ronment in the world; however, the country has, to a significant extent, opened
unofficially since the late 1990s, when famine substantially weakened the state’s
ability to maintain absolute control over the society and the people’s hunger drove
them to search for illicit ways to survive on their own outside the Public Distribution
System (Kretchun and Kim 2012; Y.-H. Kim 2014). The pivotal moment of struc-
tural, social and economic changes in North Korea was the catastrophic famine
14 Youna Kim
of the mid-1990s that killed as much as 10% of the population, and the declining
reliance on the state that could no longer guarantee a living wage or reliable food
supplies (Park and Snyder 2013; Smith 2015; B. Kim 2017). The political system
has become delegitimized as the government has continually failed to deliver on
its promises and as citizens are not quiescent. Disaffection may be channeled into
private actions that, while not overtly political, may nonetheless have longer-run
implications for the stability of state socialism (Haggard and Noland 2011). One
notable example of such action is the willingness of citizens to engage in private
market (technically illegal) economic activities and access alternative sources of
information and media culture that are likely to conflict with official ideology.
In addition to food, portable media devices such as Notels, MP3 players, mobile
phones, DVDs and USB drives containing foreign, mostly South Korean, dramas
and movies are found in exploding private markets all over the country (Hassig
and Oh 2015; O 2016). Private market vendors, who are selling ordinary goods
such as rice, vegetables, batteries or anything else, hide the USBs inside under the
counter and sell the USBs to the consumers who would quietly ask, “Do you have
anything delicious today?” (Washington Post 2017). The secret code word “deli-
cious” or “fun” refers to illicit media content from the outside, usually from South
Korea. Underground private markets are the important distribution and contact
zone not just for basic necessities such as food, clothing, medicine and household
items, but also for outside culture and information proliferated through casual
chatter, whispering rumors and the illicit foreign media. Black markets have been
instrumental in fueling not only a historic transition towards a shadow market
economy “from below,” but also a new and creative way for ordinary people to
share non-state information and networks in a country that regulates and directs
all the media and cultural flows.
The marketization as a coping mechanism that began with food has gradually
encompassed a much broader range of goods and gray-area activities as the major-
ity of citizens now depend on the private black market for survival. A motley
crew of foreign organizations (NGOs), defectors, smugglers, Chinese middlemen
and businessmen, and North Korean soldiers who turn a blind eye with bribes
comprise a robust, sophisticated, illicit network that links North Koreans to the
outside world (Baek 2016). Within a week of a South Korean TV show airing in
Seoul, it can be already distributed and available in North Korean black markets.
Dissemination of South Korean popular culture is an extremely risky yet extremely
profitable business in North Korea because the consumer demand is so high. In
North Korea, a USB drive is like gold; a USB drive loaded with South Korean
dramas or films sells for more than a month’s food budget for most middle-class
North Korean families (Wired 2015). State jobs for most men pay 2,000–6,000
North Korean won a month, less than the cost of one kilogram of rice. The
monthly salary for a doctor is only about 3,500 North Korean won, which com-
pels the doctor to undertake smuggling at night as a main job (Washington Post
2017). Everyone has to find their own way to survive and earn money in an entre-
preneurial and often illegal way. Even college students and youth have become
involved in selling smuggled media content, after learning that it is a guaranteed
 Introduction 15
way to profit. Informal traders and money masters called “Donju,” a new rich and
powerful class of North Korean capitalists, acquire and smuggle South Korean
products through China for the purpose of selling them in black markets or con-
suming them for themselves (Daily NK 2016). North Koreans who watch South
Korean dramas naturally become interested in the products they see, and affluent
people purchase popular items such as computers, cameras and bikes for their
children that were all made in South Korea. Demand for South Korean cosmetics,
including skincare products, eye creams, eye shadows and perfume, is apparently
high as the popularity of the South Korean media and celebrities has brought
changes in the products sold at North Korean markets (JoongAng Daily 2014).
Even while North Korea is heavily sanctioned by the UN, which makes it extremely
difficult to do business, it is a burgeoning consumerist place where plastic surgery
and South Korean TV dramas are wildly popular and where one rarely needs to
walk more than a block to grab a quick hamburger (Abt 2014). With the rise of a
consumer culture, the North Korean consumer landscape has evolved dramatically
despite the ever-tightening control under the country’s leader.
In addition to individuals and organizations that smuggle media content on
electronic storage devices into the country, radio broadcasters from South Korea
and the USA are also significant content providers targeting North Korean con-
sumers (38 North 2016; Baek 2016). Radio, while not as popular as smuggled
dramas on USB sticks, remains the only way that real-time, up-to-date, sensi-
tive outside news and information can be quickly disseminated into North Korea.
Unlike USA government-sponsored media organizations such as Voice of
America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA), most South Korean and Japanese pri-
vate radio stations targeting North Koreans are relatively small and under-funded.
The BBC’s new Korean-language service was launched in 2017, targeting North
Koreans with a mixture of global news, sports and entertainment for a three-hour
window that starts at midnight local time, because this timing helps radio signals
travel further distances and people can secretly listen at home with less chance
of being discovered (38 North 2017b; Telegraph 2017). As listening to foreign
radios is strictly illegal, the government makes a great effort to prevent people
from doing so, by modifying radios so that they cannot be tuned into anything but
state-run channels and by making jamming or loud noise deliberately broadcast
over a foreign station to make it difficult to listen to. From the Demilitarized
Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas, South Korea’s loudspeakers broadcasted
news information along with pop culture entertainment, especially K-pop music
such as “Just Let Us Love” by a popular female group Apink and “Bang Bang
Bang” by a popular boyband Big Bang. Considering the loudspeaker broadcast
an act of war, or something akin to a peaceful version of the nuclear bomb (You
2017), the North Korean regime was concerned about the possible impact of
this broadcasting on the country’s crucial population, the young soldiers along
the DMZ. The conflict and crisis on the Korean peninsula in 2015, for instance,
over South Korean loudspeakers at the DMZ indicates that the North Korean
regime is vulnerable to the introduction of unwanted culture and information into
the country (Jun et al. 2015). North Korean residents living close to the border
16 Youna Kim
illegally tune their televisions to South Korean stations (Reuters 2011). Ever
since North Koreans had access to the foreign media entertainment and began to
watch what they wanted, the most powerful North Korean propaganda force such
as cinema has been in a steep decline, and the chances that it will recover are slim
(Schonherr 2012).
The consequential erosion of faith among the population may challenge the
regime’s legitimacy and its iron grip on power. Instability of power worsens
human rights violations due to political necessity (Korean Institute for National
Unification 2014). A growing space between the state and the people, between
state ideologies and greater marketization, will cause a crisis of governance and
uproot the foundations of the regime (Cha 2013). It is a failed state not primarily
because it is run by a leadership obsessed with the cult of personality or because it
is a one-party state entirely devoid of democracy, but because it subscribes to the
failed concept of the Soviet-inspired socialist command economy that insists on
a centrally planned system (French 2014). The government now facing a quasi-
capitalist market economy is liable to become unstable as a result of pressure
from the people involved in necessary market activities, widespread private trade,
outside information and culture that permeate all levels of society, from the poor-
est to the Party and military elites (Tudor and Pearson 2015). The unleashing of
market forces “from below” with the amplified flows of unofficial exchanges has
weakened the totalitarian grip more than anything else in history has done, as the
livelihoods and opportunities of the people lie in areas beyond its grasp, not in the
system that imprisons them (Jang 2014).
North Korea can be compared to other societies that have experienced a tran-
sition from non-democratic communism to capitalism, market economy, greater
access to outside culture and cultural practice askance to the hegemonic mixture
of individualism (Cathcart et al. 2017). North Korea’s ongoing path today is partly
similar to the past experience of China, wherein an apparently all-powerful yet
insecure leader attempted to isolate and shield the population from knowledge of
the outside world that was seen to be a potentially harmful democratic cultural
force. In the Chinese case, however, ironically it is not “economic difficulty” that
has undermined the ideological legitimacy of the regime, but rather “economic
success,” with the emergence of a capitalist economy based on a large private
sector and foreign investment (Saxonberg 2013). On the other hand, similarities
between North Korea and China are also evident. The black market flow of popu-
lar culture (e.g. TV shows, films, music) from Hong Kong and Taiwan to China
in the 1970s–1980s is a similar, comparative point for the case of smuggling the
South Korean media from China to North Korea today (Weiqi Zhang and Micky
Lee, Chapter 4 in this volume). When China opened its door to the outside world
in the late 1970s, foreign media culture played an important role in accelerating
the country’s openness and changes. From being isolated from the outside world
to embracing almost all categories of foreign television programs, China has gone
through profound changes not only in media practice and policy but also in the
society and the daily lives of Chinese people (Hong 1998). The spread of external
culture and information in North Korea can create a similar effect and internal
 Introduction 17
pressure for change, while the regime fears that greater openness would eventually
generate popular dissident and political instability. Distribution or consumption of
the South Korean media can be subject to public executions which are commonly
administered by shooting on river banks, at school grounds and marketplaces;
and one can get thrown into a gulag for 6 months of hard labor for humming
South Korean pop songs (Cha 2013; Wired 2015; Daily NK 2016). In spite of the
severe sanctions and the state efforts to block the influx of external influences, the
borders are more porous than ever and the penetration of South Korean popular
culture is continuing and expanding.
There are indications that the illicit media from South Korea are transforming
how North Koreans see the outside world, their country, and the conditions of
their lives (Korea Times 2006; Korea Herald 2009; O 2016). Lingering discontent
is rife inside North Korea as the people become increasingly aware of the fact that
they are poor and their neighbors prosperous. Anyone seeing South Korean cul-
tural artifacts would find it difficult not to notice the prosperity that South Koreans
routinely enjoy (e.g. plentiful food, ubiquitous mobile phones, nice cars), and this
demonstration effect contradicts the state’s propaganda line that there is “nothing
to envy” in the outside world because North Korea is full of riches and the rest of
the world is worse off. In reality, North Korea is a place where everybody needs a
scam to survive (Demick 2010). The people of North Korea know that their own
media grossly exaggerate the living standards of their county, so they expect the
media from South Korea to do the same; thus, they may not immediately believe
that South Koreans can eat meat daily or that many households have cars. Yet
there are certain markers of affluence and modernity that cannot be manipulated,
such as Seoul cityscape dotted with high-rise buildings, bright night lights and
beautiful sceneries. They come to think that South Korea is not exactly the land of
hunger and destitution as depicted in their official media propaganda. Confronted
by imaginary of South Korean culture and higher living standards, media consum-
ers doubt the claims of their own government and internally question: “Why are
we poor?” “Why is South Korea so much brighter than North Korea?” Only when
North Koreans defected and crossed the border, did they begin to clearly see North
Korea as a place of utter darkness, wherein electricity supply is in a perpetual state
of emergency.

In North Korea, we would never think of eating for pleasure. Eating was for
survival. If I have an opportunity to go back or if Korea unifies as one nation,
I want to cook for the people in North Korea who could not enjoy eating.
(a North Korean defector, USA Today 2017)

South Korean popular culture has been a pull factor for North Korean migration
as mediated experiences of South Korean TV dramas, movies and music enable
North Koreans to see and feel the outside world in comparison to their country
and drive them to make life-threatening journeys (Ahlam Lee, Chapter 5 in this
volume). The famine of the 1990s and the yearning for a better life, combined
with the soft power of the South Korean media, have increasingly weakened the
18 Youna Kim
regime’s hold on its people and their imaginations. The influence of the famine
and the media is an agent of a new wave of transnational migration. Transnational
migration can be understood with multifaceted insights; considering some of the
key macro factors affecting people’s decision to move and the micro processes
of the ways in which people experience the mediated world of everyday culture,
while reflecting the interconnection of these seemingly opposite and contradictory
levels of push-and-pull elements within the particular socioeconomic and cultural
contexts in which people live their everyday lives (Y. Kim 2011). In the migration
process today, it is important to consider the possible significance of mediated
migration or a pull-effect of popular media culture as people’s mediated symbolic
encounter with the cultural Other generates imaginations of alternative lifestyles
and identities. The media play a significant role as symbolic and cultural forms
people live by, constituting residual culture that has been accumulated through-
out a life history. Media consumption potentially triggers enactment of migration,
physical displacement towards a deliberately encouraging yet highly precarious
movement of freedom. This migration can be seen as an extension of the previous
immersion of people in consuming images transmitted from the outside world,
while dreaming of escape from their social constraints. Virtually all recent North
Korean defectors anecdotally report that they consumed and were influenced by
South Korean dramas, movies or music before leaving their homeland, despite the
substantial risks involved in such consumption (Reuters 2011; O 2016; Washington
Post 2017). Defectors’ reasoning for leaving North Korea is changing; in the past
many North Koreans were forced to escape out of hunger or economic need, while
today more people are defecting in pursuit of freedom, a better education for their
children, more opportunities, or new identities because they are disillusioned with
the propaganda system. North Koreans who can make a living without economic
difficulties are deciding to leave due to the mediated experiences of outside culture.
Over 70% of the defectors are women and young people in their teens,
twenties and thirties (CNBC 2015; Liberty in North Korea 2016; Public Radio
International 2017b). Since North Korea is a highly militarized, male-dominated
patriarchal society in both political and cultural aspects, women primarily as
housewives and mothers have a lower status than men, and are less tied into
workplaces and thus less tightly controlled by the North Korean system. Since
the famine of the 1990s, however, women have increasingly engaged in private
market activities to make their living or ensure their family’s survival as main
breadwinners, earning more than 70% of household income in North Korea,
whereas most men stuck in state jobs earn little or serve in the army. This new-
found economic role, increased independence and relatively more mobility,
combined with unofficial information and illicit talk in the private market with-
out attracting much attention, have led the women to increasingly learn about and
aspire to the outside world. These women are more likely to be motivated to seek
greater freedom and make the journey to South Korea in the process of engag-
ing with smuggled dramas and films on DVDs, USBs and SD cards that have
proliferated through the black market, the secret capitalist system. During their
escape journey to South Korea via the North Korean–Chinese border, most of the
 Introduction 19
defectors are vulnerable to various forms of abuse, trapped in China and forced
into marriage, prostitution, or slave labor at risk of repatriation if caught by
Chinese authorities (Lee 2016). If repatriated forcibly to North Korea, they face
torture during interrogation, forced abortion, imprisonment and even execution
as leaving the country without permission is considered treason.
Because the people of North Korea are not allowed to get out of the country,
and because outsiders cannot freely get into the country and see the everyday lives
and activities of the ordinary people that are often hidden from outsiders, accounts
of defectors offer some of the valuable sources of current information about what
is happening inside North Korea. Interviews with defectors offer a window into
the hidden realms of the country despite that they are not wholly representative
of the North Korean population and that their accounts cannot be independently
verified because of the notoriously closed and secretive nature of the regime
that not only seeks to control the flow of information into the country but also
exercises tight control over information flowing out (Haggard and Noland 2011;
Washington Post 2017). In this global age of information, it is almost impossible
to conduct direct research on any aspect of North Korea as the North Korean gov-
ernment does not allow researchers and journalists free access to its population.
Travelers on packaged tours get to see only what is allowed, with highly circum-
scribed observations. Foreign aid workers and businessmen who are permitted to
spend time in North Korea rarely have the opportunity to converse with ordinary
citizens. It is almost impossible for an outsider to penetrate the boundaries of
North Korean society; one never gets to really know an ordinary citizen or really
understand their life, however long one stays (Roughneen 2014). From a govern-
ment perspective as well, North Korea presents one of the hardest intelligence
targets to penetrate (Cha 2013). Any serious study of North Korea has to contend
with the fundamental problem that the North Korean government is not eager to
be studied, and what little official information it releases about its people and
society often has a dubious connection to reality (Hastings 2016). Accounts of
defectors thus provide rare and important insights into life experiences, both lived
and mediated, in one of the world’s most controlled and secretive nations. The
intimate experiences of the ordinary people, the hopes and desires intertwined
with their mediated experiences, transcend cultural boundaries and politics and
reveal the human effects of the North Korean system.
The most visible effects of the experiences of the outside media are reflected in
changing body politics, self-expression and freedom through capitalist consumer
culture (Sandra Fahy, Chapter 6 in this volume). North Korea’s young people or
the so-called “black market generation” are eager consumers of South Korean
popular culture, competitively emulating not only its stylish fashions, hairstyles,
cosmetics, beauty standards and even cosmetic surgery but also manners of
speech and behavior, while simultaneously developing more self-expressive indi-
vidualistic outlooks despite the regime’s unflagging efforts to block the perceived
anti-socialist elements of the outside media (Hassig and Oh 2015; Tudor and
Pearson 2015; Yoon 2015; Daily NK 2016). Mediated experiences of the outside
culture create new opportunities for self-experimentation, ranging from simply
20 Youna Kim
trying out a different fashion or a different hairstyle to something more profound,
a possibility for self-transformation. The people increasingly draw on mediated
experiences to inform and refashion the project of the self, potentially negotiating
the shape of their present and future. Especially for the black market generation
that considers the regime more as an obstructer than a provider (Haggard and
Noland 2011), this growing self-expression is indicative of an emerging subcul-
ture or counter-culture defined by its refusal of mainstream values and practices.
The pleasure of subcultural consumption often comes from resisting dominant
ideology and discourse. Engaging with the strictly forbidden media in such a
repressive culture can be a small yet grave act of subversion against the regime,
expressing hidden wishes and self-determined oppositions to the realities of the
dominated. Many already talk like South Koreans in their everyday lives, adopt-
ing South Korean terms of endearment and love that did not exist in the North
prior to the influx of South Korean popular culture. Among large and complex
repertoires of images supplied by the outside media, the people select the specific
terms and forms of talk, construct cultural narratives of the Other and incorporate
desirable features into their invention of meaningful ways of being and living.
The mediated exploration of the boundaries between the inside and the outside,
between the self and the Other, enables them to imagine a possibility of freedom,
a possibility of a self-fulfilling life, which is in dramatic contrast to, thus a yearn-
ing element in, their own conditions. With exposure to the absence of overtly
political propaganda in the South Korean media, the North’s market friendly and
individualized generation comes to question their regime’s typical repertoires of
socialist and patriotic songs, dramas and films that are all about making self-
sacrifices for the leader, the definition of a hero in North Korea. “When they
brainwash students in North Korea, they say, ‘We can read your words, actions
and thoughts.’ If you have bad thoughts about the Kim family, they will know” (a
North Korean defector, USA Today 2017). “My mom worked in the market sell-
ing home appliances, so she had a way to get DVDs [of the outside media] . . . I
thought that if I got to South Korea, I could do anything I wanted” (a North Korean
defector, Washington Post 2017). While the leader has traditionally leaned on
brainwashing tactics to elevate himself as a God, a growing curiosity about the
outside culture and the increasing penetration of market capitalism have begun to
pose an internal threat to the domestic system of control (CNN 2017). Ordinary
people may not destabilize the whole system, but the cross-border media prompt
them to question the legitimacy of their own social system. When the local media
and environments largely fail to respond to the changing desire of the people, it is
the outside media culture that is instead appropriated for making contact with the
diverse formations of self. Experiences of the outside media help to create a rare
space where the people can imagine possibilities of freedom and mobility within
the multiple constraints of their social context.
Political attitudes, enforced affection and loyalty towards the leader are shifting,
and today’s North Korea is being transformed by the tireless, quiet but potentially
transformative experience of the outside media culture of freedom, individual-
ity and democratization of everyday life. As a subtle way of demonstrating an
 Introduction 21
individual self, North Koreans also appropriate personalized digital devices, for
instance, using ringtones of pop songs on their mobile phones, decorating their
handsets with preferred accessories sold in the black market, digitally producing
and circulating cultural contents, videos or photos. The new trends of digital media
use in the country’s changing information environment have a long-term potential
for encouraging, especially among the youth, individualism and self-expression,
the elements essential to developing a democratic society (Y.-H. Kim 2014), or
the most nascent seeds of a civil society (Kretchun and Kim 2012). The ideational
and cultural attractiveness of the outside media in a digitally connected world gen-
erates a desire for the learning of how life is organized differently in the outside
world under different rules, as well as a desire for the embrace of new values,
models and lifestyles in a cross-cultural perspective.
Curiosity about South Korean popular culture, its intricacies of human relations
and compelling narratives of everyday life, rather than the regime’s repetitive and
boring propaganda, can create a shared sense of humanity among the North Korean
viewers raising existential questions that concern the self and its emotional state.
“I like dramas that depict everyday life [in South Korea]. It is easy to compare the
living standards of North and South Korea when watching these dramas” (a North
Korean defector, Kretchun and Kim 2012). “They [North Korean viewers] have
started asking themselves, ‘What do I really want to do with my life?’ ‘What can I
really do here in North Korea?’ This form of skepticism about the limits of North
Korean life is on the rise” (a North Korean defector, Daily NK 2016). Reflexivity,
in a form of self-analysis and self-confrontation, penetrates to the core of the self
and its deepest emotions in everyday life. The attraction of consuming the cross-
border media lies much in the opportunity to get a transcultural sense of how
people live differently in another part of the world, a sense that can give the media
consumers a point of comparative reference to understand their own lives in a new
light moving beyond territorial boundaries. The increased exposure to the cultural
Other provides them with a glimpse of alternatives, thereby encouraging them to
construct their own meanings and reflect critically on the self and the actual condi-
tions of their lives. This kind of “private reflexivity” (Giddens 1991; Y. Kim 2005
and 2008) is already becoming operative in the critique of everyday people at an
informal and pre-political level. With ongoing self-reflexive discoveries, every-
day people have the capacity to question the taken-for-granted social order, make
sense of the social conditions of their existence and try to change them accord-
ingly, albeit difficult and limited. Although they continue to live a local life,
and the constraints of the body ensure that they are contextually situated in the
limited time and space, their interactions with the expansive symbolic world may
alter their sense of what the world of everyday life actually is. It can be inferred
that as they become increasingly embedded in the symbolic outside world, their
horizons of understanding may well extend beyond the immediate locales of day-
to-day life. Their official, local knowledge may increasingly be supplemented by
new forms of unofficial, non-local knowledge, and their formation of the self may
become more reflexive and open-ended. The forbidden flows of the South Korean
media into the North provide rare and significant conditions for increased capacities
22 Youna Kim
for reflexivity in the light of non-local knowledge. The South Korean media as
extended cultural resources and frameworks of alternative visions in a North
Korean cultural sphere trigger the gradual transformation of the conditions for
the construction of social identity. This plausibly powerful capacity of the media,
deeply ingrained in what people take for granted, should be recognized in any
attempt to understand the present phenomenon of North Korea.
Popular culture may appear purely as the object of materially unrestrainable
enjoyment, and entertainment may be dismissed as a simple escape from a dreary
unsatisfying reality to a mere fantasy world, without leading to a close under-
standing of specific meanings. However, it can be a self-reflexive escape, a space
of desperate dreaming, of hope for transformation, which brings along enough
of real-life concerns to effect a synthesis of thoughts and feelings between the
two different types of existence, the real and the fantastic. What entertainment
possibly offers, from the sensibility of those who seek, is something not of false
consciousness or manipulation, but a glimpse of utopia and hope, albeit far dis-
tant and faint in the people’s everyday reality. Entertainment works particularly
for those in an otherwise gloomy and unhappy world because it offers a utopian
image of something better than the realm of the people’s everyday experiences.
The utopian image of entertainment serves as a mirror for society, in which the
people can see more clearly the society’s defects. Entertainment does not pre-
sent models of utopian worlds; rather, the utopianism is contained in the feelings
it embodies. It presents what utopia would feel like rather than how it would be
organized (Dyer 1992). This utopian function of entertainment can respond to
the people’s real needs, offering symbolic solutions or the dream-like presenti-
ments of what they lack, what they want, and what they hope to find in real life.
Utopian sensibility is taken off from the real experiences of the people, the real
desires innate in the people, the real problems of society. The people of North
Korea come to criticize an existing order and make the absent ideal present
in their imagination through the encounter with entertainment, routinely with
South Korean popular culture across the border.
South Korean popular culture is the center of gravity of the imagination
whereby everyday law and order is ritually suspended. The experience of cross-
ing boundaries and opening out to the broader world is achieved through the
power of the imagination. It is possible for North Koreans to use an indefinite
range of imagination out of foreign media consumption to construct or conjure
up ideal images of reality from existing foreign symbolic materials and reflex-
ively reorganize them in their mind in both emotional and rational ways that
become distinctively pleasing in service of the imaginers’ intentions. Imaginers
can temporarily dis-embed themselves from the immediate locales of day-to-day
life, depart from the established rules of everyday reality, gain a rule-breaking
pleasure, or engage in an activity of as-if culture, as if they were in the same place
experiencing the same events. Such a vicarious imaginative journey via image
and sound of the media enables them to visit far away locations where they could
not actually travel, and to experience a new world of possibilities and changes
beyond the material constraints of the harsh reality.
 Introduction 23
The experience of the South Korean media is a popular conversation starter
among North Koreans, particularly youth and women, but also soldiers. When a
much-refereed South Korean drama is so popular in some circles, those who have
not watched it are considered behind the times (Radio Free Asia 2013). Many peo-
ple increasingly share copies of the South Korean media with those they trust, and
enter into an unspoken pact of breaking the law together by discreetly viewing the
illegal media in groups, or by collectively talking about their viewing experience
with trusted friends, neighbors and family. According to a North Korean defector
who previously worked for the state’s thought police, he went door-to-door with
the task force assigned to search out the forbidden media in citizens’ homes and
caught a group of video watchers who had, in a panic, hidden together under a
blanket in a closet (Wired 2015). State censorship units or cadres in the leadership
class loosely enforce the regulations against the forbidden media by taking bribes
from terrified watchers, confiscating the forbidden media and then watching them
at their leisure, or even involving in the reproduction and circulation of the confis-
cated media (Daily NK 2016). Inevitably, the banned media and information spread
through word of mouth and collective talk contributing to the expanding viewer-
ship and its wider impact. People’s collective talk about banned popular media
text, or their collaborative reading of the popular, is an active mode of reading that
is intrinsically subversive to dominant power structure and has an empowering
potential. The trajectory of such collective talk may move from the private to a
hidden public sphere in the rigidly controlled society, interweaving the narratives
of the popular media with their own lives and interests, and those of their family,
friends and neighbors, and thereby forming networks for sharing their unspoken
experiences and opinions. Such networks on the level of culture function as a locus
of empowerment where people can express their own personal and social issues,
as well as their own kind of pleasure, and provide necessary moral support to col-
lectively resist unwanted forces in their lives.
The two different forces from the regime and from its people, “from above” and
“from below,” create a drama in North Korea today, not the drama of a glorious
and radical revolution but rather a kind of socioeconomic and cultural guerrilla
warfare of the politically powerless masses against a ruling political class (Hassig
and Oh 2015). The powerless attempt to take some control over their lives by
employing a silent, transgressive, or poetic tactic for the very activity of making
do with their disadvantaged conditions in the dominant structure of everyday life.
A tactic, as determined by the absence of power, is appropriated as an art of the
weak, and depends on time because it does not have a place (De Certeau 1984). In
a long-term perspective, these people may appropriate popular culture as a tactic
in a struggle to deal with the misery of everyday life, and pin their hope on a clever
utilization of time, of the opportunities it presents. Popular culture as a tactic is
a self-consciously political, transgressive and opportunistic source of power con-
cealed beneath the misery of everyday life. Without leaving the place of misery,
the weak insinuate themselves into the place with a hope to change the conditions
of their lives. The culture-power tactic that constructs its own space and alter-
native discourse is persistently lurking and springing forth from everyday life,
24 Youna Kim
masquerading behind the dominant ideology and the naturalized common sense.
North Korean people, like all oppressed groups in the world, may have difficulty
in imagining the precise contours of an alternative society, but they are able to
imagine and invoke alternative sources of power in everyday life. Although ordi-
nary people may not believe that there are immediate political ways to completely
change the main elements of macro-social conditions in a short-term, their nego-
tiation is operating at a micro level by a new politics to carve a livable life with
a tactical approach. This micro-politics, formed by the adaptation of time, space,
hope and the capacity to create something extraordinary in the apparent misery
of everyday life, may not lead to an immanent mass uprising but incrementally
weaken and reduce the power of the regime. Changes within microscopic fac-
tors such as individual mindsets and behaviors and collective networks caused by
the appropriation of South Korean popular culture can influence and eventually
develop into a significant macroscopic factor in triggering regime change in North
Korea (Kang and Park 2011).
Popular culture is constituted and appropriated in complex, powerful, and not
always obvious, political ways that may both undermine and stimulate dialectically
the nation’s assumed stability. The appeal and powerful capacity of South Korean
popular culture in the everyday life of people, youth in particular, signifies one of
the important indicators of major cultural change in North Korean society (Sunny
Yoon, Chapter 7 in this volume). What takes place in the everyday life of people
within society is a crucial determinant of what makes the society as a whole, which
leads to an understanding of what lies behind cultural change. Within the sphere of
everyday life, ordinary and taken-for-granted experiences and activities emerge as
a significant and defining characteristic of what takes place in society as a whole,
its social transformations. The society and its structure or macro-processes of
structuration can be reproduced within the micro-operation of everyday interac-
tion of individual subjects (Giddens 1984 and 1991). To understand a contested
process of cultural change and a fundamental characterization of the nature of such
change, it is necessary to look at and understand what people are doing in their
everyday lives and in their relationships to the media – where and how meanings
are created and contested, structures are accepted and challenged, and the possibil-
ity of change emerging in that tension (Y. Kim 2005 and 2008). The everyday is a
site for significant action, and media consumption is seen to be at the heart of the
micro-politics of everyday life. Social transformations become possible through
the everyday people’s capacity for re-thinking and re-articulating of the givens of
prevailing dimensions of social construction, which emerges through the dynamics
of everyday practices and the awareness of their own position and their otherwise
denied potential in an increasingly mediated world.

Contesting voices
When a dominant paradigm focuses on North Korea as a country that lacks, and
as a people who lack, such reductionism fails to identify how individuals make
do, interpret and make meanings, and misses how changes possibly arise inside
 Introduction 25
the society. It is necessary to shift the paradigm from a focus on lack to a nuanced
accounting of what has come into being, from North Koreans as inactive objects
of suffering to active agents making sense and negotiating the difficulties of
their lives for change (Fahy 2015). Any effort to explore subtleties and nuances
faces people’s “muddling through,” the multiple grey areas of “neither/nor”
actions and choices, while focusing on the ways and means through which actors
deal with the settings and environments they are confronted with (Ludtke 2016).
Unlike a static image on the outside media, people in North Korea are not just
brainwashed robotic citizens of the powerful state, but struggle to find means
and practices for the (un-)doing of the everyday and for the transformation of the
socioeconomic, cultural and political landscape. The outside media’s tendency
to highlight the North Korean leader with his dictatorship or military and nuclear
weapons equates the leader to the entire country and conceals a diversity and
complexity of the everyday people who have often been forgotten. Far too often,
North Korea is seen only as the site of nuclear weapons or of military parades
as broadcast on the mainstream media around the world; but beyond all these
aspects of North Korea is a real country, where real people live, whose lives
revolve not around their country’s nuclear policy or any other great international
issue but around their families, their colleagues at work, and the thousand daily
concerns that make up their lives anywhere else in the world (Everard 2012).
When ordinary North Koreans remain largely faceless, unknown or are almost
unknowable to the outside world, visual imagery on the media plays a decisive
role because seeing is deployed as a way of knowing (Shim 2014). The out-
side media’s treatment of images of mass mobilizations, such as North Korea’s
Arirang mass games and parades, represents backward conformity and serves a
particular purpose of de-humanization or a refusal to acknowledging the human-
ity and heterogeneity of ordinary North Koreans. North Korea is not a world
of regimented automations, all thinking alike and all repeating the same propa-
ganda. It is not a monolithic aggregation of persons with identical interests and
outlooks, but is constitutive of the complicated subjects of history (Smith 2015).
Although international viewers of the media may simply assume that because the
regime is stifling and de-personalizing the people are somehow the same, this is
not the case at all in the lives and emotions of North Koreans. Although political con-
cerns penetrate family life and human relations, this does not mean that North Koreans
are devoid of feelings, for instance, of kinship, romance and so on (Ryang 2012).
Through the selective allocation of attention, framing and metaphors in covering
foreign affairs and countries, foreign news media reportage often acts to demonize
and marginalize North Korea as an international actor, and a dominant anti-North
Korea frame reinforces an adversarial orientation towards the country (Choi 2010;
Dalton et al. 2015). Perhaps, North Korea has historically been a “metaphor” that
Americans love to hate, part of an “axis of evil” or America’s most loathed and
feared “Other,” partly because popular media narratives and mimetic commentaries
alike have conjured and reproduced the images of enmity in the lack of any con-
trary argument and conversation (Cumings 2004; Suh 2013; Han and Jung 2014).
Such oversimplified and provocative hyperbole of the “Other” serves both to justify
26 Youna Kim
American military hegemony and to bolster particular notions of American national
identity (Kyle 2001). The global consensus on North Korea as a problem is mediated
in cultural sites through the continuous production of difference and otherness that
sustains uneven relations of power and identity (Choi 2015). The American media
have hardly failed to introduce a story on North Korea referring to labels such as
“rouge,” “totalitarian,” “terrorist,” “inhumane,” “Oriental,” and the repeated media
portrayal can create a public opinion that all of North Korea is inherently violent and
dangerous. All labels suffer from imprecision and pose further challenges to identi-
fying and differentiating the nature of North Korea from a grouping of rouge states
(McEachern and McEachern 2018). Just like the American media have popularized
myths about North Korea that perpetuate the image of an enemy or an evil country to
deal with, North Koreans from a young age have been indoctrinated through litera-
ture to demonize America’s imperialist ambitions in Korea (De Wit 2013), and the
regime’s anti-American mobilization has operated in people’s everyday practices by
focusing on its militant nationalism from below (Kang 2011).
While the global cultural realm tends towards portraying North Korea as the
enemy leaving more complex aspects about North Korea elusive, some of the
South Korean popular works in films and television dramas have transformed
the de-humanized North Korean “Other” to subjects capable of human emotions,
or the two Koreas as joint victims of foreign power (Elaine H. Kim and Hannah
Michell, Chapter 8 in this volume). With the realization of a global audience and
the popular media’s possible contributions to soft power, South Korean producers
recognize their potential to resist American media imperialism. Since the arrival
of a civilian government in South Korea in the 1990s, representations of North
Koreans in the South’s cinema have changed from the despicable enemy or the
communist Other of the aftermath of the Korean War to more humanized and
even romanticized subjects. For example, in the feature films Shiri (1999) and
JSA (2000) whose syndrome has since spiraled into the rise of the Hallyu influ-
ence in global popular culture, for the first time North Koreans were portrayed as
human beings worthy of empathy, friendship or love, and the traditional discursive
practices based on the Cold War thinking were eroded through an unprecedented
humanization and personalization of North Koreans as the Other (Cho 2009;
Chyao 2015). The rise of South Korean economic standing and cultural repre-
sentation can challenge American hegemonic portrayals of North Korea, but can
also reinforce differences between the two Koreas as media representation is not
separate from but operates in unequal relations of power.
In the South Korean news media, North Koreans are discursively constructed
as the culturally proximate Other and positioned beyond the normal (Kyong
Yoon, Chapter 9 in this volume). The notions of proximity and otherness are
simultaneously interwoven with each other in the paradoxical representation of
North Koreans, leading to further questions of Korean unification, integration
and unequal power. Traditionally, South Korean news coverage of North Korea
has been based on a Cold War perspective (Dai and Hyun 2010), and sources
at the institutional level have significant influence on journalists’ perceptions
of North Korean issues (Seo 2009). The mass media and everyday television in
 Introduction 27
particular come to play a crucial role as a central instrument of national identity,
and the process of collective identity formation in South Korea has tradition-
ally relied upon the representation of North Korea as the most threatening but
ethnically related Other. This otherness has to be reconciled but at the same time
maintained as a political ground on which the South Korean state proclaims its
legitimacy or at least superiority in terms of economy, political development,
international standing, as well as anti-communist nationalism as an underlying
narrative of post-war history (Lee 2007; Kal 2011). Anti-communism or anti-
North Koreanism has played an important role in the political-cultural discursive
formation of national identification (Sung 2009; Shin 2017). South Korea’s
education system has contributed to the making of national subjectivities that
imagine North Korea as the Other.
Contemporary young South Koreans are preoccupied with national reputation
and status in the milieu of globalized competition, and thus they are likely to show
apathy towards North Koreans or conceive of their nation in a way that excludes
North Koreans and highlights the difference between the two Koreas in terms
of modernity and the embodiment of a globalized cultural nationalism; further-
more, the ambivalence and antagonism against the idea of unification held among
young South Koreans is relatively high because they are afraid that unification
will increase risk and uncertainty in the South Korean nation, damaging their
prospects for the future (Campbell 2016). The future of young people in South
Korea has become much less certain in terms of life-making, or investments in
the self to ensure one’s forward career progression, in the uncertain times of eco-
nomic globalization and neoliberal restructuring (Anagnost et al. 2013). Not only
are the forms of life inhabited by their parents’ generation in terms of relatively
secure employment and benefits no longer available to them, but also they seem
no longer desirable in the transfigured imaginings of what it means to make a life.
Young people have grown increasingly frustrated and angry at their bleak future
of low wages, high unemployment and insecure employment situations. This pre-
carious reality has implications for attitudes towards North Korea and unification.
While many of the older generation exhibit strong support for unification, the
younger generation do not necessarily have the same emotional attachment to
North Koreans by viewing them as belonging to a different nation.
Currently, there are more than 30,000 North Korean defectors living in South
Korea (Korean Ministry of Unification 2017), who may be subject to prejudice and
discrimination in the new, competitive society. Although a few high-level defec-
tors have drawn media attention, the vast majority of defectors live in anonymity
and the details of their lives remain largely unknown to the world. An ongoing con-
cern is their ability to integrate into the host country, as North Koreans generally
arrive in the South without any transferable skills or knowledge for the success-
ful transition to this new society marked by the intensity of competition in all
domains, particularly in education and employment. What is waiting for defectors
is not some utopian society where Cinderella-dreams come true; rather, there is an
entire nation full of a highly educated and a fiercely competitive workforce mostly
indifferent to the plight of the average North Korean defectors (NK News 2016).
28 Youna Kim
South Korea has the highest rate (70%) of participation in tertiary education of any
OECD country, and education fever is not confined to the urban middle-class of
the capital but is an all-pervasive feature of this society in which education does
not necessarily play a positive role in reducing inequality and preparing citizens
for inclusive economic growth (Seth 2002; OECD 2009; Asian Development Bank
2012). Defectors rarely have the same level of educational attainment as their South
Korean peers; many young people had no elementary and secondary education in
North Korea because of starvation and their lengthy escape journey (Choi 2011;
Lee 2016). Even if they had school diplomas and job credentials, their qualifica-
tions are not usually acknowledged and valued in the South’s globalized capitalist
job market where English and computer literacy are just some of the basic require-
ments in employment. Almost half of North Korean defectors in South Korea have
experienced discrimination because of their North Korean origin, and there are
many instances of defectors actively concealing their origin and Northern accent at
all levels of everyday life (Chosun Ilbo 2017; Daily NK 2017). Unemployment of
defectors is more than three times the national average, and their financial future
is severely limited as a result of discrimination. On average, defectors work more
hours per week than their Southern counterparts, yet earn 30% less. Educational
disparities and unequal access to opportunities and resources continue to reinforce
socioeconomic inequality and create an underclass of the Other in South Korea.
While their experiences of the Korean Wave media culture back in the North trig-
gered an imagination about alternative lifestyles and mobility, the lived experiences
of many defectors is different from the mediated experiences. The main sources of
difficulties that young defectors experience, while living in the South, have to do
with their disillusionment with the “Korean dream,” perceptions of discrimination
and the pressure to keep up (Sohn 2013). Encompassing the contradictory feelings
of nostalgia and assimilation, the narratives of “border people,” Northern settlers in
South Korea, are often contradictory, critical and hopeful in reflecting the dramatic
ruptures in their lived experiences (M. Kim 2013). They stand on the border, not
completely belonging to any side but remaining stuck as nowhere men. Many North
Korean defectors are regarded as burdens to the society, potential spies or aliens
who cannot be trusted. They suffer from anxiety and depression associated with the
uncertainty of their circumstances and the loss of ties with North Korea, constitut-
ing an additional barrier to successful assimilation (Haggard and Noland 2011). The
longing for their families left in the North, the post-traumatic stress caused by the
tortuous journey of fleeing their country, and the challenging adjustment process in
the South put them in an extremely difficult situation (Han 2016). The suicide rate
among defectors is three times higher than the national average (NK News 2016),
an alarming phenomenon considering that South Korea has the highest suicide rate
(29.1 per 100,000 persons) among the OECD countries, which is more than twice
the OECD average of 12.5 per 100,000 persons (OECD 2016; Yoo 2016). The rise
of suicides in South Korea is a by-product of rapid industrialization, educational
competition and social pressure to succeed in this hypercompetitive society. So dis-
mayed by the marginalization as second-class citizens, some defectors even decide
to re-defect to North Korea (NK News 2016; New York Times 2017).
 Introduction 29
North Korean defectors’ survival narratives, challenges and difficulties in
their integration into South Korea are articulated in a web-based cartoon “Rodong
Simmun” (“Labor Interrogation,” a pun on the North’s official “Rodong Sinmun”
or “Workers’ Newspaper”), published by a North Korean defector. This web-
based cartoon called “webtoon” is a popularized form of media consumption,
particularly among younger audiences, and its reception creates a new form of inti-
macy and exploration of human rights among the younger generations of the two
Koreas (Jahyon Park, Chapter 10 in this volume). Relatively flexible on its subject
and content in the digital age, webtoon has emerged as an alternative cultural
resource gaining popularity in South Korea, the most wired country in the world.
This online cartoon series attempts to make the marginalized experience visible
and public, by depicting the shock and embarrassing cultural misunderstanding of
newly arrived defectors who encounter many cultural and linguistic differences
and struggle to adapt to life in the capitalist South. Uniquely differentiated from
the typical defector memoir of a harrowing journey and suffering, the Internet car-
toon mixes the serious content of escape and survival with some light and satirical
humor to better reach young South Koreans who might otherwise pay little atten-
tion to North Korean defectors. “On the Internet, people lose interest if it gets too
serious or heartbreaking. You have to make it witty and humorous so people can
identify with it,” the defector publisher explains (Korea Herald 2016a). Through
this webtoon, the defector publisher shows how someone from the relative Dark
Ages of the Northern life of the peninsula effectively deals with modern techno-
logical devices such as smartphone apps and the Internet (Washington Post 2016),
while primarily hoping to change the mindset of South Koreans who are generally
apathetic towards North Korean defectors (Public Radio International 2017a). The
online public space of the webtoon has a potential of soft power attracting tens
of thousands of views from a growing number of South Korean fans; some read-
ers express that they really need to try and better understand cultural differences
between North and South Korea, others reveal that they feel more empathetic
towards the hidden difficulties defectors experience in the South, and more defec-
tors come to participate in the expression of self. As an alternative power resource,
the Internet cartoon serves to manifest the easily ignored, marginalized and hidden
world that has been suppressed without an official voice in dominant discourse.
Marginalized minorities can be disadvantaged in their actual life conditions, but
not always feel that way as certain power resources can be imagined and appropri-
ated. Some of the resources by which minorities, North Korean defectors in this
case, manage everyday life and attempt to make them feel empowered – albeit
temporary, fleeting yet routinized in everyday practices – are the digital media
such as the Internet and mobile phones. Multiple modes of power can be appropri-
ated to deal with their labor status, social alienation, insecurity and anxiety about
highly precarious lives as minorities at the margins of the society. For the minori-
ties, the formation of identity can be imagined at a particular organization of social
and material forces, with a marginal power in the real world. But it is a space of
power, nonetheless, that is not only made of victims but also made of actors pro-
ducing their own meanings (Hall 1991). The individual and collective capacities
30 Youna Kim
of minorities create their own life world, albeit with limited power and resources.
They can produce genuine “creations” as part of the process of becoming human;
the human life world is not defined simply by historical, ideological and political
super-structures, by totality or society as a whole, but is defined by a mediating
level of everyday life or the “power of everyday life” (Lefebvre 1971). The media
are among sources of the creations, the working out of significance in everyday
practices. The media cannot be left out of the meaning of contemporary expe-
rience, since the media mediate that experience as cultural tools and integrated
resources for the expression of self (Y. Kim 2005 and 2008).
Ongoing developments in the South Korean media landscape have recently
allowed the repertoire of images of North Koreans available to expand and find a
voice, as reflected in the developing modes of discourse in reality TV shows and
YouTube. Not only does the recent proliferation of reality TV shows involving
North Koreans open possibilities for more nuanced representations of those who
have resettled in South Korea, but also members of the community have increasingly
availed themselves of self-expression on YouTube as a means of empowerment
(Stephen J. Epstein and Christopher K. Green, Chapter 11 in this volume). A new
wave of the North Korea-focused and defector-themed media has emerged in the
South Korean television industry since 2011, including talk shows, reality TV
shows and dramas. Defector TV, as a relatively new genre of entertainment, is often
enlightening, lighthearted and sometimes emotional via its mix of commentary and
comedy, tears and humor, targeting both older and younger generations of audi-
ences with a different degree of interest in unification, as well as a memory about
the Korean War and its aftermath. Previously, people from North Korea were rarely
represented on South Korean TV shows or seen only on the news and documen-
taries with an image of impoverishment and victimhood. Now, they increasingly
appear in an attractive, communicative, entertainment media space of the South to
tell the stories not just of the North Korean leader, nuclear bombs and the military,
but more importantly of ordinary people and their lives that are neglected in the
mainstream media.
Notable examples include hybrid talk and talent shows such as Now on My
Way to Meet You and Moranbong Club. These shows featuring North Korean
defectors present various issues in a softer and more human way, reducing the
fear of the little-known Other and sharing multifaceted aspects of everyday life
in the North which South Koreans have not been exposed to and thus remained
ignorant of. Drawing a sharp line between “ordinary North Koreans” and “the
dictator regime” (JoongAng Daily 2015), they aim to break down widespread
prejudices against North Koreans and change discriminatory attitudes of South
Koreans (BBC 2012). The media in this context can potentially create power
of attraction by rebranding an image of defectors and constructing an alterna-
tive public sphere for North–South connection and empowerment of Northern
counterparts. South Korean audiences have started to pay attention to defector
TV, and it is being watched secretly by some people in North Korea, too, as they
are curious about the lives of defectors in the South (Guardian 2016a). Defector
TV mingles serious discussions of harrowing escapes, public executions, prison
 Introduction 31
camps and famine, with lighter subjects of North Korean fashion, beauty prod-
ucts, music, drinking culture, dating, ideal spouses, romance and so on, capturing
South Korean imagination and evoking an emotional public response that they
are not too different but ordinary people with common interests and concerns
just like South Koreans. The perceived difference and distance between “us”
(South Koreans) and “them” (North Koreans) can be temporarily resolved at
that viewing moment. Reflecting the human side of North Koreans, defector TV
gives the Northern participants a voice to speak out, sometimes sing and dance,
and even laugh at the cruel regime they have escaped. Humor and laughter are
subversive, which are not allowed in the North Korean media but highly encour-
aged in the South Korean entertainment media with an intentionally humanizing
and perhaps inclusive effect that affirms a community of laughers and further
connects the North Koreans to the South Korean audiences in the shared aware-
ness of commonality.
While humanizing and giving a voice to the Other, defector TV predominantly
featuring young women can be sensational and more dramatic than reality in the
feminization of the commercially mediated space. It sharply inverts the typical
image of the Northern poor and replaces it with a new stereotype – celebrity defec-
tors who are invariably young, female and attractive (Public Radio International
2017b). Referred to as “Northern beauties” by the hosts, most of them are
glamorously dressed young women with velvety looks and pearly smiles, giv-
ing little indication that they went through harrowing experiences of escape or
grew up amid famine. As minor celebrities, these feminized participants tend to
be presented as traditional, shy yet sexualized, servile, more pure and innocent
than their Southern counterparts, objectified for a masculine or South Korean
gaze. Such objectification can reinforce pre-existing regimes of knowledge and
impede a better understanding of North Koreans, while engendering a hierarchi-
cal Othering and a difference between a strong masculine nation seeking to play
the role of protector and its weak feminine counterpart (Epstein and Green 2013).
Entrenched gender roles of patriarchy are being reproduced, even if unintention-
ally, through the ironically passive representation of female escapees from the
North who are, on the contrary, extraordinarily resilient and active agents in their
life choice and experience.
North Korean defectors embrace all kinds of communicative channels, both the
mainstream and the alternative media, to tell their stories freely, empower themselves
through storytelling, and raise awareness of human rights abuses in North Korea.
Performance on online platforms including live video-streaming is an engaging way
to access and inform young people of the realities of the secretive country (Korea
Herald 2016b). Some defectors have a strong presence on YouTube and the social
media such as Facebook and Twitter, speaking about what is actually happening
inside North Korea, one of the worst modern-day tragedies in the world, and asking
the international community to support their starving and oppressed compatriots
under the dictatorship, and also to support the rights of North Korean defectors who
are forced to work as sexual slaves in China. They have emerged as part of the most
effective advocates for the North Korean people. Although defector testimonies can
32 Youna Kim
be sometimes exaggerated by Western media outlets looking for more sensational
stories (Washington Post 2015), their voices play an essential role in increasing
public awareness and international support for a free North Korea. By reaching out
to global online audiences and forming transnational networks, their narratives on
digital media platforms appeal that this humanitarian crisis is as important as the
regime’s issues but mainstream media coverage fails to draw attention to the real
suffering of the North Korean people. Digital media platforms appear to be the
pronounced wave of innovation in political communication and humanitarian cam-
paigning around the globe. Central questions of the digital media as “tactics” are
whether and how diverse types of media interventions challenge dominant power,
and what new forms tactical interventions should take. Everywhere in the world, the
advent of the Internet has been seen as a new catalyst for freedom and democracy
and as an insurmountable threat to authoritarian regimes, while there are possible
gaps between the rhetoric and the reality surrounding the supposedly transformative
potential of the Internet.
North Korean defectors of human rights groups take a soft power approach to
revolution in North Korea by regularly sending USB drives with foreign media
culture and information through various tactics – using bribes and smuggling,
helium-filled balloons and drones across the border (Al Jazeera 2015; Guardian
2016b; You 2017). As a guerrilla tool of cultural communication and education,
the content on the USB drives ranges from South Korean popular dramas, movies,
music, variety shows to Korean-language versions of Wikipedia, pro-democracy
explainers, newspapers and interviews with North Korean defectors, in order to give
the isolated people of the North a glimpse of what the outside world is like. Today’s
digital technology makes it easier to use drives and potentially alleviate intellectual
poverty in North Korea. While such media content may not directly criticize or
oppose the regime’s ideology, basic concepts of freedom, human rights and democ-
racy are reflected and intended to be transferred in a subtle way to give the people
a vision and trigger a spark for change. Although the regime has toughened border
controls and tried to exert a total blockade to stop the people from knowing about
the outside world, knowledge about the human and affluent life elsewhere in stark
contrast to the abnormality of their own suffering is leaking into the world’s most
closed society. Defectors employing these tactical interventions maintain that the
most effective humanitarian way is to bring about change in North Korean society
“from the inside,” by bombarding the country with outside culture and informa-
tion, contradicting the state media’s brainwashing propaganda and demystifying
the North Korean leader. To foster conditions that enable this internal process of
change, they wage campaigns of soft power against the dictatorship and convey an
emotional signal that the North Korean people are not alone. Organizations of intel-
lectual defectors wage information war against the Kim regime and prepare for its
weakening by helping the people see the reality and slowly changing the situation
of North Korea (Guardian 2016b). The growing forces of popular culture, technol-
ogy, capitalism and open markets offer a legitimate threat to the regime’s grip on
power and help imagine a revolution driven by ideas rather than weapons (Lerner
2015; BBC 2017). The Korean Wave popular culture in a digital era marked by
 Introduction 33
increased information has a potentially vital role to play in the future milieu of the
peninsula, with the incremental and diffuse effects of soft power in the long term.

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38 Youna Kim
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Part I

Popular culture as soft power

1 Soft power and the Korean Wave
Joseph Nye and Youna Kim

Why South Korea should go soft

In a survey of G-20 nations published in The Chosun Ilbo, the Hansun Foundation
ranked South Korea as 13th in the world in terms of national power, the ability
to obtain what a country wants in international affairs. South Korea ranked 9th in
hard power resources defined in terms of military and economic capabilities, but
performed more poorly in soft power, ranking 12th. In the words of the paper:

State of the art factories, high-tech weapons, advanced information commu-

nications infrastructure are the key components that a country must have for
a stronger international competitiveness. However, for these “hard power”
ingredients to become true engines to propel the country’s growth and
prosperity, they must be backed by more sophisticated and highly efficient
“soft power” that runs the hardware. Unfortunately, South Korea is relatively
weak in soft power.

The “Wisemen Roundtable on Soft Power in Northeast Asia” convened by the

Korea Foundation, the East Asia Institute, and JoongAng Ilbo reached a similar
conclusion. In short, South Korea needs to pay more attention to soft power if it is
to play a larger role and command more attention in international affairs.
Power is the ability to make others act in a way that advances the outcomes you
want. One can affect behavior in three main ways: threats of coercion (“sticks”),
inducements or payments (“carrots”) and attraction that makes others want what
you want (“soft power”). Soft power co-opts people rather than coerces them:
If I can get you to want to do what I want, then I do not have to force you to do
what I want. Soft power is not the same as influence, though it is one source of it.
Influence can also rest on the hard power of threats or payments. And soft power
is more than just persuasion or the ability to move people by argument, though
that is an important part of it. It is also the ability to entice and attract (Nye 2004).
In behavioral terms, soft power is attractive power. In terms of resources,
soft power resources are the assets that produce such attraction. Some resources
can produce both hard and soft power. For example, a strong economy can pro-
duce carrots for paying others, as well as a model of success that attracts others.
42 Joseph Nye and Youna Kim
In international politics, the resources that produce soft power arise in large part
from the values an organization or country expresses in its culture, in the examples
it sets, and in the way it deals with others. It was a former French foreign minister,
Hubert Vedrine (1997–2002), who observed that America is powerful because it
can inspire the dreams and desires of others. The U.S. is master of global images
through film and television; this, in part, draws large numbers of overseas students,
who either stay or bring their experience back home with them.
The soft power of any country rests primarily on three resources: (1) the
attractiveness of its culture, (2) its political values, when it lives up to them at
home and abroad, and (3) its foreign policies, when they are seen as legitimate
and having moral authority. Sometimes, these dimensions can conflict with each
other. For example, the attractiveness of the United States declined markedly after
the invasion of Iraq, which was seen as illegitimate in the eyes of many nations.
In contrast, after the United States used its navy to assist in Tsunami relief in
2005, polls showed an impressive increase in its standing in Indonesia, the larg-
est Muslim country in the world. In China, former President Hu Jintao told the
17th party congress that China needed to invest more in soft power to increase
its standing in the world, and Chinese soft power benefited from the successful
staging of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but polls show that China’s human rights
policies and censorship of free speech has limited the growth of its soft power.

A soft power strategy for South Korea

South Korea, with its population of about 50 million people, is not big enough to
be one of the world’s great powers. But many small and medium-sized countries
wield outsized influence because of their adept use of soft power. Canada, the
Netherlands and the Scandinavian states, for example, have political clout that is
greater than their military and economic weight, because they have incorporated
attractive causes such as economic aid or peacemaking into their definitions of
their national interest. South Korea should see to follow these examples.
Seoul has impressive potential for soft power. In addition to its stunning
economic success, it has developed a truly democratic political system, char-
acterized by human rights, free elections, and the transfer of power between
different political parties. Of course, South Korean democracy is not exactly
tidy; bribery scandals are all too common and parliamentary fistfights are not
unknown. Even so, the fact that Korea fights it out, sometimes literally, in the
open is a point in its favor.
Finally, there is the attractiveness of South Korean culture. The traditions
of Korean art, crafts and cuisine have already spread around the world. The
impressive success of the Korean diaspora in the United States has enhanced the
attractiveness of the culture and country from which they came. Many Korean-
Americans have risen to important positions, and this has created a positive
view about their country of origin. Korean popular culture has proved attrac-
tive across borders, in particular among younger people in neighboring Asian
countries and beyond.
 Soft power and the Korean Wave 43
What can Korea do?

1 Attracting more foreign students to South Korean universities would be one way
to reinforce the country’s role in this transnational youth culture. This would
involve more emphasis on English as well as Korean language instruction, as
well as scholarships for students from other countries.
2 Korea can increase its overseas development assistance to raise its profile
on other continents besides Asia. Many African countries that are seeing
increases in Chinese aid but worry about Chinese domination, would wel-
come the diversification that Korean aid could provide.
3 Korea could sponsor more exhibits, visiting speakers and broadcasting to convey
the story of Korea’s success to other countries. In 1960, Korea and Ghana had
the same per capita income. Today Korea is not only a member of the OECD,
but has become a democratic success story. The Korean government can help
convey this story, but the credibility would be enhanced if Korean companies,
universities and non-profit organizations also conveyed the message.
4 Korea can host major international conferences and events that draw attention
to its successes. The fact that the G-20 met in Seoul in 2010 and the 2018
Winter Olympics was held in Korea is a good example, but an active program
of sponsorship of non-governmental events would help as well. Topics such as
health, development and climate change are issues that would draw attention
to Korea’s efforts.

Korea has a message for the rest of the world, and it needs to see itself as
more than a regional actor and think of the ways in which it can contribute
to global public goods that are well received throughout the world. This will
enhance Korea’s standing and create an enabling environment for the pursuit
of Korea’s foreign policy interests. In short, South Korea has the resources that
produce soft power, and its soft power is not prisoner to its geographical or
demographic limitations.

Korean Wave popular culture as resources

Since its release in July 2012, Psy’s music video “Gangnam Style” (one of the
most watched videos on YouTube) has prompted more people around the world
to seek information on South Korea, the sudden attractiveness or sarcastic humor
of an actor’s culture. The emergence of Korean popular culture, as exemplified by
Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” is a ready-made export that is enhancing the country’s
soft power (British Council 2012; Daily Mail 2012; Forbes 2012). Under condi-
tions of globalizing market forces in a digital age, popular media culture such as
“Gangnam Style” has become a “cool” cultural brand promoting Korean exports
ranging from mobile phones to cosmetics to consumer electronics. The nation can
be reinvented as a more favorable and lasting brand by the government’s cultural
policy that global circulations of media cultural products promote the construction
of soft power, an attractive image of the nation as a whole.
44 Joseph Nye and Youna Kim
Earlier in 2005, for the first time in the Middle East, Korean popular culture
began spreading the non-economic side of its soft power to the political sphere,
when the Korean TV drama Winter Sonata hit the airwaves in Iraq (Kim 2007).
The South Korean government (Defense Ministry) reported that the drama signed
a broadcast agreement with Kurdistan Satellite Channel, a broadcaster operated
by the Kurdistan government. The goal was to generate positive feelings in the
Arab world towards the 3,200 South Korean soldiers stationed in northern Iraq.
Originally, the Defense Ministry considered providing Korean movies in Iraq,
but this was repealed due to concerns that a flock of moviegoers might lead to
possible accidents or terrorist attacks. So the final decision was made to broad-
cast the TV drama Winter Sonata which had already proven popular worldwide.
The drama was aired with Kurdish subtitles, every Thursday at 5:00 pm with re-
runs every eight hours. Furthermore, the South Korean government purchased the
rights to provide Korean TV dramas for free to broadcasting stations in more Arab
countries in an effort to create a favorable image of the nation.
The South Korean government (Overseas Information Service) also gave the
popular drama Winter Sonata to Egyptian television in 2004, paying for Arabic
subtitles (Kim 2007). The broadcast was part of the government’s efforts to
improve the image of South Korea in the Middle East, where there is little under-
standing and exposure towards Korean culture. The state-run broadcaster ERTU
(Egypt Radio Television Union) aired the drama daily except Fridays on its satel-
lite channel. This led to thousands of fan letters to the Korean Embassy in Egypt,
indicating a warm reception by Egyptian audiences. A flood of e-mails and phone
calls were received at the Embassy when another Korean drama Autumn in My
Heart was broadcast in 2004. Many of them called for inviting the leading actors
of the drama to Egypt. One of the e-mails was from a professor at a University
of Cairo saying that he had watched the drama every night with his wife and two
children. A female fan asked the Embassy to broadcast the drama again and to
introduce more Korean dramas. Egyptian viewers have launched a Korean drama
fan club and website, expressing a newly found interest on the Internet: “I wish
I could visit Korea some day” (an Egyptian fan, KBS Global Marketing 2005).
The expression of these thoughts indicates that the Korean Wave popular drama is
understood in the Arabic cultural sphere. Importantly, the Korean Wave popular
culture helps young people in the Middle East to raise interest in Korean studies
and the Korean language (Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism 2013).
These cases signify the Korean Wave popular culture’s potentiality as soft power
resources that may have a significant and complex impact on cultural diplomacy as
well as on trade, tourism, academy and other national interests across various con-
texts. Popular culture has become a potentially important resource for soft power
diplomacy, transcultural collaborations, dialogues and struggles to win the hearts
and minds of people. Such a potentiality is evident in the region of East Asia that
is still haunted by colonization and violence (Chua 2012). Culture – particularly,
popular, media and consumer culture – transcends borders with such frequency
and intensity as to constitute an irrevocable and irresistible force that regional-
izes and possibly transforms identity (Berry et al. 2009). It is this power that
 Soft power and the Korean Wave 45
governments seek to promote through the articulation and legislation of cultural
policy and the promotion of cultural industries, with a renewed focus on identity,
culture and nation branding as an essential component of foreign policy thinking.
South Korea is among the world’s 13 largest economies but still does not have
its own unique brand or unique cultural identity, partly because for the past dec-
ades South Korea has been focused on building the country, not marketing it
(BBC 2012). The G-20 summit held in Seoul in 2010 increased awareness of
South Korea by almost 17%, making it one of the country’s most successful mar-
keting events. The 2018 Winter Olympics hosted by South Korea promoted the
country’s soft power push, and the world’s media covered not only sporting sto-
ries but also the controversial integration of North Korea in sports diplomacy
(British Council 2018; Washington Post 2018). In Europe, people still associate
South Korea mainly with the Korean War or North Korea, sometimes with mobile
phones or cars, more than with its culture. South Korea brings its culture to Paris
with “Korea Week,” an event that aims to enhance the country’s international
standing and change the image of its economic hard power far outweighing its
soft power in the eyes of the global community (France 24 2011).
The South Korean government, along with the private sector and the academy,
has been working on the re-creation of its national image and cultural identity for
multiple effects of soft power by integrating the Korean Wave popular culture since
the late 1990s. The Kim Young-Sam government (1993–1998) and the official
globalization policy (segyehwa) started to respond to neoliberalism and regula-
tory practices imposed by the U.S. and other Western countries. In 1999, the Kim
Dae-Jung government (1998–2003) provided financial support of $148.5 million
to the culture industry. Focusing on the so-called three Cs – Content, Creativity
and Culture – the government encouraged colleges to open culture industry depart-
ments, providing equipment and scholarships. The number of such departments
rose from almost none to more than 300 by 2004. The Roh Moo-Hyun government
(2003–2008) advocated “cultural diversity” and vitality as well as creativity.
The Lee Myung-Bak government (2008–2013) sought to promote “Brand Korea”
to enhance the nation’s image and soft power through popular culture in a wide range
of areas from K-pop music to Korean food. In 2016, the world’s largest K-pop festival
was held in Paris with the attendance of former President Park Geun-Hye, attracting
about 13,500 Korean Wave fans and offering exclusive visibility of Korean culture
(Le Figaro 2016; Le Monde 2016). The number of Korean Wave fans in the world
is estimated to be around 60 million. In the summer of 2017, President Moon Jae-In
revealed his plan to increase the number of Korean Wave fans to 100 million in the
next five years (Korea Herald 2017). Various organizations including the Ministry
of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) and the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion
Agency (KOTRA) set aside budgets for programs to promote the national image. To
a great extent, the global circulation of Korean popular culture for the creation of soft
power is the consequence of Korean national policies.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has been intensely promoting Korea
through “Visit Korea” campaigns with the marketing slogan “Korea, Sparkling”
and the official tourism website that provides information about popular TV dramas
46 Joseph Nye and Youna Kim
and movies including storylines, filming locations and leading actors and actresses.
The government has also appointed the Korean Wave stars as tourism ambassa-
dors, while hosting events for overseas fan clubs of the Korean Wave. For instance,
fans of Jewel in the Palace can visit the historical drama’s shooting site, Jeju Folk
Village, and experience traditional culture such as hanbok (traditional clothes),
hanok (traditional house) and hansik (traditional food).
Scenery, as a marker of foreignness, constitutes a mode of visual tourism. Avid
fans of Korean TV dramas can become so enamored by the sceneries that the locations
become “must see” places and storytelling of the mobile self (Kim 2007 and 2011).
“You know, there’s this scene where they went up by cable car and got caught in a
snowstorm? We went up, too. I even went to the restaurant where the two of them sat”
(a Singaporean fan of Winter Sonata, Straits Times 2003). As picturesque romance
dramas like Winter Sonata and Autumn in My Heart have dominated TV screens, the
snow slope and the beach where the memorable scenes were filmed have become a
popular destination for overseas fans.
About 13 million foreign tourists visit Korea each year (Korean Ministry of
Culture, Sports and Tourism 2016). In the past decades, Korean TV stations and
drama producers were often accused of putting too much focus on dramas and unre-
alistic escapism at the expense of more educational programming, but now they are
honored for bringing home foreign currency. Furthermore, the engagement with
the Korean drama Winter Sonata has created a new awareness among the Japanese,
and the number of private language schools that teach Korean has increased in
Japan: “Watching the drama, I just wished I could understand what he was say-
ing in Korean” (a female fan, Yomiuri Shimbun 2004). Language learning is often
about a desire to reinvent oneself in transnational spaces and that desire is crucially
influenced by media discourses (Piller and Takahashi 2010).
About 100,000 international students come to Korea each year, and about 41%
of American fans of the Korean Wave popular culture are learning the Korean
language (Yonhap News 2013; Korean Ministry of Education 2016). A survey
in Singapore, for example, shows that the initial motivation for many university
students to learn the Korean language is “to gain greater exposure to the Korean
Wave popular culture” (Chan and Chi 2011). In Singapore, there is some demand
for Korean studies and Korean language instruction, driven by both economics
and the Korean Wave, although these demands are small in scale and are being
satisfied outside the schools and tertiary institutions (Steinberg 2010). This also
implies that such a motivation and demand may prove to be a transient interest
that may wane once the hype trend generated by the Korean Wave has subsided.
In a digital age, South Korea can appropriate this opportunity to make its lan-
guage, culture and society more attractive to wider international audiences and open
possibilities for soft power of the Korean Wave popular culture. Today’s rapid media
globalization and the widespread use of information and communication technologies
present new opportunities as well as unprecedented challenges to nation-states.
Information is power, and modern information technology is spreading information
more widely than ever before in history, which adds the reasons why soft power is
becoming more important than in the past (Nye 2004).
 Soft power and the Korean Wave 47
The Korean Wave has finally made its way into isolated North Korea despite
tight controls set by the regime’s authority (Kim 2007 and 2011). In recent years,
cases of defections have continued to arise, while the means of access to the Korean
Wave popular culture has expanded through the use of digital technologies and
mobile phones in North Korea (Daily NK 2011b; Washington Post 2017). North
Koreans caught watching the South Korean media face up to 2 years in a labor re-
education camp, or up to 5 years in a prison camp for more serious cases.
The 33 North Korean defectors interviewed in a study revealed that they had
illegally consumed the South Korean media “every day” (34%) or “once or twice
a month” (41%) before they fled to the South (Daily NK 2011c).

To be honest, watching an episode of a [South] Korean drama is a psychological

war. First, I need to completely guard the place where I’m watching the show.
I have to block the windows with curtains and closely guard the entrance door.
Then I lock the door and listen with an earphone on a low volume so that no
one outside can hear what I’m watching. Because there are frequent inspections,
I make sure I can move the moment the inspectors come. The whole scene of
me watching drama is worthy of a real drama show. Nonetheless, there is the
additional excitement that comes from watching in secret.
(a North Korean defector, Kretchun and Kim 2012)

“Listening to South Korean songs just makes me feel good. I hum a song with-
out realizing it. Our songs are all about political ideas” (a North Korean defector,
Daily NK 2011c). North Korean young people dance to South Korean music
(K-pop), sometimes with the lyrics erased, because they want to dance freely and
the lyric-less songs would not compel the regime’s authority (Young Red Guards)
to stop their dance (Daily NK 2011a).

There were youth leaders who would patrol around, looking for things that we
weren’t supposed to be doing. If you were wearing jeans or skinny pants, or if
you had a manicure or your hair was too long, you would get in trouble. They
would sometimes check your phone to see if you had any South Korean songs.
(a North Korean defector, Washington Post 2017)

Under the repressive surveillance, young people as rising consumers tend to

feel and think that South Korean culture is attractive and different, while building
cultural connections with other consumers and continuing to engage with what is
officially prohibited as politically inappropriate media content.
These illegal activities may be part of the process of imagining about, and reflect-
ing on, social transformation and other structures of identity, while attempting
liberation of desire from established structures. The Korean Wave popular culture
in North Korea may provide a new framework for making sense of the world, with
a possibility of a multitude of meanings to emerge and circulate in everyday life
(Kim 2007 and 2011). Despite the higher risk of execution for consuming the South
Korean popular culture, many North Koreans get a taste of freedom, modernity and
48 Joseph Nye and Youna Kim
the free-market fantasies spun by the illegal, smuggled dramas and movies, and
now through digital technologies.
In a force of globalization and interdependence, the Korean Wave popular
culture is no doubt building a bridge of cultural connectivity and South Korea’s
strongest form of soft power – the attraction and acquiescence of people without
the use of military or economic force. However, given the nature of soft power
being uncontrollable and unpredictable, as being shaped by many complex factors
including the geopolitics and strategic interests of nations (Fan 2008), Korean
Wave soft power may play a limited role, albeit significant historically.

Korean Wave soft power and its limits

Soft power has been an extremely productive concept but also remains an elusive
concept partly because its measurement is a formidable challenge. It is not suffi-
ciently clear how soft power actually works in specific international relationships,
and using poll data as an empirical ground of soft power requires much caution,
calling for qualitative and ethnographic methods of measuring soft power (Lee and
Melissen 2011). To some extent, the Korean Wave popular culture has heightened
South Korea’s visibility around the world and captured the imagination of a new
generation. It has possibly changed foreign perceptions of South Korea, which
dominantly has been viewed as an industrial powerhouse and whose achievements
have been overshadowed by North Korea, or often ignored by more attention paid
to the neighboring countries, China and Japan.
Thanks to the Korean Wave popular culture, the awareness and image of South
Korea has perhaps changed in the popular mind abroad, for example in Southeast
Asia since 2005. Yet, that awareness does not necessarily translate into “better
policy” either by or towards South Korea (Steinberg 2010). It is remarkable that
leading intellectuals and policy makers in Southeast Asia, Europe or elsewhere
may find it extremely difficult to identify nationals in their own countries who
can be considered specialists or knowledgeable about Korea in any depth. The
European public remain largely unaware of Korean culture including traditional
arts, even though K-pop music has successfully entered the continent since 2011.
Does South Korea want to be remembered, if unforgotten now, and identified
overseas mainly by its pop culture? The success of Psy and K-pop idol groups has
created a cool national image, soft power in raising its international stature. Yet at the
same time, this can create a very partial and distorted picture of South Korea associ-
ated with “a pudgy comic singer and long-legged beauties” (Korea Times 2012).
A country’s image, as sources of soft power, can be both very powerful and very
constraining. The global/audiences may expect certain conformity with the very
partial, or extremely polished, image in the popular cultural forms of K-pop music,
dramas and films, without further developing an ability to understand the country’s
actual conditions and sociopolitical issues.
The concept of soft power has also been used to represent the power of
Japanese popular culture overseas, also known as “Japanese cool.” It may well
be desirable for the sort of cultural content embodied in “Japanese cool,” such
 Soft power and the Korean Wave 49
as manga, anime or fashion, to spread naturally around the world through global
market forces or people’s efforts. Yet, this will not necessarily lead to an increase
in understanding of Japan in any depth (Ogoura 2006). Those on the receiving end
of contemporary cultural activities either from or related to Japan are not neces-
sarily aware of any Japanese connection and actual conditions.
The relatively happy, fun, trouble-free, cosmopolitan consumption of popular
cultural forms, or the consumers’ “hearts and minds” do not always lead to any in-
depth understanding of the history, culture and society within which the popular
cultural forms are embedded and produced. What is consumed here are meanings
and symbolic values that are not used up through the production of culture as
commodity, but that continue to circulate in ever increasing and expanding cir-
cuits of communication in the emergence of the cultural economy in a new digital
age (Chua 2012).
The Korean Wave, with the active role of the nation-state, is a pronounced
example of the crossover of culture and economy, and the commercialization of
culture through nation branding, taking a neoliberal capitalist approach in the
era of globalization. Policy discussions in Korea continue to utilize culture as
transnational commodity and capital. The Korean Wave idols are often chosen
as commodity representatives of Korean brands, helping Korean trademarks to
become more fashionable, cool image products through constant product place-
ment and idol promotion (Huang 2011). In the widest possible sense, the Korean
culture industry is seen to commodify the nation, circulating its popular culture as
a cool national brand.
This dependency on the Korean Wave popular culture to create soft power and
develop new markets, such as South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East,
is particularly significant at a time when the world economy shows signs of slow-
ing down (Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency 2013). Korea’s soft power
is likely to be an extension of its economic influence, which is a core component of
hard power. With their accustomed nationalism, East Asian countries would like to
invest in soft power to expand their existing economic influence and acquire more
sophisticated politico-cultural leverage (Lee and Melissen 2011). Popular culture
has emerged as a core component of a nation’s economic competitiveness that
extends to interests in cultural influence and cultural diplomacy.
In cultural diplomacy, however, a greater emphasis should be placed on
reciprocal cultural flows and mutual understandings, rather than asymmetrically
presenting a nation’s own culture, or cultural nationalism, based on the market-
driven cultural economy. This unequal condition is most pronounced in East
Asia, including North Korea. It has been overwhelmingly Korean and Japanese
popular cultures such as TV dramas that enter Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore
and urban China, yet there is very little flow in the reverse direction (Chua 2012).
There is no significant flow of North Korean media culture into South Korea.
This one-way unilateral flow from South Korea to North Korea may serve to
disseminate more powerful ideology through attractive transnational culture
and not meaningfully lead to inter-Korean dialogue and cross-cultural exchange
from below.
50 Joseph Nye and Youna Kim
The Korean Wave, as a state-subsidized “soft power” initiative, has emerged
as a new player for the production and circulation of transnational culture, while
consolidating a relatively more growing position in the regional market based on
geopolitics and similar historical experiences. The postcolonial periphery is fast
becoming a major center for the production of transnational culture, not just a
sinkhole for its transnational consumption (Watson 1997). There is a lingering
anti-colonial sentiment lurking in the hearts of people in many Asian countries;
however, the Korean Wave appears to benefit from the sense of solidarity, sym-
pathy more than resentment, which people have towards the country that shared a
similar colonial past and continues to struggle in a current postcolonial situation.
Korea with the sentiment of “han” (deep suffering) is seen to be a less problem-
atic source of power and ideological threat than some other countries in Asia, for
example, “Japanese odour” (Iwabuchi 2002) that Japanese cultural producers try
to remove from their products in order not to induce resistance from regional audi-
ences. On the other hand, the aspirations behind the national government’s efforts to
use popular culture, and the impact of the asymmetrical cultural flows are limited by
the fragmented nature of global audiences who respond differently, by the audience
reception as a contested site of negotiation, and even by the possibility of resist-
ance and subversion. This limitation is evident in anti-Korean Wave movements
in Japan, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Thailand, and so on. It is usually confronted
with larger non-consumer communities reinforcing nationalist discourses with the
complicity of local media productions and the state (Chua 2008).
For instance, Japanese nationalist groups have held regular demonstrations
against Fuji Television, demanding that the television company stop excessively
broadcasting Korean TV dramas and other Korean entertainment (JoongAng Ilbo
2011). In Taiwan, too, Korean dramas have faced negative sentiments for the
excessive airing of Korean shows in the evening time, between 6:00 pm and mid-
night. In 2010, Taiwanese TV stations aired 162 Korean dramas, or an average
of 13 Korean dramas per month (Dong-A Ilbo 2012). Initially, Korean dramas
were considered as cheap alternatives to their Japanese counterparts. In 2000,
at the early stage of the Korean Wave, Taiwan’s Gala TV paid $1,000 for one
hour of a Korean drama, compared with $15,000 to $20,000 for a Japanese one.
Only after 5 years, however, a Korean drama commanded $7,000 to $15,000,
and a Japanese one $6,000 to $12,000 (New York Times 2005). In China, the
biggest market for the Korean Wave, Chinese interest in South Korean cul-
ture has naturally prompted a tourism boom; nearly half of all tourists to South
Korea have been from China since 2013. In 2017, however, the Chinese govern-
ment announced that it would ban all group travels to South Korea as part of its
response to South Korea’s decision to deploy the U.S. THAAD (Terminal High
Altitude Area Defense) missile system with the sophisticated radar in uncom-
fortable proximity to Chinese soil, although THAAD was a necessary deterrent
to an increasingly unstable and belligerent North Korea from the South Korean
government’s security perspective (Time 2017). In North Korea, South Korean
dramas, music and films have become so popular among its people that the com-
munist regime denounces the popularity as bourgeois delinquent capitalism and
 Soft power and the Korean Wave 51
endeavors to stop the imperialist move for ideological and cultural infiltration
(JoongAng Ilbo 2014; Wired 2015).
The heightened visibility of Korean popular culture has been criticized by the
mass media and the public overseas as a cultural invasion of the Korean Wave.
Regionalism may be a response or a challenge to globalization, but also one com-
ponent of globalization that is a complex, conflicting and indeterminate process
(Berry et al. 2009). While the Korean Wave fosters connectivity within East Asian
cultural geography, the diversity of its fandom also demonstrates that the cultural
identity of East Asia is neither monolithic nor reified, but envisaged as a variable
and asymmetric space of both integration and contestation (Cho 2011).
Linking culture to the nation-state carries a high risk of impeding, rather than
promoting, the spread of cultural activities around the world (Ogoura 2006). With
the active involvement of the government, the Korean Wave has been largely con-
structed within nationalistic discourses and policies, and imagined with cultural
nationalism – a form of hegemony masked in soft power. Nationalism has been
central to the globalization of media cultural products; paradoxically, the question
of how global such media are is to ask how nationalistic they are (Chan 2005). This
Korean version of nationalistic and expansionistic cultural policy has a tendency
to develop into another form of hegemonic cultural imperialism in the region. The
Korean Wave popular culture, as resources for soft power by the postcolonial
periphery, can ironically generate a new version of cultural imperialism that is
deeply embedded in cultural nationalism and its ideological position going against
cultural diversity and soft power of attraction.

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2 The Korean Wave as a powerful
agent
Hidden stories from a North Korean defector
Thae Yong-Ho

Sever the chains of slavery

In the summer of 2016 I moved to South Korea with my wife and two sons. I am
one of the few highly ranked officials ever to defect from North Korea since the
1997 defection of Hwang Jang-Yop, the brains behind North Korea’s govern-
ing ideology “Juche” which combines Marxism with extreme nationalism. As
North Korea’s former deputy ambassador to London, I was the servant of a brutal
regime and of its merciless leader, and my job was to spread North Korean propa-
ganda and report back on colleagues. We keep an eye on each other, control each
other, and even spy on each other. During my speeches in London, I needed to be
very convincing and be a true believer myself. If I showed any sign of hesitation,
I would be sent to prison camps, and my whole family’s life would be jeopard-
ized. North Korean diplomats and their families who are dispatched to foreign
countries live together as one group. It is like a microcosm of North Korean
society. An ambassador takes home an average monthly salary of $900–1,100
although the amount varies depending on the country. A minister gets about
$700–800. Many people question how one could live in London with a salary
of less than $1,000, but that is because all the North Korean diplomats based
overseas make extra income using all possible means. Diplomats working in the
commercial section of North Korean Embassies are also required to earn foreign
currency and send it to the regime, a compulsory task designed to make up for
North Korea’s dwindling foreign exchange income due to sanctions, which is
crucial to its development of nuclear weapons.
I fled over dissatisfaction with the rule of Kim Jong-Un. It took me quite a long
time to prepare this defection since, for quite a long time, I had not believed in this
regime. In March 2013, Kim Jong-Un decided to openly continue the develop-
ment of the nuclear program of North Korea, which was the actual announcement
of his decision to continue the policy line of his grandfather Kim Il-Sung and his
father Kim Jong-Il. When Kim Jong-Un first came to power, I was hopeful that
he would make reasonable and rational decisions to save North Korea from pov-
erty, since he had studied abroad for a long time and he knew the world. Yet, he
decided to choose the continuation of the policy rather than bringing any change
to North Korean society. I lost all faith in the regime when Kim executed his own
 The Korean Wave as a powerful agent 55
uncle in December 2013 and dozens of perceived enemies, including diplomats. He
executed the people around him who yearned for change in North Korean society.
I fell into despair watching him purging officials for no proper reasons. Persecution
and purges were frequent even during the Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il period but
they never executed their family members. Kim Jong-Un is different; he does not
have any sense of solidarity among the family members because Kim Jong-Un was
a hidden boy not only from North Korean society but also from the family members
of his father and grandfather. Kim Jong-Un is in great fear of those officials around
him because they are old and used to be the followers of his father and grandfather.
As a man with great paranoia, Kim Jong-Un is always sensitive about whether he
is looked down upon by them as a young leader. North Korea, like South Korea,
has a strong Confucian influence on the society, where the people should obey the
instructions of the leader, children should respect their parents, a younger brother
should respect the elder brother, and the first son of the family should inherit the
family business. Kim Jong-Il was successful in being appointed as the heir to Kim
Il-Sung because he was the first son. But if Kim Jong-Un followed this policy, Kim
Jong-Un should be eliminated because he is the branch of the tree rather than the
main trunk. Kim Jong-Nam, the first son of Kim Jong-Il, was a great psychological
burden for Kim Jong-Un to legitimize the leadership as the successor of his father.
When it comes to Kim Jong-Un’s identity, North Koreans actually know very little.
The leader lives a secretive life; Kim Jong-Un has still not presented his age, his
place of birth or childhood, and his mother’s name because his mother was not the
official wife of Kim Jong-Il. Everything remains ambiguous about Kim Jong-Un.
On the surface, Kim Jong-Un’s system looks very formidable, but I think that his
system is already heading for collapse and that the only thing Kim Jong-Un now
relies on is the reign of terror. The North Korean people are in great fear because
Kim Jong-Un even killed his own uncle and made this execution open and public,
meaning that he could kill anyone.
The other main reason for my defection was my family. I am the father of two
children and I am worried about their future. I was afraid that the slave life would
continue until the time of my grandchildren’s children. That’s why I told my fam-
ily that I am severing the chains the moment I leave the embassy. My life in North
Korea was nothing but the life of a slave, so I did not want to hand over the same
destiny and the same life to my sons’ generation. All North Korean diplomats are
forced to leave one of their children back in Pyongyang as a hostage. Kim Jong-
Un’s regime even abuses the pure love between parents and children to prevent
the defection of diplomats, but I was lucky to bring both of my sons to London.
My break came when this hostage policy unexpectedly changed and my oldest
son was allowed to join the family in London. It was my family in London who
persuaded me to defect. I found myself defending the regime to my children, espe-
cially my younger son who was a bright kid in a West London state school. On the
day we left the embassy and stepped outside, I told my sons, “From this moment
on, as a father, I am breaking you free from your shackles.” I really wanted to give
them freedom to lead a normal life like other people. I decided to cut off all links
56 Thae Yong-Ho
with the regime for my sons at my generation. I just wanted to hear a very simple
sentence from my sons, “Daddy, thank you for letting us be free men.” Nothing is
more important than the freedom of my sons. I am sure that more defections of my
colleagues will take place since North Korea is already on setback.
In order to prevent more possible defections from North Korea, Kim Jong-Un
will do anything, even assassination. I do not have any regret about moving to
South Korea and do not fear for my safety anymore. It is my dream to walk back
to my hometown when both Koreas reunite one day. I am very determined to do
everything possible to pull down the regime to save not only my family but also
the whole North Korean people from slavery. I believe that human beings are
entitled to the right to speak freely, the right to worship in the manner of their
choice, the right to acquire and dispose of property, the right to be able to partici-
pate in the government of their country, the right to leave and enter their country.
However, the people of North Korea do not have fundamental concepts of human
rights, as they are deprived of freedom from arbitrary detainment, torture, slavery
and corrosion in the matters of conscience.

Hallyu in North Korea

There are two things that cannot be stopped among the numerous attempts of
the North Korean regime to control its people – drugs and Hallyu. Kim’s regime
appears stable from the outside but is actually rotting from the inside. North
Koreans hail Kim Jong-Un during the day and watch South Korean films and dra-
mas at night under blankets. South Korean culture has become one part of daily
life in North Korea. In the privacy of their homes, North Koreans have begun to be
honest about the regime because they cannot lie to their family. North Koreans are
fed up with all the government coordinated propaganda and brainwashing content.
They care less and less about state propaganda but increasingly watch smuggled
South Korean movies and dramas. Bringing in information from the outside world,
which often takes place on the side lines of smuggling, is considered as one of the
worst crimes in the country. Technological advances and growth of the black mar-
ket in the “hermit kingdom” have made it more difficult to keep the citizens from
accessing the outside media. The popularity of South Korean actors and TV series
is evolving alike in South Korea, and this makes the point how prevalent is South
Korean cultural content in North Korea and to the North Korean public.
A strong influencing agent for access to information is South Korean dramas
as an increasing number of North Koreans are watching TV series that are affect-
ing their daily lives. Although the two Koreas have the same language, regional
dialects and the 70-year separation of the two countries have resulted in their citi-
zens speaking in a very different manner. Hallyu affects North Koreans’ everyday
language and terminology. North Koreans nowadays talk like South Koreans. The
North’s youth often use words like jagiya (honey), oppa (meaning older brother,
but often used to refer to a boyfriend or spouse), kkk (the equivalent of LOL, a
social media abbreviation for laughing out loud), which do not exist in the North
Korean language and were unthinkable ten years ago. A lot of South Korean body
 The Korean Wave as a powerful agent 57
language has also intruded into the North because of this Korean cultural wave.
Using new South Korean words is subject to the authorities’ crackdown, but this
can be fixed by paying certain fees to the authorities.
The change of cultural content can also create a new market. Six years ago
rich investors created for the first time coffee shops in Pyongyang, but people
were suspicious about the success because a cup of coffee in North Korea costs
$5 or $6 which is more than a one-year salary for a civil servant. However, once
the coffee shop was open, it was quickly full of young people because they watch
South Korean dramas and in their minds they want to imitate the lifestyle of South
Korean young people. The North’s boys and girls want to imitate the nice dates
usually seen in South Korean TV series when they hang out nowadays.
There are great differences between the reality and the content in dramas and
movies. If one watches South Korean romantic TV drama, it usually gives a dif-
ferent aspect of South Korean life. Many North Koreans believe that most South
Koreans are living in Villa houses with several luxurious cars, going on frequent
foreign trips. This does not reflect ordinary South Koreans’ normal lives; for
instance, retired old men in South Korea are still working hard in parking-lots
and many young Koreans are working hard doing part-time work in conveni-
ence stores or coffee shops. South Korean society is very competitive, but North
Koreans think the society is a very slow and easy society, a wrong impression
created by some South Korean dramas and films. This misunderstanding might
be due to the lack of a variety of genres and cultural diversity available to North
Koreans. Another example is security in South Korea. To my knowledge, security
systems are highly efficient and streets are very well maintained. However, South
Korean action films give the impression that there are common street fights and
organized crime between gangster groups and the police. North Koreans have not
lived in the South Korean society, and they do not watch these action films as
part of the cultural content but accept the films as reality. They take the fictitious
content and think it is non-fiction. The reason why North Koreans cannot tell the
difference between fiction and reality is because they have never been exposed to
the diversity of cultural content.
Probably because of the generation gap, I do not have much knowledge about
current South Korean idol groups or particular actors. However, in the late 1990s
and beginning of the 2000s, actors such as Ahn Sung-Ki and Choi Min-Sik were
popular, and when the TV series Full House was released in North Korea in 2004,
the actress Song Hey-Kyo became popular. When the drama Immortal Admiral Yi
Sun-Sin was released, the actor Kim Young-Min became very famous. TV dramas
that gained attraction among the general North Korean crowd include the romance
works Autumn in My Heart, Winter Sonata and Full House. A few dramas that
discuss North Korean defectors’ assimilation stories in the South, such as Blow
Breeze, were especially popular in the North. I am a fan of period dramas such as
Immortal Admiral Yi Sun-Sin, Jeong Do-Jeon and Six Flying Dragons.
In 2017 I met with the South Korean film director Im Kwon-Taek. I have wanted
to meet him ever since I came to South Korea as his film The Taebaek Mountains
(1994) left a very strong impression on me. It is one of the first South Korean films I
58 Thae Yong-Ho
ever watched in my life, in 1997 when I was working as the secretary at the embassy
in Denmark. The first part of the film was about the communist guerrilla war during
the Korean War, but the second part was about the ideological debate between com-
munism and capitalism. It illustrated the period when North Korea was undergoing
the most difficult economic stagnation, when people suffered a lot from hunger and
famine. At that time, people like me from the North Korean system were wonder-
ing whether North Korea was going in the right direction or not. The film made me
think about the communist and socialist ideals that our parents and grandparents so
strongly believed in, sacrificed their lives fighting for and how they are being realized
in North Korea today. His film shed light on the North Korean society and helped me
to reflect on how it has evolved since and think about where it should be heading. The
main message I got from the film is that communism cannot overwhelm capitalism
because the ideology, communism, does not allow independence of human beings, as
well as the differences between the ideologies and the existence of different groups
of classes in the society. The film taught me that a diversity of ideologies and cultures
within one society is always better than the monolithic system. The film gave me an
alternative approach to the communist ideology and changed my viewpoint towards
the society and the happenings in the North Korean regime.
Another film I enjoyed watching is Ode to My Father (2014), also known as
International Market, which connects the whole process of economic development
with the people’s hardships in one piece of cultural content. That film gave me a
quite different insight about South Korean society and history. As for my wife,
she prefers more romantic, love-story based content, whereas I prefer historical
content. My 19 and 26 year-old sons also enjoy South Korean popular culture.
They especially like to listen to rap, but I personally do not understand it, maybe
due to the generation gap. Their first concern when they arrived in South Korea
was whether they could freely browse the Internet, play Internet games, read any
books or watch any films.
During the past ten years, the North Korean film industry has not produced any
significant drama or film. If one asks North Koreans what are the most famous
and popular North Korean movies or dramas these days, nobody can answer
because they cannot even remember. In my opinion, North Korean filmmakers
lost all kinds of enthusiasm to make any film after seeing South Korean dramas
and movies because the content in the South is so overwhelming. North Koreans
also have pop culture bands, but they cannot be compared to South Korean bands.
Moranbong Band was formed by Kim Jong-Un himself. In South Korea, singers
are scouted by agencies or auditioned for these jobs, but North Korea has a detailed
education system to bring up singers. The children usually start special education
from the age of five or six in specialized music schools in North Korea. Once
they prove themselves to be talented, they can go up the ladder and join famous
music schools, and once they are successful in the system, they can join bands like
Moranbong Band and for the rest of their lives they will be well off, compared to
ordinary North Koreans.
It is no longer easy for the regime to cut off Hallyu, as South Korean popular cul-
ture is gradually expanding in North Korea. It depends on the class, but there is not
 The Korean Wave as a powerful agent 59
one North Korean who has not seen a South Korean drama or movie as far as I know.
Cadres in the leadership class enjoy the dramas and are secretly contributing to the
expanding viewership. It is now a normal daily routine for the upper class to relax
and watch TV in the evening, but North Korea has frequent power cuts. At night,
only the central part of Pyongyang can enjoy two to three hours of power supply, and
in the rest of the country, even in Pyongyang, ordinary people cannot have access
to power supply. If there is no power supply, people cannot watch TV because they
need 220 volts of electricity. Means of access to Hallyu in North Korea include the
digital media, which counter this lack of electricity as the technology has developed
dramatically in the past five years. One of the most popular ways of enjoying South
Korean popular culture is said to be “Notetel,” a type of portable media player that
plays DVDs and enhanced versatile discs. This small laptop device made by the
Chinese functions with 12 volt batteries, allowing North Koreans to enjoy South
Korean movies and dramas more easily. It was legalized in 2014 under the condition
that it is limited to certain channels of the regime’s choice. Also, domestically pro-
duced North Korean smartphones have been alternative devices. Although a limited
number of people have smartphones that can access radio broadcasts, the demand for
such devices is consistently high.
Even before the legalization of such devices, people were getting access to outside
culture and information through micro SD cards whichs are small enough to be easily
smuggled into the country. Young North Koreans have begun calling such devices
“nose cards” because they can be smuggled even inside one’s nostrils to escape
detection during a body search. It has been more than five years since electronic
devices such as laptops, external hard drives and digital cameras first emerged in
the official markets without special restrictions. Smugglers have secured protection
from State Security Department officials through bribery, allowing them to import
USBs and SD cards loaded with the foreign media. Measures to block Hallyu in the
North are not so easy, despite the hoard of forces sent out to crack down on young
North Koreans who exchange text messages in the South Korean way of speaking
they picked up from South Korean dramas. Even the crackdown efforts are being
misused because of the illicit sources of income for surveillance officials who often
release suspects in return for a bribe of $20–30. North Korea’s once-robust control
on external information is already showing signs of erosion amid the uncontrollable
spread of popular South Korean dramas and movies among the North Korean elite as
well as ordinary citizens.
The regime’s control over the Internet is crumbling, and Kim Jong-Un knows it.
North Koreans working and living abroad like me have greater access to the foreign
media via the Internet and smartphones, which we use to understand how North
Korea is viewed by the outside world. Party cadres and diplomatic staff are not
allowed to access or disseminate content critical of Kim Jong-Un in North Korea,
but they are accustomed to freely accessing information. They are prevented from
conveying the information they learned to others, due to the authorities spying
on them upon their return to North Korea. Despite the Kim regime’s notorious
restrictions on the inflow of outside news, like other North Korean elites, I was
aware of the wide disparity between how North Korea looked from the inside and
60 Thae Yong-Ho
the outside. The disparity was felt more acutely, as I was allowed free access to
the Internet, a privilege given exceptionally to diplomats who have to fend off any
external criticism of the communist regime. Unlike the general public of North
Korea, the job of a North Korean diplomat often provides a certain level of free-
dom of access to information, which naturally brings a sense of comparativeness.
This freedom of access to information sometimes pushes North Korean diplomats
to double think their status and doubt the North Korean system especially when
they read hidden stories of Kim’s family. The first thing North Korean diplomats
based overseas do at work is open the homepage of South Korea’s Yonhap News
Agency whose North Korea section compiles all the local and foreign news involv-
ing North Korea. The Internet connected me to the vast pool of South Korean
media content involving fellow North Koreans who risked their lives to escape the
socialist country and have successfully settled down in the South. On the South
Korean TV show featuring defectors called Moranbong Club, which I watched
when I was working as a diplomat in London after searching “North Korea” in
Korean on YouTube, I recognized a defector panelist on the show. I actually used
to do night shifts with this man, Han Jin-Myeong, at Pyongyang’s foreign ministry.
The elite class, which supported North Korean society, have turned their backs
on Kim Jong-Un. This is why Kim Jong-Un keeps such close tabs on the country’s
elites and executes anyone who falls out of line. Traditional structures of the North
Korean system are crumbling; the so-called socialism is still technically in place
but it is no longer succeeding in providing chronic reforms. Those further down
the political food chain are finding life much tougher. North Koreans are gradu-
ally beginning to make their discontent known. More curious North Koreans now
do not listen to the regime’s propaganda when the system is already on a slippery
slope, and the once unthinkable starts to become possible. Low-level dissent or
criticism of the regime, until recently unthinkable, is becoming more frequent.
The North Korean regime is trying its best to block external information so that
the residents cannot compare the living standards with others, but control over the
residents has been collapsing due to information seeping in. As more and more
people gradually become informed about the reality of their living conditions, the
North Korean government will either have to change and adapt in positive ways
for its citizens, or face the consequences of their escalating dissatisfaction.
Changes in North Korea mean that, contrary to the official policy regime, free
markets are flourishing and traveling merchants effectively serve as carriers of
information to regions across the country. Another sign of Kim’s weakening con-
trol is evident at the unofficial markets of North Korea where women trade goods,
mostly smuggled from China. The vendors used to be called “grasshoppers”
because they would pack and flee whenever they saw the police approaching.
Now, they are called “ticks” because they refuse to budge, demanding a right to
make a living. Such resistance, even if small in scale, is unprecedented. This black
market called “Jangmadang” itself is not an illicit but official and legal place as
the government acknowledges the trade of goods area. They allowed a sort of free
trade among people to sell to and buy from each other especially during famines.
However, the number of Jangmadang in every city increased exponentially and
 The Korean Wave as a powerful agent 61
the authority started to control them. Corruption and the South Korean media are
now a way of life, despite the official attempt to stamp them out. Poorly-paid offi-
cials continue to take bribes as it is the only way for high officials to make ends
meet. The leader’s efforts to clamp down on information and products from outside
North Korea have been unsuccessful because the police accept bribes in exchange
for freeing smugglers and people caught watching banned movies and dramas.
Breaking down the censorship and surveillance state from within is the only way
to bring down North Korea’s nuclear weapons-obsessed leader. The spread of out-
side news and market activities could eventually doom Kim Jong-Un because his
government can be held in place and maintained only by idolizing Kim Jong-Un
like a God. If he tries to introduce a market-oriented economy to the North Korean
society, then there will be no place for Kim Jong-Un in North Korea, and he knows
that. These developments in accessibility of outside culture and information make
it increasingly possible to think about a civilian uprising in North Korea.
I thus call for more small digital players to be smuggled into North Korea to
receive outside broadcasts. A comprehensive strategy to open up the country with
information will require custom-tailored programming relevant to the background
and social class of the consumers. It is important to have a sense of the media
preferences of North Koreans and to provide information that matches the needs
and dispositions of the various demographic groups within the country. We should
make different content for the different classes of North Korean people. There is
no sense of solidarity between the core classes, and there is a kind of hidden hatred
between the ruling class and the people’s class since the Korean War. Now, the
ruling class is afraid of any kind of political revenge if there were to be changes in
the system or any contingency. It is important to deliver the key message about the
value of cooperation with the rest of the population in order to change the dread-
ful regime and guarantee their future. We should try to make an accommodation
of feelings and diminish the hatred between the elite and the people’s class as the
best way to make a change. It will be useful to disseminate tailor-made content
comparing the reality of North Korea and South Korea. North Koreans most com-
monly watch South Korean TV dramas, but outside content should be tailored to
appeal more directly to a North Korean audience and convey democratic principles
in a subtle way. For example, beautiful young girls are often sent from rural areas
to serve the North Korean leadership in Pyongyang, which is often viewed as an
honor rather than a human rights abuse. Programs could educate North Koreans on
how they should be paid for the labor they provide for free when mobilized by the
state. There is no concept of proper payment for the labor they sacrifice for several
decades. Even when I worked as the deputy general of the foreign ministry, my
monthly salary was 2,900 North Korean won. As a benchmark, one kilogram of
rice was 4,100 won, so I could not afford to buy one kilogram of rice. People take
it for granted because they have been used to this kind of poverty for a long time
and nobody thinks it is strange. This is why we are urged to educate the North
Korean people about proper payment and democratic values. With information
comes education, and that can lead to a popular uprising and help ordinary citizens
to rebel. Kim Jong-Un’s days are numbered. To resolve human rights violations
62 Thae Yong-Ho
in North Korea and the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula, there is no other
way but to eliminate his regime. The best way to bring down Kim Jong-Un is to
disseminate external information into North Korea to educate the North Korean
people for a popular uprising.
The arrival of information by USBs and drones will enlighten the residents
about the Kim regime’s fabrications and bring about the regime’s collapse. As I
became aware of South Korea’s economic rise and democratization through the
Internet and other means, I realized that the Kim government has no future. The
regime continues to produce a never-ending stream of propaganda, but the shaky
logic of this content is becoming apparent. As more North Koreans are awakened
to the truth, more will feel a sense of estrangement towards their government. The
leaflets and USBs with films can be introduced to North Korea and incentivize
the people for an eventual uprising. A shortwave radio station called “Free North
Korea Radio” has been delivering information from outside the country since 2005,
broadcasting from the second floor of a multipurpose building just outside Seoul.
The power of radio has been huge in advancing the cause of freedom and human
rights. Free North Korea Radio puts out at least an hour a day of programming,
produced by North Korean defectors for their fellow North Koreans to hear. This
is a critical way for them to understand that the North Korean defectors living in
South Korea are working for freedom and rights, providing them with information
to help them understand that the source of their misery is Kim Jong-Un. Their true
ally is the people of South Korea and the people of the United States. The beginning
of radio broadcasts by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in September
2017 is a welcome addition to the sources of news and information reaching North
Korea. Increasing information availability to North Koreans who are brave enough
to seek alternative news is one of the critical steps in weakening the regime’s infor-
mation monopoly that has manipulated and mobilized its people. South Korea, the
United States and other countries have played a major role in seeking to break down
the barriers to external information reaching the North, not only because the North
Korean people ought to have a right to freedom of information as a matter of prin-
ciple, but also because access to external information makes it harder for the North
Korean regime to control information and manipulate its population.
Developing and disseminating the new media will be a challenging process.
The North Korean regime has placed restrictions on the North Korea–China
border and completely banned all Hallyu media content and devices under the
banner of strengthening the propaganda war. However, with the increasing
exchanges of smartphones and USBs, the content of which can be quickly copied
and transferred to other storage devices, and the regime’s strategy to block the
flow of information will also face challenges. Smartphones are providing North
Koreans with a window to the world. Currently, information such as regional
prices, the black market rate of foreign currencies, and the supply and demand
for given products in each region can be accessed all over the country by smart-
phones. If smuggling opportunities are expanded, people will be able to import
what they want. The materials that the regime wants to import are big things such
as oil, metals and engines for their military, but what we need to disseminate are
 The Korean Wave as a powerful agent 63
small things. As devices are getting smaller and smaller with technology, we can
transfer our content in SD cards and USB sticks.
Thanks to the South Korean cultural wave, continued marketization and the
corresponding distribution of information, North Korea can better understand what
is happening in the South Korean society and their way of life, further exposing
the North Korean leadership’s fallacies. The introduction of South Korean culture
in North Korea can reduce dramatically the hatred and negative post-war feelings
created because of the Korean War. I believe that it can also reduce social and cul-
tural differences between the two Koreas. South Korean culture plays an important
role in the preparation for future unification by closing the gap between the two
Koreas that has evolved during the seven decades of separation. Soft power of the
cultural content has huge influence on North Korea.

Soft power
The spread of South Korean popular culture among the North’s citizens has
brought with it a growing influx of information from the outside world. In order
to eliminate Kim Jong-Un’s regime, there can be several options even including
military ones, but I think that the most realistic and effective way is to disseminate
the outside information in order to educate North Korean people for a popular
counter-debate against the regime. More and more people are gradually becoming
informed about the reality of their living conditions and what they are seeing is
not a paradise, and finding out how the people are living in South Korea or in the
rest of the world. It is important to disseminate the right content for North Korean
people, to educate and make them ask questions about their life and their destiny.
We have to spray gasoline on North Korea, and let the North Korean people set
fire to it. We should help topple the North Korean regime by encouraging other
defections and speaking out.
Undermining Kim Jong-Un’s God-like status among his people could be the
key to weakening his rule. Until now, the North Korean system has prevailed
through an effective and credible reign of terror and by almost perfectly pre-
venting the free-flow of outside information. The majority of the North Korean
population do not know the facts about Kim Jong-Un, so we should dissemi-
nate information about him first; who he really is, why he cannot present even
a single photo with his grandfather Kim Il-Sung because he was secretly kept in
Switzerland and not in North Korea during his grandfather’s regime. We should
tell North Koreans that Kim Jong-Un, his father and grandfather, all the members
of the Kim dynasty are not Gods, and we should disseminate the concept of free-
dom and human rights. The personal cult in North Korea is devastating. People
are already brainwashed when they reach the age of four or five, from the age of
kindergarten. Every morning, the young children are supposed to bow in front of
the portrait of Kim Jong-Un, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-Sung. They have to stand
up and express their thanks to Kim Jong-Un before drinking milk. When apples
are served and distributed to the population, they are presented as a gift from Kim
Jong-Un. His regime has established a full-scale brainwashing system, depicting
64 Thae Yong-Ho
himself as a God. We should try to concentrate our efforts to educate the North
Korean people that he is not a God but just a normal human being. We should
continue to tell the truth to the population and show them the ugly side of Kim’s
regime. It is time for the world to stop the widespread and systematic human
rights violations in North Korea, which are pantomimes of crimes committed by
the Nazis in the past. North Korea is a country with a system of classification
with different classes. We should tell the population how stupid their system is, a
futile system that would have existed several hundreds of years ago. We should
let them know that their current regime is not a socialist welfare system but the
worst system that could exist.
While Kim has leaned on decades of brainwashing tactics to elevate himself
as a God, a growing curiosity about foreign culture and the increasing penetration
of free-market capitalism have begun to pose an internal threat to his domestic
system of control in recent years. Kim has tried to quell the demand for outside
information by opening his father’s archive of foreign films, most of which were
produced in the former Soviet Union or other socialist nations. To my interpre-
tation, there is a really huge people’s resistance to the system in North Korea
especially in the economic field. The daily life of survival is highly dependent
on the general market; it is the capitalist market system that is providing for the
survival of North Korean people, not the socialist system of the government. The
more this kind of capitalist element is growing, the more the independent way of
thinking and also the people’s yearning for their own rights will grow and expand.
One day, the people’s awareness of this kind of right to survival could evolve
into a kind of right for political freedom. North Korea still outwardly professes
to maintain a Soviet-style command economy, but for years a thriving network
of informal markets and person-to-person trading has become the main source of
food and money for ordinary people. The people in the elite group and also the
people in the security and enforcement networks share the same sense that there
is no hope for this system. The North Korean government I once defended is
unstable and doomed to fail. A people’s revolution will one day bring an end to
the Kim family’s dynastic rule.
Many people do not understand why the North Korean regime believes nuclear
weapons can solve their problems and why Kim’s regime is so much obsessed
with the nuclear weapons program. During his five years in power, Kim Jong-Un
has expanded North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, despite international sanctions that
have brought his country’s economy to its knees. Electricity is scarce. From
space, North Korea is a black hole between the shining lights of South Korea and
China. One sure thing about Kim Jong-Un is that he is ruthless and his ability to
wreak harm, not only to the United States but also to South Korea and the world,
should not be underestimated. He knows quite well that nuclear weapons are the
only guarantee for his rule. He will press the button on these dangerous weapons
when he thinks his rule and his dynasty are threatened. He knows that if he loses
the power, then it is his last day, so he may do anything, even attack Los Angeles,
because once people know that in any way they will be killed then they will do
anything. That is a human being’s normal reaction. While Kim Jong-Un already
 The Korean Wave as a powerful agent 65
has the tools to destroy South Korea, he also believes that it is necessary to drive
American forces out of the Korean peninsula and this can be done by being able to
credibly threaten the continental US with nuclear weapons. On top of thousands
of artillery and missile capabilities, the potential deployment of better nuclear
ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) means the threat is not only towards
South Korea but also towards the US. In case of emergency, we should strengthen
the US and South Korea alliance and enhance military preparedness. The US and
South Korean governments should strengthen the level of their coordination and
communication under the slogan of “We go together.”
The US government has put severe sanctions to pressure North Korea, but it
will take some time to assess the effectiveness of the economic sanctions and
campaign of diplomatic isolation. We need to examine the impact of the sanc-
tions, as well as the efforts to empower the North Korean people with the truth
about Kim Jong-Un’s brutal human rights abuses. The economic sanctions are so
far not enough to destroy the North Korean system. We have to wait and see how
long the regime can sustain itself as North Korea is already used to the sanctions.
We should continue monitoring the momentum and expand the sanctions until
North Korea truly decides to move towards denuclearization. Vaguely wishing
for a change by the Kim Jong-Un regime cannot affect any change. In November
2017, I told the US Congress: Before any military action is taken, I urged officials
to meet at least once with the North Korean leader to understand his thinking
and try to convince him that his nuclear program is risking mass destruction if he
continues his direction.
During my 2017 speech before US lawmakers, I also recommended that the
US expand its use of soft power in an effort to ultimately convince Kim that his
nuclear goal is unattainable but also offer a path forward that does not result in a
massive loss of life. We cannot change the policy of terror of the Kim Jong-Un
regime, but we can educate the North Korean population to stand up by dissemi-
nating outside information. Some people do not believe in soft power and only
in military action, but it is necessary to reconsider whether we have tried all non-
military options, before we decide that military action against North Korea is all
that is left. The US is spending billions of dollars to cope with the military threat
and yet, unfortunately, only a tiny fraction the US spends each year on informa-
tion activities involves North Korea. Even though the US has tried to ramp up
diplomatic and economic pressure on the North Korean leadership through addi-
tional sanctions and tough rhetoric, those efforts have done little to slow down
the development of a reliable nuclear-tipped long range ballistic missile. The
US could touch “the Achilles Heel of Kim Jong-Un” by tapping into the societal
shift within the North Korean population with a targeted information campaign
that disseminates basic concepts of freedom and human rights. By strategically
producing and distributing tailor-made content that challenges the North Korean
population to critically analyze their own living conditions, the US could counter
the Kim regime’s brainwashing operation over the long term, a move that could
foster domestic dissatisfaction that may eventually help drive Kim towards a
willingness to compromise.
66 Thae Yong-Ho
There are tremendous changes taking place inside North Korea in spite of the
reign of terror. If we are determined to use and expand our soft power, one day
we can reach the same goal achieved with the former Soviet Union and former
European socialist countries. We now know that the communist system of the
Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries crumbled as a result of dis-
semination of outside information and the subsequent changes in thinking among
the people within the system. Indeed, the Berlin Wall would not have easily col-
lapsed if East German people had not regularly watched West German TV. Much
more needs to be done to increase the flow of information towards North Korea.
German unification could not have been achieved if the Hungarian govern-
ment had not opened its border with Austria to provide an exit route for the East
German people. Now, over 30,000 North Korean defectors have come to South
Korea. In China, however, tens of thousands of North Korean defectors are living
without papers and are being physically or sexually exploited. While the US has
urged China and Russia to support more economic sanctions, it should also do
more to stop sending defectors back to North Korea. The Chinese government has
built up the expansive network of catching North Korean defectors along its bor-
ders. If North Korean defectors are caught, they could immediately be repatriated.
The Chinese borders have built more fences and more riverbanks to prevent the
vast exodus of the North Korean population. The Chinese government is saying
that they are very much concerned with any possible refugee crisis if the North
Korean system collapses. However, North Korean defectors have a place to go,
South Korea, once they arrive in China. There is the government of South Korea,
which is ready to accommodate North Korean defectors. Thus, we should ask the
Chinese government to establish a path for the defectors for a temporary stay and
continuation of their journey to South Korea, as an international obligation.
My appeal for non-violent measures, maximum engagement with the North
Korean people, the power of micro SD cards and USBs, and smuggling of South
Korean culture may sound optimistic and naïve in light of the unpredictable
process on the Korean peninsula. However, the most elite of recent defectors
including myself confirm that this area is the weakest spot in the Kim regime.
Moreover, most of the people around the world who are concerned about North
Korea issues prefer a diplomatic and peaceful solution to the current predica-
ment. It would be at least worth taking a look at past methods of engagement with
North Korea, weighing the non-military options, and then pondering whether past
efforts can really be considered less effective compared to the military confronta-
tion under consideration.
Acknowledgment: The preparation of this chapter was assisted by Hanna Kim,
a research student in the School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, Paris.
3 Popular culture in transitional
societies
An Eastern European perspective
Nikolay Anguelov

Soft power of culture behind the Iron Curtain

Throughout its history, Communism has relied on tight censorship, allowing
only the dissemination of information that strengthens the proclaimed ruling
legitimacy of “The Party.” Today in North Korea, that legacy endures as the
regime goes to great lengths to limit all foreign media content (Greitens 2013).
However, as advanced technological products proliferate even the most restricted
of North Korean media markets, increasing numbers of North Koreans gain
access to modern telecommunication technology and media culture (Boynton
2011; Kretchun and Kim 2012; Baek 2017; Kretchun et al. 2017). It is estimated
that over 3 million citizens use mobile devices and Internet access is available to
government officials, elites and North Koreans working abroad (Yamada 2017).
North Koreans are able to find ways of accessing the foreign media via the tech-
nological capabilities of new digital platforms, creating increasing challenges
for the regime’s defense of its legitimacy (Lerner 2015; Holt and Smith 2017).
In North Korea, foreign entertainment programs, especially South Korean TV
dramas, films, and music are growing in popularity, spreading through the coun-
try in “the shadow economy” (Dukalskis 2016). It is an illicit trade and exchange
system of smuggled content, based on bribing and evading the authorities, similar
to that of the Cold War decades in the rest of the Communist world. Both dur-
ing the Cold War years, and in today’s North Korea, the illicit spread of foreign
entertainment is an example of soft power potential. The emergence of informal
market structures that challenge government censorship in order to bring forbid-
den media content shows a way of “winning the hearts and minds of people”
(Nye 1990) through the power of entertainment. Political analysts and historians
have linked the illegal market system of Western entertainment products to the
wave of change that led to the domino-like crumbling of the totalitarian regimes
in Eastern Europe in 1989 (Wagnleitner 1994; Drakulic 1997; Mattelart 1999;
Drakulic 2016). I can attest to the veracity of the link because I lived through
the transition as a teenager, experiencing an emancipation of coming of age not
just in the reality of a “shadow economy,” but also a “shadow culture.” Through
my childhood my cultural identity was shaped by foreign entertainment content.
American music, films and comics, British books and French cartoons were not
foreign to me. They had gradually become a part of my own culture.
68 Nikolay Anguelov
Now a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
in the USA, I grew up in Bulgaria during the last decades of Communism. On
10 November 1989, a day after the world watched the jubilant crowds in Germany
dismantle the Berlin Wall, the regime crumbled in Bulgaria. I was 14 years old.
Now, almost 30 years after that night, a moment of it is emblazoned in my mind,
clearer than most memories. I returned from school at the time the nightly news
was on. We went to school in shifts; first shift from 8 am to 1 pm, second shift from
1:30 pm to 7:30 pm to accommodate the general lack of adequate school space.
That semester I was on second shift in my first year of high school. I remember
walking into our apartment to find my mother hunched on a stool, staring at our
small, black and white television set showing the demonstrations on the streets of
Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital city. My mother did not move at my entrance; her face
tense, eyes glued to the screen. That television screen was showing more than just
demonstrations. It was showing that media control had allowed the broadcasts.
Either the government was overthrown or it had made a conscious choice to broad-
cast the demonstrations. It was not clear at the time which had occurred. All we
knew that night was that the broadcast signaled a change in the very nature of the
regime because media control was its defining mechanism.
All citizens living in the former Eastern Bloc were aware of the profound
media censorship and this awareness had created a culture of distrust in the offi-
cial media. This distrust shaped our limited knowledge of the world outside of our
borders because in the 1980s, as technology was changing even behind the Iron
Curtain, new platforms were exposing us to foreign content. We sought foreign
content with a fervor fueled by our culture of distrust, yearning to learn, see and
feel more of what life was like beyond the confines of our national boundaries.
Through a “shadow economy” of the time, Western entertainment programming
was showing evidence of a better life outside the Communist world. Understanding
and analyzing how the culture of media distrust had grown in Eastern Europe is
not simple. It was, however, obviously normalized in Bulgaria in the 1980s, as
evidenced by the behavior of citizens. We watched our parents – the Eastern Bloc
version of the hippie generation – who sang Beatles songs, dressed in “Western”
fashions, climbed the social ladder of “intelligentsia” and taught us to celebrate
popular culture, music, and modernity. Yet, the regime continued to remain
focused on the past. Our media mostly showed programming that glorified a past
of strife and heroism, of folklore and ethnic struggle for survival against foreign
aggression, and most importantly, of victory against foreign oppression.
To us Bulgarians, history and patriotism were presented synonymously in end-
less speeches, manifestations, parades and hours of television and radio programs.
The problem was that to us they were boring. They were probably even more so
to our parents who were growing up in the tightest decades of Cold War isolation.
Hours of propaganda for entertainment in a life of general poverty, grayness, and
hard work, does little to entertain. Therefore, both our parents’ and our generations
grew up starving not just for a good quality of life in material terms, but for fun.
In the 1980s, and perhaps earlier, in Eastern Europe “fun” had become synony-
mous with Western (mostly American) popular culture. It seeped through the Iron
 Popular culture in transitional societies 69
Curtain via a growing number and variety of cultural exchanges with the West
(Richmond 2010), or through more open and permissive Communist governments,
such as Yugoslavia’s, which had legal markets for Western entertainment products
(Drakulic 2016). In the rest of the Eastern Bloc, products of Western entertainment
industries were increasingly, yet selectively, imported by the various governments
with the main purpose to show that the workers’ struggle was alive and real in the
capitalist world. Selected films, television programs, and music were allowed and
marketed to show social and racial injustice and the oppression of the working
class in the Western world. Despite the messages of injustice in those programs, it
was plain to see that even those most oppressed in the capitalist world had higher
standards of living than people in Eastern Europe. Eastern European audiences
yearned to learn more about the nature of this paradox.
Gradually, a well-managed black market for illegal Western cultural content
swept the Eastern Bloc. The most coveted media became VCR tapes of American
music videos, Hollywood blockbusters, American sitcoms, and classic cartoons.
The outcome of this “illegal” commerce appeared, most naturally, in the homes of
those who could afford it. Under those circumstances, the concept of affordability
was less about the value of money, although that was a major factor as such prod-
ucts were expensive, and more about privilege. All video equipment, most color
television sets, and many of the audio sound systems had no Eastern Bloc product
substitutes and were only available in their original Western brands through a
few duty-free shops in major cities. Those shops retailed products in Western
currency, which was highly regulated. Only a few citizens were allowed to pos-
sess it if they were involved in legal international work. When in a community
the rumor spread that some households had acquired a “video” (meaning a VCR
and an assortment of tapes) it became a social occasion to vie for an invitation not
to dinner, but to “watch the video.” Consequently, those households became the
cores of community social circles. The paradox is that they were, at large, in the
homes of the political elites. The very families of Communist Party apparatchiks
had unintentionally, or intentionally, become the disseminators of evidence of a
better life behind the Iron Curtain.
Why the regime did not stop this diffusion could be the function of two factors.
One is that its members were the offenders themselves, using their special position
that had allowed them the privilege and wealth to acquire the “video.” They were
also behind the black-market commerce, profiting from what, in effect, is now
known as copyright piracy. The other factor is the fact that it was unparalleled fun
and fun builds social status. This status created a new class with wealth that was
not based on money, or at least not in the same way one thinks of wealth inequality
today, but on sophistication and worldliness. It was a cultural status of emulating
the lifestyles and manners portrayed by the characters in Western programming.
This emulation left the confines of the illegal “video” trade and entered the main-
stream media. On holidays children’s programs started to include Looney Toon
and French cartoons. Saturday morning variety shows started to include “aero-
bics” and wellness segments, showing a lifestyle with the sound track of American
pop music and the image of Western 1980s active fashions. Western miniseries
70 Nikolay Anguelov
appeared on night time TV to such acclaim that it is now a popular platitude to
say that when The Thorn Birds were on in Bulgaria, “the streets were dead.” Such
serials were shown at 8:30 pm, after the Evening News, on the only TV channel
available. Culturally that was a communal time of day. If the weather allowed,
Bulgarians would go out after dinner, sit in groups in cafés, yards, and community
spaces, for an hour or two of being with friends. For centuries, the after-dinner
gathering had been a unique local method of community building as a legacy of
the nation’s agrarian past when, during such times, people would help each other
with light workloads that could be shared. When Western television programs
arrived in Bulgaria in the late 1980s they disrupted the tradition as few could resist
their seductiveness.
This dynamic was occurring in different ways throughout the Eastern Bloc.
In her much-acclaimed memoire Café Europa: Life After Communism, Drakulic
(1997) explains how the different degrees of openness and acceptance of “Western
content” in entertainment, fashion, and products in her native Yugoslavia made
Yugoslavs feel superior to other Eastern Europeans, meaning more enlightened,
progressive and modern. The author describes how in the rest of Eastern Europe,
vacations in Yugoslavia became sourcing trips for Western traditional and enter-
tainment products. With the acquisition of such products came knowledge of a
lifestyle of political freedom, gender equality, sexual freedom, and racial and ethnic
diversity – all concepts traditionally not addressed behind the Iron Curtain. Such
social messages were disseminated in the lyrics of songs, the storylines of films
and television serials, and Western advertising campaigns. What was increasing
the power of the growth of Western entertainment products was technology. Audio
and video tapes could be copied easily and this capacity increased the mobility
with which ordinary citizens could spread content by sharing, without a formal
marketplace. The most popular programming showed the advances of Western
technology. Special effects and production innovation dazzled Eastern European
audiences with unmatched quality. In addition, the themes in film and television
show storylines celebrated human connections in universal ways. This amalgam of
emotion and higher quality fun made it irresistible.
The soft power of Western entertainment products lay in the fact that they had
happy endings. They provided citizens behind the Iron Curtain with hopes and
dreams of greater happiness with examples that it was possible in a system of
freedom and openness. Foreign media culture showed not only richer realities with
bigger and more luxurious homes, cars, and fashions, but also personal stories
filled with hope, triumph, and happiness. In contrast, Eastern European cultural
legacy under Communism had grown to prioritize self-sacrifice rather than self-
indulgence. The soft power of cultural attraction lies in the ability to influence
people’s way of thinking about social issues. For Eastern Europeans, the Western
focus on happiness was the core cultural difference shown by foreign entertain-
ment programs. They offered evidence of hope for a better life and an emotional
escapism mechanism from the harsh daily reality of Communist life.
Analyst of Communist and post-Communist transitions, Drakulic (1997,
2016) explains how scarcity defined not just the poor quality of life behind the
 Popular culture in transitional societies 71
Iron Curtain, but also cultural dynamics. In How We Survived Communism and
Even Laughed, Drakulic (2016) shares that after years of giving talks based on
her early works, explaining the cultural dynamics in her native Yugoslavia and
their impact on the end of the regime with a focus on institutionalized gender
inequality, she came up with an opening demonstration at her invited speaking
engagements. She would hold a female sanitary napkin up to the audience and
boldly state that Communism ended because the regime did not bother to provide
such a product to its women. That one example captures perfectly what citizens in
the Communist world learned from the Western media that was most appealing.
It was the consumption of novel Western products and technologies, their design
and appealing advertising. Behind the Iron Curtain there was no such concept as
advertising and consumer culture. There was no market competition in centrally
planned economies and therefore, there was little to no incentive for product devel-
opment and innovation. From apparel to the packaging of everyday products, this
lack of competitive branding resulted in a general lack of appeal in design, mak-
ing local products plain, often defective, and most importantly, scarce. Western
entertainment programming showed an abundance of exotic goods. From sanitary
napkins to sneakers to blue jeans and other such foreign garments as sweatshirts,
which were so unique in design to Bulgarians that we took their American name –
sweatshirts we called “swichers” – we wanted those products. We wanted a future
in which we could have them, not a future in which the government decided we
did not deserve them.

Cultural convergence in the digital age

Diplomats, academics, cultural and business experts noticed this link between com-
merce and culture in the transitional years after the end of the Cold War (Kostera
1995; Durvasula et al. 1997; Supphellen and Rittenburg 2001; Kaneva 2012).
The end of the Cold War ushered American consumer culture into the Eastern
Bloc (Imre 2009). It was via commerce, and more specifically the introduction
of Western products into Eastern Europe, that the cultures of the two formerly
economically separated blocs connected to a new globalizing marketplace.
The connection was not simply through products but also through information
exchange. The new products came with new information about their features and
importance, increasing and redirecting attention to new customer demographics’
needs and social roles. For example, home products, cosmetics, apparel and pre-
pared foods appealed to women with promise of improving their quality of life.
Advertisers showed messages that placed value on easing female work burdens
and improving health and wellness. The messages extended past product attributes
to gender relations and there is evidence of links between increasing proliferation
of Western product advertising and female emancipation in Eastern Europe and
India (Vida and Fairhurst 1999; Miller and Thorr 2003; Ibroscheva 2007).
The term “cultural convergence” emerged to describe how the promotion of
foreign commercial products leads to a convergence of tastes and preferences
around the globe. The convergence is a result of the promotion of a global
72 Nikolay Anguelov
identity encouraging consumers to value cosmopolitan internationalism which
they strive to build as their distinctive identity through the consumption of well-
known and prestigious global brands (Leung et al. 2005; Jenkins 2006; Özsomer
and Altaras 2008). A positive vein of analysis of the impacts of cultural con-
vergence developed the concepts of “global branding” and “nation branding”
(Anholt 2006, 2007; Kaneva 2011, 2012). The positive outcomes discussed
include increasing the quality of life of citizens around the world through the
international proliferation of product innovation, increasing public–private part-
nerships between firms and governments in social activism, as well as increasing
the incentives of governments to encourage corporate social responsibility.
Negative outcomes, described through the concepts of “cultural imperialism”
and “the neo-liberal agenda,” lament the loss of local cultural legacies from the
Western promotion of consumerism (Tomlinson 1991; Saad-Filho and Johnston
2005; Chen and Morley 2006). In either case, globally core cultural changes
towards convergence result from the fact that consumers use brands to build their
“own cultural capital” (Özsomer and Altaras 2008). It operates through a process
of linking one’s self-identity to a social-identity (Elliott and Wattanasuwan 1998)
as consumers use brands as displays of social symbolism, building their own
self-image to signal a social-identity of global citizenship. Research on consumer
culture recognizes that consumers develop feelings of “social solidarity” based
on common consumption of global brands (Arnould and Thompson 2005).
Cultural convergence has created a world in which similarities in tastes and
preferences have brought people across the globe closer (Pieters 2015). Based
on idea exchange, increasing levels of commonality resulting from cultural con-
vergence have been linked to democratization with the causal factor identified
as the proliferation of information technology (Addison and Heshmati 2003).
Mobile devices, Internet connectivity and social media use have been key factors
in the Arab Spring (Hänska 2016) and anti-authoritarian movements in Russia
(Gainous et al. 2018). Given access to digital technology including the Internet
and mobile phones today, everyone can produce and circulate content, respond
to the content, start imagined communities, and influence communication devel-
opment. Implicitly political messages are transmitted globally through popular
cultural products, contributing to the impetus of convergence not just in tastes
and preferences for product features, but also social values. The global transmis-
sion is a function of economic interconnectedness that is a product of investment
and particularly foreign direct investment. The growth of international invest-
ment has increased the degree of global economic and political commonality
(Gholami et al. 2006).
South Korea has become a global brand leader with well-known companies,
including Samsung, LG, and Hyundai. In urban centers of Asia, specifically
designed for local markets, South Korean products include many more fast-
moving consumer goods such as cosmetics, fashion, and accessories, promoting
not just Korean industrialization, but also Korean taste, aesthetics, art and music
(Park 2011; Walsh 2014). South Korean popular media culture proliferates in a
multifaceted form with the promotion of an integrated, uniquely Korean form of
 Popular culture in transitional societies 73
entertainment called “Hallyu” or the “Korean Wave.” Through digital media plat-
forms, Hallyu is embraced by international consumers with global cultural attitudes
who drive its popularity through user-generated content. International consumers
have formed strong attachment to Hallyu as a cultural brand (Walsh 2014). The
popularity of South Korean cultural products increases the economic power of the
nation and defines its diplomatic clout. Such an effect is the ultimate goal of nation
branding. Nation branding makes the distinct connection between diplomacy and
the promotion of multinational brands (Anholt 2007). It is more than international
awareness of Italian food, Indian yoga, or Belgian chocolate. Nation branding
takes the impact of the international success of cultural exports and levies it on the
image and reputation of a nation’s government. The intertwined notions of cultural
convergence, global brand proliferation, and nation branding help understand the
success and the soft power potential of Hallyu in the digital age. The digital media
increase the freedom of expression in all possible forms from political voice to
commercial interaction to cultural exchange. Targeting an increase in such cultural
exchange, today the South Korean government has engaged in an official policy
to deploy Hallyu as a diplomatic tool towards international communities including
North Korea. This may be a unique example of modern government use of popular
culture as an ideological weapon.

Hallyu and North Korean experience

Hallyu is about to swamp the North Korean society; it is reaching more and more
North Korean citizens and particularly proliferating fastest on college campuses
and rural villages where evading the authorities is relatively easier (Park 2009;
Kang 2011). Hallyu content becomes more accessible as media commerce grows
in North Korea as a function of the North Korea/China economic relationship
(Boynton 2011). As Chinese citizens increase their wealth, they trade in old media
technologies, such as video recorders and outdated computers, and these trade-
in goods are sold in North Korea. As more North Koreans get access to media
devices, a commerce of entertainment programming grows with Hallyu content
gaining impetus despite being officially banned. According to survey results
from 2009, half of North Koreans listened to South Korean pop music known as
K-pop on cassette recorders with radio access, and around a third of the popula-
tion watched South Korean TV programs on video recorders and DVDs (Boynton
2011). In a more recent recount of the proliferation of Hallyu, the types of devices
used by North Koreans include MP3 players, USB drives, and SD cards, and an
especially popular device is a portable media player called Notetel, made in China
(Kim 2016). Examples from interviews of North Korean teenagers explain how
they gather in secret to listen to K-pop in impromptu dance parties, coyly admitting
that they are not sure they are using the right dance moves, but they dance all the
same (Baek 2017).
What stands out in such reports is the strong similarity with the reality of my child-
hood in 1980s Bulgaria. As teenagers, that is exactly how we listened to American
pop and rock music and watched Hollywood films. It happened in small groups in
74 Nikolay Anguelov
someone’s home who had acquired a new tape or a film. Those that could, meaning
possessed cassette players, made copies of their own. Music was easiest to replicate
and, therefore, most accessible. I received my first Walkman as a New Year’s gift
in 1988 when I was 13 years old with an assortment of tapes of American pop song
classics, which my father’s colleague had compiled for me. I remember being one of
the last among my friends to be given this most coveted of presents. The Walkman
was legally sold in Bulgaria, as were the cassettes, but not the music which they con-
tained. The same market dynamic is reflected in today’s North Korea with examples
of shops in Pyongyang that sell blank DVDs and CDs (Hajek 2017). They are sold
for the purpose of copying legal content. However, their demand grows because
they are blank and are intended for the dissemination of illegal content such as South
Korean popular culture. Legal content, after all, is readily available, not to men-
tion compulsory. These works narrate mirror-like reality in North Korea today to
the reality of my childhood in Bulgaria almost 30 years ago where technology was
legally proliferating while content remained highly censored.
Interview stories of North Korean defectors and their recounts of Hallyu access
explain that they watched South Korean TV dramas mostly and listened to K-pop
music in communal settings (Hsu 2012). TV programming would be watched
with family and trusted friends rather than alone and music listening gatherings
would also happen in private homes with the volume turned down low. As foreign
media content use grows in North Korea, citizens are becoming more open about
accessing it (Haggard and Noland 2010). Even with increasing boldness, North
Koreans remain cautious about being reported for illegal Hallyu access, which
can occur when disagreements or personal dislikes with neighbors or acquaint-
ances become problematic. Therefore, North Koreans prefer to buy or borrow
Hallyu DVDs and USB memory sticks from family and close friends (Hsu 2012;
Baek 2017). Even though there is a thriving black market, some citizens are wary
and prefer second-hand exchanges with people they trust.
Two features in existing research on Hallyu and themes in defector inter-
views can be noted. The first is that, much as was the case in Eastern Europe
in my childhood, the shadow Hallyu commerce is illegally managed by corrupt
North Korean authorities (Baek 2017). The second is that the South Korean
government has promoted the dissemination, increasing radio and television
signals around the border and even setting up giant screens with loudspeakers
playing K-pop videos (Greene 2016). The strategy has impacted international
diplomacy, eliciting an official response from China – North Korea’s main
international ally. Over 90% of North Korean economic output depends on trade
with China and on official North–South Korea pontifications; China’s input is
seen as a key diplomatic component. For China, stability of the North Korean
regime is a main goal and China does not want to see a unified Korea (Kazianis
2017). It would be a major power in Northeast Asia that would become a pivotal
American stronghold as unification would happen with military aid and con-
trol by a US-backed, and possibly financed, South Korean absorption. Another
reason is the potential arrival of millions of refugees in both China and South
Korea. Therefore, China has a strong incentive to protect the North Korean
 Popular culture in transitional societies 75
regime and by definition, Hallyu is an existential threat to the legitimacy of state
propaganda as it challenges the regime’s lies about life outside North Korea.
Recounts of North Korean defectors increasingly discuss the role Hallyu has played
in their resolve to escape and seek the better life they see portrayed in South Korean
programming. An increasing number of the defectors are women, and they share sto-
ries of their marginalized lives as North Korean females when exposed to the lifestyle
and stories of the South Korean women in Hallyu media culture (Maresca 2017). Most
popular of the illegal Hallyu programs are glamorized female-themed soap operas
called K-dramas, wherein women are the heroines with storylines of emancipation,
female empowerment, and financial independence and success. North Korea’s high-
est profile defector Thae Yong-Ho, who was a diplomat in London, posits that the
North Korean regime’s system of control on Hallyu content is deteriorating because
of corruption, as a function of the growing black market for Hallyu, and also because
of spreading discontent among ordinary citizens about restricted Internet and mobile
phone service access (Choe 2017). The former diplomat argues that the best way to
deal with North Korea is to continue increasing the dissemination of outside culture
and information in order to help ordinary citizens eventually rebel.
Given the attention the illegal consumption of Hallyu is getting in the world
press, accounts emerge on how the North Korean government is dealing with the
proliferation. In April 2016, ten cadres were reportedly executed for having watched
a popular South Korean TV drama serial illegally (Yong 2016). Cadre is a term
used to describe members of the political and social elites in Communist countries.
They are ranking party members with positions of authority in either military or
civil service. Executing cadres is a strong demonstration of power and punishment
for treason. Public execution of those branded as traitors are a staple in the fear
tactics used by the regime. All citizens, including school-age children, are forced
to watch (Smith 2017). The regime has re-defined a penal code for “decadent act”
to include watching and listening to any foreign media programming that shows
capitalist culture (Kim 2017). First amended in 2015, the act focused mainly on
Hallyu content. In 2017, it was expanded to include Chinese programs as well, with
penalties increasing to 10 years of hard labor or execution. In the words of defec-
tors, the regime is exercising much tighter control over foreign media content than
it did a decade ago. Police squadrons called “groups” are strengthened under Kim
Jong-Un. Specifically, “groups” 109 and 118 powers have been expanded to raid
homes and check cell phones and file histories of all devices, including media play-
ers (Kretchun et al. 2017). It is evident that Kim Jong-Un is becoming desperate to
maintain control over the growing infiltration of the foreign media into North Korea
(Holt and Smith 2017). These examples may signal a reversal of the earlier reports
on the ways the North Korean government tolerates Hallyu, which indicate increas-
ing leniency, mainly due to the fact that it is most popular with government elites.
There is a hierarchical structure of permissiveness and the higher up in the political
hierarchy one is, the more access that person has to Hallyu content (Hwang 2012). It
is also the members of that hierarchy that are bribed and fuel the shadow economy in
a classic economic platform of rent-seeking behavior, where all tiers of government
agencies are involved in extracting illegal profits (Corrado 2017).
76 Nikolay Anguelov
Hallyu’s smuggling in North Korea mirrors the reality of the illegal “video”
commerce of Communist Eastern Europe with the main difference that today in
North Korea content is much easier to transport on DVDs, CDs, SD cards, and
USB memory sticks. The storage capacity of modern mobile electronics also
allows for more and more varied content than the audio cassettes and VHS tapes
of my childhood in Bulgaria. Higher variety of programming reaches different
segments of the population. A survey of 350 defectors and 34 qualitative inter-
views, specifically asking questions about the type of Hallyu content respondents
enjoyed, offers information about the demographics of the surveyed; they vary
in age, education, and occupation and there are differences in the accounts of
what programs they preferred (Kretchun et al. 2017). The implication is that there
is a tiered targeted market of content distribution, reaching a variety of North
Koreans. This is another difference between the shadow economy of foreign
entertainment products behind the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe in the 1980s
and today’s North Korea. Back then it was mainly music, music videos, films and
cartoons that would appeal to young people. The films were mainly action block-
busters favored by men and boys. The target demographic was male. In contrast,
the accounts from North Korea today stress its popularity among women and the
growing interest in female emancipation-themed contents.
The points of teenagers gathering in homes to secretly dance to K-pop, of cult-
like fanships of television serials, and of the underground commerce supplying
Hallyu content to North Koreans (Baek 2017) mirror not just my memories in
Bulgaria but also cross-cultural communications and soft power of popular cul-
ture dynamics in authoritarian nations (Schlesinger 1993; Nye 2004; Hafez 2005).
The unifying challenges are misunderstanding, message distortion, and absorptive
capacity limitations due to language barriers. During my childhood, not many
people behind the Iron Curtain spoke the languages in which soft power cultural
content was broadcasted. Those that did speak the languages commercialized
their knowledge into translation services. The problem was that often this process
changed the meaning of the content and seldom captured the nuances of cultural
symbolism in satire and political undertones. In addition, the translators used their
own tastes and preferences when making selections on what content to actually
commercialize illegally. Young people in particular, while being most impression-
able and eager to learn about life behind the Iron Curtain, had to rely on others’
input when consuming Western cultural content. Those were people with higher
knowledge of American, British, German, or French language and culture. The
translators used that knowledge to position the content in historical and political
contexts, interpreting not just the plots and storylines of films and serials, but also
the social messaging of the content.
In contrast, in terms of Hallyu content’s proliferation in North Korea at pre-
sent, relatively there are no such significant barriers. For North Koreans, Hallyu is
not so dramatically foreign but somehow familiarly Korean. Its global popularity
may be fueled by cultural convergence, but inside North Korea its appeal grows
on the foundations of an ethnic link. It is something that the people of North Korea
can possibly relate to as their own as it is based on their own shared language,
 Popular culture in transitional societies 77
cultural legacy, history, and virtues. Some North Korean defectors including Thae
Yong-Ho believe that Hallyu can potentially bring about major political changes
inside North Korea as more and more North Koreans come to doubt the regime’s
propaganda system because of the growing influence of Hallyu. Mr. Thae draws
parallel comparisons with the current situation inside North Korea and the changes
in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s:

Once the people do not believe in what the leadership is saying, then there is
a great possibility for possible uprising – what happened in the Soviet Union,
what happened in the Communist system in Eastern Europe . . . Because when
the people in those Eastern European countries knew that Western Europe was
much better than Eastern Europe and that democratic society was much bet-
ter than Communist society and the one-party system – all of a sudden people
stood up against the system . . . These things could also happen in North Korea.
(Holt and Smith 2017)

The changes in Eastern Europe occurred as a function of power struggles among

senior politicians for succession of an aging Communist Party leadership; criti-
cal mass in revolt did not come from ordinary citizens but from key government
players (Munck and Leff 1997; Pridham and Vanhanen 2002). Hallyu’s popular-
ity among North Korean government elites as well as ordinary people is growing.
It is this growth that may have significant soft power implications. Based on the
idea of soft power as “winning the hearts and minds of the people” (Nye 1990),
one can ask: Does Hallyu’s embrace by North Korean politicians signal such a
win? Can its popularity shake the loyalty foundation of North Korean govern-
ance? A main lesson from the Eastern European transitions is that they occurred
with support from key echelons of political and army elites. Therefore, the evi-
dence that defiance of Kim Jong-Un’s control of the foreign media is increasing
among government officials as well as ordinary North Koreans is very hopeful.
It is unclear whether this defiance is a signal of a broader discontent movement
that can develop into a viable local political opposition. Still, it is encouraging to
see the popularity of Hallyu as a cultural connection that keeps increasing outside
the scope of formal governance. The essence of soft power is to build common-
alities in social values through closer cultural connections. To that effect, Hallyu
is helping show North Koreans the benefits of a social system of freedom and
democracy with examples of a better life in South Korea.

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Part II

Circulation of meaning
4 Black markets, red states
Media piracy in China and the Korean
Wave in North Korea
Weiqi Zhang and Micky Lee

This chapter explores the complex interplay between culture, informal economy,
technology and politics about the (re)production, distribution and consumption of
the Korean Wave in North Korea. The lack of empirical research data from North
Korea can be compensated by a comparison between today’s North Korea and
China in the 1970s and 1980s. Existing studies about China, particularly about
its media piracy, can shed light on potential change in North Korea if there is
economic reform and growth of black markets. The Korean Wave in North Korea
is not just an interaction between South Korea and North Korea, but importantly
it is also intermediated by China. Chinese cities serve as transit ports for foreign
visitors, capital and goods to North Korea. Chinese-Koreans enter North Korea
to trade, and those living in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture act as
communication channels between China and the two Koreas. China originates
broadcast and mobile phone signals which North Koreans pick up across the
border. Significantly, China has a vibrant market for pirated media culture and
affordable low-end electronic goods.
The case of media piracy in China serves as a useful comparison because
China was closed off to the rest of the world from 1949 to 1976. During the
Mao era, the state limited information flow and banned foreign media culture.
In addition, most Chinese citizens at that time could not afford media technolo-
gies such as television sets. Since Deng Xiaoping commenced economic reform
in 1978, China has undergone dramatic political, economic and cultural change.
Media technologies including television, computer and smartphone are staples
of today’s middle-class in urban areas. However, the state has yet to relax regu-
lations of all media industries; foreign firms cannot own the media unless they
collaborate with local partners, and the state sets film quota for foreign mov-
ies. The popular demand for foreign media culture has led to flourishing black
markets of pirated foreign media.
Media piracy in China indicates how the intertwined relationship between politics,
the informal economy, technology, and culture has implications on the study of the
Korean Wave in North Korea. Today’s globalization is a complex process whereby
goods, information, people, money, communication, fashion and other forms of
culture move across national boundaries (Eitzen and Zinn 2012). This complexity
assumes that culture could influence changes in laws and regulations in closed nations
84 Weiqi Zhang and Micky Lee
via technology and the informal economy. A growing interest in illicit foreign media,
such as the Korean Wave in North Korea, creates the informal economy of media
goods and technology, which may provoke the state to react in two ways – cracking
down on the black market if the informal economy makes its citizens question the
non-market ideology, or implicitly tolerating it if the informal economy is able to
reduce the citizens’ grievance towards the state and weaken their will to revolt. This
chapter comparatively explores these intertwined issues by examining the cases of
mainland China and North Korea.

Media piracy and informal economy in China

China in the 1970s was at a historical turning point. After decades of political
turmoil and economic stagnation, the young Deng Xiaoping leadership shifted
priority from revolution to economic development via liberalization. In the
pre-economic reform era, the Chinese government saw the media as a political
tool to propagate state ideology, spread information and educate the masses.
The Chinese media were exclusively state-owned. The transition in China was
marked by the rise of the informal economy and pirated foreign media culture. At
the beginning, numerous unlicensed small- and micro-businesses compensated
the inefficient public sector by supplementing media goods that were desired by
consumers, such as TV shows from Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan. In Deng’s
era, economic liberalization brought along the “cultural system reform” which
first liberalized the book industry in 1982, newspapers and magazines in 1992,
and television production in 2003. However, all TV stations and radio stations
still remain state-owned. The Chinese government acknowledges the economic
value of media goods by first referring to them as “cultural system” in 1988,
then “cultural market,” “cultural economy” and “cultural industry” in 1992.
The government issued the Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China in
1991 to protect its cultural industry. Article 46 of the law states that anyone who
infringes copyrights bears civil liability and will be required to make a public
apology, pay compensation for damages, administrative fine, or confiscation of
unlawful income from the infringement. The legal protection of copyright also
extends to international media goods.
The international community often calls out China as a chief offender in violating
copyright laws. One explanation is that historically the Chinese media industry did
not provide diverse content to fulfil people’s needs. A few films produced during the
Cultural Revolution could not satisfy audiences’ demand (Gao 2014). Even when
foreign films began to be imported, there was a one-year gap in the distribution
domain, and therefore Chinese consumers turned to the black market to satisfy their
needs. Another explanation for the pervasive copyright violation in China is the
complicated steps to prosecute. Although the Chinese authorities sometimes pro-
actively inspect the black market to stamp out pornographic material and illegal
activities that endanger the formal economy, they usually adhere to the principle
of “no trial without complaint”; if domestic or foreign copyright holders do not file
cases, the government does not enforce the law. Yet importantly, another explanation
 Black markets, red states 85
for the pervasive copyright violation is the state’s tolerance of the informal economy
as a political strategy because a growing informal economy promotes a free mar-
ket, internationalization and the nation’s economic growth (Chan and Qiu 2002;
Alexander 2005; Pinheiro-Machado 2012). An expansion of the informal economy
can also reduce the grievance of citizens who rely on such income to make a living.
At a local level, some officials tolerate piracy because pirates regularly give gifts or
bribes to establish personal relationships (Pinheiro-Machado 2012).
China’s informal economy employs the largest non-agricultural population in
developing countries (Huang 2009). A significant number of people participate in
the informal economy, given that 80–90% of software and media goods in China
are illegally reproduced (Pang 2006). Even though the black market is often seen
as disorganized, the Chinese one is highly developed and responds to consumers’
needs better than the formal economy. On the demand side, consumers play a
key role in supporting the informal economy as they prefer pirated media goods
for the low cost. The cost of watching movies in theatres still remains prohibitive
to most Chinese despite an increase of “official” films (Ent Group 2011). Media
goods from the United States and East Asian countries are the most sought after
(Pang 2006). Media piracy can also be a political expression. Some believe that
pirates and consumers stand together to resist the state and global capitalism,
while others believe that consumers unintentionally resist global and national
hegemony by reproducing copyrighted goods (Zhang 2008). Regardless of the
motives, the pirated media give Chinese people access to new ideas and cultures
that are restricted by the government. Piracy makes the worker identity fluid;
unlike workers in the formal economy, those in the informal economy do not
enjoy job security, work benefits or labor law protection, but it is a viable, if not
the only, means for the unemployed to make a living. It may be an irony that some
laid-off state employees make money by engaging in media piracy (Pang 2006).
Digital technologies have shifted media consumption from the public to the
private realm. In the 1980s, VHS tapes and color television were unaffordable,
so illegal movie theatres played pirated foreign movies to satisfy people’s needs.
As more people owned VHS and DVD players, the consumption site moved to a
private space. The proliferation of VCDs and DVDs spread piracy as domestic
firms manufactured electronic devices that could also be used to duplicate media
goods. These new technologies have been feeding a voracious appetite for the
pirated media, especially among the older generations who were not computer-
savvy. For the younger generation, BitTorrent, online sharing and video streaming
significantly cost and thus changed the piracy business model. Pirates’ business
responded to consumers’ habits, and shifted the site of operation from selling
physical media goods on the street to sharing them on the Internet. They even
offer contents for free so that hosting websites and pirates can both profit from
advertising revenue (Zhang 2008). Rapid technological development challenges
government officials who do not have expertise in the new technologies or the
means to regulate them. For example, the introduction of CDs and encrypted
computer drives to China in the mid-1990s made duplication, distribution and con-
cealment of the pirated media much easier than VHS. However, simply because
86 Weiqi Zhang and Micky Lee
the government did not have the technological know-how to effectively inspect
the devices, it banned all entertainment businesses from using these technologies
until the government caught up with them (Ministry of Culture of China 1996).
It should be recognized that the development of piracy technology is not linear
as pirates respond quickly to the changes in the market and government policies.
When the government begins cracking down on online piracy, street vendors
would re-emerge to sell physical pirated media goods (Zhao and Keane 2013).
Pirated foreign media goods influence local media content. The “contempo-
rary pop culture” TV genre in state-owned television stations follows East Asian
television dramas that reflect “urban culture” (Keane 2005). The pirated media
from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s showed
mainland Chinese a prosperous life. As a consequence, many adopted foreign cul-
ture such as speaking with a Hong Kong or Taiwanese accent, using Cantonese or
English terms in conversations, or seeking a Western lifestyle. The pirated foreign
media also provided information that motivated the people to question or even resist
government propaganda via an alternative vision of free market, competition and
democracy. TV shows and films in the 1980s introduced to mainland Chinese novel
financial instruments, such as the stock market and international trade. Importantly,
the pirated foreign media change consumers’ identity because piracy is a dialectical
process of identification; on one hand, audiences are subject to the identity transfor-
mation influenced by foreign culture, and on the other hand, they can actively select
which part of the foreign culture and negotiate what aspects of modernity to indulge
in (Gao 2014). Piracy itself forms an underground subculture as copyright laws can
neither decide how foreign culture affects the society nor determine how people feel
about the state control imposed on them (Pang 2006). Unlike the public practice
of watching state-approved film in a theatre, watching pirated media constitutes a
private practice in which audiences experience the outside world through film – a
mediated activity belonging to individual time and space (Pang 2006). In a sense,
piracy subculture promotes a democratic viewing practice.
The development of pirated media culture in China shows that political, eco-
nomic and cultural domains come into play to create a new milieu in which the
pirated foreign media significantly transform the people and the society. Although
the state has laws to protect copyright and occasionally cracks down on media
piracy, the state tolerates the black market for the sake of economic prosperity
and political stability. Technological development effectively facilitates media
piracy as the new technologies enable people to evade government control and
construct an underground subculture. The present and possible future of the North
Korean media landscape can be speculated from the case of China. North Korea
today and China during the early stages of reform share two similarities, at least.
First, the two countries are totalitarian and socialist; neither state officially allows
the citizens to consume, share, or own foreign media cultural goods. Both coun-
tries advocate a centrally controlled, self-reliant economy, and culturally adhere
to the Confucian principles dictating that the ruled submit to the rulers. Second,
North Korea today is at a historical turning point, like China in the 1970s. The Kim
Jong-Un regime has prioritized economic recovery (Kim 2016). When one of the
 Black markets, red states 87
chapter authors visited North Korea in 2016, a tour guide said that the economy
had already been liberalized in practice. Although North Korea officially advocates
a planned economy and every product has a government-assigned price tag, many
goods nowadays are traded at a market price. Citizens now need to pay for food
and can trade apartments even though the government is supposed to ration them
(Lankov 2013). Workers’ salary is calculated from productivity, and some state-
owned enterprises are privatized and run by business contractors. Like the case of
the pirated media smuggled from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, the
Korean Wave media culture has been smuggled into North Korea and traded in the
black market. The similar conditions and trends shared by North Korea and China
imply that the case of China will shed light on future development in North Korea.

The Korean Wave in North Korea

It is almost impossible to fully examine the impact of foreign media in
North Korea because of the lack of access to, and information about, North
Koreans’ private lives and local culture. To cope with the methodological
challenge, we used a triangulation of methods; (1) we critically reviewed
academic literature and the Western press for information about private
lives in North Korea, (2) one of the authors joined a guided North Korean tour
group in 2016, and (3) the two authors conducted in-depth personal inter-
views with six informants in the Chinese cities, Yanji and Changchun in Jilin
Province – home to more than one million ethnic Koreans – and also in Seoul
in the summer of 2017. The guided tour provided on-site observation of North
Korean urban and rural areas including mobile phone use on the street, even
though the itinerary was strictly controlled by the North Korean authority and
the visitors could only see what the government was willing to show. The
informants in the in-depth interviews all have vivid descriptions about lives
in North Korea because they live near the China–North Korea border, have
lived in North Korea, or have careers built around North Korea.
There are no independent media in North Korea. The North Korean govern-
ment sees the domestic media as an educational and propaganda tool, therefore a
key mechanism of the regime governance. Kim Jong-Il was so devoted to media
propaganda and cultural activities that he wrote On the Art of the Cinema in 1973,
still the most authoritative filmmaking book in North Korea. The book asks media
workers to build their works on the Juche (self-reliance) ideology and use the
heroic film genre to show the Juche-type men who dedicate themselves to the
socialist revolution (David-West 2009; Kwak 2013). All news broadcast in North
Korea must be approved by the government. Radios are pre-tuned to government
stations, and the four television channels are all owned by the government. The
North Korean regime is particularly hostile to the foreign media because foreign
culture and information do not fit the Juche ideology. Officially, the state consid-
ers foreign media from the West as a “cultural invasion of imperialism” (Kang
2014), and South Korean popular culture as a “half-bred culture that stands against
Korea’s ethnicity” (Kang 2013). Therefore, it is strictly illegal for North Korean
88 Weiqi Zhang and Micky Lee
citizens to access foreign media such as the Korean Wave, and the government
actively jams foreign broadcast signals. The state also shows hostility towards the
Chinese media, yet tolerates the Chinese media much more than the South Korean
media (Baek 2016). Only visitors who stay in designated foreigners-only hotels
have access to international cable news stations such as CNN and the BBC.
To protect the copyright of domestic media goods, the North Korea Copyright
Act of 2001 states that “the copyright law of the DPRK shall aim to protect the
rights of copyright holders and contribute to the development of literature, art,
science and technology by establishing a strict system and order in the use of cop-
yrighted works” (Copyright Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
2001; revised 2006). Article 5 states that “the DPRK shall duly protect copyrights
belonging to corporations and individuals of a foreign country that honors the
conventions or treaties that it has ratified.” Nonetheless, since North Korea is not
a member of the WTO (World Trade Organization), the international community
cannot pressure the country to open its media market or to observe Western-style
copyright protection. Even if foreign copyright holders sue the North Korean
government, there is no international court to hear such disputes between private
parties (Palmer 2012), rendering international laws irrelevant to the illicit flows
of the Korean Wave media into North Korea.
North Korea does not acknowledge that there is a supply-and-demand problem
of media products because it advocates a state-planned economy. During the Cold
War, the North Korean regime made about 20 movies a year thanks to Soviet aid
(Schönherr 2007), but the collapse of the Soviet Union disrupted the aid supply
to North Korea and significantly limited the amount of resources channeled to
the regime. The North Korean economy collapsed and a massive-scale famine
broke out in the mid-1990s, forcing the state to loosen control over its citizens’
economic activities. An informal economy, with its introduction of foreign cul-
ture and information, subsequently emerged when citizens began to trade among
themselves in the black market (Kretchun et al. 2017). According to an inform-
ant in our research, Dandong, a city that borders North Korea, is a trading spot
between Chinese and North Korean traders where trucks move with Chinese con-
sumer products along with contraband media goods. The smuggled goods quickly
extended to other media devices such as VCDs, DVDs, and more recently USB
drives loaded with foreign media (Kang 2014; Kim 2014). The most popular for-
eign media in North Korea are the Korean Wave media culture (Lee 2014). The
piracy business is so profitable that the sale of one USB stick earns a month of
food for a middle-class family (Greenberg 2015). North Korean defectors reported
that, on average, 90% of their income came from trading in the informal economy,
with only 1% from official salary (Kretchun et al. 2017). The informal economy is
also gender-differentiated; most of the traders are women because all male adults
in North Korea have compulsory government-assigned full-time jobs.
The suppliers of foreign media can be generally divided into three groups –
those who do it for money, those who do it for political reasons, and political
elites. To understand why different groups engage in the informal economy, it
is important to understand the Songbun system that classifies the population into
 Black markets, red states 89
three tiers – core, wavering and hostile. The core class is composed of those who
demonstrated their loyalty to the regime during wartime; it is composed of high-
ranking government and party officials, which accounts for about 25% of the
North Korean population. Half of the North Korean population belongs to the
wavering class. At the bottom is the hostile class with citizens whose pre-revolu-
tion professions were considered to be counter-revolutionary or capitalist, such as
former landlords, business owners, lawyers and Christian ministers. The hostile
class accounts for 25% of the population (Collins 2012). The government uses the
class status to allocate social benefits, careers, and living conditions, and this class
status is hereditary. During the famine in the 1990s, the government stopped pro-
viding for the hostile class and some of the wavering class. Therefore, they turned
to the black market to make a living, which then defined a new way of survival.
The second group of suppliers smuggle in media goods for ideological or politi-
cal reasons, and some of them are foreign NGOs (Greenberg 2015; Baek 2016).
According to another informant in our research, activists of the “Free North
Korea” movement have sent cassette tapes, CDs, copies of popular TV dramas,
and transistor radios in balloons from South Korea to North Korea. Other NGOs
smuggle media goods from China and sell them in the black market because free
goods would raise suspicion among some North Koreans (Ji 2016b). Most of the
smugglers are North Koreans who have escaped from the country, and some are
Chinese Koreans who have relatives in North Korea. The third group of suppliers
are political elites who are often indirectly involved in piracy yet play a unique
role in the supply chain. Customs officers and border patrol officers seek extra
income from smugglers and pirates; according to an informant in our research, the
amount of bribery is equal to the monthly salary of a higher-class member. Senior
government officials who travel abroad can bring back foreign media goods with-
out being inspected. Another informant revealed that North Korean officials in
Dandong have secretly asked Korean-Chinese traders for USB drives loaded with
South Korean TV shows. Since North Koreans of the elite class have direct access
to the foreign media and the latest technology, they are likely to play a role in the
localization of the pirated media industry from early on (Kang 2013).
Traders of the pirated media closely follow the trend of the Korean Wave by
talking to business partners, friends, and relatives in China or South Korea, but con-
sumers also request specific shows from traders. Generally, what is popular in South
Korea will find its popularity soon in the North Korean black market. According
to an informant in our research, South Korean TV dramas that have been popular
across the border include Sweet 18, Autumn in My Heart, and Tokebbi. While there
are similarities between today’s North Korea and China in the 1970s and 1980s, the
portability and the capacity of hardware differ significantly. Consumer products
such as TV sets were probably as expensive in 1970s–1980s China as informa-
tion technologies such as laptop computers in today’s North Korea, but now USB
drives and SD cards can store much more data. New technological devices allow
users to effectively evade government inspection. Older storage devices such as
CDs, VCDs and DVDs are risky because they cannot be quickly retrieved and hid-
den during police raids, whereas the new storage devices can be quickly removed
90 Weiqi Zhang and Micky Lee
and replaced with state-approved film (Baek 2016). Class status and residency
(rural or urban) of consumers influence their access to digital technologies. The
middle and elite classes in urban areas have better access to technologies and more
disposable income to spend on electronic devices (Ji 2016a). However, income
from the black market activity can supplement political elites and the hostile class
alike (O’Carroll 2014).
It is estimated that 13–16% of North Koreans have mobile phones (Martin
and Chomchuen 2017; CIA 2018). During the guided tour in 2016, one of the
chapter authors observed that smartphones were commonly used by urban
residents, especially in Pyongyang. The black market, to some extent, reduces
unequal access to technologies in North Korea; Chinese-made devices such as
color TV sets, CDs, DVDs, USB drives and smartphones are traded in the black
market at relatively affordable prices, as noted by an informant in our research.
Smartphones would usually cost $500 in stores (Martin and Chomchuen 2017),
but one of the chapter authors was told by a North Korean tour guide that he
bought his smartphone at $160 in the black market. Some mobile phones known
as “Chinese phones” are sold in the black market or smuggled into North Korea.
These phones are loaded with Chinese SIM cards, and thus can connect to a
Chinese cellular network. Many North Korean defectors send such Chinese
phones to their relatives in North Korea for communication (Horwitz 2016), and
four in ten North Koreans living close to the Chinese border are believed to have
a Chinese phone (Kretchun et al. 2017). Despite the availability of hardware,
stable power supply is a major problem in North Korea. According to the experi-
ences of one of the chapter authors and an informant in our research, nationwide
power outage leaves North Korean cities literally in the dark. To cope with the
blackout, many middle- and upper-class families install solar panels outside their
apartments (Kretchun et al. 2017). Although each small solar panel, approxi-
mately 0.36 square meters, costs about $70, many North Korean families are
willing to pay for it to sustain power supply and access the media of their choice.
One of the informants in our research, who works for a non-profit organization,
reveals that the Korean Wave media have influenced the culture and behavior
of some viewers. North Koreans who have experienced the Korean Wave are
likely to point out their state’s distorted view of the outside world and question
state propaganda (O’Carroll 2014). The North Korean regime would tell its citi-
zens that defectors were abused or killed in South Korea; however, South Korean
media show the defectors living a good life and going to university in the South
(Baek 2016), both being privileges reserved for the core class in North Korea.
Like the Chinese case, engaging with the foreign media constitutes an under-
ground subculture in North Korea. North Korean viewers would only do so in
a private setting with trusted others, such as family members and close friends
in the neighborhood. This indicates a change in the citizen–state relationship
because the North Korean regime encourages people to spy on, and report on,
each other – a similar tactic used during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The
fear of being spied on has led to weak interpersonal trust in North Korean society,
but watching the illicit foreign media secretly with family and friends can foster
 Black markets, red states 91
interpersonal trust and create a sense of community for possible collective action.
So influenced by the Korean Wave popular culture, young North Koreans speak
in a Seoul accent and use South Korean terms and expressions (Lee 2016), as well
as South Korean names (Lee 2015b). The North Korean youth, called the black
market generation, received very little support from the government and are less
devoted to the regime than their parents’ generation. They are economically des-
perate, hard-working, individualistic and capitalistic (Lankov 2015; Park 2017).
Similar to China, the informal economy and technological development can func-
tion as a mobilizing platform for internal change in North Korea.

Comparative perspective
The development of the pirated foreign media in North Korea shows similar condi-
tions and patterns to those of China in the 1970s and 1980s. In addition to similar
political structures and economic conditions, both nations are to some extent subject
to marketization. Despite tight government control, pirated foreign media culture
has found ways in the lucrative informal economy to reach domestic audiences, and
both governments have implicitly tolerated the black market force. Banned media
goods not only provide the audiences with outside information and alternative ideas
but also undermine the totalitarian control by building up the people’s social capital.
Technological development has facilitated the illicit distribution and consumption
of pirated media culture more effectively in today’s North Korea than 1970s–1980s
China. As technological devices such as USB drives and micro SD cards help North
Korean citizens evade government inspection more easily than the older technologies
of VHSs and DVDs, governmental blockage of the Korean Wave media becomes
futile (O’Carroll 2012; Kretchun et al. 2017). Another difference between today’s
North Korea and China in the past is the motives of pirated media suppliers; while
those in China were mostly driven by profit, some pirates in North Korea are driven
by counter-ideology against their regime, indicating that foreign media content in
North Korea is more pro-liberalization than that in China.
Would pirated foreign media culture in North Korea lead to long-term sociopo-
litical changes as it did in China? Considering the interplay between the informal
economy, culture and technologies, it can be suggested that the impact of the
Korean Wave on transforming North Korea would be relatively limited, compared
to the Chinese case. First, North Koreans may not always understand the meanings
of the Korean Wave media due to cultural differences (Rohrlich 2013; Ji 2016c).
Even though affluent North Koreans enjoy K-pop music, they pay more attention to
the lyrics and the vocals than the singers’ appearance (Lee 2015a). Psy’s “Gangnam
Style,” for instance, is puzzling to some North Koreans because they are unfamiliar
with an urban lifestyle. Cultural discrepancies may occur because North Koreans
are weary of the ills of capitalism reflected in the Korean Wave, such as inequality,
materialism, and moral decadence (Kim 2014; Lankov 2014).
Second, the Chinese regime differs from the North Korean regime; the government
in a closed society needs to first initiate political and economic liberalization for
substantial change of the society (Rozumilowicz 2002). China officially adopted
92 Weiqi Zhang and Micky Lee
economic liberalization in the late 1970s with the support of the central and provin-
cial leaders. The top leadership also voluntarily limited their own power by setting
up institutions such as term limits, restoring meritocracy in leadership recruitment,
and giving local governments more authority. The North Korean government,
despite emerging economic liberalization “from below,” shows no significant sign
of providing the political environment or determination for liberalization. The
different stances towards economic liberalization explain why the governments
implicitly tolerate the pirated foreign media in the informal economy. In China, the
government’s focus on economic growth via liberalization brought about negative
social issues including unemployment and income inequality. The informal econ-
omy then became a source of income for some, while alleviating citizens’ political
opposition during economic liberalization. The Chinese government therefore tol-
erated the informal economy in which pirated foreign media culture was actively
traded. The North Korean government still officially adopts a centralized planned
economic system and views the informal economy as a challenge to its authority.
While the Chinese informal economy emerged during “economic prosperity,” the
North Korean informal economy emerged during “economic downturn.” The North
Korean government had to tolerate the informal economy only because it could
not provide daily necessities for its people. Once the economy showed a sign of
recovery, the government quickly reclaimed economic control by restricting the
informal economy. The Kim Jong-Un government has tightened up control over
the economy and media regulations and deemed watching the foreign media a more
serious crime than the Kim Jong-Il era (Macdonald 2017). At the international level,
the fact that China is a WTO member subjects the country to international standards
of copyright protection via further liberalization in the media market. However,
North Korea is not a WTO member, which makes it difficult for the international
community to pressure North Korea towards liberalization.
Third, Chinese consumers prefer pirated media because of its low cost, but the
pirated media in North Korea are expensive and primary consumers include economic
or political elites. This raises a question of whether or not the North Korean elites,
including government officials, would support liberalization as they may have an
interest in maintaining the existing political and economic status quo. Technological
development has effectively limited the government capability of restricting foreign
media consumption. In China, economic growth made modern entertainment technol-
ogies accessible to many families, and more people were able to consume the foreign
media in private. The huge market of China ensures an economy of scale, leading to
the localized and speedy reproduction of the illegal media. In contrast, pirates face
unfavorable conditions in North Korea with a small market size, an underdeveloped
economy, and restricted access to foreign media content. Pirates have to overcome
costly technologies and face a high risk of being prosecuted by the government. Even
if the government may tolerate the pirated media that are already in the country, it can
still restrict the future flow of foreign media culture by strengthening border control.
In conclusion, this comparative study shows that the impact of pirated for-
eign media culture on sociopolitical changes is complex because of the interplay
between government policies, social structures, the informal economy, and
 Black markets, red states 93
technological development. While today’s North Korea shares many similari-
ties with China in the 1970s and 1980s, pirated foreign media culture such as the
Korean Wave may not dramatically change the society at the same scale and pace.

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5 The Korean Wave
A pull factor for North Korean migration
Ahlam Lee

North Korea’s Great Famine of the mid-1990s is estimated to have killed

2.8 million to 3.5 million North Korean citizens and led many famine survivors
to cross the North Korean–Chinese border in search of food (Noland et al. 2001).
Famine survivors had no conception of the outside world because they were
ordinary citizens from the most closed country in the world, with no freedom to
travel to other countries. In the early stages of the Great Famine, North Koreans
defected from their home country “temporarily,” and had no intention of leaving
permanently. Thus, they illegally traveled back and forth between North Korea
and China to feed themselves and their family members. However, years after
the Great Famine, their frequent visits to China exposed them to a wide range of
new elements from foreign cultures, including South Korean television dramas,
movies and K-pop music (Lee 2016). These cultural products increasingly enter-
tained North Koreans and triggered their curiosity about the outside world. They
began to smuggle foreign media products into North Korea on USBs and DVDs
and sell them in the North Korean black market called Jangmadang (Tudor and
Pearson 2015). In the Jangmadang, South Korean items are in high demand
because they mirror the desirable lifestyle and culture of South Koreans shar-
ing the same language, history and traditions that remain inaccessible since the
Korean War (1950–1953). With the growing popularity of South Korean media
products, the Korean Wave (Hallyu in Korean) has infiltrated into North Korea
after the Great Famine.
Selling and buying foreign media products is illegal in North Korea and con-
sidered a severe criminal offense. Consuming South Korean dramas and movies
or listening to K-pop music is a grave act of delinquency. A major reason for
making this business activity strictly illegal is that such foreign cultural products
deliver an implicitly political and challenging message to North Korean citizens.
The regime has lied and distorted the reality of the outside world to glorify and
legitimize the Kim family dynasty that has ruled for three generations since the
regime was established in 1948 (Lee 2016). North Korea’s Constitution states that
any North Korean caught smuggling or accessing foreign media products faces
severe punishment and even public execution. Nevertheless, approximately 88%
of North Koreans who defected to South Korea had access to the forbidden foreign
media in North Korea despite the risk (Chosun Daily 2017b). Another recent study
 The Korean Wave 97
by the Center for Strategies and International Studies (2017) showed that about
92% of North Koreans consumed forbidden foreign media once a month at least.
It would be almost impossible to identify and prosecute such a large number of
North Koreans who have already engaged with foreign media culture. Moreover,
security guards and high-ranking government officials are engaged in the illegal
business of buying and selling, as well as watching and listening to foreign media
(Tudor and Pearson 2015). These government officials are more likely to access
illicit products than ordinary North Korean citizens, because they have more
money to buy them and the power to avoid punishment if caught.
Since the Great Famine, North Korea’s Public Distribution System (PDS) has
failed and ordinary citizens, especially those classified as members of the lower
social class, have not received food rations supplied by the PDS. They have had
to seek their own ways to survive, such as engaging in illegal business in the
black market Jangmadang. Over 60% of North Koreans have obtained their food
from the Jangmadang, 34% have searched for food based on their own efforts
or networks, and a mere 3% have received food rations from the PDS system
(Haggard and Noland 2011). Social class known as Songbun in North Korea is
determined by one’s ancestors’ background and their family’s or relatives’ loy-
alty to the Kim dynasty (Collins 2012). Even high-ranking government officials
and elites, who are classified as a high Songbun class, have received fewer food
rations since the Great Famine; thus, they also depend on the Jangmadang for
a large portion of their household income (Tudor and Pearson 2015). Although
trading foreign cultural products in the shadow economy is illegal, it has become
an essential subculture in North Korean society (National Public Radio 2017).
Unless they trade in such illicit products in the Jangmadang, most North Koreans
cannot make ends meet, while at the same time enjoying these foreign cultural
products has become part of their daily lives.
Foreign culture flowing into North Korean society is transforming ordinary
North Koreans’ world views and weakening their loyalty to the regime, which is
detrimental to the regime’s long-term stability and legitimacy (Lee 2016; Daily
NK 2017). The most severe punishment, such as public execution, is imposed
on North Koreans who smuggle, distribute, watch or listen to foreign cultural
products, particularly South Korean media entertainment. The Korean Wave
popular culture serves as a potential tool for soft power that encourages North
Koreans to revisit their views on North Korean society by reflexive comparison
with South Korean society. The Korean Wave has become a contributing fac-
tor in North Korean defection to South Korea. This chapter explores how the
Korean Wave has served as a pull factor for North Korean migration since the
mid-1990s when the Great Famine induced them to escape from their home
country. It aims to provide an understanding of North Koreans’ desire to access
the illicit Korean Wave, their engagement with the Korean Wave culture in
daily lives, and its influence on their migration to South Korea. It further recog-
nizes the significant role of outside culture and information, and of stakeholders
in the international community in emancipating North Koreans who wish to live
in liberty, freedom and democracy.
98 Ahlam Lee
Influence of the Korean Wave on North Korean migration
The Korean Wave can be seen as resources for “soft power” (Nye 1990 and 2011),
the ability to attract and appeal to international audiences without using coercion.
Culture is a major source of a country’s soft power and can serve as an antecedent
motive for human behavior. Most North Korean defectors have testified that one
of their key motives in escaping to South Korea was their exposure to the Korean
Wave culture (Radio Free Asia 2016; Chosun Media 2017; Daily NK 2017). The
more access North Koreans had to South Korean cultural products, the more their
curiosity about the outside world grew. Despite the risk of severe punishment,
they do not stop consuming such forbidden materials, suggesting that their curios-
ity most likely outweighs their fear. The curiosity sparks their eagerness to seek
something new or interesting that is not only rare but also illegal in North Korea.
By secretly sharing the forbidden materials, North Koreans form a subculture in
which they distribute forbidden information and experience further excitement
(Tudor and Pearson 2015).
When North Koreans are initially exposed to South Korean cultural products,
they have mixed or confused feelings about the contents because everything they
watch or hear for the first time sounds like lies or propaganda disseminated by their
official enemies, the United States and South Korea. However, they are also fas-
cinated about the new world these cultural products reveal (Baek 2016; National
Public Radio 2017). Their mixed feelings are not surprising, given that from a
young age North Koreans have been brainwashed by the regime to despise the
United States and its allies (Kim and Falletti 2012). The more they consume the
foreign media, the more curious they become about the outside world; gradually,
they come to realize the contents of the South Korean media are interesting and
appealing. The South Korean way of speaking, behavior, lifestyles and fashions
in dramas and movies present an unknown free world, capture North Koreans’
attention, and can possibly change their perceptions about the authoritarian lead-
ership and political system of their home country. Common features in the South
Korean popular media do not describe North Korea-related issues and politics;
therefore, they do not change North Koreans’ loyalty to the regime immediately
or radically (Tudor and Pearson 2015). However, North Koreans’ continuous
observations of the mediated South Korean milieu reflecting liberty, freedom and
democracy weaken their loyalty to the regime over time (Hyun 2016). Observing
South Koreans’ quality of life through the media leads them to ask reflexively,
“Why are we poor?” (Kim 2017b).
Hearing the shared language and new terminologies from South Korean
radio and TV programs seems to trigger North Koreans’ interest in the Korean
Wave culture. The Korean spoken in the South has different accents and
expressions from that spoken in the North, which North Koreans seem to find
attractive. For example, Ms. Eunsun Kim, who endured a nine-year escape
journey in China and finally reached South Korea in 2006, wrote the following
in her autobiography:
 The Korean Wave 99
They spoke Korean with a different accent, but they are the same things we
do. We could understand each other . . . In Shanghai, for the first time, I
was able to form my own opinions. I started watching South Korean televi-
sion shows. Over time, I became a fan of South Korean dramas, discovered
K-pop, and even became a fan of artists who have become stars in China.
(Kim and Falletti 2012: 144)

Through the South Korean media, Ms. Kim observed how freely the Southern
counterparts behave, think and express themselves, which helped her think criti-
cally and form her own opinions. Similar to Ms. Kim, North Koreans are drawn to
South Korean-style expressions in dramas and movies and feel that the Southern
accents sound “softer” than do the Northern accents (New FOCUS 2015). A North
Korean man would practice speaking the Southern-style expressions before having
a first date because many North Korean women are attracted to men who speak like
a South Korean. South Korean words, such as dangyeon haji (literally meaning “of
course”), have been used widely in North Korea since the people were first exposed
to the South Korean media (Tudor and Pearson 2015).
To consume any foreign media including South Korean radio and TV pro-
grams, North Koreans have to wrestle with the barriers placed by the regime.
North Korean radios and televisions sold legally are preset to tune to only state-
owned propaganda broadcasters, and the regime controls the media tightly by
blocking the foreign media. The regime makes every effort to jam South Korean
state-run and other foreign broadcasts, given evidence that North Koreans receive
the signals of these overseas broadcasts (Williams 2017). Some North Koreans,
particularly those who live in the border regions, can receive radio or TV pro-
grams late at night when the signals can travel long distances. Those who have
bought Chinese radios and televisions in the Jangmadang can also receive South
Korean and other foreign broadcasts, and curious North Koreans dismantle their
fixed-tuned radios or TVs to search for overseas signals (Chosun Daily 2011;
Joins 2017). When North Koreans first found signals from overseas, they were
not searching for them; but when they heard the Korean language from a radio sta-
tion, they stayed tuned to the radio station only to realize soon that it was not run
by their government but by a station in South Korea (Radio Free Asia 2007). They
gradually became attracted to the station’s new content and actively searched for
it. Many North Koreans were first addicted to listening to K-pop music that has
lyrical melodies and words and differs greatly from North Korea’s revolutionary
songs (Chosun Media 2016; Joins 2017). Subsequently, they became interested in
South Korean news or radio programs that provide a wide range of information,
including South Korean politics, social issues, and stories about North Korean
defectors who have resettled in South Korea. These secret audiences did not ini-
tially intend to be political; rather, they regularly listened to learn more about
the outside world and the views of their home country held by people in other
countries (Tudor and Pearson 2015; Baek 2016).
100 Ahlam Lee
Radio programs are less popular than are TV programs in North Korea.
Although listening to radios is more affordable, easier to operate using unstable
North Korean electricity, and more common since the Great Famine, TV is more
popular because North Koreans seek more entertainment through the combined
picture and sound of TV. However, they depend on radio programs to gather
information on North Korea, including the stories of North Korean defectors
who have resettled in South Korea and their condemnation of the North Korean
regime. When North Koreans hear the voices of defectors with their Northern
accents, they tend to pay greater attention to the contents (Tudor and Pearson
2015; Baek 2016). Foreign radios such as Free Radio Asia, Voice of America, and
Free North Korea Radio, which often feature North Korean defectors, are in high
demand in North Korea because these programs meet their information needs.
One defector, Lee Keum-Reong, recalled that some North Koreans around him
secretly listened to forbidden radio programs, according to his observation in 1996
when he worked at the State Security Department in North Korea (Radio Free
Asia 2007). Mr. Lee found that another country, presumably South Korea, sent
large balloons containing about 20 million radios to North Korea, but the State
Security Department could collect only 2 million of them, suggesting that the
remaining 18 million radios eventually fell into North Koreans’ hands. Assuming
that these North Koreans shared these radios with their family members and close
friends, many more have listened to forbidden radio programs. Among 103 North
Korean defectors who responded to a survey, 67% listened to South Korean radio
programs before defecting to the South (Hani 2003), and some reported that the
programs motivated them to defect (Voice of America 2016).
In addition to radio programs, South Korean TV signals have been captured by
North Koreans who live near the North Korea–China border such as Hamgyeongbukdo
province or those who live in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) such as Hwanghaedo
province (Kim 2011). North Koreans skilled at disassembling preset TV receivers
can watch South Korean TV programs in real time (Chosun Daily 2011). When they
first picked up South Korean TV programs, they were both surprised and afraid to be
caught by security officers; but today it is common for border residents to watch South
Korean TV programs. Even in Pyongyang, where the North Korean leader resides, it
is common for residents including government officials, the rich and intelligentsia to
watch South Korean TV programs more frequently and become disenchanted with
their state-run TV channels for propaganda (Radio Free Asia 2015). Pyongyang resi-
dents, who are expected to have the greatest loyalty to the Kim dynasty and ideology,
are rather engaging with South Korean media culture. The growing popularity of the
Korean Wave implies that the authorities’ coercion cannot block the flow of outside
culture and attractive cultural products serve as a soft power potential that defeats any
coercive method. Although the regime punishes its citizens who access the forbidden
foreign media, North Koreans continue to demand and consume the Korean Wave
popular culture that both entertain and expose them to new information or knowl-
edge about the outside world. According to the high-ranking defector Thae Yong-Ho,
North Korea’s former deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, the Korean Wave
has already swept across the North Korean society, so even the harshest punishment
 The Korean Wave 101
of public execution cannot stop the people from watching South Korean dramas and
movies (Chosun Daily 2017a). Such coercive action can rather have an opposite
effect, given evidence that North Koreans are much more motivated to escape from
their repressive country after experiencing severe punishments for charges of pos-
sessing prohibited media materials (Baek 2016). Elsewhere in the world, the similarly
coercive action, such as torture, of governments in repressive countries has led to
increased defection (Schmeidl 2001).
With respect to the causes of North Koreans’ defection, the regime’s oppression
of its citizens is a major push factor (Chang et al. 2008; Song 2015), while at the same
time the Korean Wave media culture serves as a pull factor as it influences North
Koreans to desire to live in South Korea and eventually defect (Kim 2017a). For
example, the autobiography of Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector, expressed
aspects of the way in which foreign media products affected North Koreans, espe-
cially young people in their teens and 20s, to wish to live in a free country:

North Koreans of my age and younger are sometimes called the Jangmadang
Generation, because we grew up with markets, and we couldn’t remember a
time when the state provided for everyone’s needs. We didn’t have the same
blind loyalty to the regime that was felt by our parents’ generation. Still,
while the market economy and outside media weakened our dependence on
the state, I couldn’t make the mental leap to see the foreign movies and soap
operas I loved to watch as models for a life I could lead.
(Park and Vollers 2015: 100)

Ms. Park’s story indicates that foreign media products sold in the Jangmadang
have weakened loyalty to the regime and young North Koreans in particular are
less likely to have the expected loyalty to the regime, compared with their parents.
Like Ms. Park, young North Koreans who were born around the time of the Great
Famine did not experience the function of the Public Distribution System, unlike
their parents’ generation; instead, they suffered from starvation and witnessed the
horror of their families and neighbors dying (AP News 2017). This young genera-
tion has relatively more motivations to access foreign media culture and is more
likely to plan on a migratory project to eventually escape from North Korea. Indeed,
North Korean defectors in their twenties and thirties comprise approximately 60%
of the North Korean defectors in South Korea (Daily NK 2016).
While North Koreans were hiding in China during their escape journey, some
of them were freely introduced to the Korean Wave media culture and desired
life of the South by watching South Korean dramas and movies (Kim and Falletti
2012; Lee and John 2015). Those who left for China immediately after the Great
Famine had few opportunities to consume the Korean Wave media culture because
it began to spread in North Korea after the black market Jangmadang developed
(Teitel and Baek 2015). Hyeonseo Lee’s autobiography on how she escaped from
North Korea documented her experience of watching South Korean drama for the
first time in her life. She lived in China beginning in 1997 for ten years, after she
crossed the Yalu River – a river on the border between North Korea and China.
102 Ahlam Lee
I had been in Shanghai more than two years now. In that time I’d learned a
great deal about South Korea from my colleagues. I regularly watched South
Korean TV dramas. Some of them were such addictive viewing that Ok-Hee
[another North Korean defector] and I would dash home to my tiny apartment
and watch them together, lying on my roll-out mat. But I had never imagined
myself in South Korea, until I saw these desperate people storming embassy
gates. They were risking their lives. The reward had to be worth it. The more I
thought about it, the more the idea of living among South Koreans excited me.
(Lee and John 2015: 174)

Ms. Lee enjoyed watching South Korean dramas regularly with her colleague,
another North Korean defector who lived in fear, much like Ms. Lee. The more
she watched such programs, the more she understood why many North Koreans
risked their lives to reach South Korea. Her narrative also signals that the Korean
Wave media culture serves as a pull factor for North Koreans to move away from
their regime’s propaganda and decide to defect to South Korea. For North Korean
defectors who hide in China or are in the middle of the escape process, their grow-
ing exposure to the Korean Wave media culture in China is likely to increase
their motivations to complete their escapes to South Korea (Oh 2015). The Great
Famine was an initial motive for many North Koreans to leave their home country
with no concrete final destination, while the frequent exposure to the Korean Wave
influenced their decisions to make South Korea their final destination.
Similar to the escape pathway of those who left North Korea immediately after
the Great Famine, the Korean Wave media culture has a mediating effect on the
defection of North Korean overseas workers. For example, in 2016 the collective
defection of 13 North Korean overseas restaurant workers to South Korea was
influenced in part by their exposure to South Korean dramas and TV shows while
living and working in a foreign country (Los Angeles Times 2016). Like these 13
defectors, the North Korean workers the regime sends abroad are generally clas-
sified as members of the high Songbun class, a privileged group in North Korea
(Washington Post 2017). As such, their collective defection to South Korea is
considered extraordinary and reflects the Korean Wave’s soft power potential that
seems strong enough to make them relinquish their privilege in North Korean soci-
ety. In conjunction with the influence of the Korean Wave, their regime’s foreign
revenue pressure on these workers might be a push factor for their defection; the
UN’s more stringent sanctions against North Korea’s nuclear test in January 2016
left the regime in financial difficulty that possibly pressured North Korean over-
seas workers to send more money to the regime (Guardian 2016). North Korean
defection is most likely to be driven by the push-and-pull dynamics of the regime’s
oppression and the Korean Wave’s attraction.

Curiosity about the outside world: “It’s in people’s DNA”

With the decline in their loyalty to the regime and the growing interest in mobility in
all possible forms, North Koreans’ curiosity about the outside world has gradually
 The Korean Wave 103
grown and been expressed, as indicated in the data from interviews with ten North
Korean defectors (Baek 2016). One of the common themes in the data was that North
Koreans were more curious about the outside world than afraid of the regime’s pun-
ishment when they became aware of the outside world they were forbidden to know.
Below is a quote from Kim Heung-Kwang, a former enforcer in North Korea:

Of course, I knew that if I were caught, especially given my job, I’d face
grand punishment. But you know, despite all that, a curiosity, a desire for
the new and an opposition to things being hidden, is inherent in people and
[they] will pursue it to the end. It’s in people’s DNA. Anyone, including
North Koreans, wants to watch what [they]’re told not to watch. If you watch
one episode, you want to watch two. If you watched two, you want to watch
three. If you’re young or an intellectual, even if you can’t eat and have to skip
a meal, you’d rather spend the money to get your hands on this stuff to watch.
(Baek 2016: 78)

As Mr. Kim emphasizes, curiosity is a basic desire of human beings, and the
people in extremely repressive North Korea are not an exception: “It’s in people’s
DNA.” Humans have an innate sense of curiosity about novel things (Silvia 2017).
North Koreans’ innate desire to explore an unfamiliar and attractive world is a
natural phenomenon that is almost impossible for the regime’s coercive power to
stifle or manipulate. The Korean Wave’s infiltration into North Korean society
fosters a culture of curiosity about the outside world that encourages the people’s
engagement with forbidden culture and information. Leaked information about
unfamiliar things is a driving force that arouses humans’ curiosity and has the
effect of increasing their information-seeking behavior to learn more about them
(Kidd and Hayden 2015). The people who have already had a taste of the Korean
Wave media culture are becoming more curious about the outside world and are
increasingly demanding outside culture and information to meet their human
needs despite the risk of severe punishment. In a similar vein, a statement from
another North Korean defector, Ji Seong-Ho, underscores that curiosity is human
nature and cannot be destroyed by ideology:

All humans have a basic desire, a basic fabric that [they] share, I believe. It
doesn’t matter if someone lives in a socialist system or a free market system.
That is, if we are told to not do something, [we] will tend to want to do it;
there is more curiosity for things we are told not to see or listen to. All it is
just basic human nature.
(Baek 2016: 45)

Mr. Ji’s narrative also emphasizes that sharing new information is human nature.
Consistent with this statement, it has been widely recognized that North Koreans
tend to share forbidden media materials with their neighbors and wish to encourage
an emotional consensus in their community of excitement about the outside world
(Tudor and Pearson 2015). Another defector also noted that in North Korea, social
104 Ahlam Lee
networks for sharing foreign films with friends have been established, wherein
they watch the films together, borrow or rent from other social networks, and
circulate the films to other groups (Baek 2016). Such a culture of sharing infor-
mation and excitement is commonly found in research showing that the human
brain is attuned to share ideas; for example, humans’ emotions are more intense
when they see something novel, such as an unfamiliar image or short video, with
another person rather than watching alone (Baumeister and Bushman 2017).
The narratives of Kim Heung-Kwang and Ji Seong-Ho reflect how North
Koreans show oppositional behavior by breaking the state’s law and continuing to
watch and listen to the prohibited media. In accordance with the North Koreans’
oppositional behavior, a large body of empirical evidence reveals that when
people’s freedom is threatened or their actions are prohibited, they demonstrate
resistance that motivates them to restore their freedom (Steindl et al. 2015). North
Koreans, too, exercise their agency and are likely to show psychological resist-
ance to the regime’s repression of their freedom to connect to the outside world
through foreign cultural products. Similarly, the following narratives from other
defectors exemplify North Koreans’ psychological status that can be understood
as human being’s natural curiosity and resistance:

We secretly watch . . . [The North Korean regime] inspects much rigorously

South Korean films than Chinese ones. Nevertheless, the more we desire
to watch South Korean films, the more [the security guards] prohibit these
materials . . . That is to say, we would like to watch South Korean movies
much more than other foreign materials . . . We very much are addicted to
watching South Korean films.
(Kim et al. 2011: 198)

Using dramas or movies on USB flash drives, we had watched a lot of South
Korean stories. We [students] risked being expelled from schools. We did our
best not to be caught by [the security guards] . . . If one person is caught, a
bunch of people are involved in obtaining the forbidden materials and so, all
of them will be caught and punished.
(Kim et al. 2011: 198)

South Korean TV dramas and movies capture North Koreans’ attention much
more than do other foreign media. One reason may be that among all the illicit
foreign media in North Korea, South Korean media are the materials that are
most prohibited by the regime, and therefore North Koreans demonstrate more
conscious resistance to the regime to implicitly claim their freedom and choice by
engaging with South Korean media. Another reason may be that North Koreans are
connected with South Koreans emotionally, as the people share the same history,
language and traditions despite the seven decades of ideological tension between
the two Koreas. Watching South Korean dramas and movies consciously affects
North Koreans’ lifestyles, and women in particular are eager to obtain a wide range
of South Korean products, including clothes, shoes, cosmetics, kitchen appliances
 The Korean Wave 105
and food (MBC News 2017). The following quote from a North Korean defector
demonstrates the way in which products shown in South Korean media change a
North Korean’s perceptions about South Korean society and subsequently serve
as a pull factor for North Korean migration to South Korea:

When I first saw it, I just couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought everything was a
lie, because I had been taught since my elementary school days that South Korea
was helplessly poor. But, as I continued to watch it a couple of more times, I
could realize what I was watching should be all true. And I thought I wanted
to go live in South Korea. Looking at the lifestyle, the way people are dressed,
buildings, houses and foods, I thought everything was just unimaginably nice.
(Kang and Park 2011: 80)

Human rights activists, including North Korean defectors, are aware of the soft
power potential of the Korean Wave media culture and have launched initiatives to
send diverse information, including South Korean cultural products, to North Korea
through various routes (Baek 2016; ABC News 2017). While a considerable number
of South Korean citizens support or have no objection to these initiatives, opponents
argue that such actions will irritate the North Korean regime and aggravate the polit-
ical relations between the two Koreas (Park and Kim 2012; Reuters 2014; Newdaily
2016). Such divergent views are rooted in different political or ideological prefer-
ences in South Korean society. North Korea-related issues, including the action of
disseminating outside information to North Korea as well as North Koreans’ and
North Korean defectors’ human rights, are treated as political or ideological mat-
ters, and it took more than ten years to pass the North Korean Human Rights Act of
2016 (NKHRA) because left-wing political parties in South Korea voted against the
NKHRA or abstained from voting (Daily NK 2014; Premium Chosun 2014; Radio
Free Asia 2017). These opponents overlook the information needs and human rights
of ordinary North Koreans. Those who advocate the NKHRA or send outside infor-
mation to North Korea highlight the harsh realities of North Korea and human rights
violations against North Korean citizens and defectors.
North Koreans’ eagerness to obtain outside information is based on human curi-
osity and North Koreans, too, have a right to learn about the outside world, just like
people in the rest of the world. Disseminating outside information to North Korea
is the right thing to do from a humanitarian and social justice perspective. Because
of North Korean defectors’ sharing of their stories despite continuous threats from
the North Korean regime, diverse stakeholders in the international community have
learned about the harsh realities that ordinary North Koreans face, and the human
rights violations against them and defectors (United Nations Human Rights 2014).
The Korean Wave media culture with outside information is flowing in and qui-
etly transforming North Koreans’ perceptions about their regime and leadership as
well as their life conditions, while increasingly motivating them to defect to South
Korea. In a sense, it can be hoped that in the long run the Korean Wave will serve as
a soft power potential to democratize North Korea and emancipate North Koreans
who equally deserve to live in liberty, freedom and democracy. Human rights
106 Ahlam Lee
activists in the international community should not ignore the North Koreans’
human rights to seek outside culture and information because they are part of the
most vulnerable and most oppressed groups in the world.

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6 Hallyu in the South, hunger in
the North
Alternative imaginings of what life could be
Sandra Fahy

The term Hallyu was mentioned in the Beijing Youth Daily in the late 1990s
when the newspaper published an article about the “Zeal of Chinese audiences
for Korean TV and pop songs.” They were not referring to North Korean TV
and pop songs. In North Korea, the South Korean Wave or Hallyu is called
Nam Pung – Southern Wind. The Hallyu phenomenon took Japan, China and the
world by surprise. The seemingly quiet, long-troubled country of South Korea
has experienced the type of interest from the international community which
animation did for Japan. Around the world, more and more people from all walks
of life began to take an interest in Korea. Out of Hallyu little wavelets generated
interest in South Korean make-up products and fashion. For some, this generated
still more interest in Korean history, business and economics. That small country
in Northeast Asia, so often forgotten, was suddenly too charming and engaging
to be overlooked. Viewers of Hallyu dramas, once plunged into the storylines,
found themselves powerless against the intrigue. Happily Hallyu-victims suc-
cumbed to being washed along in the wave.
Ordinary North Koreans would have been struck by the success too, if they
could have been equally aware of it. At the start of Hallyu, North Koreans’ ears
and eyes were shuttered by their state. The people were deeply preoccupied with
basic subsistence survival. At the time of South Korea’s global cultural debut,
their Northern sibling was reaching the worst years of a famine that would impact
on millions of lives and prematurely kill tens of thousands. The famine changed
North Korean society in one critical way; people were no longer primarily depend-
ent on the state to provide food. Simply because the state was no longer providing
food, alternative coping strategies took shape in the form of black markets and
border crossing. This change was a fatal flaw for the dictatorship, though the
results of this have yet to be entirely manifested. The changes ushered in dur-
ing the famine years continue to undermine the strength of North Korean state
propaganda. It should be recognized that the famine in North Korea was a man-
made disaster; it could have been avoided, but the state prioritized care of the
military and the elite over the young, the old and the infirm (Haggard and Noland
2007; Fahy 2015). The decision to prioritize the elite and the military would be
the undoing of North Korea, socioeconomically, though not politically. Prior to
the famine, the Public Distribution System was the primary system of food and
110 Sandra Fahy
resource delivery. As such, it ensured people stayed in the local village or city.
This way, the state was able to keep an eye on people. People could only collect
their allotment in their local area. That now defunct, people could – though it was
illegal – migrate.
Realizing that the state could not – actually would not – provide, many North
Koreans turned to the Korean community in China to find what they needed.
Demographically speaking, the migration was largely female and young; it was
largely based in the Northern parts of North Korea, and where borders were
concerned it was mainly across the Sino–North Korean border (Haggard and
Noland 2011). Critically, the migration was not one way, nor singular. Though
crossing the border is a risk to life and limb, having few other options many
North Koreans made this choice. For some readers, it may seem curious to learn
that the migration was largely female. Famine scholarship finds that this is the
typical trend, globally, where famines arise. Food insecurity pressures women
within families most of all. Bio-medically, women are more likely to survive
famine due to greater physical stores of body fat (Dyson and Ó Grada 2002).
Social factors of patriarchy also shape women’s position vis-à-vis famine. Girl
children and the elderly have higher mortality rates in famine, whereas women
can draw on social capital – through sex selling, for example – to eke out sur-
vival. Readers should note that famine never impacts on a society in total;
instead, there are more often uneven areas of impact. While many suffer and
die, some within society may actually benefit from famine.
Interviewing women who survived the famine of the 1990s, some recalled
common expressions that highlighted inequalities between men and women –
identifying how pressure fell mostly on women while men were rendered useless
(Fahy 2015). Men were no longer men but mongmongi (barking dogs) meaning
noisy and demanding, as several women reported. “They are daytime llight bulbs.
Useless during the day,” another woman said. Women are the ones who go to
the illegal market to hustle and sell. It was explained that men want to save face
(chemyeonui kanghae) whereas women are “good at talking” (maljalhae) which
is good for selling (Fahy 2015: 100). Another element of this is the patriarchal
society of North Korea, where authorities see women as irrelevant and powerless
and often turn a blind eye to women selling in the illegal markets. Women are
viewed as disposable and unnecessary to society, meanwhile their activity in the
markets is keeping the unofficial economy afloat (Haggard and Noland 2011).
The thriving black market economy had several unintended impacts on North
Korean society. It enabled people to survive independent of the state, but it also led
to a huge influx of outside culture as North Koreans smuggled those items from
China. Up to the 1990s, the North was largely a closed media-culture environment.
Though the state tried – and continues to try – to ensure distrust of foreign cul-
ture, people were increasingly curious. Critically, those familiar with all-pervasive
North Korean propaganda of movies, literature and state media would appreciate
that the people were starved not only for food, but also for entertainment. While the
black markets fed hungry stomachs, they also fed a curiosity about the outside world
through Hallyu entertainment. North Korean merchants including women and youth
 Hallyu in the South, hunger in the North 111
saw that huge profits could be made from foreign movies and television shows,
especially those from South Korea. The foreign media were smuggled into the black
markets of the country in formats such as CDs, DVDs, USBs and Micro-SD cards.
It was this confluence of factors – the famine, the South Korean wave, and the emer-
gence of small technology forms that could safely transmit the “wave” – which
facilitated the influx of Hallyu into North Korea.
Among those lives most socially shaken up by the famine – in terms of work,
family structure and social norms – were those of women and young adults. For this
reason, it is not possible to examine the impact of Hallyu on North Korea without
acknowledging the role of the famine in opening up the country to the illegal smug-
gling of South Korean media. Just as the famine negatively altered the lives of women
and young adults, it also inadvertently primed those disenfranchised demographic
groups to positively receive South Korean media. This chapter pays particular atten-
tion to North Korean women, youth and Hallyu because consumption of the South
Korean wave opened these groups to alternative perspectives on power, gender and
age in everyday life. Existing social expectations related to power, gender and age
have been challenged through their mundane engagement with South Korean media
culture and alternative imaginings of what life could be outside North Korea.

Women, youth and South Korean media

Individuals who grew up during the transformative marketization period in North
Korea have been referred to as the black market generation or the Jangmadang
generation. Quite unlike generations that came before them, this young generation
is critical for shaping the future of North Korea from the grass-roots. Referred to
as “native capitalists” because they grew up thinking about how to do business
in the black markets and make money rather than expecting the state to provide,
these young people are resourceful in business-savvy ways (Fifield 2017). Today’s
digital youth are learning from each other, improving their skills at selling and
communicating, and understand the lure of capitalist desire, and how to create it in
the other. This generation has seen both freedom and repression expressed simul-
taneously within the marketplace. In a sense, they signal a critical nascent stage
of development for North Korean civil society because they embody the conflu-
ence of major social changes that took place in the 1990s now manifested in a
youthful generation that is technologically skilled, culturally mobile, internation-
ally aware, and with the necessary chutzpah to want for more. Asked to describe
“freedom,” a North Korean defector explained that it means, “being able to work
in a certain place if you want and not if you don’t want, being able to do your
own business if you want, living where you want and being able to go where you
want” (Fifield 2017). That thinking characterizes the young generation precisely;
life is about doing as you want, and not if you don’t want. As a point of compari-
son, older generations born prior to the Jangmadang generation express confusion
when asked about the implicit idea of freedom in employment and the changing of
careers. Two former North Korean broadcast workers who were interviewed at the
United Nations Commission of Inquiry in 2013 expressed confusion when asked
112 Sandra Fahy
by Commissioners why they continued to work at a job they did not like or enjoy,
rather than look for other work (United Nations Commission of Inquiry 2013). Of
course, their question was intentionally naïve in order to elicit the interlocutors’
thoughts. The question, or rather the difficulty in extracting an answer, proved
more telling than perhaps expected. The Public Hearing came to a halt for several
minutes as the North Koreans were stumped by the very premise of the question;
one simply did what one was asked to do. To ask someone why they did not change
jobs was as illogical as asking why they learned to walk rather than fly.
The confluence of new actors in a digital age – youth, technology, and the
largely female driven marketization – has led to a social milieu that is open and
available to media culture from South Korea. The borderland with China has a par-
ticularly high circulation rate and viewership of the media from South Korea, and
deep within North Korea there is ample interest and demand for the South Korean
wave (Wikitree 2012). Hallyu is a “wave train” that gets recreated repeatedly and
endlessly, functioning as a multiple and dynamic process as popular culture – from
famous actors and actresses, fashion, make-up, to cool mannerisms, speech styles
and music – all are part of the material of the South Korean wave. By and large,
it is consumed more actively by women, yet it also manifests a particularly femi-
nine, and youthful, spirit. The peak of the wave was with the great charm of Bae
Yong-Joon, the lead actor in the enormously successful Korean melodrama Winter
Sonata. The wife of Chinese Premier Xi Jinping raved about actor Kim Soo-Hyun
in the Korean romance drama My Love from the Star, remarking that he looked
like a youthful Korean incarnation of the Premier. When North Korean audiences
view South Korean dramas, they consume a set of gender norms that have taken
present shape due to social transformations culturally specific to South Korea. In
contrast, the traditional patriarchal social order has not faded in North Korea. Even
though ideologically North Korea claims to be a socialist society of equals, such
rhetoric and laws have no practice in reality. The strong family motif runs through
North Korean state media and literature (Kim 2010); for instance, the first wife of
Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Suk, is promoted as a role model for women to learn from,
yet her significance does not come from her own being, but from her role in the
life of the eternal leader Kim Il-Sung. Since the division of the peninsula in 1948
North and South Korea walked separate socioeconomic and political paths. The
material manifestation of this can be seen in the stark contemporary differences
between the two Koreas. One area of difference – not examined as much as it could
be – concerns relations between men and women in North Korea. Indeed, globally
gender norms continue to be a fatiguing point of struggle. The Koreas provide an
interesting kind of “social experiment” where gender norms and sex relations are
concerned. While South Korean society continues to battle for fair treatment of
women, North Korea’s struggle has yet to begin.
Women in North Korea face extreme vulnerability to abuse and exploitation,
though the state claims the society to be an equality-paradise. South Koreans, by
comparison, can mobilize and make demands of the government to improve the lot of
women and men. Such activities have resulted in the continued struggle to improve
the gender pay gap and other injustices. Youth in South Korea are particularly keen to
 Hallyu in the South, hunger in the North 113
cast off tired old stereotypes of gender normativity. Most South Korean men, unlike
their fathers or grandfathers, no longer fear that entering a kitchen will result in social
castration of sorts. The same could hardly be said of North Korea. North Korean peo-
ple cannot safely make any demands of their government. While the North Korean
state is a signatory to the United Nations conventions on the Rights of the Child
and the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, genuine adher-
ence to the values of these conventions is not matched in practice. North Korean
women defectors who face forcible return from China to North Korea report physical
abuse from border guards on the North Korean side that distinctly targets women as
a group; for example, if a woman is suspected of being pregnant she faces additional
abuse aimed at eliminating and punishing her for the pregnancy because the child
is assumed to be half Korean and half Chinese (Database Center for North Korean
Human Rights 2017).
Even without crossing borders, women in North Korea face additional social
hurdles because of their sex. One area where this can be seen is with regards to the
military. North Korea is a highly militarized society; militarism is by definition
masculine. While South Korea is militaristic too, with men conscripted for two
years, at least there are judicial structures in place to protect citizens from military
abuse, whether from ROK or US forces. Everyone in North Korea must serve in
the military – exceptions are made for the severely disabled, those in political
prison camps or those of questionable political loyalty – seven years for women
and ten for men. North Korea is such a highly militarized society that it is difficult
to draw a distinction between civilians and those conscripted, enlisted, in reserves,
and so on. Because social inequalities are stark in North Korea, military abuse
of power is frequent. Women take the brunt of this with – among other things –
sexual abuse within the military and from the military towards civilian women in
villages (New Focus International 2013).
Even when not focusing on extreme cases of inequality, gender disparity is strong
in North Korea. Men are “men” through and through. And should they be otherwise?
The patriarchal social order protects and privileges them. Stoic non-display of emotion
is the norm for North Korean men. It is normal and unquestioned, culturally, to see
women heaving heavy luggage while men walk hands free (Ju 2014). Culturally, such
traditional customs as these have both largely disappeared from South Korean society,
and the seemingly more modernized and commercialized South Korean media that are
seen to be rather feminized and soft. If they are represented in South Korean media,
it is to indicate a “heartless rogue of a man” rather than a man who could be deemed
attractive and secure in his manliness.
However, rather than interpreting Hallyu as a sort of panacea injected into
North Korea – a panacea that “solves” social inequalities – it is more useful,
and more accurate, to interpret Hallyu as a phenomenon that adds something
new to the existing imaginative landscape of North Korea. Hallyu holds the
potential to awaken new ways of being and becoming for consumers and
multiple identifications – new ways of living, thinking and behaving that are
different from what is prescribed by the propaganda narratives of North Korean
state media. This is not to imply that these new ways are better, superior or
114 Sandra Fahy
inherently positive. What is brought into North Korea with Hallyu is simply
difference itself, and yet given the stark control, uniformity and constriction of
North Korean state media, the power of this difference and its unpredictability
gets compounded in the state power. Hallyu culture is powerful because it is
different, is inherently fresh, draws attention, and is literally attractive, com-
pelling. Hallyu is a curiosity, for good or bad. This popular culture from the
South cannot suddenly “fix” the social asymmetries existing in North Korea,
and the role of popular culture is not to “fix” primarily or use such coercive
power. Rather, the soft power of Hallyu culture is inherently a threat to the
state power because it profoundly brings a different representation and imagi-
nation of what life could be to the existing tired messaging of how life must be
within North Korea.

Hallyu and the Rise of Consumer Culture

The question of whether South Korean movies and TV shows accurately portray
the reality of gender relations and the lives of youth is not within the scope of my
argument. Nevertheless, it is clear that South Korean media present a more nuanced
gender picture than the North. As represented in the Hallyu media, gendered relations
and the lives of youth offer something magically different from what is presented in
daily life and the media in North Korea. Asked to reflect back on their first impres-
sion of South Korean TV shows and movies, North Korean defectors described
South Korean men as seemingly unlike men, but feminine. Women, by contrast,
were manlier (Shin 2012). One North Korean said, “South Korean men looked like
idiots and not manly.” However, with time these initial impressions began to change;
gradually they saw gender norms in South Korea as progressive. This reaction is
analogous to the situation in Korea nearly a century ago when Koreans observed the
differences between gendered relations of Western foreigners (Oh 2011).
North Korean women are smitten by Hallyu fashion, hair and make-up. In North
Korea, the government controls the dress codes of women severely; for exam-
ple, banning pants, if riding a bike, or banning the dying of hair because these are
viewed as capitalistic, decadent and individualistic activities. However, recently
change has been occurring in North Korea, especially as a result of the appearance
of Lee Seol-Ju, the wife of Kim Jong-Un. She has been seen in public wearing
colorful clothes, high-heels and carrying a Prada handbag. Since Lee Seol-Ju’s fre-
quent appearance in the media, reportedly the censorship of women’s fashion has
significantly loosened. Defectors report that Lee Seol-Ju is not considered a fashion
icon in the North because women yearn to be like South Korean actresses. It is
from the Hallyu media that they take their fashion inspirations. It could be assumed
that Kim Jong-Un has partly had an influence on recent changes; Swiss-educated,
the young leader seems to be less controlling than his father and grandfather, at
least if we consider the Moranbong musical group. Considering this, and how his
wife dresses, it seems that he may care less about controlling the fashion regu-
lations in Pyongyang. When North Korean women’s performance groups visited
South Korea for the Winter Olympics in 2018, some were wearing shorts and other
 Hallyu in the South, hunger in the North 115
clothes considered progressive by North Korean standards. When it mimics Hallyu
culture, changing fashion in North Korea signals aspiration. Capitalizing on desire
and aspiration in the hearts of women, a young North Korean explained how she
got her attractive friends to wear fashion items smuggled from China. Wearing the
clothes as “human advertisements,” she sought to incentivize other women to buy
her products (Fifield 2017).
High profits can be made from selling Hallyu media products, and Hallyu inspired
items such as fashion and make-up in black markets. This in turn encourages North
Koreans to smuggle and sell Hallyu despite great risks and strict government pro-
hibitions. It is not only Hallyu movies and TV shows that offer the chance to earn
money for merchants. Because of Hallyu cultural popularity, many different kinds
of South Korean-made consumer products have become popular and a nascent con-
sumer culture has emerged in the North. For example, North Korean women want to
try South Korean skincare products in order to look like Jun Ji-Hyun, a South Korean
drama actress in My Love from the Star. They want to wear clothes that make them
look like another South Korean celebrity, Song Hye-Kyo. Thus, consumer items
that have a Hallyu appeal are actively smuggled through China. Merchants know of
these material interests as such consumer items that are actually made-in-China are
transformed with the switch of a label into tantalizingly Hallyuified products from
South Korea. The same piece of clothing jumps in price with its transformed label.
Some women who work in factories have expressed benefiting from Hallyu pop-
ularity. In some factories, workers are granted permission to use leftover cloth and
items – it was Kim Jong-Il’s injunction not to waste – to manufacture new items on
their own that are inspired by South Korean looks. Attaching a “Made in Korea”
label – meaning South Korea – transforms the garment into something of desire.
North Korean citizens are studying how to make South Korean-style fashions by
looking at the South’s popular media culture. The items ordinary citizens make are
sold on the black market to wealthy North Korean women. Making clothing mod-
eled on what South Korean actresses wear is in demand. A popular book, a North
Korean woman said, is one that instructs on how to make dresses that they see in
foreign movies (Wikitree 2012). Hallyu’s popularity among North Korean women
has inspired clothing makers in the North to capitalize on demand, creativity and
skill – drawing on outside cultural influence to improve their lives. As a conse-
quence of Hallyu, the non-state controlled fashion industry and capitalist consumer
culture of North Korea has begun, unofficially, “from below.”
North Korean women try to mimic the lifestyle of South Korean women they
see in the Hallyu media, and they create ways to do it despite the restrained aspects
of their lives. For example, North Koreans who marry in front of their leaders’ por-
traits envy the intimate and glamorous wedding ceremonies in South Korea. As
influenced by Hallyu, the wedding ceremony culture has significantly transformed
in North Korea (Ahn 2017). Couples have the first part of their wedding where they
play state-approved songs, followed by a second part where they secretly play South
Korean music and hold a ceremony such as they have seen in TV shows and dramas.
In South Korea, couples kiss in front of guests at their wedding. In North Korea,
keeping with tradition, such a public display of intimacy is exceptionally unusual.
116 Sandra Fahy
Inspired by the public kiss common in South Korea, North Korean couples kiss
for the camera after their guests leave. They share this intimacy with close family
and friends. If lucky enough to have the money for such things, couples might start
their newly-wed life much like the brethren in South Korea, with electric house-
hold goods from the South. This changing wedding culture – perhaps performed by
Hallyu fans in the North – indicates an active appropriation of South Korean culture
in the relatively hidden domain of intimacy and family life.
It is interesting to note that fandom culture has developed in North Korea as a
result of Hallyu – in the extraordinarily totalitarian country where the only socially
accepted fandom, to use such an expression, is for the Kim family. A defector
named Miss Ko identified herself as a “serious fan” of South Korean actor Jang
Dong-Gun. She first saw Jang Dong-Gun in a TV drama called All About Eve
from the early 2000s, and was drawn to the character’s romantic, humble and
considerate behavior towards the woman he truly loved. Despite being in North
Korea, she described a nascent “fandom” culture that emerged among her friends
(Seoul News 2014), suggesting the formation of subculture against the hegemony
of masculinist ideology in the North. Even though letters could not be sent, she
explained, fans still wrote letters to their idols to express their self and emotion.
Miss Ko also reported that North Koreans were privately teaching dance moves
from Hallyu music – using the Korean word gwawoe (tutoring) – implying that
bodily freedom and fun were being expressed and shared in a rare space through
South Korean popular culture and that young capitalists of the North were making
money from teaching and circulating dance moves.
The multifaceted elements of performativity in everyday life, for instance, in the
dance moves, fashion and behavior of women and youth in North Korea signal the
considerable manner in which this demographic has absorbed and engaged with
Hallyu culture to better deal with their life conditions. Putting Hallyu culture into
practice like this in the repressive society signals a creative and deliberate blending of
the imaginative worlds and real life. In North Korea, such seemingly banal consumer
culture and practices are strictly prohibited and risky. The openness and willingness
to absorb Hallyu culture, at the cost of punishment, by women and young adults in
particular, suggests that for some people the imaginative world offered through these
new ways of being and becoming is worth the cost such risky behavior may bring.

Hallyu and alternative imaginings of being and becoming

Perhaps it is not surprising that those within some of the most disadvantaged and
weakest groups in North Korean society – women and youth – are most enchanted
by Hallyu culture. It is at once different from them, and yet of them. Hallyu cul-
ture is attractive because it resonates with the consumer while at the same time it
goes beyond the consumer indicating to her another possible version of herself. As
North Koreans consume the Hallyu media, they have the rare chance to escape into
fantasy worlds, gaining moments of reprieve from harsh reality as they are tem-
porarily transported into a character that is at once them and not them. One North
Korean reflected that watching the Hallyu media gave a “second hand satisfaction”
 Hallyu in the South, hunger in the North 117
(Radio Free Asia 2016). It is a self-reflexive chance to imagine another life, to
imagine one’s own life as the same and different. The imaginative worlds presented
through Hallyu are not actually alien of course because North Koreans experience
love, desire, passion, fear – the wonderful and agonizing emotions all of us have –
and as such they identify subjectively and emotionally with the imaginative worlds
presented to them. The critical part of Hallyu for North Korean women and youth,
and for North Koreans generally, is twofold. First, the material world represented
through Hallyu. This triggers desire, envy and imagination. Second, the world of
interpersonal relations represented through Hallyu. This suggests alternative ways
of behaving in relation to others. Both of these are permissive and by existing
in the celluloid world of Hallyu can be somewhat safely tried on, imagined and
accepted or rejected. Consumers invariably identify – otherwise they would not
consume – and yet all the while they consume they are aware of the difference that
exists between themselves and Hallyu subjects. Yet, it is this identification within
the difference that is deeply permissive, opening new ways of imaginative being
and becoming. The power of this cannot be underestimated in a closed and repres-
sive society such as North Korea.
Here, I do not wish to imply that North Koreans have no creative imaginative
worlds separate to the state – indeed I believe my research into speech patterns during
the famine strongly indicates that they are profoundly creative at critiquing the diffi-
culties of life, albeit subtly (Fahy 2015). Through the outside culture of Hallyu, North
Koreans are able to better imagine and witness what creativity looks like when it is
freed from the controls of the state. Further, they are able to see what kind of creative
worlds Koreans – as an ethnic nation here, not as a government – can make when they
are left to their own devices. North Koreans have not experienced citizen-led culture
in the form of free media, literature, music or poetry, for 70 years. For that time North
Koreans have not officially experienced the conventional notion of civil society, or
the legitimized space where individual creativity thrives and is socially validated.
With the South Korean Hallyu wave, they are getting a taste of what such a thing
might look like, and by localizing it through performative behavior they are making
it into something of their own. Young people who are growing up engaging with the
cultural products and embedded ideas of Hallyu will bring a new way of becoming
into North Korea, which will be a test to both the government and the people alike in
the decades ahead.
Hallyu is more than just a cultural phenomenon that cannot be undone. The
South Korean “wave” has been washing over the Sino–North Korean border for the
last two decades, and like a wave it continues to flow bringing new insights, chal-
lenges and dreams. The South Korean wave is creating a type of reunification to
Korea – albeit one largely shaped imaginatively by the South’s creative minds – but
a reunification nonetheless. It is one driven by people absorbing creative culture as
their heart’s desire. It is about indulgence in non-state-sanctioned culture and imag-
ination. Hallyu has globalized, modernized and to an extent liberalized consumers
as they watch and imaginatively “try on” another state of affairs. This is essentially
about freedom, and it is essentially the stuff of revolution. Consider what Jean-Paul
Sartre wrote about this in Being and Nothingness (1992: 562–63). He wrote that
118 Sandra Fahy
when a person is “immersed in the historical situation” it is not possible for such an
individual to successfully conceive of the failures and lacks in that political milieu
or economy – and this is not because the individual is “accustomed to it,” Sartre
explains. Rather, the failure to conceive of the failures and lacks is because such a
person “apprehends it [the historical situation] in its plenitude of being and . . . can-
not even imagine that [s]he can exist in it otherwise.” Sartre then goes on to explain
how a new conception of freedom is not born. It is not born from suffering itself, but
instead it is born when a new light is shed on one’s sufferings. He writes,

For it is necessary here to reverse common opinion and on the basis of what
it is not, to acknowledge the harshness of a situation or the sufferings that it
imposes, both of which are motives for conceiving of another state of affairs
in which things would be better for everybody. It is on the day that we can
conceive of a different state of affairs that a new light falls on our troubles
and our suffering and that we decide that these are unbearable.
(Ibid.)

Hallyu potentially offers North Koreans a new conception of ways of being

and becoming. It also makes their current state-sanctioned media environment
less endurable and more intolerable. For women and young adults in particular,
there are strong indications that Hallyu is being absorbed and integrated into ordi-
nary people’s lives in creative, pleasurable and dynamic ways. The fact that life
in North Korea is difficult – deathly difficult during the famine years and deathly
difficult should one protest – is not in itself a motive to demand something dif-
ferent. Rather – following Sartre’s argument above – it is when individuals form
in their minds ideas for changing their suffering, such as black market selling
and border crossing, these plans make current conditions of suffering intolera-
ble. Likewise, it is when individuals in North Korea are able to imagine another
state of affairs as they try on the different imaginative worlds readily available in
Hallyu that their current situation will be becoming increasingly unbearable. In
time, they will demand a different state of affairs.

Acknowledgment
I would like to acknowledge the help of my research assistant Yeonji Ghim with
this chapter.

References
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Present, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
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Fahy, S. (2015) Marching through Suffering: Loss and Survival in North Korea, New York:
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7 South Korean media reception and
youth culture in North Korea
Sunny Yoon

A young soldier from North Korea who crossed the JSA (Joint Security Area) on
foot while being shot five bullets received full coverage from world news including
CNN and NHK as well as Korean media recently in November 2017. He recovered
from long hours of several surgeries conducted by Dr. Lee who became another hero
in South Korea thanks to his medical techniques and devotion to his patients. One
of the treatments that Dr. Lee gave to this 24-year-old soldier was to show K-pop
music performance videos, Korean TV shows and American movies. According to
Dr. Lee’s presentation on the news, this young man wanted to listen to K-pop and
was familiar with Hollywood movies. Since the world remembers the horrible story
of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who went to North Korea for tourism
and died from being a hostage there for a year, the dramatic story of this North Korean
soldier reminds people of the misery of North Korea. These two young people, com-
mon young men who enjoy pop culture and adventures, seem to represent the tragedy
of the Korean peninsula and the horror of dictatorship in North Korea. These human
stories may give a stronger impression to the people in the world than the nuclear
threat and political propaganda that the North Korean regime proclaims daily.
North Korea interests journalists and academics because it is such an idiosyn-
cratic society, having three generations of dictatorship and threatening world peace.
Despite the world’s attention, however, not many people clearly know what is actu-
ally going on inside because it is such a closed society. The political leader has been
predominantly reported and analyzed, yet the real situations of ordinary people in the
society remain covered in a veil. Despite the closeness of the society, however, ordi-
nary people in North Korea seem to know about the outside world and make sense of
it. A study disclosed that 85% of North Koreans secretly enjoy Western media and
South Korean TV shows (Kim 2014). Although this study was conducted by survey-
ing North Korean defectors due to limited access to North Korean residents, other
studies illustrate similar demographic distributions between North Korean residents
(who have been surveyed during their visit in China) and North Korean defectors.
In interviews with the former, they commonly state that “all watch South Korea
TV shows in North Korea” (Kang and Park 2014). Considering the fact that politi-
cal authority maintains the society closed as tightly as possible and that it is totally
forbidden to watch foreign media, it is surprising to know that the majority of people
watch South Korean and Western media at the risk of severe punishment.
 South Korean media reception 121
This chapter explores the cultural aspects of North Korea by examining the
everyday lives of its people, youth in particular. The viewing patterns of foreign
media in people’s daily lives may be one of a few indicators of social change
in North Korea. Even though some may simply assume that micro changes in
the daily lives of people, such as media viewing patterns, have no significance,
cultural consumption and media viewing can be an important indicator for social
change. Any information on social change at the macro and the micro level is not
readily available from totalitarian societies such as North Korea. News reports
and the media are tightly controlled by the authoritarian government and released
only for the purpose of propaganda. It is hard to gain access to detailed internal
affairs of foreign subjects and everyday people inside the North. Besides, social
mobility is limited in North Korea; physical mobility such as moving and visiting
is not allowed to people in general. People do not have the freedom of expression
to convey or report any structural change on a grand scale other than experienc-
ing daily affairs and transformations in their own position. Moreover, the daily
practices of ordinary people at the micro level may be the only manifested source
of disclosing social change happening inside the society and gradual leakage in
the totalitarian system. Compared to grand social schemes that can be affected
by propaganda or judged by global perspectives, transformative life stories of
ordinary people illustrate hidden reality and insistency of social change, however
micro and mundane it might be. Social power and culture are not fixed or stabi-
lized but can be contested and redefined in micro processes that are constitutive
of macro structures. Seemingly ordinary behavior, such as viewing the foreign
media in everyday life while taking one’s life in order to do so, signals extraordi-
narily significant change in North Korean society.
This chapter is based on an audience study of South Korean media among
North Korean youth, which explored the possible social change and transforma-
tions “from below” under the repressive and dictatorial state. An ethnographic
study including in-depth interviews and participatory observation was conducted
to get into the deeper level of North Korean youth culture and to identify the key
indicators of social change inside the closed nation. This chapter addresses the
motivations and viewing patterns of North Korean youth and how South Korean
visual media relate to North Koreans’ everyday lives and social change.

Context and method

This study is particularly interested in youth culture in North Korea, because
what is happening to young people at this historical moment can be an important
indicator of the society’s future and the young generation are the most active
consumers of South Korean media. In North Korea, young people are considered
a new generation called “Jang Madang (Market Place) Generation” who experi-
ence the informal capitalist market system. They are the main agents running and
participating in the black market of North Korean society (Kim and Cho 2017;
Im 2017; Shim 2017). These young people collect all kinds of things for the
Jang Madang by smuggling products from China to sell. They frequently cross
122 Sunny Yoon
the border risking their lives and accumulating capital for bribery and revenues.
These resilient and somehow entrepreneurial young people tend to be rebellious
to the regime while getting through tough life situations. They are also open to
foreign cultures and capitalist values. Watching South Korean media is a com-
mon popular trend among the North Korean youth despite the risk of being caught
and going to jail. The youth of the black market generation would appropriate
emotional means of forming their own subculture through regular engagement
with South Korean media. Like other youths in the world, their emotional but
potentially rebellious activities function as the so-called “affective alliances” and
“affective differences” (Grossberg 1984) that are collectively opposed to, and
deliberately differentiated from, the mainstream ideology of the society. These
cultural activities in the everyday life of North Korea indicate social change on
the grand scale as well. This is a society where little change may occur at the
political structural level, but a tremendous transformation takes place in the daily
lives of its people.
This study adopted ethnography in order to examine the daily practices of the
young generation that may lead to social change. This method is a subtle and
effective way to reveal social criticism at the deepest level in a society where overt
means of repression and power are pervasive. Cultural resistance in people’s eve-
ryday lives opens up a new space of disclosing change in the long run. Previous
studies of ethnography in other repressive societies may be useful to sense social
change practiced by ordinary people in their everyday lives (Marcus and Fischer
1986). Studies including Rabinow’s Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco (1977),
followed by diverse ethnographic studies in Thailand, Sub-Saharan Africa and
South America (Arac 1991; Pels and Salemink 2002; Blum 2008), share useful
insights to approach social change in closed and repressive societies. As these
previous studies offered a full-scale description to understand the identity forma-
tion of ordinary people, this study on North Korea also attempted to explore the
identity formation of the new generation by considering their foreign media con-
sumption and cultural resistance against the traditional system of the patrimonial
and tyrannical society.
This study was originally designed to research the youth culture of North Koreans.
Since there are no direct human interactions between South and North Korea, recruit-
ing North Korean students in China was attempted. Despite various efforts, no contact
with these students was available. Alternatively, North Korean defectors currently
living in South Korea were recruited for this study. In-depth interviews with young
defectors from North Korea and participatory observation of them were conducted
at a special high school for North Korean defectors. Interview participants voluntar-
ily took part in this research with the assistance of the school master and teachers,
and once met, they were outspoken and frank. I had both private meetings and
group meetings with interview subjects by visiting the high school for three months.
Each individual had two or three private meetings with me and one group gather-
ing. Interviews lasted about an hour to an hour and a half. In addition to in-depth
interviews, I engaged in participatory observation of their classroom and extracur-
ricular activities at the school. I selected interview subjects among those who came to
 South Korean media reception 123
South Korea no more than three years ago and had experiences of viewing South
Korean media when they were in North Korea, in order to explore their everyday
experiences through their own memories. Since interview subjects did not want to
disclose their names, to protect their identity and confidentiality their names have
been made anonymous in the text below.

Viewing the media as indicators of social change

North Korea uses the domestic media as the typical means of educating and per-
suading its people of a communist ideology inherited from Leninism. However,
due to the decline of the North Korean media, young people do not follow this
educational principle. Even when they watched North Korean TV, their viewing
pattern was close to the so-called “oppositional reading” (Hall et al. 1980; Lee
2003), consciously opposing the dominant ideology and discourse of the society.
They did not accept the ideological position of power of the elite, but interpreted it
differently with resistance to political messages in the media.

Boy 1: “I did not watch North Korean TV often because it did not seem real. It
was on every day for over an hour and a half, with Kim Jong-Il visiting
here and there. I had no need to watch that . . . Young students were not
interested in politics.”
Girl 2: “North Korean media were too boring. Kim’s family looked so unreal
and hypocritical. South Korean media demonstrated real life stories that
were all so interesting.”

Young people who participated in the interviews first expressed antagonism

towards North Korean media before they made any comments on South Korean
media. They did not have any interest in, or did not pay attention to, the political
and ideological power represented in North Korean media. The media did not
achieve its ideological role, but instead stimulated the youth to resent the political
regime. Most people preferred to watch South Korean media because of the more
relevant depiction of the “reality of ordinary lives,” as indicated by Girl 2. North
Koreans appreciated a genuine life story more than the advanced economy of the
South or unrealistically fantastic narratives in the South Korean media.
Although young North Koreans have found alternative ways of opposing the
ideology of the communist regime, it might be an overgeneralization to expect
that the media play a direct role in promoting political opposition and social
change, particularly when they are limited to the secret use of forbidden media.
Interviewees said that they did not make any direct attempt to oppose the govern-
ment or plan for any revolutionary change, even though they eventually fled from
the political repression of North Korea. What the interviewees actually got out
of South Korean media was a heightened emotional reaction to the uninterest-
ing North Korean media and a favorable reaction to South Korean media. Even
though they enjoyed South Korean and foreign media, which were totally prohib-
ited by law, the media did not play a direct guiding role in social transformation on
124 Sunny Yoon
a grand scale. The voices of these people tell not a grand narrative but a small story
on a micro scale of cultural taste. To some extent, cultural taste and media con-
sumption activities represent micro power and resistance in contemporary society,
if not dramatic social change on a grand scale.
In the interviews, young defectors shared their experiences of how they were
able to illegally access South Korean media in North Korea.

Girl 1: “I think two thirds of people around my neighborhood were seeing South
Korean media. We could rent or buy CDs and DVDs smuggled in from China.”
Girl 3: “When we watched South Korean media through DVDs, more than
ten people gathered together, men and women, children and adults. In the
[black] market, there are stores that rent foreign programs secretly. It was not
expensive.”

North Korea officially closes its doors to any foreign influence, yet people
manage to access the foreign media through the black market. Although geog-
raphy can affect the degree of exposure to foreign media, the illegal viewing of
this media content is prevalent in all areas of North Korea. Despite the fact that
the interview subjects were defectors who crossed the border, their statements
generally illustrated the media reception of North Korean people, indicating
that the majority in the society watch South Korean and Western media. In the
interviews, these young people knew all the titles of South Korean TV dramas
and the names of celebrities who were popular while they were living in North
Korea. According to interview statements, young North Koreans imitate the
fashions, dances and songs that South Korean media broadcasted. This imita-
tion could also be observed in the North Korean students in China who are
upper class and strong in communist ideology. Recent studies show changes
in digital technology; North Koreans prefer USB to DVD because the former
is handy and easy to avoid being caught when the police come and inspect
households (Kang and Park 2014; Hwan et al. 2017). When the police shut
down the electricity to catch forbidden media viewers, people can still take
out USB and clear the evidence quickly.
Although North Korea is the most secluded society in the world, viewing
patterns of the media indicate potential social change in this society. Ordinary
people expose themselves to foreign cultures and alternative lifestyles by
secretly engaging with outside media cultural products obtained from black
markets. The North Korean case shows the outside media culture as a lead-
ing force attracting people’s interest in the outside world. In my research on
young North Korean defectors in 2011, among 140 respondents, 56% had
viewed South Korean media while in North Korea and 40% viewed South
Korean media whenever they wanted (Yoon 2015). Since then, the number has
increased and has now gone up to 85% of the people who have experienced
viewing South Korean media in North Korea. In this digital age, North Koreans
are increasingly open to global trends consuming globalized media cultural
products, albeit officially prohibited.
 South Korean media reception 125
Youth culture in North Korea
Young people in North Korea play a particular role in the society, more than just the
minority who are expected to be protected by adults and social institutions as in other
countries (Kil 2002; Kim 2006; Kim 2008). Living in the closed and arduous society,
they have to learn how to survive by themselves without expecting protection from
others. With extremely limited resources, they are nevertheless capable of developing
their own subculture while being abandoned and outside of the society’s spotlight.
Young people have this relative freedom because they are neglected by people in the
mainstream who are too busy surviving with economic and political difficulty.
In the interviews, memories of their lives in North Korea for young defectors
sounded more positive than outsiders might typically assume. South Koreans tend
to presume that people in North Korea are only miserable, have no leisure time
and suffer from poverty, violation of human rights and oppression all the time.
Young people from North Korea recalled fun memories, although they did not
forget to mention their experiences with the lack of necessities and of personal
care both from their families and from the society. Because of the exploitation
of human resources and pervasive bribery in the society, the personal care and
educational opportunities of the youth are neglected.

Boy 2: “In North Korea, there’s no interest other than playing outside. We
enjoyed playing all sorts of physical games since there’s no computer or
any other means [in our village]. There was no expectation for us to study
hard or to accomplish anything because studying did not promise any
success in NK. If there weren’t problems with necessities and enough
food, North Korea would be a paradise for children and young people.”
Boy 1: “In North Korea, there’s a kind of caste system. Without money, one can-
not achieve a high position. So normally, parents did not ask us to study.”

According to the interviews, Boy 2 recalled North Korea as a “paradise for

children with its lack of necessities.” All the boys and girls who participated in
the interviews shared their experiences of enjoying their leisure time in North
Korea. They had parties, love affairs, and athletic activities similar to young
people in any other country. Young North Koreans had a chance to create their
own leisure culture because of the lack of social pressure for future success,
which was due to social problems such as the quasi-caste system and political
corruption. Young people managed to enjoy delinquent behaviors due to the
failure of social integration in North Korea. Most activities that young people
enjoyed were prohibited by the mainstream, such as violence, forbidden parties
and sometimes drugs and gambling. In private interviews, Boy 2 mentioned that
he missed the fight competition between groups and Boy 1 admitted his indul-
gence in computer gambling while in North Korea.
Viewing South Korean media was one of the popular ways that young North
Koreans enjoyed their leisure time, even though it was as prohibited by the society
as other delinquent activities. Engaging with South Korean media culture provided
126 Sunny Yoon
young North Koreans with an outlet to dream of an alternative lifestyle that was
seen to be more desirable than mainstream North Korean culture. It was one of
the rebellious cultural activities that young people engaged in at the risk of going
to jail. They were willing to take this grave risk for nothing more than the enter-
tainment value of daily activities such as watching the outside media in a society
where persistent repression and terror prevailed.
Ordinary people in North Korea get access to foreign culture through the black
market. Young people are the most active participants who predominantly engage
in these underground market activities. Interestingly, the dissemination of South
Korean media to the general population is more pervasive in North Korea where
technological and economic means are relatively less available. Because North
Korea has problems in supplying electricity and producing media content, its
people increasingly seek alternative ways to enjoy their leisure time. The black
market naturally prospers because of the political isolation and economic hard-
ship that the North Korean government is unable to resolve. Young people are
willing to risk their lives and play the role of leading changes by adopting foreign
products and culture as a way to survive. They can be key agents in the domain of
the shadow economy and culture.

Boy 3: “I kept coming to China by crossing the Duman River. My parents smug-
gled me into China and I became an expert in crossing the border in order
to deliver money to my grandparents living in North Korea. Yes, it was
dangerous and risking my life every time. I was scared to death at first,
but it felt homey at last to cross the border.”

More and more people are crossing the national border of North Korea,
although they have to put their lives at risk. Boy 3 told that he was scared
at first but the border-crossing later became a routine. In the interviews, all
young people shared their experiences of having access to foreign materials
and culture when they recalled their everyday lives in North Korea, suggest-
ing that foreign contact in North Korea is much higher and more common than
outsiders would presume. Despite its policy of isolation, the North Korean
society as a whole cannot avoid opening its door to the grand tide of cultural
globalization. While the government still retains tight control, ordinary people
contribute to the opening of the society by having direct and indirect contact
with foreign cultures.
One can say that there is no youth culture in North Korea to be officially
recognized. Young people are frequently mobilized to work at home and
schools and they are seen as immature laborers, with a lack of proper care
and education. The future of the youth is restricted in this totalitarian society
that maintains a quasi-caste with little upward social mobility. Young people
have to learn how to survive by themselves, and many of them take the risk
of crossing the border or making money in black markets, while adults are
officially mobilized to the workforce ordered by the communist party with no
decent payment or food distribution. Many young people are abandoned due
 South Korean media reception 127
to poverty and neglect, and becoming delinquents or Kotjebi (homeless teens).
Despite this socioeconomic hardship, they nevertheless find a way to enjoy
their lives and create a subculture of their own in contradiction to the main-
stream system and social values. Interview participants in this study recalled
that the play culture of the youth in North Korea was actually richer than that
of South Korea. The foreign media play an important role in forming a sub-
culture among young North Koreans by introducing a diverse range of global
culture from fashion and lifestyle to pop culture. Young people imitate the
popular fashion of South Korean celebrities and gather to learn K-pop secretly
in the course of forming their rebellious subculture.

Cultural resistance and social change

The youth culture of North Korea indicates a significant sign of social change in
spite of the political pressure that attempts to undermine this emerging change.
Young North Koreans exercise cultural resistance in emotional and mundane ways
that reveal cracks in the political authority and potentially lead to social change.

Boy 2: “In North Korea, it was demanded that students work out in the field.
Who wanted to work? Absolutely nobody. We idly gathered in groups
and tried to play together while avoiding any labor.”

Boy 2 pointed out an interesting aspect of young North Koreans’ resistance.

When students were largely mobilized to do public labor, they had no interest
in working. Instead, they organized resistant activities to the political demands
by playing around in groups. Young people demonstrated their discontent
indirectly by idling, joking around and playing instead of working. In this
case, the resistance of young people is not simply a way of expressing politi-
cal opposition, but is also a sign of social change in North Korea. Everyday
small cracks in governmental power, as shown in the attitude of young people
and the government’s failure to control ordinary activities in workplaces and
schools, potentially lead to social change. In other similar cases, young people
take themselves out of the system by evading or withdrawing from school. They
attempt to avoid ideological education and political mobilization by completely
rejecting the system itself.

Girl 1: “I did not go to school after elementary school. My mother was a teacher
and was homeschooling me . . . I hated working at school.”
Boy 3: “I had not gone to school since the fourth grade in North Korea because
I was in and out of China often.”

These students did not appreciate institutional education and resisted it.
Schools in North Korea ceased to function as an ideological apparatus, not to
mention a proper educational system. Young people rejected the social value
that had been demolished already among ordinary people while staying away
128 Sunny Yoon
from the ideological apparatus of schools that is seen to be a major means of
political oppression.
Viewing the illegal South Korean media is not just an escape from the repres-
sive political power imposed on young North Koreans but also an everyday sign
of rejection of the social structure. All the young people who participated in the
interviews preferred South Korean media for describing real life stories, while
North Korean media were felt boring to them, for showing only politics and
ideological education. Although it was strictly forbidden to watch any South
Korean or Western media, it was almost an open secret among young North
Koreans who watched the forbidden media in their everyday lives. All inter-
viewees revealed that they did not openly talk about their viewing experiences
for fear of being arrested, while watching South Korean media at home together
with their family members.

Girl 1: “We were caught once at home while watching South Korean media.
Someone in my neighborhood must have reported us. Intelligence
Agency personnel came and had a discussion with my parents and then
went away after a short while. I did not know what was going on, but can
assume that my parents gave them some money.”

Outsiders may find it surprising to hear how ordinary people got away without
being caught in the entirely politicized and regulated society. Yet, bribery has
become a normalized practice in the everyday life of North Korea (Park 2008;
Park et al. 2010). According to the experiences of the interviewees, the society
was not as tightly controlled as assumed due to political corruption and inef-
ficient management. Even when people were caught, they could avoid being
punished by bribing public servants. North Korea officially considers South
Korea and Western societies as enemies, but most people enjoy viewing South
Korean media and Hollywood films. In the crack of social control, young peo-
ple engage with forbidden media culture regularly as a rare means of resistance
against the oppressive political authority.

Hallyu: two sides of soft power

Reception of South Korean popular media culture, known as Hallyu or the Korean
Wave, in this North Korean case indicates that the soft power of the attractive
media can potentially trigger social change inside North Korea (Im 2014; Jung
2016; Lee and Woo 2004; Sung 2008). However, the soft power of the media is
a double edged sword as the negative side of the media also works along with the
positive role of enhancing communications between South and North Koreans.
Ideology and cultural power embedded in the popular media can generate a mis-
understanding of another society that the North Korean audience has no direct
experience of living in. In the interviews, young North Koreans spoke about
fantasies that they had while watching South Korean media. Under the social
pressure and repression of North Korea, they desired alternative lifestyles and
 South Korean media reception 129
different human relations reflected in South Korean media, as revealed in a group
interview below.

Girl 3: “I thought that all people in South Korea were living in big houses.
Since TV showed rich people, there’s a gap between fantasy and reality
that I discovered after I came to South Korea.”
Girl 2: “Me too. By watching South Korean TV, I dreamed of how to decorate
a big two-story house with a handsome guy (laughs).”
Girl 1: “In North Korea, we could also buy good apartments as long as we could
afford to pay. There’s no difference in that aspect [between North and
South Korea] in reality.”
Boy 2: “I thought there were no problems with necessities in South Korea, but
there are 100 times more worries here than in North Korea. Everybody
worries about finding a job here.”

Since the motivations of the audience were high at the risk of being arrested, their
expectations were so high that they believed in fantasy as if what they saw on TV
was real. The interviewees ended up being disappointed with the reality that they
have experienced since settling in South Korea. Any effort to facilitate the social
integration of North Koreans through the media is a complex process because the
media representation carries its own cultural bias. The ideology transmitted by South
Korean media can mislead young defectors who were already biased because of the
social problems in North Korea. For example, a gender issue is a notable example
of ideological bias of the media, as the following group interview demonstrates.

Girl 3: “I like a man who is good at fighting.”

Girl 1: “Yes. Someone who could save me.”
Girl 2: “A man who could protect me in the troubled world.”
Boy 3: “In North Korea, most girls like strong, tough men. They do not appreci-
ate gentlemen. Because North Korea has no [official] contact with for-
eign culture, old traditions are retained.”
Boy 2: “In North Korea, boys are often involved in group fighting. Every girl
likes good fighters. Who would like wimpy boys?”

In this group interview, young people addressed gender differences in their pref-
erences of TV genres and ideal types of partnerships. They demonstrated that
traditional gender ideals are still engrained in the minds of the North Korean
youth. Under the economic and political hardship, the gender issue seemed par-
ticularly complex and contested in the context of black market activities.

Boy 3: “In North Korea, women usually earned money. Men had a duty to keep
their jobs with no [decent] pay.”
Boy 2: “In our neighborhood, all women worked and earned money.”
Girl 3: “Women had to earn money because men could not.”
Boy 3: “Despite that, men claimed their superiority.”
130 Sunny Yoon
Most North Korean women work in the black market in order to provide necessi-
ties, whereas men have been required to work for the government without decent
pay since the public distribution system was demolished during the famine and
Arduous March (Cho 2009; Chon et al. 2009). Households rely on the labor of
females and young minorities to survive. However, the positive correlation between
the economic activity and the social position of women cannot be recognized in
North Korea since its seclusion from the developed world allows traditional patri-
archy to stay intact there. In spite of the economic contribution of women to the
household, women are still discriminated against due to the traditional gender roles
that are upheld in North Korean society. Viewing patterns of the media between
boys and girls reflect this ongoing patriarchal power and tension.
Although South Korean TV dramas and films attract these young people with
depictions of a modern and advanced lifestyle, the media still contain a patriar-
chal ideology. South Korean media present a fantasy to the young people who are
living in a repressive society without sufficient necessities, and the disadvantaged
youth use the media as temporary compensation for the misery of their everyday
lives. Economically advanced and sophisticated life stories in South Korean media
provide a niche for them and create ideas of meaning-making and new values on
their own. Watching South Korean media is an indirect way of demonstrating their
resistance against patrimonial tyranny. Yet, young people are also subject to another
level of ideology – the capitalist materialism that South Korean media continue to
reproduce. Young people became vulnerable to a new type of ideological power
contained in the patriarchal media of South Korea. These ideological mechanisms
bind the North Korean audience’s feeling of distress while reinforcing the preexist-
ing patriarchal power over them.
Cultural power that the popular media play in contemporary society can lead to
both positive and negative consequences. As the case of North Korean defectors
indicates, it can create a regressive effect on the young people who cross the bor-
der at risk of their lives and find the harsh reality misrepresented by the media and
different from what they dreamt of. Cultural power of the popular media can nega-
tively influence people and further lead to social disintegration and maladjustment
of North Korean defectors in South Korea. The soft power of Hallyu proves to
be successful in attracting young people in North Korea and potentially leads to
social change. Yet, it also raises the challenging question of whether, and how, the
popular media can function to integrate North Korean defectors at the margins of
South Korean society and ultimately reunify the two Koreas in the future.

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Part III

Contesting voices
8 Other as brother or lover
North Koreans in South Korean visual media
Elaine H. Kim and Hannah Michell

Many people in the Western and Western-influenced world think they know
about North Korea and have an opinion about it; North Korea is a poor country
of brainwashed or hopelessly trapped people led by a lunatic head of state bent on
preserving his own power by any means necessary, even if that means starving
his own people and destroying the world with nuclear weapons. US media have
been at the creative center of these notions, not only in news stories but also in
films and television programs, which generally depict North Korea as the cur-
rent arch-enemy of the US, like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan before World
War II and the Soviet Union were during the Cold War. Like other such political
representations, these inscriptions function to describe the US and the capitalist
West by contrast. Red Dawn (2012) and Olympus Has Fallen (2013), two of
the few recent Hollywood films representing North Korea feature the American
Midwest and the US capital being bombed by North Korea. This is ironic not
only because North Korea has yet to attack any country but also because during
the Korean War the US-led three-year carpet bombing and napalming of mostly
civilian targets – 1950s Korea had no significant military targets – destroying the
economic infrastructure of the Northern and central Korea and resulting in the
deaths of an estimated four million people, 70% of them civilians. North Korea
claims to need nuclear capacity to defend against the threat of a US aerial attack.
In vivid contrast with what we commonly encounter in most Western media,
representations of North Korea and North Koreans in contemporary South
Korean films and television dramas are complex and nuanced, notwithstanding
certain recurring tropes and clichés. Whether in romantic comedies or in spy
thrillers and adventure stories, South Korean representations might reveal a great
deal about South Korean hopes and fears about the peninsula’s possible political
future and fantasies about who North Koreans might really be after decades of
forced national partition and Cold War trauma. We expect that like American
representations, South Korean representations say much less about North Korea
and North Koreans than they do about those doing the representing. At the same
time, because Korea only became separate entities in modern times, the North
Koreans in South Korean stories are neither dehumanized nor incomprehensi-
ble, and depictions of the North are often contextualized so that North Korean
characters are multidimensional.
136 Elaine H. Kim and Hannah Michell
We examine recent commercially successful films such as Secret Reunion
(2010), Berlin File (2013), The Suspect (2013) and Confidential Assignment
(2017), which feature narratives about North Korean characters and interac-
tions between North and South Koreans, comparing them to their predecessors,
Shiri (1999) and JSA (2000) as well as to the widely viewed television drama
The King 2 Hearts (2012), one of the very few that deals with North–South
relations. We explore the diverse ways in which North Koreans are humanized
in South Korean productions – whether it is through allowing them subjectivity
and opportunities to present their perspectives or in highlighting differences
among them and their complex relationship with their own state and with the
South. We also consider how these narratives express South Korean nostalgia
for a culture that has been altered by capitalism. Finally, we will use the lens of
gender to analyze South Korean representations of North–South relations and
possibilities for the peninsula in the future.
We have chosen to focus on mass cultural productions targeting mainstream
audiences rather than art house works. Given their ready legibility and global
popularity, it seems quite possible that South Korean popular media can influ-
ence the way people in other countries view North Korea and North Koreans
and perhaps play a role in what happens on the peninsula. In a political climate
in which dehumanized images of North Koreans and a singular narrative about
North Korea can be used as a justification for war, we believe that attention to
these counter-narratives and counter-visions is not only necessary but urgent.

Shiri, JSA and the emergence of Hallyu

The National Security Act exercised extensively during the dark decades of mar-
tial law in South Korea (1961–88) made anything deemed “soft” on communism
punishable by imprisonment and even death. Articles about the Soviet Union
were cut out of magazines such as Time and Newsweek before they were placed
on newsstands. Books were banned and films were strictly censored; writers and
filmmakers could be arrested and imprisoned for describing Americans negatively
or for depicting North Korean characters as good looking or capable of human
emotions. Even comedians were not free to create political jokes. In the wake
of democratization of the late 1980s, however, South Korean filmmakers were
finally able to deal with previously censored themes such as colonial history and
the relationship between North and South Korea.
Two big budget blockbuster films that feature North Korea and North Koreans,
Shiri, directed by Kang Jae-Kyu, and JSA, directed by Park Chan-Wook, met with
huge box-office success in South Korea. The record $8.5 million budget for Shiri
(1999) was backed by Samsung, and the film also broke domestic box office records,
exceeding those previously set by Titanic by 2.1 million viewers. Borrowing from
Hollywood’s repertoire of special effects, Shiri is replete with bloody assassina-
tions, chases through shopping mall and subway crowds, extended gun battles,
ticking time bombs, and spectacular explosions. With its Hong Kong action film
pacing and visual style, Shiri was also successful elsewhere in Asia and heralded
 Other as brother or lover 137
the emergence of a wave of popularity of Korean culture, known as Hallyu. Shiri’s
box office record was quickly broken the following year by Joint Security Area
(JSA), a mystery thriller that became the highest grossing film in South Korean
history, sweeping cinema awards in multiple categories and attracting five
million South Korean viewers in the first week. JSA garnered critical praise and
won awards in Europe and Asia.
The two films present North Korea and North Koreans very differently. Shiri
opens with members of a North Korean Special Forces unit undergoing tortuous
training in cold rain and snow. Trainees are required to stab living captives tied
to trees and shoot at unarmed people. The North Koreans in the film are repre-
sented as fanatics who live only for the dream of a unified Korea. They repeat
individually and in unison “jokuk tongil mansei! [long live the unification of the
motherland!]” to remind themselves of their life’s mission. To signify the impor-
tance of repressing their own needs and desires and putting aside human emotions,
Lee Bang-Hee, the star trainee, holds a match to a family photo before she departs
for Seoul to work as a sleeper agent.
In Shiri, North Korea is a dark and brutal place, especially when compared to
bright, lively Seoul. As so often depicted in South Korean media, North Koreans
are deadly fighting machines single-mindedly focused on obeying orders, how-
ever inhumane. In this film, one of their most ominous traits is that they are not
easily distinguishable from South Koreans. Lee Bang-Hee blends into the Seoul
population so well that even her fiancé thinks she is from the South Korean island
province of Jeju-do. Like an invisible disease, or indeed like the mysterious CTX
concoction that looks like plain water but under the right conditions can blow
up the entire city of Seoul, Bang-Hee has completely melted into South Korean
society. Whereas later productions emphasize even small differences between
North and South Korean people, in Shiri they are like the swiri fish that swim
in Korean waters without knowing whether they are in the North or the South.
Having fallen in love with a South Korean agent, Bang-Hee succumbs to alco-
holic fantasies about becoming South Korean. Of course, as in the geopolitical
sphere, marriage between North and South is impossible. Thus like a character
from a Hollywood horror film, she must be destroyed when her fiancé discovers
that she is a North Korean alien in a South Korean body. Like the replicants in
Hollywood cinema, her feelings are her downfall. Because she cannot kill her
South Korean lover as she has been ordered to, she and their unborn child must
die by his hand. That she has feelings after all and seems almost South Korean
is perhaps what makes her a sympathetic figure to South Korean viewers, who
might begin to wonder if the North Korean can be recuperated.
If Shiri is the story of love and betrayal, JSA is one of homosocial bonding
across forbidden political lines. The narrative unfolds with an investigation into
a cross fire incident between North and South Korean soldiers that has left two
North Korean soldiers dead and two South Korean soldiers wounded. A biracial
mediator, Major Sophie Jean, is brought to investigate the conflicting narrative of
events and eventually uncovers the truth about the blossoming friendship between
the soldiers from the two sides.
138 Elaine H. Kim and Hannah Michell
Since JSA takes place in the demilitarized zone, North and South Korea are
fundamentally the same – a windswept landscape of trees and grasses overrun
by wild rabbits and studded with treacherous land mines. But North and South
Korean people are very different. Kept apart by decades of political separation and
socialization, the soldiers who gradually get to know each other at the border dis-
cover what they share – not only “blood,” history and language, but also interest in
women, friendship and family, and it can be said that the four actually fall madly in
love with each other during their nights of horseplay, teasing, playing games, and
sharing photos and food as the faint strains of the South Korean hit song “Friend”
plays in the background. Occasionally, their differences bubble up to the surface, as
when ROK sergeant Lee invites DPRK sergeant Oh to defect to the South, where he
can get all the delicious Choco-Pies he can eat, to which the North Korean responds
that he will work towards the day when his own country will produce its own deli-
cious snacks, or when Sergeant Oh suggests that the two South Koreans who are
about to be discovered in their hut can escape punishment by defecting to North
Korea. The viewers feel the impossibility of difference because they know, as Oh
does not, that death would be an easier alternative for them. Now that the two
Koreas have been separate nation-states perhaps diametrically opposed politically
and culturally for 70 years, immigration from one side to the other would feel as
difficult as moving to another planet.
In the end, long-ingrained mutual suspicion, like a finger on a hair-trigger,
results in the two young South Koreans killing one of the North Korean soldiers,
Private Jeong, whom they both loved. Overwhelmed by guilt and sorrow, both
attempt suicide. The two bored young draftees had not given much thought to the
history and context of why North and South Korea must fight each other, but JSA
gives voice to the often repeated but little heard North Korean intention not to
attack South Korea but to engage with the US, as the seasoned and more thoughtful
North Korean sergeant explains to the South Korean officer:

If the Yankee bastards play their war games, we’ll be obliterated. Zero. Three
minutes into the war, both countries would be destroyed. A total wasteland.
Don’t you get it? . . . Move your army out of the way. Then we can go head
to head with those damn Yankees.”

The “other” as “brother”

JSA heralded a cinematic shift by introducing a North Korean soldier who is mul-
tidimensional and who has “sentimental emotions (for South Korean pop music)
and an appetite for junk food (cheap chocolate cakes), but who is exceptionally
self-disciplined, exercising total command over his body and his ideology” (Kim
2004: 269). The theme of homosocial bonding across the 38th parallel has been
taken up in many other recent South Korean blockbusters since then. Recent action
thrillers such as Secret Reunion (2010), The Suspect (2013), Berlin File (2013)
and Confidential Assignment (2017) have been stripped of the drama of Shiri and
JSA. While it may be tempting to dismiss action films as escapist entertainment
 Other as brother or lover 139
without much social commentary, we might also read these films as helping to
define “the national, ethnic, racial self as opposed to ‘other’” as well as “the mean-
ing of masculinity and male prerogatives” (Gateward 2007: 188). They continue
JSA’s thematic exploration of the possibility of male friendships and camaraderie
as individuals from both sides of the border work together, suggesting how broth-
erhood between North and South agents might blossom. Both love and friendship
are doomed in Shiri or JSA, but recent films often conclude with a South Korean
agent bending the rules to allow the North Korean to escape and continue on with
his mission. In these narratives, brotherhood is possible if the individuals operate
outside of their governments, implying that political structures and institutions
have kept the North and the South divided, despite the possibility of humanity and
connection between individuals from both sides who are often able and willing to
help each other.
In Secret Reunion (2010), or Uihyeongje, which may be literally translated into
“sworn brothers” or “blood brothers,” Lee Han-Gyu, an ex-national intelligence
agent, enters into a business partnership with an ex-North Korean agent, Song
Ji-Won, who has been abandoned by the state. They work together to capture
and return immigrant women, mail order brides for rural bachelors, who have run
away from their matrimonial homes. In the course of their work, they encounter
a Vietnamese gangster who brokers international marriages and then, when the
women escape, persuades them to work in his factories, where he can exploit
them. The North Korean is presented as more humane than his South Korean
counterpart. In one scene, Han-Gyu walks among a group of workers to grab a
Vietnamese woman by the wrist and when the workers protest, he threatens to
report them by saying, “You’re all illegals, aren’t you?” Ji-Won intervenes, asking
his partner, “Can’t you treat her like a human? Do you see them as only money?”
The South Korean detective has dehumanized these Southeast Asian brides to
the extent that he does not care about the circumstances that have led them to leave
their homes, such as domestic abuse. Rather, he describes his work as “keeping
families together.” But this scene does more than simply highlight the humanity
of the North Korean as morally superior to his South Korean counterpart. It also
raises the question of identity and belonging, about who is a foreigner in the South
and who is not. It is clear that the North Korean is not considered a foreigner or
other, and the shared cultural identity of the two men is later emphasized as they
perform jesa, rites for their respective ancestors, together.
Confidential Assignment (2017) begins with a violent action scene in which
Im Cheol-Ryung’s newly pregnant wife is mercilessly killed, along with his team
members, by the evil North Korean renegade Cha Ki-Seong. Ki-Seong steals the
plates for printing US dollars that the North Korean government was planning
to use and escapes to South Korea, and Cheol-Ryung is assigned to track him
down and bring him back to be punished. Confidential Assignment also thema-
tizes the relationship between the two Koreas through individuals, in this case as
two agents of the law who work for their respective nation-states against a mutual
enemy. The hero from the North and his comrade in the South successfully get
the North Korean villain. The film ends with their plan to work together in the
140 Elaine H. Kim and Hannah Michell
North to capture a South Korean bad guy there. We read the counterfeit plates as a
metonym for the US, and neither the North Korean detective nor his South Korean
counterpart is seduced by or has any interest in holding onto them. There is no
need for national reunification, the film suggests, because the North and South
Korean individuals can be allies and friends as they each inhabit their own politi-
cal spaces, like cooperating kingdoms in Korean history. Confidential Assignment
ends in Pyongyang with Cheol-Ryung checking South Korean detective Jin-Tae
for hidden weapons just as Cheol-Ryung had checked him when he was in Seoul.
Though they have yet to trust each other completely, we have hope that the rela-
tionship will remain peaceful and cooperative, as suggested by the film’s Korean
title Gongjo, which may be translated as “cooperation.”
Confidential Assignment portrays various types of South Korean masculinity
while privileging North Korean masculinity as heroic. Besides being physically
powerful, Im Cheol-Ryung is self-possessed and focused, invoking the hegemonic
masculinity valorized by earlier Korean generations. By contrast, the South Korean
detective is unattractive and a smaller presence on screen. His masculinity, for the
most part, is defined by his role as a provider for his wife, daughter and sister-
in-law. The courageous and handsome North Korean agent can single-handedly
defeat a room full of gangsters, while the goofy South Korean detective cowers
in the corner until the conflict is over. Later, he has to ask his wife’s permission
before he tries to rescue Cheol-Ryung from danger. On the one hand, we are sup-
posed to admire the dazzling North Korean masculinity characterized by Hyun
Bin’s performance, yet the portrayal of the South Korean man as an older brother
(hyeong) confers status and authority on him, suggesting that South Korea is more
experienced and sophisticated than North Korea. Jin-Tae chides Cheol-Ryung,
offering the moral lesson that “real vengeance is not in killing one’s enemy but
in imprisoning him.” By the end of the film, the North Korean is addressing his
South Korean counterpart not as comrade, but as hyeong.
In The Suspect (2013), popular South Korean actor Gong Yoo plays Ji Dong-
Chul, an impoverished North Korean defector seeking revenge against the North
Korean soldier who betrayed him, killed his wife, and sold his child into slavery in
China. His mission is complicated when he is framed for the murder of the chairman
of a South Korean company. He is entangled in a complex web of politics involving
a corrupt South Korean NSIA agent who attempts to hijack what he believes to be
a biological weapon developed by the chairman. A skilled fighter and an assassin
of villains, Dong-Chul survives a gunshot wound and being poisoned, tortured and
hanged. He is not a ruthless killer but a man with a conscience who is unable to kill
a South Korean agent when he sees the photograph of the agent’s wife and child
in his wallet. In turn, the South Korean agent assigned to track Dong-Chul down
ultimately allows him to slip away and look for his small daughter.
Compared with Shiri, where we only glimpse Agent Yu’s bare chest briefly in
a bedroom scene, films such as The Suspect and Confidential Assignment linger
on the powerful male body. Dong-Chul’s torso is on display first when he is rock
climbing, then during a torture scene, and again when he is stripped to the waist
after being shot. Seductive shots panning his chest and arms represent him as an
 Other as brother or lover 141
attractive hero. In Confidential Assignment, Cheol-Ryung’s muscular body is also
on display in a gratuitous torture scene. The focus on half naked men’s bodies is
a recent turn in Korean cinema that signals both new attention to female viewers’
pleasure and a break with traditional Confucian respect for seonbi masculinity,
which did not valorize physicality. In a more recent cultural context in which
bodily perfection is required of celebrities, these scenes inform audiences that
North Korean characters are not only powerful fighting machines, but may also
be objects of desire. Showcasing South Korean men’s bodies challenges centuries
of stereotypes of Asian men as unmanly in the Western context where “hard male
musculature symbolizes might” (Epstein and Joo 2012) and “might means right.”
In recent South Korean films, North Korean men – even villainous ones – are also
ascribed these hard bodies and the most popular and attractive South Korean actors
are chosen to play them, thereby including the North Korean in South Korea’s bid
for soft power in contemporary global politics.
While films such as Shiri and JSA were groundbreaking in introducing the
possibility of love between individuals from both sides, they privilege male
friendships and male heroes. The action genre, as it defines national identity, is
only concerned with depicting masculinity. In this respect South Korean action
films may not differ much from Hollywood films. What is notable about recent
representations of masculinity in action films is that there has been a shift from
the self-loathing, conflicted and self-destructive characters such as JSA’s ROK
sergeant Lee to productions in which men on both sides have become “objects of
desire” (Kim 2004: 269).
The female characters in Shiri and JSA are a disruptive presence. In Shiri, Bang-
Hee kills Jong-Won’s partner Jang-Gil and ruptures their bond. In JSA, Major Jean
is an unwelcome and prying investigator who exposes, with no thought about
what turns out to be a tragic outcome, a beautiful and delicately blossoming male
friendship. Major Jean is conscientious, but she is oblivious to the effects her
investigation is having on those involved. In later action films, the female charac-
ters are often peripheral or all but invisible in the story, merely inciting male heroes
to action by dying. In Berlin File (2013), the doomed mission to rescue a North
Korean agent’s wife and her death provide the basis for bonding between him and
the South Korean agent who aids him. With the exception of brief glimpses of
Bang-Hee’s torment over her conflict between her North Korean political loyalties
and her South Korean lover, there has been little in South Korean cinema to give
insight into North Korean women’s subjectivities.

North Koreans in The King 2 Hearts: nostalgia for a culture

before capitalism
Recent South Korean films concerning the relationship between North and South
have focused on the theme of brotherhood between men who represent their
respective nations. But with the possible exception of the spy thriller drama Iris
(2013), television dramas such as Spy Myong Wol (2011) and The King 2 Hearts
(2012) have treated the relationship between North and South as a romantic one.
142 Elaine H. Kim and Hannah Michell
The 20-episode drama The King 2 Hearts begins with a little boy watching
the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, but it takes place mostly in the present, an
alternative reality in which South Korea is a constitutional monarchy. The figure-
head king is descended from the last Joseon Dynasty, which was brought to an
abrupt end by the Japanese colonization at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Accompanied by ponderous regal music, the king moves about in an opulent pal-
ace festooned with antiques and portraits of previous Korean kings. In parallel
with British royalty, the king and the palace guards wear British-looking uniforms,
and like twenty-first century British royalty the contemporary Korean royal fam-
ily is mostly decorative and symbolic, “like scarecrows,” as the king’s younger
brother puts it. The king, Lee Jae-Kang, fervently wishes to ensure peace on the
Korean peninsula by encouraging rapprochement between North and South Korea.
Working with high officials from the North, he oversees the formation of a joint
team to compete in the World Officers Contest (WOC) in Japan. The king wants
to demonstrate to the world that the two Koreas can work together and ultimately
determine their own destiny without being manipulated by the big powers. It is
through the process of training for the WOC that the king’s younger brother, Lee
Jae-Ha, played by superstar Lee Seung-Ki, meets the North Korean team leader
Kim Hang-Ah, played by top star Ha Ji-Won, and the two begin a tumultuous
romantic relationship.
Like most other Korean dramas, social and political problems in The King
2 Hearts are addressed and “solved” through romantic and familial relation-
ships. Hang-Ah and Jae-Ha symbolize North and South Korea respectively, and
their turbulent affair is a metaphor for the fluctuating and unpredictable rela-
tionship between two nation-states they represent. But as in most of the recent
South Korean films featuring interactions between North and South Koreans,
the individuals always exceed their governments, suggesting that individuals
could work out their differences and get along if their often corrupt and unjust
government institutions as well as other countries, such as China and the US,
would simply leave them alone.
The North Korean team members in The King 2 Hearts are patriotic and prin-
cipled, but they are socially awkward and unsophisticated or, as Lee Jae-Ha says,
“beyond naïve,” especially in matters of romance. Though she can operate a
gigantic anti-aircraft weapon, Hang-Ah at 30 has never even been kissed. Besides
softening and rendering harmless the North Korean characters, the humorous
depiction of them as naïve and innocent is also nostalgic. The South Korean rush
to modernize, which has been tantamount to Westernization, generally meant
running away from the past, with all of its humiliating political and economic
weakness, as quickly as possible, so that even physical remnants of those times
have been almost completely obliterated or relegated to museums. Many South
Koreans are disconcerted to find no trace of the neighborhoods they grew up in or
the schools they attended. Historical dramas are filmed at minseokchon, the tradi-
tional folk village for tourists, and films set in the recent past must often be shot
in the provinces, where a street from the 1970s or 1980s might remain. Leaving
behind some things of great beauty and meaning in the desperate desire to escape
 Other as brother or lover 143
from and forget about poverty and weakness may have engendered feelings of
longing and regret.
The North Koreans in The King 2 Hearts might remind South Korean viewers
of chonsaram, a term used – not entirely positively – to describe simple country
folk. Like a city slicker tricking a gullible bumpkin, Jae-Ha deceives Hang-Ah
many times. He delights in reminding his North Korean teammates that South
Korea is seonjinkuk, an advanced developed country. But unlike the self-absorbed
and thoughtless South Korean prince, the North Koreans are portrayed as embody-
ing the honesty and consideration of others associated with the past, a simpler time
before the rush to modernization. In The King 2 Hearts, respect for the Korean past
is most clearly seen in the characterization of South Korean team member Eun
Shi-Kyung, who might even be described as a modern version of idealized Joseon
Dynasty masculinity. Since he does not have to be rendered harmless in compari-
son to the North Koreans, he is a more refined and non-humorous version of the
socially awkward North Koreans. Shy and reticent around women, he is a model
of decorum, always respectful and deferential towards Jae-Ha as the king, no mat-
ter how unworthy he shows himself to be. That the modern version of Confucian
masculinity, with its propriety, respect for hierarchy, and sexual restraint, is still
admired in both Koreas can be seen in the contrast between Shi-Kyung and the
irresponsible, self-indulgent Jae-Ha, who is unable to understand why his South
Korean sister Jae-Shin and North Korean Hang-Ah find him irresistible.

Feminizing the “other”: from fighter to lover

Like Bang-Hee from Shiri, Hang-Ah is a trained assassin who falls in love with
a South Korean. At the outset, she is described as a soldier who has been placed
first in foot races and who is “outstanding in her internalization of juche ideology
[of self-determination].” In the first episode, she easily defeats a much larger male
soldier in a wrestling match. Hang-Ah’s conundrum is that, because of her job, she
does not conform to traditional gender expectations and is considered a difficult
match romantically. When she tries to hold her date’s hand, he ignores the gesture
because he prefers to initiate a move first, but he is humiliated when she instinc-
tively grabs his face when he leans in to kiss her. Worried that she will never marry,
she agonizes over her romantic life and must be advised by her married friends on
how to attract men. Having initially turned down the opportunity to participate in
the WOC because she fears that no one will date her afterwards, she reluctantly
agrees only when she is told that a suitable match will be found for her afterwards.
In The King 2 Hearts, the quandary of Hang-Ah’s femininity is a humanizing
source of humor. The question that arises in her relationship with Jae-Ha is whether
she can ever be seen as a woman. In the North, Hang-Ah is a tough and respected
authority figure. When Kang-Suk jeopardizes the Korean team’s chance of win-
ning by getting into a fight with the Americans, she beats and disciplines him even
though he is an older man. Her tough demeanor means that no North Korean suitor
will see her as a likely candidate for marriage; it is a South Korean prince who is
able to rise to the challenge. In her relationship with Jae-Ha, Hang-Ah’s naiveté
144 Elaine H. Kim and Hannah Michell
makes her gullible and susceptible to his taunting and pranks. Like the typical
unpredictable hero in paperback romances, he vacillates between charming and
abusing her. And like the prototypical female protagonist, she must constantly
focus on interpreting his true feelings about her. In the North, Hang-Ah has author-
ity despite such expectations because of her rank as a soldier, but once she is in
the South, she loses much of her power as she must be transformed into a feminine
woman. The King 2 Hearts humanizes and renders sympathetic the North Korean
woman by representing her as eager to learn how to catch a man and as maternal
when she bathes the disabled princess who has soiled herself. Viewers feel sympa-
thy for her when she is scolded like a child by the queen as she struggles to learn
to speak and behave properly in the South Korean palace. In a stunning reversal
of familiar representations of North Korea as dark and scary, she says that she is
afraid of South Koreans and finds South Korea a frightening place. Her attempts
to imitate female characters in South Korean dramas and pop culture might make
her seem cute and harmless, such as when she tries to comfort and entertain Jae-Ha
by dancing around wearing fuzzy fake bear paws. Unlike Bang-Hee in Shiri, who
had to be executed to preserve national security, the trained female assassin of The
King 2 Hearts is domesticated almost to the point of infantilization.
From a South Korean perspective, a symbolic marriage between North and
South in a South Korean drama is only imaginable if the Northerner is female.
The North Korean is the one who must become part of her husband’s family and
adapt herself to living in South Korea. In his parting words to Hang-Ah after the
announcement of their engagement, Hang-Ah’s father tells her, “No matter what,
follow South Korean ways. From now on, you are a South Korean.” In The King
2 Hearts, marriage is the perfect metaphor for North-South relations. Though the
man will be the stronger partner, the wife and husband will complement each
other and be stronger as a unit than as separate entities, and perhaps they will
produce offspring such as ideas and products that reflect both of them. This drama
suggests that jockeying for peace on the Korean peninsula is like a romantic rela-
tionship with all its ups and downs; it will require dialogue, understanding, the
development of trust, and willingness to persist. Moreover, the union will succeed
only if not impeded by outside interference.

Using the “other” to define the “self”

Hang-Ah as well as other minor North Korean characters are often presented
as sympathetic and likable through humorous depictions, but they function
in this drama primarily to provide a foil for South Korea and South Koreans
by contrast. Viewers see South Korean society through the de-familiarizing
gaze of the North Koreans, who often provide a cogent critique of its short-
comings. The South Korean characters in this drama are more complex and,
unlike the North Korean characters, they are transformed in the course of the
story. The North Korean characters do not change much. Kang-Suk grudg-
ingly shakes the American opponent’s hand and carries a poster of Girls’
Generation (K-pop group) home to North Korea, but we know that he has not
undergone any profound transformation.Hang-Ah will have to adjust herself
 Other as brother or lover 145
to life in South Korea and in the royal palace, but she will deploy her North
Korean straightforwardness and her personal qualities of diligence and sincer-
ity to charm and win over the royal family and the South Korean populace. In
the very last scene of the drama, we see that she has taught her son, the heir
to the throne, North Korean dialect. She both embraces and deflects criticism
from the South Korean public, but we somehow have the feeling that she will
continue to use her own dialect when raising the crown prince.
The static simplicity of the North Korean characters in The King 2 Hearts
allows for a certain amount of criticism of South Korean society. Hang-Ah is first
required to have more stylish hair and clothing. Then she must learn about South
Korean society which, given the ideological differences between the North and
the South, is a daunting task. When the queen asks her what Kim clan she belongs
to, she cannot reply because unlike in South Korea such distinctions are no longer
important in North Korea. She must be taught to recognize South Korean cur-
rency and to understand the completely foreign vocabulary of capitalism – interest
rates, inflation, taxes, investments, cashier’s checks. In another scene, she com-
plains bitterly to herself, “All they talk about is money, money, money. They’re
good for nothing. Making the poor feel worthless!”
The North Korean characters in The King 2 Hearts are relatively uncom-
plicated and unchanging, but every one of the main South Korean characters
is fundamentally transformed by the end of the drama. After the murder of his
brother the king, Jae-Ha becomes a serious and effective monarch, partly due
to the encouragement of the principled Hang-Ah. Because Jae-Ha’s indolence
and self-aggrandizing immaturity are emphasized in the first several episodes
with wide angle lens shots and scenes of him eating donuts, powdered sugar
smeared on his face, while talking to the king, the enormity of the change is
emphasized. Likewise Jae-Ha’s younger sister, Princess Jae-Shin, changes from
a fun-seeking diva wearing a blonde wig and mini-skirt and performing in a rau-
cous Hongdae night club into a terrified paraplegic in a wheelchair. Near the end
of the drama, Jae-Shin changes dramatically again, this time into an articulate
stateswoman. Straight-arrow Shi-Kyung struggles to overcome his stiffness and
claim an identity separate from his father who in turn is also transformed from
an all-efficient palace chief adviser into a softer and more flexible person as a
consequence of his own mistake and his son’s death. Even the queen overcomes
her fragility and fear under Hang-Ah’s direction as they scramble to escape from
their kidnappers.

North Koreans in the context of Hallyu and soft power

JSA and Shiri preceded what has become known as Hallyu, or the Korean Wave. Since
then, South Korean cultural productions have become a vehicle to enhance not only
South Korea’s economy but also its “soft power.” According to Joseph Nye, soft power
is “the ability to make others act in a way that advances the outcome you want . . . it is
more than just persuasion or the ability to move people by argument . . . it is also the
ability to entice and attract” (Nye and Kim 2013). Korean films and television dramas
have been used to project and re-brand Korea’s national image, countering the decades
146 Elaine H. Kim and Hannah Michell
of dark and violent images of war and protest emerging from the country and pre-
senting it to the rest of the world as an attractive, prosperous and cosmopolitan place.
During the past decade and a half, the global circulation of Korean cultural products
has made Korean scriptwriters and directors highly conscious of how South Korea is
being presented to the world, and productions are being used to broadcast perspectives
on Korean history to global viewers. Though always through a South Korean lens,
Hallyu also gives voice and visibility to North Koreans that have never been allowed
in Western media.
Ultimately the North–South Korean team defeats the US at the WOC, despite its
endless resources and advanced equipment, by using wily strategies reminiscent of
the feint and retreat guerilla tactics used by Korean heroes of the past, such as Eulji
Mundeok against the Chinese Sui dynasty in the early eighth century and Yi Soon-
Shin against the Japanese Hideyoshi invasion in the late sixteenth century, many
millennia before Korea was divided into the North and the South. Both military
leaders are regarded by both North and South Koreans as national heroes because
they defeated much larger and more powerful enemies by using their brains and
their position as the recipients of invasion who knew their own terrain. When the
Sui Emperor Yang sent more than one million troops and two million auxiliaries
into what later became Northern Korea in 612 ad, Eulji Mundeok’s much smaller
forces decimated them. Of the more than 300,000 Sui soldiers who attacked
Pyongyang, only 2,800 returned to China alive. Similarly, Yi Soon-Shin used his
knowledge of the Korean currents and coasts to protect Korea from the late six-
teenth century Hideyoshi invasion in at least 23 battles, the most famous of which
is the battle of Myeongryang, when Yi’s 23 modest ships defeated a more powerful
and better equipped Japanese armada of 133 without losing a single Korean ship.
In The King 2 Hearts, South Korea can never win with hard power, but perhaps
soft power can be deployed to fight and resist an enemy who owns newspapers, TV
channels, even makes movies and plots where strong nations overtake small ones.
At the end of The King 2 Hearts, the North and the South find themselves head
to head and about to go to war. When Hang-Ah resists her father’s attempts to
take her back to North Korea, he reminds her that some families were separated
for 35 years, suggesting that if she stays with Jae-Ha in the event of war, she
might never see him again. It is obvious that this exchange is inserted mostly for
the benefit of foreign viewers who are not well acquainted with the history of the
partition of Korea, since South Korean viewers are very familiar with the reality
of families separated by the Korean War. In light of this, Jae-Ha’s response to
the escalating conflict, stating that it is the North who have “disconnected all our
communication hotlines . . . [while] our side is always open” and that “the North
one-sidedly cut off the lines,” is a South Korean view of the current situation in
reality. To foreign audiences, Jae-Ha’s response makes the South appear to have
“moral authority” – an important attribute of soft power.1
References to Korean pop culture throughout The King 2 Hearts add lightness
and humor throughout the drama, but in the context of discussing soft power, they
may also hint at a different strategy for reconciliation between North and South
Korea. Early on in the drama, Kang-Suk is shaken and troubled when he becomes
 Other as brother or lover 147
captivated by the K-pop group Girls’ Generation. Although he disparages the
scanty clothing and Western names of the members of the Girls’ Generation
(“Tiffany . . . why does the name have to be Tiffany? What’s Tiffany? Why do
I have to be into a girl with a rotten American name? A rotten bourgeois!”), he
secretly watches them on his computer when alone in his room and is later over-
joyed when his South Korean teammate gives him a Girls’ Generation poster to
take home with him.
Jae-Ha hopes to seduce Hang-Ah when she first arrives in the South after the
false announcement of their engagement. He arranges to have her attended to by
multiple stylists who dress her in a fashionable South Korean style. When she later
rebuffs him after he has gone to great lengths to arrange a very public romantic
dinner for her, it is not just a personal matter but an offense to “the pride of the
South Korean nation.” His resolve to enact the ultimate prank to make her fall in
love with him forever may be read in multiple ways, including seduction of North
Korea by South Korea’s pop culture.
Improved representations of North Koreans may stem from the desire to make
South Koreans appear more generous and humane. The narratives that center on
brotherhood and romance, as discussed in the productions above, for example, do
little to expose the gritty reality of discrimination, poverty, and hardships faced
by North Korean defectors in the South. And perhaps in attempting to appeal
to a global audience, Korean men have been sexually objectified and commodi-
fied. Compared with the ahistorical and one-dimensional representations of North
Korea and North Koreans in the West, recent South Korean films and television
dramas offer complexity and historical context as well as critiques of the excesses
and inhumanity engendered by capitalism. Many of the North Korean characters in
South Korean productions are presented as wise and attractive people with integ-
rity, in stark contrast with Hollywood’s unfathomably evil stick figures. There
are always those who dismiss action films and television dramas as meaningless
entertainment, but in a digital era that has allowed well-written and well-acted
stories intended for popular viewing to reach a wider audience than ever before,
South Korean productions have the potential to inform and alter global public
opinion. In this way, South Korean soft power may be a force to deter US war
hawks from continuing to view the Korean peninsula with genocidal intent.

Note
1 It is asserted that the soft power of any country relies on (1) the attractiveness of its
culture, (2) its political values, when it lives up to them at home and abroad, and (3) its
foreign policies, when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority (Nye and
Kim 2013).

References
Epstein, S. and Joo, R. (2012) “Multiple Exposures: Korean Bodies and the Transnational
Imagination,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, 10(33) https://apjjf.org/2012/10/33/Stephen-
Epstein/3807/article.html.
148 Elaine H. Kim and Hannah Michell
Gateward, F. (2007) Seoul Searching: Culture and Identity in Contemporary Korean
Cinema, New York: State University of New York Press.
Kim, K. (2004) The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Nye, J. and Kim, Y. (2013) “Soft Power and the Korean Wave,” in Y. Kim (ed.) The
Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global, London: Routledge.
9 Discursive construction of
Hallyu-in-North Korea in South
Korean news media
Kyong Yoon

In November 2017, a 24-year-old North Korean soldier fled across the demilitarized
zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. Chased and shot five times by
North Korean soldiers, he received critical gunshot wounds. His defection attracted
particular media attention on a global scale due to its spectacular components that
fed the media frenzy. His suspenseful defection process through the heavily armed
inter-Korean border, recorded by surveillance cameras, was later televised to gen-
eral audiences through national and international news outlets (Berlinger 2017). In
addition to broadcasting the defection process, the news media exhibited the soldier
as another form of spectacle during his surgery and recovery. During the press
briefing after the major surgery that saved the soldier’s life, a South Korean surgeon
publicly announced that there had been many parasitic worms inside the soldier’s
body, also stating that this was “shocking” and had made the laborious surgery even
more difficult. He offered these details alongside a magnified image of the worms
that had been projected onto the screen behind the podium where he stood. While
the relatively poor hygiene and nutrition of North Koreans caused by the decades-
long national famine had already been known, the images of the parasites inside the
soldier’s abdomen shocked global audiences, especially South Koreans, who were
intensively exposed to the images and the term “parasites” over the next few days.
This media representation of the North Korean defector indicates how North
Koreans have been othered in South Koreans’ imagination as a group of people
who are poor and potentially infested with contagious “worms” (and diseases).
In this imagination, North Koreans seem to benefit from their healthier (and
wealthier) neighbor (like parasites), and thus eventually need to be saved by their
healthier neighbor. Interestingly, during the question-and-answer session at the
same press briefing, the surgeon also mentioned that the soldier, who had regained
consciousness a few days after the surgery and was in recovery, liked to listen to
the songs of the K-pop (South Korean pop music) group Girls’ Generation. This
narrative of the soldier’s familiarity with South Korean popular culture seemed
to have the effect of alleviating the otherness implicated in the aforementioned
media spectacle of North Koreans as the Other. The narrative also implies how
South Korean popular culture can be used to facilitate not only the recovery of the
damaged bodies of North Koreans but also their assimilation into the “normal”
state in which South Koreans are situated.
150 Kyong Yoon
The spectacular media coverage of the defector soldier indicates that North
Korea and its people have remained largely unknown to South Korea and the
globe for many years and accordingly have been mythicized through conveniently
selected images and narratives. This chapter explores how North Koreans have
been represented in recent South Korean news media coverage of the consumption
of South Korean popular culture called Hallyu or the Korean Wave. By examin-
ing how South Korean news frames the Hallyu phenomenon in North Korea, it
addresses how the otherness of North Korea and its people as the audiences of
Hallyu is constructed and reconstructed through media discourse.

North Koreans as the proximate Other

While the Hallyu phenomenon has increasingly been reported and studied, a few
regions and audience groups, including North Koreans, have remained relatively
under-explored in flourishing discourses about global Hallyu. South Korean news
media’s representation of Hallyu-in-North Korea has been limited in quantity, and
can be situated within the wider historical context of the discursive formation of
North Korea in South Korean society (Shim and Nabers 2013). In comparison to
the relative lack of studies on the media representation of Hallyu-in-North Korea,
media studies have gradually investigated North Koreans in the South Korean
news media and narrative genres.
Journalism scholars have examined how North Koreans – and more recently,
North Korean defectors – are represented in the South Korean news media. Kim and
Noh (2011) analyzed South Korean newspaper articles and revealed that conserva-
tive newspapers portrayed North Korea as a relatively hostile, irrational and closed
country that differs substantially from South Korea. By analyzing the South Korean
press coverage of North Korean defectors during the period of consecutive liberal
South Korean governments (1998 to 2007), Choi (2016) found that the South Korean
press depicted the South Korean government positively and was critical of the North
Korean regime, while remaining ignorant about the difficulties that North Korean
defectors faced in their daily lives. These studies on the news media’s representation
of North Korea and its defectors commonly found essentialized and negative media
coverage of North Korea, in which the diverse lived experiences of North Koreans
including defectors were rarely recognized. These studies confirm that news mes-
sages are far from transparent, but rather implicate particular ideologies and often
bring about ideological effects on society (Hall et al. 1978). News as discourse tends
to construct particular groups of people, such as ethnic minorities, immigrants and
defectors, as the Other of the dominant group of people (Henry and Tator 2002).
Research on the representation of North Koreans in the South Korean media has
also been conducted to analyze narrative genres, such as films and entertainment
TV shows, in relation to the population of North Korean defectors. Kim and Oh
(2013) examined the representation of the North Korean defector as an embodiment
of North Korea in several popular South Korean films such as Typhoon (2005),
in which the North Korean defector is depicted as an “invisible and unformed
monster.” The narratives shaping the dominant images of North Korea and its
 Hallyu-in-North Korea 151
defectors have also been examined in a few studies of the TV shows hosting North
Korean defectors. Commonly, North Korean defectors and re-settlers are stereo-
typically othered as “infantile citizens” (S. Kim 2017) or “second-class citizens”
(Lee 2014). On a South Korean reality TV show, Good Life, which hosted a group
of young female North Korean defectors alongside a team of male South Korean
celebrities, the North Koreans were portrayed as immature, victimized and uncivi-
lized women, while the South Koreans were depicted as rational, Westernized and
masculine subjects (Pang and Lee 2016). These analyses of the representation of
North Korea and its defectors in narrative genres commonly point out the binary
opposition between the positive, normal “us” (South Korea) and the negative,
abnormal “them” (North Korea), which is reproduced in the South Korean enter-
tainment media as a new form of orientalism. Said (1978) suggested that the Orient
is a socially constructed discursive system in which a particular mode of thought
and statements is considered normal and rational. Stereotyping can be seen as a
specific and ideological way in which the dominant discursive system is reinforced
and revealed, as it essentializes the myth of the Other by reinforcing the boundary
between the normal and the abnormal (Dyer 1993).
The existing analyses of North Koreans in news media and narrative media
genres imply that South Korea’s media discourse of Hallyu-in-North Korea can
be understood in the context of how “our” popular culture is consumed by “them.”
However, the North Korean Hallyu audiences in the South Korean media may
be in a unique position as a result of being geo-culturally close, yet politically
opposed, to “us.” Furthermore, the national desire for future unification as one
nation seems to affect South Koreans’ imagination of North Korea (Kim and Oh
2013). For South Koreans, North Korea may not be simply the distant Other but,
rather, the ambivalently proximate Other.

News media as frame and discourse

To explore how North Korean audiences are represented in the South Korean
news media, this study focuses on news articles in 11 national newspapers, of
which circulation is recognizable (according to the Korea Audit Bureau of
Circulation’s annual report). By adopting frame analysis and critical discourse
analysis, the study explores which particular themes are salient and how particu-
lar forms of social power are produced and reproduced in media representation.
The articles of the 11 newspapers – Chosun Ilbo, Donga Ilbo, Joongang Ilbo,
Hankyoreh, Kyunghyang Shinmun, Moonhwa Ilbo, Hankook Ilbo, Kukmin Ilbo,
Seoul Shinmun, Segye Ilbo and Naeil Shinmun (listed in the order of paid cir-
culation size) – were collected and reviewed, using the Korea Integrated News
Database System (KINDS) and the newspaper’s own digital archives (Chosun
Ilbo, Donga Ilbo and Joongang Ilbo, which are not registered in the KINDS).
The content analysis revealed that 129 newspaper articles of the 11 South Korean
newspapers published between 2000 and 2017 addressed North Korea and Hallyu
as a key component of their stories. This number is surprisingly small, given that
North Korea has constituted a significant topic in the South Korean news media,
152 Kyong Yoon
and media reports on Hallyu have rapidly increased over the past two decades.
Two newspapers – Hankyoreh and Naeil Shinmun – did not even include a single
news article focusing on Hallyu-in-North Korea during the 18-year period.
Despite the South Korean media’s flourishing attention to Hallyu in various
countries and regions – such as Asia (Japan and China, in particular), the Americas
and Europe – North Korea has remained a largely unknown territory in the Hallyu
discourse. This may not be surprising because South Korean journalists’ access to
North Korea is not allowed by the North’s government, thereby making it nearly
impossible to observe the consumption of South Korean media content in North
Korean society. Only a few journalists have data on North Koreans’ access to and
consumption of Hallyu primarily via international nongovernmental organiza-
tion workers, North Korean defectors, scholars and foreign journalists. The South
Korean journalists’ limited access to first-hand news sources on North Korea may
explain why most newspaper articles examined in this study are straight or hard
reports that primarily deliver information without interpretation, and heavily rely
on a few alternative media outlets specializing in North Korean news or the South
Korean government’s sources. For example, Radio Free Asia, the non-profit
international online news partly sponsored by the US government, was the most
frequently cited source in the data set analyzed in this study, along with a few
other news outlets such as Daily NK, the non-profit online newspaper addressing
North Korea-related news, and Free North Korea Radio, the radio station estab-
lished by North Korean defectors. Government sources, such as the South Korean
Ministry of Unification’s reports and the Korea National Statistics Office’s data
on North Korea, were also often cited.
The first newspaper article on Hallyu-in-North Korea was published under
the title of “The Hallyu Fever in North Korea?” by Chosun Ilbo in 2001. While
the annual total number of articles on the topic remains small (between 0 and 8
articles per year) in the 2000s, the number significantly increased in 2011 and
stayed relatively large onward (21 articles in 2011, 12 in 2012, 17 in 2013, 11
in 2014, 10 in 2015, 14 in 2016 and 14 in 2017). Hallyu-in-North Korea did
not attract South Korean media attention until the late 2000s. This trend might
reflect the actual growth of Hallyu-in-North Korea and might be influenced by
the increased availability of data on North Korea since the mid-2000s. A signifi-
cant factor influencing the media coverage of Hallyu-in-North Korea is the South
Korean media’s increased access to North Koreans’ everyday lives, often via the
narratives of North Korean defectors and re-settlers in South Korea since the mid-
2000s. The number of North Korean defectors rapidly increased in the mid- to
late-2000s: 1,384 in 2005, 2,028 in 2006, 2,554 in 2007, 2,803 in 2008, and 2,914
in 2009, which was the peak (Ministry of Unification 2017).
In addition to the frequency of newspaper articles on the topic, it is important to
identify which specific themes are selected and published more often than others,
and to explore how the news media construct realities. In this regard, frame analysis
is an effective method, as news frames diagnose, evaluate and prescribe particular
problems (Entman 1993). An examination of the frames that repeatedly appear
in the coverage of Hallyu-in-North Korea would reveal how North Korea and its
 Hallyu-in-North Korea 153
audiences are defined and interpreted by South Korea’s national press. However,
frame analysis does not articulate in depth how particular frames can have ideo-
logical effects and implications in a wider social context (Vliegenthart and van
Zoonen 2011). Thus, critical discourse analysis is adopted to examine how the
salient discourse of Hallyu-in-North Korea is constructed and what power relations
might be implicated in the narrative. Critical discourse analysis deconstructs news
as a systematic sorting and selecting of events and topics according to a socially
constructed set of categories (Hall et al. 1978). By examining how Hallyu-in-North
Korea is socially constructed, this study aims to understand the reproduction and
reinforcement of particular power relations through media practices.

Analyzing the discourse of Hallyu-in-North Korea

Given the sporadic nature of the reporting on Hallyu-in-North Korea, it is uncer-
tain how political views of newspapers influenced their news selection and
framing. The political positions of newspapers (e.g. conservative and liberal
points of view) might result in different emphases on news frames and agendas
related to the same issue because of news corporations’ regulatory norms govern-
ing news production (Ryfe 2006). This tendency has also been observed in recent
studies of South Korean media coverage of North Korea and its people (Kwak
and Rhee 2009; Kim and Noh 2011; Lim and Kim 2015). For example, Kim and
Noh’s (2011) comparison of four major South Korean newspapers’ coverage of
North Korea revealed that the conservative press represented North Korea rela-
tively negatively. However, probably due to the nascent nature of the topic in
the news media, such a tendency is not clearly observed in the media discourse
of Hallyu-in-North Korea. Regardless of the political stance of newspapers, the
overall frequency, quantity and importance of the topic have remained undiffer-
entiated; similarities, rather than differences, in tones and wording were evident
across different newspapers. However, the two most circulated conservative
newspapers – Chosun Ilbo and Donga Ilbo – were exceptions in that they pro-
duced significantly more articles than others. Chosun Ilbo published 33 articles
and Donga Ilbo published 23 articles. The two newspapers’ articles represent
42% of all articles (n = 129) examined in this study. The two newspapers’ fre-
quent reporting on the topic might be explained partly by the role of the two
North Korean defectors-turned-journalists; one has been affiliated with Chosun
Ilbo since 2000 and the other has worked for Donga Ilbo since 2003. Their unique
position as defector-journalists has allowed them to regularly report on North
Korean issues, including Hallyu-in-North Korea. These most conservative news-
papers’ relatively frequent coverage of the topic is contrasted with the absence
of the topic in the most liberal newspaper – Hankyoreh – during the same period.
The topic of Hallyu-in-North Korea in the news archives analyzed in this study is
addressed in three thematic frames, emphasizing the meanings of Hallyu respectively
in terms of freedom, unification and cultural exchange; Hallyu is considered a symbol
of freedom (the Hallyu-as-freedom frame), a means for unification (the Hallyu-for-
unification frame), and a medium of cultural exchange (the Hallyu-for-exchange frame).
154 Kyong Yoon
The Hallyu-as-freedom frame appears far more frequently (83 out of 129 articles:
64%) than the other two frames; the Hallyu-for-unification frame appears in 41 out of
129 articles (32%), while the Hallyu-for-exchange frame is found only five times out
of 129 articles (4%).
The first and most salient frame is the representation of Hallyu as a symbol of
freedom, the Hallyu-as-freedom frame, in which South Korean popular culture is
often represented as being in contrast with the North Korean regime’s strict con-
trol of individual freedom. According to the articles in this frame, North Korean
audiences recognize Hallyu content by its high production qualities and poten-
tially aspire to South Korean society. Articles in this frame are predominantly
short-length straight news that delivers information about a topic. The articles
reveal the names and types of Hallyu content that are popular in North Korea.
While several South Korean TV dramas, such as Autumn in My Heart (2000),
Taejo Wanggeon (2000), Winter Sonata (2002) and All In (2003), are listed in
earlier news, K-pop and its idols are addressed as popular Hallyu content in later
news of the 2010s. The media coverage of Hallyu as a symbol or medium of free-
dom tends to depict young North Koreans as the key population engaged in the
clandestine consumption of South Korean media.
In the Hallyu-as-freedom frame, Hallyu is not only limited to particular
content items, but also extended to lifestyles – from popular hair styles to com-
munication behaviors. Several articles address young North Koreans’ dress codes
as influenced by South Korean dramas and their characters, such as Hyun Bin’s
training suite in the TV drama Secret Garden (2010) and Song Hye-Kyo’s hair
style in the TV drama All In (Oh 2005). It is also reported that plastic surgeries
and cosmetic products to look like South Korean celebrities are popular among
North Korean women. Other examples of Hallyu-inspired lifestyles among North
Koreans include young couples’ riding a bicycle together, which is shown in pop-
ular Korean TV dramas such as Autumn in My Heart (Baek 2013), and bodily
communication styles such as making a heart shape using both arms for express-
ing intimacy, often observed in South Korean TV (Kang 2004). Moreover, young
North Koreans’ changing public behaviors are ascribed to the cultural effects of
Hallyu (Moon 2014). Reportedly, North Korean women who are exposed to South
Korean TV content imitate the TV characters’ behaviors, such as smoking in pub-
lic (Seoul Shinmun 2012). In this manner, some articles in the Hallyu-as-freedom
frame imply that Hallyu has influenced North Koreans’ behavioral changes and
thus would eventually change the North’s society. A Donga Ilbo article notes that
North Koreans have been awakened by new culture shown in South Korean TV
dramas, while even comparing Hallyu with a religion (Baek 2013).
The meaning of Hallyu as a symbol of freedom among North Koreans is
emphasized especially in contrast with the regime’s strict ban of Hallyu content
consumption, which is often accompanied by brutal punishments of violators.
For example, an article drawing on a source publicized by Free North Korea
Radio reports that two North Koreans were executed by shooting in public for
their possession of VCDs containing South Korean TV dramas and pornogra-
phy (Hankook Ilbo 2013). The strict social control of Hallyu in North Korea
 Hallyu-in-North Korea 155
is also reported in relation to the regime’s corrupt officials. According to a
recent article, North Koreans’ “addiction” to Hallyu content has been a major
concern for the North Korean regime that defines Hallyu as an example of
“non-socialist” and “unsound” phenomena; however, by citing a defector’s rec-
ollection, the article reveals that, despite the official ban on Hallyu, the policing
officials tend to let the clandestine audiences off if a bribe is offered (M. Kim
2017). By contrasting the controlled and corrupt North Korean society with the
desired South, articles in the Hallyu-as-freedom frame describe North Koreans
as audiences who are affected by the alternative lifestyles projected in the
Hallyu content. However, with a few exceptions, the articles in this frame do
not substantially analyze the larger social implications of Hallyu consumption
or audiences’ motivations for such consumption.
The second salient frame is the Hallyu-for-unification frame, in which South
Korean popular culture is reported as a tool for North Korean regime change and
inter-Korean unification. In comparison to the Hallyu-as-freedom frame that pri-
marily comprises straight news reports including short information or introducing
another news outlet’s report, the Hallyu-for-unification frame often relies on
commentaries written by expert journalists, editorial board members, or external
contributors including high-ranking defectors and South Korean officials. In this
frame, Hallyu is identified as South Korea’s “soft power” potential, with which
unification can be achieved in the future. A country’s soft power depends on its
cultural attractiveness, political values and foreign policies having moral author-
ity (Nye and Kim 2013). Among these components, the Hallyu-for-unification
frame in the analyzed South Korean newspapers appears to focus on South
Korean popular culture as an attractive resource that offers North Koreans “a
taste of freedom, modernity and free-market fantasies” (Nye and Kim 2013: 37).
By introducing defectors’ anecdotes, several articles in the Hallyu-for-unification
frame emphasize the role of Hallyu for South Korea-led unification. This per-
spective is evident in the articles that address the defection of Thae Yong-Ho, a
high-ranking North Korean diplomat. In a press conference and follow-up inter-
views, Mr. Thae claimed that if South Korean popular culture is widely spread
and integrated into the North Korean society, it is possible to replace the North
Korean regime (Han 2017). He also stated that his initial decision to defect was
partly influenced by his viewing of the South Korean film The Taebaek Mountains
(1994), which depicts a tragedy caused by the ideological conflict between right-
ists and leftists in the Southern part of Korea of the late 1940s and the early 1950s
(C. Kim 2017). His defection and his press conference appeared to affect South
Korean journalists, as several articles directly reflect his emphasis on the possible
role of South Korean popular culture in unification.
In addition to news on Mr. Thae in relation to Hallyu as a soft power
resource, most newspapers published a small number of opinion pieces on the
topic, written by external contributors or high-ranking journalists, in which
Hallyu is defined as a potential medium of unification. Chosun Ilbo, the largest
conservative newspaper, published ten columns and commentaries suggesting
the use of Hallyu for North Korean regime change, while the other newspapers
156 Kyong Yoon
published 0–2 opinion pieces during the period. The majority of the opinion
pieces in the Hallyu-for-unification frame suggest the infiltration of South
Korean popular culture into North Korea rather than propose cultural exchanges
between the two Koreas. In this regard, the columns and commentaries often
use military rhetoric to describe the power of popular culture. For example, an
expert on North Korean politics metaphorically describes Hallyu as the “Trojan
horse” in his columns that emphasize the political potential of Hallyu for North
Korean regime change (Kang 2015 and 2017). Hallyu is described as “a cultural
weapon” (Koo 2016) that can be used to awake North Koreans, change the
regime and achieve unification between South and North Korea (Hwang 2016).
This discourse may resonate with the South Korean army’s tactics for its psy-
chological warfare with North Korea. As reported by a few articles, the South
Korean army has used the latest K-pop songs through loudspeakers pointed
across the inter-Korean border (Park 2015). With some differences in the degree
of considering Hallyu as a tool for political transformation, the articles in the
Hallyu-for-unification frame have an overall similar perspective on Hallyu as
a soft power potential for regime change in North Korea and eventually South
Korean-led unification. While the Hallyu-for-unification frame in the South
Korean news media appears to propose the use of popular culture as a long-
term political tool for internal change within North Korean society, it does not
necessarily present any immediate and substantive evidence of media effects on
social transformation.
The least salient frame is the Hallyu-for-exchange frame, in which South
Korean popular culture is described as a means of cultural exchange and the pro-
motion of peace between South and North Korea. Only five articles out of 129
reported the possible significance of Hallyu as a facilitator of cultural exchange
between the two Koreas as equal partners. The two articles (published in 2004)
report on the countries’ agreement on cultural content exchange, which includes
South Korea’s donation of the broadcast release rights to the popular TV epic
drama Empress Myungsung (2001). One article (published in 2005), contributed
by the head of a government agency (Korea Creative Content Agency), calls
for the facilitation of South and North Korean collaborative cultural production
(Seo 2005). In addition, another article reports on cultural content exchange that
happened during the inter-Korean summit in 2007 (Kim 2007).
Except for one article published in 2014, this discourse of Hallyu for cultural
exchange has not been visible in recent years during which the Hallyu discourse
has increased substantially. The exceptional news coverage of the topic of Hallyu
for South–North cultural exchange in the past might be influenced in part by the
social atmosphere in which the liberal Roh government (2003–2008) maintained
a relatively flexible relationship with its Northern counterpart; as a result, the
two governments held an inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang in 2007. However,
the right-wing governments that followed and the inter-Korean tensions between
2008 and 2017 might have influenced the lack of the Hallyu-for-exchange
frame. The lack of media coverage of Hallyu as a means of inter-Korean cultural
exchange seems similar to the way in which North Korean defectors have recently
 Hallyu-in-North Korea 157
been addressed in South Korean newspapers. The defectors’ contribution to an
inter-Korean cultural understanding has been largely underestimated, compared
with other more conspicuous themes such as defection processes and defectors’
assimilation into South Korean society (Lim and Kim 2015).
To some extent, the three aforementioned salient frames overlap in terms of
the views on North Korea and its audiences. Given their limited first-hand infor-
mation about North Korea, it is unsurprising that South Korean news media lack
in-depth investigative journalism on the topic. Moreover, the National Security
Law (since 1948), which has restricted the publication of materials positively
depicting North Korea, may continue to narrow the scope of South Korean news
coverage of the topic. While most articles inevitably deliver straight news draw-
ing on external news sources, their views expressed about the topic appear to
show similarities rather than differences, with a few exceptions (e.g. Chosun
Ilbo’s relatively frequent coverage of the Hallyu-for-unification frame, and the
absence of the Hallyu-in-North Korea news in Hankyoreh). The newspaper arti-
cles analyzed in this study appear to share their views on North Korea and its
people – their lack of interests in the lived experiences of North Koreans, their
assumption of strong media effects, and the cultural hierarchy between South
and North Koreas.
First, in the analyzed newspaper articles, North Korean audiences’ ability to
reflexively engage with South Korean popular culture tends to be underrepre-
sented. Due to the access limit, the lived experiences of North Korean audiences
remain largely untold. There is a lack of information about who they are, and the
context within which they access and enjoy Hallyu. To protect their confidential-
ity and vulnerable status, the audience group’s identities are presented collectively
without any specific reference to their subject positions, with a few exceptions
that mention gender, class and age. In the Hallyu-as-freedom news frame, North
Koreans are depicted as secretly consuming Hallyu content despite severe govern-
ment control. The news coverage does not sufficiently explain how the audiences
interpret the content, especially in relation to their everyday contexts and their
own national media content. Due to the reduction of media consumption as access
to freedom, rather than as a process of constant negotiation, the agency of North
Korean audiences, who sometimes risk their lives to view Hallyu content, remains
under-recognized.
Second, the under-recognized agency of audiences is further reflected in the
analyzed newspaper articles, which appear to assume that there are strong or
immediate media effects on North Koreans. As implied in the news frame of
Hallyu as a medium of unification, extensive exposure to popular culture is con-
sidered to transform the viewers’ consciousness and ideology. The frame implies
that the more North Koreans are exposed to South Korean media, the more they
desire the South Korean social system and lifestyles. This view seems to resemble
the North Korean regime’s perspective on foreign popular culture; the regime
has strictly controlled North Koreans’ access to foreign popular culture, South
Korean popular culture in particular, and accused it of being responsible for the
“demoralization” (punggimullan) of North Korean society (Oh 2005).
158 Kyong Yoon
Third, the analyzed newspaper articles imply the existence of a hierarchy and une-
qual cultural power between South and North Korea. Hallyu commonly represents
a superior mode of popular culture, while North Koreans are considered audiences
whose cultural resources are deficient. In the news frames of Hallyu as freedom and
for unification, North Koreans are viewed as desiring South Korean lifestyles as
their ideal, and South Korean culture is presented as the normative ideal. The hier-
archy between the superior South and the inferior North appears to be naturalized
and reproduced in the South Korean news media. The dominant discourse produced
in South Korea has often depicted North Koreans as inferior subjects who must be
assimilated into South Korean lifestyles and values (Park 2016).

Conclusion
By analyzing the news media discourse of the Hallyu-in-North Korea phenomenon,
this chapter has explored how the dominant South Korean media representation of
North Korea and its people is reconfigured in the era of Hallyu. The frame analysis
has identified three visible themes, respectively referred to as “Hallyu-as-freedom,”
“Hallyu-for-unification,” and “Hallyu-for-exchange.” Among the three frames, the
Hallyu-as-freedom frame appears to be the most salient theme. The three frames
are, to some extent, intertwined and serve to reproduce a particular ideological
framework, in which strong or immediate media effects are taken for granted and
the hierarchy between superior South Korean culture and inferior North Korean
culture is naturalized. The three frames appear to resonate with the dominant dis-
course of the South Korean-oriented logic of unification.
Over the past six decades North Korea has been represented as the geo-
culturally proximate yet politically distant Other of South Korea in the
mainstream media. The discourse analysis in this chapter reveals that cultural
proximity between the two Koreas is relatively underrepresented while their
political and cultural distance is often emphasized. This tendency is evident
in the two salient news frames, Hallyu-as-freedom and Hallyu-for-unification,
in which North Korea is not necessarily considered as an equal cultural coun-
terpart of the South but rather as the culturally and economically deficient
Other. North Korea as a collective entity is positioned as the Other of freedom
(in the Hallyu-as-freedom frame), and as the object to overcome for South
Korea-led unification (in the Hallyu-for-unification frame). While this chap-
ter has identified thematic frames and their possible ideological implications,
the question of why such frames are constructed remains underexplored. As
mentioned earlier, the role of the defectors-turned-journalists affiliated with
major conservative newspapers might be an influential factor. As shown in the
major conservative newspaper Chosun Ilbo’s relatively frequent publication of
commentaries on Hallyu as a facilitator for unification, dominant media corpo-
rations’ news practices may be supportive of the instrumental value of Hallyu
as a means of the South-led unification. Hallyu-in-North Korea is a nascent yet
extraordinarily important phenomenon, which seems to occur as an organically
grown, isolated case outside the spotlight of the dominant Hallyu industry and
global market. However, the South Korean news discourse seems to reproduce
 Hallyu-in-North Korea 159
the stereotyping of the unknown Other and reinforce the us–them dichotomy
in news media reporting.
This chapter has critically addressed Hallyu as a form of ideological discourse
constructed in its place of origin, rather than an actual meaning-making process
occurring outside South Korea. In the South Korean media landscape, over the
past two decades Hallyu has been considered as a vehicle for a new phase of South
Korea’s export-driven economy and a proof of the nation’s rapid integration into
the global cultural economy (Cho Han 2005; S. Kim 2013; Sohn 2009). “Global
Hallyu” as a recent South Korean media discourse seems to narrowly refer to the
market expansion of South Korean cultural commodities to “economically global”
locations (e.g. the United States and Japan) and “culturally global” locations
(e.g. Western Europe) (S. Kim 2013). In this discourse of Hallyu, some global
audiences are inevitably left behind. The North Korean audiences, who are on the
margin of global capitalism, are an obvious example of the Other in the global
Hallyu discourse. In this regard, the media spectacle of the defector soldier intro-
duced at the beginning of this chapter should be revisited. As shown in the image of
the inside of the soldier’s abdomen, North Korea and its people might be imagined
as the “parasitic” Other of South Korea’s “healthy” state in the global economy.
The global Hallyu discourse engages with South Korea’s nationalistic pursuit for
economic and cultural power. The othering of the North Korean Hallyu audiences
suggests that the discourse of Hallyu under construction may be primarily about
economic and cultural penetration into the narrowly imagined global. As revealed
in this chapter, Hallyu between the two Koreas does not necessarily mean their
cultural exchange but rather refers to the affirmation of their political and economic
distance. Ironically, the media discourse of Hallyu-in-North Korea implies how
certain audiences in the outskirts of the globally commodified circuit of Hallyu
may be discursively constructed both as “invisible” subjects in their cultural agency
and as “hyper-visible” subjects in their spectacle otherness.

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10 Webtoon and intimacy
Reception of North Korean defectors’
survival narratives
Jahyon Park

As of 2017, South Korea’s Ministry of Unification announced that more than

30,000 North Koreans had defected to South Korea. The growing population of
North Korean defectors in South Korea brings about the issue of their assimilation
into a new community. Kim and Yun (2017) point out the paradoxical situation
that North Korean defectors confront; on the one hand, the defectors hold the
rights as citizens of South Korea, but on the other, they inevitably experience
social exclusion and identity problems as the Other in South Korea due to their
complex entanglement in political ideologies. Considering their peculiar social
position, the South Korean government prioritizes their stable settlement. Both
social and government-level interests have invoked academic research on the
degrees and types of their “adaptation” to South Korean society (Yi 2014; Lee
2016; Kim and Yun 2017). The research methodologies have been refined and
quantitatively increased in terms of measuring social and psychological integra-
tion alongside economic stability, policy and institutional changes.
Nevertheless, these analyses tend to neglect the actual reception of North
Korean defectors among the South Korean community. As Kim and Yun (2017)
demonstrate, South Koreans have experienced a high frequency of encounters
with North Korean defectors in the media since the 2000s when television pro-
grams and films began actively dealing with their survival and adaptation as
emerging issues, while the majority of South Korean people have little chance
to communicate with them in the real world. Their research continues to prob-
lematize commonly represented images of North Korean defectors, which
reflect distorted and tendentious views in media production. The representa-
tion of North Korean defectors as pathetic and deplorable rather strengthens
their preexisting stereotype of North Koreans as the Other. According to Sim’s
(2017) research on the level of perception of North Korean defectors among the
public, their repetitive exposure in the media intensifies prejudice and discrimi-
nation against them. By referring to the survey of the public perception about
North Korean defectors conducted by the National Human Rights Commission
of Korea in 2014, it was noted that around 49% of the respondents expressed
their concerns about taxation and unemployment despite their awareness of the
need for social and economic help (Sim 2017: 175). The fragmented informa-
tion about “otherized” North Korean defectors in media content produces a
 Webtoon and intimacy 163
fallacy that they can deprive existent community members of economic and
social opportunities in a competitive society. This problem is also raised by
Lee (2016) who points out South Korea’s passive attitudes towards the matter
of North Korean defectors’ resettlement. Thus, pervasively embedded negative
perceptions in the mass media exacerbate social and psychological barriers in
the adjustment process.
Considering the necessity of a positive recognition of North Korean defectors
for their stable integration into South Korean society, Kim and Yun (2017) argue
that the media consumption of the narratives about the defectors on the Internet
helps improve their reception because of interactivity in the process of obtaining
knowledge. They pay attention to diverse media forms that lead to different levels
of perception of North Korean defectors. Their study on media perception of the
defectors indicates that negative responses often emerge through films and televi-
sion programs. By demonstrating the problematic deployment of North Korean
defectors in these media sectors, they propose that North Korean defectors’ anec-
dotes of escape and adaptation are often used as entertainment for audiences. In
addition to the exaggeration that occurs in the defectors’ stories on television and
screen, their criticism of North Korea results in the cultivation of negative percep-
tions towards them in South Korean society. As Kim and Yun continue, whereas
North Korean defectors’ negative perspective against their previous regime helps
justify their escape and advocacy of the South Korean political ideology of liberal
democracy, the ways in which they speak about negative aspects of North Korea
at the same time provoke a negative reaction among South Koreans against the
defectors. This kind of negative narrative generally hinders the reception of North
Korean defectors by engendering the unfavorable response towards the defectors as
they assimilate into South Korean society even if it is based on the truth. By draw-
ing on Hall’s (1980) hegemony theory of the mass media in his encoding/decoding
model, Kim and Yun argue that there is a strong tendency of major media forms,
such as newspaper, film and television, to produce these biased depictions, as media
producers are closely related with hegemony, which justifies the view of the ruling
class in political and economic domains, and thus constitute media texts in a way
that reproduces and strengthens mainstream ideologies. Kim and Yun point out that
the mass media tend to focus on the negative aspects of defectors’ survival stories
because anti-communist ideology has remained influential in South Korean society
since the national division occurred. Also, the producer–audience relationship tends
to be unidirectional in the sectors of newspapers, films and television programs.
Audiences are forced to repeatedly encounter and accept these negative images and
stories of the defectors without interactions with media producers, and even with
defectors. However, the Internet media provide various types of comments sec-
tions, which potentially invigorate multi-directional communication between media
producers and audiences, in contrast to the one-sided mode of communication in the
majority of mass media forms.
Given this observation of multi-directional communication on the Internet, I
will argue in this chapter that the interactive engagement of the comments section
follows certain enabling features of Internet fora, thereby creating relatively more
164 Jahyon Park
positive perceptions of North Korean defectors. Indeed, the comments section
plays a significant role in Choi Seong-Guk’s online comic strip, Rodong Simmun
(Labor Interrogation), which I would like to consider here as an example of rela-
tively symmetrical and even intimate communication between media content
producer and audiences. Choi, as the first North Korean defector web-cartoonist,
deploys North Korean defectors’ survival narratives in South Korea based on
his own experiences and interviews. Choi has gained more than 90% favorable
reviews and successfully attracted the attention of audiences to the issues of
North Korean defectors’ challenges and difficulties in resettlement. His direct
communication with the audiences occurs through the unique form of the com-
ments section that arises in the so-called daetgeul which is a form of online reply
available in the web interface underneath each episode. Choi uses this section
as an informal “North–South Daetgeul Summit,” which promises to satisfy the
curiosity of the audiences who ask questions about North Korean defectors as
well as the country that they left behind. The active interactions between Choi
and the audiences contribute to the alternative discourse on the perception of
North Korean defectors in South Korean society, by facilitating North–South
cultural exchange “from below” through this intimate form of communication.
This chapter examines how audiences engage in the reception of a web-based
cartoon (known as “webtoon”), Rodong Simmun, through daetgeuls (online
replies). In this webtoon, Choi Seong-Guk describes the challenges and strug-
gles of North Korean defectors in the process of escaping from North Korea and
adapting to new life in South Korean society since 2016. Choi facilitates the
daetgeul section to attract younger generations of audiences in particular and
also promotes positive reception of North Korean defectors among South Korean
audiences. In contrast to the general assumption that regards the social media as
eroding modes of intimate interchange based on face-to-face encounters, I argue
that daetgeuls equally strengthen interaction through the development of affect
of intimacy towards North Korean defectors’ survival narratives. This intimacy
in reception improves the understanding of the North Korean defectors because
the webtoon’s orientation towards younger generations in South Korea opens the
scope of these narratives to those who do not otherwise have any knowledge
or familiarity with this content. By drawing on Fiske’s (1987) perspective on
active audience theory, subculture and empowerment, I will argue that audiences’
direct individual engagement with the webtoon challenges pervasive stereotypes
about North Korean defectors as being isolated and otherized, as the engage-
ment with the media often involves the active and autonomous participation in
meaning-making production. It can be argued that this digital form of reception,
by facilitating daetgeuls, has an implication for the way that audiences challenge
dominant ideologies of mainstream society, and that they furthermore create their
own modes of resistance to the preexisting stereotype of the defectors. Also, audi-
ence intimacy fostered in the daetgeul section can shed new light on the larger
issue of unification because of inclusion of younger generations of South Koreans
in the crucial discourses about the social integration of North Korean defectors
into South Korean society.
 Webtoon and intimacy 165
Daetgeul: a new form of intimate communication
Considering the format of Rodong Simmun as a webtoon, the distinctive features of
webtoons should be examined before exploring the role of daetgeuls and audience
intimacy in the reception practices. The term webtoon is a new form of media on the
Internet and generally refers to a technological combination of two media – digital
and cartoon (Han and Kim 2013; Ryu and Lee 2014; Jin 2015; Cho 2016; Jang 2017).
As web-based online comics, webtoons have emerged as a new cultural commodity
since the early 2000s in South Korea along with the expansion of smartphone use.
The webtoon is generally created on a computer platform and distributed via the
Internet and the mobile devices. Due to its usage for a small screen circulation, they
mainly consist of close-ups in a long vertical layout. While the traditional comic
book, and even in the form of nowadays e-books, requires readers to continuously
flip the paper to see its content in the next page, with this revolutionary layout of
the webtoon, readers can read and view content simply by keeping scrolling down
the smartphone or computer screen to see the next scene. This is considered a con-
spicuous feature of webtoons, distinguishing them from other types of online comic
strips and the still pervasively published print form of comics, manhwa, in South
Korea. In addition to these technological advantages, webtoons have accelerated
in cultural popularity due to easy accessibility via the Internet and the high quality
of narrative-centered visuality through the phenomenon of media convergence. Jin
(2015: 193) also points to the technological development as a significant factor in
terms of defining the webtoon, and argues that its form of transmedia storytelling
enables this new media form not only to become “one of Korea’s signature forms
of youth culture,” but also to play “a major role as the primary cultural product of
the Korean Wave in the global cultural market.”
The popularity of webtoons is attributable to the active participation of the
audiences in the “daetgeul” section. The daetgeul can be translated into “replies,”
but it should be regarded as the neologism that combines “following (daet)” and
“writing (geul).” In terms of these acts of following, or reading, and writing online
through computer-mediated communication, Kweon and Kim (2008) explore this
new media form in their study of the circulation of news and interactive com-
munications through daetgeuls to measure the effects of the user’s activities in
replies to newsfeed on Internet portal sites. They define this new media form as
the perceptions of online replies and pay attention to their circulation through
computing and automobile platforms. The daetgeul is generally created and dis-
tributed on the computer platform, similar to that of webtoons. But now, users
may respond to any online articles or visual works, including to other people’s
posts on various network interfaces, such as desktop, laptop, tablet PC and mobile
devices. As the term platform expands its definition due to the development of
mechanical devices and the ubiquitous presence of high-speed wireless Internet,
the evolving digital culture turns the daetgeul into a new space as an active site of
communication for media users.
Indeed, the daetgeul section contributes to vigorous communication online by
encouraging audiences to express their responses and thus makes them visible.
166 Jahyon Park
Through the online viewer board, including ratings and comments, the audiences
convey their impressions and opinions to media production. The number of clicks,
ratings, and positive reviews or critiques provide “measurable and immediate
feedback” to the producers and circulators (Jin 2015; 200). In addition to com-
municating with the producers and circulators, they interact with other members
of the audience through the “dual” acts of following and writing. They express
their thoughts and feelings by choosing and clicking other audience members’
comments. The process of clicking and viewing/reading comments demonstrates
the behavior of “following.” In addition to “following,” the audience members
post their writings as another active form of engagement. This behavior of “writ-
ing” reflects a new form of reception that creates a discourse on media content by
encouraging participants to engage in the discourse. This structure of reception
visualizes the participation of the audience members in reception.
Furthermore, communication among the audience members in the digital
space complicates, and allows for, unconventional notions of temporality and
spatiality. As Jin (2015: 199) posits, webtoons are popular due to “their easy
accessibility,” regardless of temporal and spatial boundaries. Both webtoons and
daetgeuls are open for anyone with access to Naver and Daum, the two most
popular Internet portal sites in South Korea. The media users read and watch
webtoons and write comments about their own reactions and reviews by clicking
and scrolling down the screen of their portable devices on the subway, bus, or
even on the street whenever they want. Simultaneously, they may further develop
their emotional reactions by expressing their ideas and thoughts. The acts of fol-
lowing and writing that transcend any physical boundaries of time and space thus
produce spontaneity in that the audiences create a new type of relationship with
the media and other audiences. This new type of relationship potentially brings
about the emergence of intimacy. Individuals emerge as active subjects in the
new cultural practices to the extent that they participate in a more intimate form
of communication, particularly as members of audiences.

Active audiences in digital media culture

To analyze the impacts of webtoons and daetgeuls, it is necessary to briefly
explain the position and meaning of active audience in digital media culture.
The role of audiences has become increasingly important in the new and evolv-
ing environment of media reception. In media audience studies, Hall’s (1980)
encoding/decoding model originally demonstrated that media texts are encoded
by producers and the texts contain the dominant ideologies of the people who
made the texts, whereas decoding occurs when audiences read/view the texts and
interpret their own ideologies according to their social and political backgrounds.
Hall’s concept of audience autonomy in decoding media texts is used as a criti-
cism of theories of social reproduction that are complicated by Marxist analyses
of culturalism in mass media studies. By employing qualitative research in exam-
ining how audiences read and use media texts, scholars in media studies have
expanded their views on the media, moving away from the view of the media as
 Webtoon and intimacy 167
largely performing ideological functions to a view of the media as constructing
complex relations between individuals and their media environment. Ang (1985)
recognized audiences’ individual viewing experiences against the dominant
flow of an institutional perspective, and Fiske (1987) emphasized the subjectiv-
ity of the audience members in emphasizing pleasure afforded by polysemy of
meaning production, as well as the possibility for audience resistance to domi-
nant ideology. In terms of the evolving digital environment, Livingston (2003)
points out the critical role of technology in the transformation of audiences from
previously passive observers to active participants in the digital world. Jenkins
(2006) recognizes that the circulation of media content highly depends on the
participation of active audiences who blur the boundary between producers and
consumers. Recent audience studies attend to articulating popular media culture
in multifaceted contexts of everyday life.
The Korean daetgeul case in webtoons shows that audiences receive media
content differently from ways that have been proposed in earlier Western stud-
ies of active audiences. The spontaneity of online activities generated by using
cutting-edge digital technologies transcends the temporal and spatial boundaries
that used to be significant factors in the dominant theorization of audience recep-
tion in television studies. Unlike audiences of other media forms, the webtoon
audiences no longer need to be at home or in a theater in order to read/watch
their favorite webtoons at a given time. Therefore, there is no need for research-
ers to attend to the event of observing audiences’ reading and interpreting media
texts with their own eyes within a required time frame. Examining accumulated
comments in the daetgeul section serves as a useful method of reception stud-
ies. Methodological advancement clearly provides such advantages, but some
researchers point out possible limitations or side effects that rise as social con-
cerns about the newly emerging daetgeul culture. Reflecting upon Internet users’
activities through daetgeuls on social networking websites, Kweon and Kim
(2008) indicate a relatively low accuracy or truthfulness of the online replies due
to the users’ anonymity and the probability of manipulated information. Their
research reveals the negative effects of online replies about the believability of
the information sources in the reception process of various types of online news.
However, they address a considerable degree of reading and writing on the Internet
through the comments sections in everyday life and suggest facilitating daetgeul
management policies, including a “track-back” system to improve confidence
in online communication. This system sends a notification to the website owner
when a user follows and links to one of the owner’s writings, such as an indi-
vidual blog. Daetgeuls located at the end of a webtoon have similar functions and
allow a webtoon author and other participants to impose sanctions or restrictions
on manipulative or offending daetgeuls. While these functions and management
policies still need improvement to promote the daetgeul culture, this new type of
communication in webtoons enables individuals’ direct engagement in the media
and further urges an innovative approach to the question of audience reception.
In discussing the webtoon about North Korean defectors and the emergence of
intimate forms of communication, the terminology “audiences” will be used since
168 Jahyon Park
the singular term “audience” refers to a coherent, but passive, group of audience.
Fiske (1987: 16) problematizes the term “audience” as “a homogeneous mass of
people” as this term reflects the desire of the producers who create an imagined
homogeneous group of powerless people who accept dominant ideology. This
singular form has a tendency to underestimate the capacity of audiences who can
produce, circulate, and reproduce media content and social knowledge. For webt-
oon audiences, the entire process of reception requires multiple actions of reading,
seeing, watching and sometimes listening when they have animation effects and
background music. They also write while they are reading and watching. Their acts
of writing represent their active reception and involvement in the meaning-making
process as a “user,” “consumer,” “producer,” and “prosumer” implying audiences’
performance in multiple roles of a consumer, distributor and producer in digital
media culture. Their multi-dimensional engagements in the reception of webtoons
emphasize active agency and diversity as distinctive features of webtoon audiences.

The narrative of Rodong Simmun

Choi Seong-Guk’s webtoon Rodong Simmun describes the challenges and struggles
of North Korean defectors in the process of escaping from North Korea and adapt-
ing to new life in South Korean society. Before defecting to South Korea, Choi used
to work at Pyongyang’s SEK (Scientific Education Korea) animation studio. His
distinctive career in North Korea encouraged him to take up drawing again after
defecting and this time he posted his comic strips online. Rodong Simmun has been
serialized on Naver, one of the major portal sites in South Korea, since May 2016.
It was first published on the “user-created webtoon” section and then moved to
the “best user-created webtoon” section after receiving positive reviews reaching
almost 9.9 out of 10. Even though he had to stop serializing from mid-March 2017
through the beginning of November in the same year due to circulation issues, most
episodes received more than the average 30,000 views before the re-serialization.
Considering the high competitive situation of serializing webtoons on such a major
portal site, the promotion in status confirms its exceptional popularity. This phe-
nomenon has enabled Choi to continue its serialization and has even encouraged the
circulator to publish its series in the print book form in 2016 and 2018, respectively.
Rodong Simmun strategically uses its title to attract webtoon audiences. The
title means “labor interrogation,” which sounds as if it is a synonym of the North
Korean state’s official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun (Labor Newspaper). As this
newspaper is internationally used as a source of conveying recent news about the
North Korean regime, the webtoon Rodong Simmun aims to satirize this one and
only channel for obtaining knowledge about North Korea by using the homonym
effect. In fact, the humorous title of this webtoon gained the attention of webt-
oon audiences and further inspired them to read/view, rate and leave comments.
One of the reviewers wrote about his curiosity about this webtoon as “unknown
stories about North Korea,” and another commenter states: “This is really good
to compare differences in general thoughts between North and South Koreans. I
am grateful for this type of webtoon.” Another reviewer also mentions: “I used
 Webtoon and intimacy 169
to wonder about North Korea, so I need to read this webtoon.” Many comments
about the introduction to the series reveal readers’ expectations of learning about
the unfamiliar territory that is their neighboring country. They believe that this
webtoon series can reduce the gap between North and South Korean cultures and
also improve mutual perceptions.
Daetgeul suggests that audiences’ interests are provoked by both the cultural
differences between North and South Korea and also the difficulties of North
Korean defectors experience on their social dilemma of adapting to new circum-
stances. Some reviewers state that the defectors’ survival stories in this webtoon
produce realization that the defectors confront burdensome lives in their adaptation
to South Korean society. Others respond that this webtoon should be considered a
kind of a textbook for North Korean defectors. Recently defected North Koreans
can learn about cultural differences through this new cultural form and embrace
the unexpected hardship involved in adjusting to a new community. This webtoon
provides laughter through the medium of comics and also educates both South
Koreans and North Korean defectors about the challenges and struggles in the
defectors’ assimilation into their society.
Since the word “interrogation” in the title indicates an actual investigation, ini-
tial episodes focus on portraying various experiences that the defectors go through
at South Korea’s NIS (National Intelligence Service). They undergo several months
of interrogation by NIS as soon as they arrive in South Korea. This agency, which
is similar to the United States’ CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), investigates the
defectors to screen out spies. North Korean agents sometimes disguise themselves
as innocent defectors and enter South Korea to complete their missions. They then
assassinate certain other defectors who are known to have sensitive information
about the North Korean state or who are sent to provoke social chaos in South
Korea (Lee 2016: 52). After interrogation, the defectors are sent to Hanawon,
located in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province near Seoul, to receive resettlement educa-
tion making possible their stable integration into South Korean society. During this
period, they are segregated from the outside world and undergo various types of
trainings, including medical examination and psychological counselling, intended
to promote their secure settlement.
In this webtoon, several episodes depict the defectors’ experiences of interro-
gation right after their dangerous journey of escape from North Korea. Among
them, one episode deals with a camouflage defection where a security manager
pretends to be a defector to capture the protagonist Yong-Cheol who defected to
South Korea. Unless the manager brings Yong-Cheol back to North Korea, the
Communist Party will suspend food rations for his family in North Korea. Though
he must carry out the order from the Party, he becomes impressed with his res-
cuer’s sacrifice and eventually comes to trust liberal democracy in South Korea.
Another episode shows a defector’s fear of torture while waiting for interroga-
tion. That person worries about getting punishment because most investigations
in North Korea involve physical coercion. However, in the next scene he is able
to get over his anxiety when he is offered a cup of coffee by the investigator.
Not only this character but also other defectors discuss their misunderstandings
170 Jahyon Park
about NIS. When they were in North Korea, the Communist Party circulated incor-
rect information about the organization and forced common people to believe that
NIS tortures defectors and also conducts medical experiments on living bodies. As
described in this webtoon, most defectors are not much involved in ascribing to
political ideologies. They choose to undergo “conversions” of political orientation
as a way of surviving and mostly wished to satisfy their hunger. These survival
stories may have dramatic elements that create tensions in the narrative, but they
are based on actual experiences, according to the personal in-depth interview with
the author conducted in August 2017. During the interview, Choi clarified the pri-
mary source for his webtoons. He used his own experiences and interviews with
other defectors to convey what he sees as the reality of their situations today. Choi
has regularly contacted defectors since he is also engaged in activities in rescuing
North Koreans who long for defection to South Korea. Thus, the episodes in his
webtoon stand in for the real world situations in which North Korean defectors
emerge as a new entity in the South Korean community.

The structure of Rodong Simmun

Although Rodong Simmun began with the depiction of North Korean defectors’
survival and adaption to the South Korean society from Yong-Cheol’s perspective,
Choi changed the format of this webtoon while he was building an intimate rela-
tionship with audiences through daetgeuls. The original subtitle “Daetgeul? What
Is That? Something Like Writing a Report or Evaluation?” which later switched to
“The Enthusiastic Resettlement Diaries of a Male North Korean Defector,” reveals
Choi’s awareness of daetgeul as an effective communication with the audiences. In
the interview, Choi said that he read every single comment in the daetgeul sections
on his work and was thus able to learn how his webtoon influenced South Korean
audiences and what kind of information and content they were interested in, in terms
of North Korea and the defectors. He considers daetgeul as one of valuable sources
in determining the direction of the webtoon’s narrative and structure. In fact, the
format of the webtoon was transformed from an episodic comic strip to a format
of three parts in one vertical layout – comic strip, the author’s commentary section,
and “North–South Daetgeul Summit.” While Choi continues the narrative about
the adaptation process that Yong-Cheol and other defectors are going through, he
features the other two sections as a new field of extensive communication with his
audiences. Through these sections, he answers audiences’ questions about North
Korea, the defectors, and himself as the author. This new format actively involves
the thoughts and questions of the audiences who wish to learn about other aspects of
both North Korean people and defectors. The printed book format also adopts this
structure. In between episodes, the author’s commentary sections appear together
with “North–South Daetgeul Summit,” in which audiences, as representatives of the
South, are able to put forth questions, answered by Choi as a representative of the
North Korean defectors.
In the author’s commentary section, Choi introduces various aspects of life in
North Korea. To ensure that both his webtoon and commentary section are based
 Webtoon and intimacy 171
on reality, Choi posts pictures taken by other defectors. In the episode of entering
NIS, some defectors reveal their lack of knowledge about the place of NIS and look
confused by complex facilities in North Korea. Since most cultural facilities end
with won, which means a building, in North Korea, NIS (Gukjeongwon) ending with
won in a Korean word gives this impression. Choi uploads several pictures of these
facilities, such as Edundeogwon, Bupyeongwon, and Changgwangwon, to visualize
these terminologies. He also uses North Korean dialects and languages to enhance
realistic elements. On the margin of webtoon, he provides the “North Korean cul-
tural dictionary” to explain how certain expressions, proverbs and terminologies are
differently interpreted. For example, the term “friend” refers to a lover if it is used
between a man and a woman. In the episode of a marriage proposal, Yong-Cheol
misunderstands the word “a good friend” when he hears from a South Korean woman
and looks forward to marrying her. However, he soon finds this is due to a cultural
misunderstanding, and comes to learn that the expressions of kindness, including
“I love you, the customer,” are prevalently used as a part of customer service and
etiquette throughout the entire South Korean society. Furthermore, he introduces
a newly emerging phenomenon in North Korean society. About the Hallyu (the
Korean Wave) boom among North Korean people, Choi mentions CD al which
refers to Korean dramas and films, and other foreign films. Younger generations
of North Koreans secretly watch CD al and even try to change their names to the
names of the characters in the South Korean films and dramas they have watched.
The Hallyu actresses or actors are much more popular with their characters’ names
among younger generations of North Koreans. Because of the author’s commentary
and cultural dictionary sections within the webtoon, audiences accept this webtoon
as a lens to understand the intangible sphere of North Korea and defectors.
While the author’s commentary section is more used for Choi’s personal-level
conversations with audiences dealing with the content of webtoon and Choi’s life
in South Korea, the other section, “North–South Daetgeul Summit,” is utilized to
encourage discussion on the North–South related issues. As the popularity of this
webtoon grows, the audiences have become more interested in different aspects
of North Korea, from aspects of everyday life to social, cultural, economic and
political issues. These matters may be considered sensitive in other forms of
media, such as television programs and films. Webtoon, as a subculture genre,
enables satire and humor in debating such controversial topics. In a sense, Choi is
providing an unofficial summit section between the audiences and himself. The
first topic that was taken up is about greeting. A member asks why a person who
bows to express gratefulness is regarded as a servant in the North Korean context.
Choi answers, “because of socialism.” According to Choi, North Korean people
tend to exaggerate their pride and joy while they try to conceal bad incidents
under this system. As they are accustomed to seeing bluff and bluster in social
activities, they consider a taciturn person to be virtuous. Thus, an expressive per-
son, even when expressing gratitude, is seen as a low-status person. Other topics
taken up include Juche (self-reliance) arts, which features artistic embodiments
of communism and nationalism, the popularity of South Korean cosmetics among
North Korean women, propaganda broadcasts, amusement parks, historical sites
172 Jahyon Park
for students’ field trips, the economic system of North Korea including mon-
etary units, the circulation of digital technologies such as personal computers
and mobiles, and so on. The development of diverse discourses related to North
Korea through “North–South Daetgeul Summit” contributes not only to enlarging
knowledge about North Korea but also to creating some degree of intimacy with
the people from this unexplored nation.

Cultural unification
During the interview, Choi spoke about his purpose of this webtoon. He wished
to promote “cultural unification” between North and South Korea, particularly
among younger generations of South Koreans. Since the webtoon emerged as
a new form of popular culture among the young South Koreans, he decided to
use the format of the webtoon as a medium to embody the defectors’ accounts in
South Korea. According to Choi’s observation, the younger generations are less
interested in the matters of North Korea and unification. In addition to trying to
appeal to the younger generations of South Koreans, he wished to attract recent
defectors as readers of his webtoon, to encourage their communication with South
Koreans. Choi confessed that the biggest challenge he had faced in South Korea
was “prejudice.” Due to the pervasive prejudice against North Korean defectors
in South Korean society, the defectors find it hard to believe that they can live the
same as South Koreans do. He attributed the responsibility for this to the South
Korean government but emphasized that both ordinary South and North Korean
people were innocent. Through his experience in adjusting to life in the South,
he learned that South Koreans were biased primarily due to their “lack of knowl-
edge.” The ignorance about North Korean defectors and fragmented information
in the mass media produced and even strengthened the image of North Korean
defectors as Others. Choi uses the webtoon to inform the South Koreans about
both North Korea and the defectors and wanted to show, “we (the defectors) are
different, but also the same.” The emergence of intimacy and sympathy among
audiences towards his webtoon can potentially reduce the isolation of North
Korean defectors by breaking down the stereotype that marginalizes them.
Rodong Simmun draws the attention of webtoon audiences with humorous
elements that particularly appeal to younger generations of South Koreans. The
way Choi deploys defectors’ survival narratives is different from other mem-
oirs. Preexistent accounts often focused on extremely perilous journeys during
escape. Similarly, one episode about Sin Go-Nam’s escape in Choi’s webtoon
conveys a serious tone with hyper-realistic drawing technique to dramatize
Sin’s loss of family and a woman in love with him as well. However, most of
the episodes maintain a light tone with caricature-style drawings to continu-
ously hold the attention of younger audiences, who can easily lose interest and
also can at any time click onto other content on the Internet. In one episode of
“Show Me the Loyalty,” the defectors are shown making exaggerated efforts to
demonstrate their loyalty during an investigation period where they hear about
“freedom of expression.” By using features from the television hip-hop program
 Webtoon and intimacy 173
Show Me the Money, which was very popular among younger generations of
South Koreans, Choi presents the defectors proclaiming in rhythmical lyrics
their loyalty to NIS. Humor occurs in the defectors’ performance as the audi-
ences recognize this episode as a parody. One of the comments receiving a lot
of “likes” figures out which part in which season of Show Me the Money is paro-
died. The commenter continues by noting that this webtoon successfully deals
with a serious subject by means of integrating popular culture into its narrative.
Choi’s attempt to describe the culture of North Koreans from the perspective
of young South Koreans becomes a model of a kind of integration process. By
utilizing and reconstructing familiar references of South Korean popular culture
in his narrative of North Korean defectors, Choi aims to contribute to cultural
unification between North and South Korea based on cultural connection and
interactions evoked among the younger generations of South Korea.
Choi’s initial goals may end up arousing webtoon audiences’ interests in the
narratives of the defectors. Some audiences are interested in both the social conun-
drums that North Korean defectors confront as they adapt to South Korean society
and the debate over unification, as manifested in the way they actively engage
with both the content of the webtoon and communication with the author. For oth-
ers, however, this webtoon appears mainly to be seen as a fresh and new object for
rapid cultural consumption that may provide a fantasy of consuming the imagery
of difference. For such viewers, caricaturized characters’ dramatic reactions to
their new environment may simply ironically confirm what they already believed
is the reason for the defectors’ alienated social position in South Korean society.
Notably, it is the case that re-serialized episodes have mainly used a newly intro-
duced character, Ryu Si-Jin who accidently drifted to North Korea. As a South
Korean man, Ryu learns about North Korea from Hallyu media products watched
by younger generations of Koreans, dealing with topics such as dating, getting
a job, finding a home, getting married, navigating the legal system, and so on.
During the journey, Ryu meets a young female North Korean who accompanies
him as his guide to North Korea. Their union reminds the audiences of the gender
stereotype of “Nam nam buk nyeo,” which literally means “men from the South
and women from the North.” In other words, most South Korean men are hand-
some while most North Korean women are beautiful. Often, this expression has
been used to promote marriages between female North Korean defectors and
South Korean men since the appearance of the South Korean popular film Shiri
(1999) and several television programs describing romantic relationships between
South Korean men and North Korean women (Dong-A Daily 2011). The similari-
ties between the ideology of Nam nam buk nyeo and Ryu’s tours in North Korea
alert us to the fact that both North Korea and North Korean women may serve as
cultural commodities by becoming associated with mainstream ideologies, despite
the celebration of this newly emerging phenomenon by audiences.
Choi also showed that he was aware of the probability of a dispute over his
description of North Korean defectors in his webtoon. In the interview, Choi
admitted that he had to reflect opinions of the distributor, who might represent
mainstream ideologies. In fact, some defectors have raised questions about his
174 Jahyon Park
approach to the issue of cultural differences. They have participated in developing
the discourse on perceptions of defectors among media users, and have promoted
Choi to introduce more diverse perspectives in his webtoon. Thus, the medium
of the webtoon can not only reduce the cultural boundary between the North and
the South but also enable interactive and constructive communication between
North Korean defectors and South Korean audiences. This can lead to a positive
transformation in the perception of unfamiliar, otherized North Korean defectors.
Consumer culture in mass media such as television has a strong tendency to rely
on the producer or circulator-centered media practices. However, in the digital
age, the audiences are much more capable of actively participating in meaning-
making process and further creating their own pleasure in reading media texts
against dominant hegemony embedded in the mainstream discourse of South
Korean society. Although the audience members’ readings often embody their
relationships to social positions and cultural influence, they also have the capacity
to refuse mainstream ideologies. By engaging in an intimate form of communi-
cation, audiences become aware of differences between top-down or one-sided
communication in the mass media and bi-directional or multi-directional com-
munication in the alternative media. Their active and autonomous participation
through daetgeuls in webtoons can be a way to resist dominant ideologies that
reinforce a negative view of both North Korea and North Korean defectors. Not
only defectors themselves, but also South Koreans, as members of a shared com-
munity, come to understand the problems with commonly accepted images of
North Korean defectors in mainstream media forms, which have the capacity to
widen the cultural divide between the two Koreas.

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11 Revealing voices?
North Korean males and the South Korean
mediascape
Stephen J. Epstein and Christopher K. Green

Visitors to the YouTube channel of BJ (“broadcast jockey”) Ipyeong will find high-
lighted a ten-second clip in which the channel owner makes a bid for an audience;1
Ipyeong looks sternly at the camera, his eyebrow piercings accentuating an impos-
ing demeanor, and commands the viewer to subscribe (ni gudokhaera). However,
the young man then breaks into an ironic pose of over-the-top cuteness as he moves
his hands to his face, revealing a heavily tattooed forearm with figures that include a
rabbit and some skulls, and squeals “gyuuuu,” as an effect lends blush to his cheeks.
Visible behind him are accoutrements of trendy South Korean youth, such as multi-
ple baseball caps and sports shoes.
BJ Ipyeong’s display of tough masculinity softened by a performance of aegyo
(affective cuteness) would not be especially remarkable but for one important feature;
Ipyeong is a talbukja, a border-crossing migrant from North Korea, who made his
way out of the country at age 11 and now airs his own videos online, engaging with
the audience in a live format on AfreecaTV, a South Korean digital platform that
allows self-broadcast.2 Ipyeong then also archives these shows on a YouTube channel
that has more than 40,000 subscribers. In his broadcasts Ipyeong offers reflections
about his own experiences, North Korea and the talbukja community. He thus adds a
personal, insider perspective to media voices on North Korea within South Korea that
complements and, at times, challenges more mainstream outlets. Through his very
presence, Ipyeong helps construct an alternate version of North Korean males and
masculinity, one that defies common portrayals of the Kim dynasty and its men as
elite minions or goose-stepping soldiers.
In this chapter, we extend previous work on the representation and involve-
ment of North Korean migrants in the South Korean media. The topic not only
reflects ongoing developments in South Korean understandings of neighbors
from the North but also provides an engaging venue for exploring recent changes
in the South Korean media landscape. In an earlier article, we considered in detail
the cable television show Now on My Way to Meet You (Ije mannareo gamnida),
focusing on how evolution in broadcasting law and screen culture intertwined
with gendered portrayals of North Koreans (Epstein and Green 2013). As we
argued at the time, the show had garnered a substantial audience by successfully
bringing North Korean women into the popular yeneung (variety entertainment)
show format, but its desire to emphasize shared ethnic and cultural elements
 Revealing voices? 177
between the North and the South while providing information on North Korea in
a way that commanded viewer attention led to a dilemma; although viewers are
encouraged to recognize traits held in common with the new arrivals from the
North, the show’s material often represented Northerners as Others.
The appearance of several more media texts featuring defectors since that arti-
cle was published urges further investigation of the phenomenon. These offerings
include such programs as Good Life (Jal sarabose) on Channel-A, the con-
servative broadcaster of Now on My Way to Meet You, and Love Reunification:
Southern Man, Northern Woman (Aejeong tongil – namnam bungnyeo), which is
shown on a second, equally conservative cable channel, TV Chosun. In keeping
with Now on My Way to Meet You, both programs make romantic flirtation and
tension between South Korean males and North Korean females a key attraction,
as highlighted in the title of the latter, and draw heavily on the namnam bungnyeo
motif. This trope, which highlights the desirability of matches between men from
the South and women from the North, continues to exert appeal for South Korean
audiences while, in the process, reinforcing gendered hierarchies of power on the
Korean peninsula.
The demographics of the resettled North Korean community encourage this
propensity to focus on defector females. Although in the early days of inter-Korean
migration, men composed a majority of those who defected, their proportion has
declined markedly over time; of the 1,127 North Koreans who entered South
Korea in 2017, just 188 were male, and they now make up only 30% or so of the
entire community of over 30,000.3 This long-standing shift has led research on
representations of talbukja to concentrate on women, often critiquing the way in
which they are subjugated to the patriarchal gaze of the South Korean media (Tae
and Whang 2012; Lee 2014). A corollary of such attention to women has been a
gap in research on talbukja men.
In this chapter, therefore, we examine evolving South Korean media representations
of North Korean migrants with particular attention to the portrayal of men. Ongoing
developments in the South Korean media landscape are allowing the repertoire of
such images to expand considerably. The proliferation of talk shows involving North
Koreans opens possibilities for more nuanced representations of these recent arrivals,
and members of the community are also availing themselves of self-broadcast as a
means of empowerment. Furthermore, greater knowledge on the part of South Korean
media consumers about North Korean society means that recourse to stereotypes of
the past carries less and less weight in such formats. Audiences often seek answers to
specific and comparatively well-informed questions, albeit not necessarily the ones to
which the migrants would prefer to respond.
Our exploration of these developing modes of discourse focuses on three case
studies. First, we consider TV Chosun’s Moranbong Club, which pursues the
framework staked out by Now on My Way to Meet You but with the addition
of male panelists and greater emphasis on life after resettlement, as an exam-
ple of how conservative broadcasters continue to mine this topic and attempt to
shape public discourse, while increasingly bringing in North Korean male voices.
Second, we address the supportive portrayals of young North Korean men in Best
178 Stephen J. Epstein and Christopher K. Green
Friends (Ddak joeun chingudeul), an EBS show sponsored by the Institute of
Unification Education, a sub-division of the South Korean Ministry of Unification.
Finally, we return to look in further detail at the rise to low-level prominence of
BJ Ipyeong as an example of how self-broadcast is fostering a more direct chan-
nel for North Korean migrants to reach South Korean audiences. What images of
men with North Korean origins do such recent productions from cable networks
and user-created content put forth? How do these texts contribute to knowledge of
North Korea for a South Korean audience, and what do these developments reveal
about South Korean society itself?

Moranbong: joining the country club

Broadcast on TV Chosun, Moranbong Club is advertised as a vehicle for dis-
covery of how “beautiful defector men and women” (talbuk minam minyeodeul)
live in South Korea today. As such, the show nods to Now on My Way to Meet
You in focusing on the attractiveness of its guests. Divergence with its forerunner
has come in consideration paid to male panelists and to the personal background
of panelists as interesting individuals rather than simply informants about North
Korean life. Initially, the show admitted only North Korean defectors with less
common histories into its “club” and referred to them as “members.”4
In spotlighting male participation in a club whose members have national ori-
gins outside mainstream South Korean society, the show also draws inspiration from
the recent Non-Summit (Bijeongsang hoedam), a cable television program that has
attained an unusual degree of popularity. Launched in mid-2014, Non-Summit fea-
tures foreign males fluent in Korean discussing their lives and integration into South
Korean society, with special attention to their experiences in the labor force. While
humor is certainly present, the show takes the views of these foreign members of
society seriously; discussion takes place around a conference table, in contrast to
most variety shows. The setting lends authority to the ensuing conversations and
establishes an insider group of males standing in implicit opposition to others who
are unable to converse similarly in Korean. Likewise, Moranbong Club, first broad-
cast in September 2015, began with a conference table format to validate the voices
of its panelists as they explained their lives and their views of both North and South
Korea, and related information about North Korea that the audience would otherwise
struggle to access. This hierarchical privileging of certain members of the commu-
nity, though potentially problematic, conveyed the desire to respect the voices of
at least some North Koreans and not simply treat them as fodder for consumption.5
To be sure, Moranbong Club also displays continuity in less encouraging repre-
sentations of North Koreans. The show’s discussions of North Korean society can
be accompanied by playful but derogatory treatments, such as the pithy description
in episode 95 of the late Kim Jong-Il’s palace lifestyle by one of his former guards,
which features cartoonish interpretations of the deceased dictator that occasion
great laughter from those assembled.6 Not infrequently, these treatments tip over
into reminders of North Korea’s poverty, as with discussion of the low salary
level of a male DPRK Foreign Ministry official in comparison with a Vietnamese
 Revealing voices? 179
cleaner in episode 63, which is treated as a source of embarrassment and highlights
North Korea’s failure to meet international norms.7
Anecdotes can, however, regard favorably North Korea’s maintenance of tra-
ditional character traits that older South Koreans at times complain have been lost
in the younger generation locally, a theme largely absent from the female-oriented
Now on My Way to Meet You. Episode 70 treats Hwang Taek-Hyeon, a former
member of North Korea’s elite special forces, as worthy of unusual admiration
for his manly fortitude.8 Though hardly imposing looking, Hwang, in a modest
tone, claims to be able to face off against seven or eight men simultaneously. The
assertion, regardless of its veracity, is a clear performative statement of tough mas-
culinity, and his professed indifference to the dangers of defection clashes with
the emphasis on the perils of the process in female and child defection stories.
Understated stoicism here evokes astonishment from his interlocutors, while also
suggesting the resoluteness of North Korean manhood in the role of adversary.
At the same time, examples of North Korean males’ lack of empathy for women
are foregrounded; in the show’s first episode, conversation turns to differences
between North and South Korean men. Female talbukja panelists become authori-
tative sources for the comparison; unlike their North Korean counterparts, South
Korean men are described as usually remembering a couple’s special days and cel-
ebrating those days with gifts; they are also characterized as more detail-oriented
than North Korean males as a rule, paying careful attention to their clothes so
that their outfits are well coordinated.9 Accordingly, North Korean male attitudes
are made to clash with those of contemporary South Korean males, represented
here by the show’s first co-hosts Ji Sang-Ryeol and Kim Seong-Ju, who affect an
urbane, trendy appearance alongside a compassionate demeanor.
The show further reveals that, although as subject to the stresses of contem-
porary South Korean life as anyone else, its “members,” male and female, can
integrate into society without jettisoning a North Korean identity. The point of view
of Moranbong Club therefore expands upon that adopted in latter episodes of Now
on My Way to Meet You, in which positive examples of resettlement replaced har-
rowing narratives of defection (Epstein and Green 2013). The North Korean regime
is to be rejected, but not all aspects of North Korean upbringing have to be down-
played or diminished. This focus on integration jibes with a South Korean media
preference for shows that present the successful assimilation of foreigners into
Korean society, such as the long-running Love in Asia, which strives to bring before
the public happy international marriages, and the aforementioned Non-Summit. As
they reveal the inner workings of the North Korean state, the North Korean males
on Moranbong Club thus implicitly challenge dismissive portrayals of migrants as
part of a developing underclass and the dystopian visions of unification associated
with Lee Eung-Joon’s novel Private Life of the Nation (Gukka-eui sasaenghwal)
and Chang Kang-Myoung’s Our Aspiration Is War (Uri sowoneun jeonjaeng).
Most strikingly, in episode 68, Moranbong Club brought forth Thae Yong-Ho,
a former senior official in the North Korean embassy in London. Likely the most
well-known male talbukja in Korea, Thae assumes prominence on Moranbong
Club as an exemplar of how North Korean men may be accommodated within a
180 Stephen J. Epstein and Christopher K. Green
reconstituted Korean fabric as sophisticated and respected members of society.
His smooth and affable cosmopolitanism has enabled him to fit within frame-
works of South Korean self-understanding. Indeed, one South Korean official has
remarked that Thae is not even a Korean per se so much as a citizen of the world.10
Thae’s rejection of North Korea, of course, is therefore treated as “proving” the
superiority of South Korea’s system, and concern for his family’s wellbeing as a
motivation for defection encourages sympathy on the part of the audience and a
view of Thae as a loving father.11 Through the appearance of Thae, other special
guests, and its more regular panelists, Moranbong Club reassures the public that
reunification is desirable, necessary and, moreover, possible. In doing so, it offers
an example of how shifts in the media landscape with the proliferation of cable
channels can work to further political agendas and effect social change.

Best Friends: best of intentions

Sponsored by the Institute of Unification Education for EBS (Education Broadcasting
System), South Korea’s public broadcasting network, Best Friends wears its peda-
gogic intent on its sleeve. The program concerns itself with bringing together young
panelists born on each side of the 38th parallel and exhibiting the close friendships
between them. Rather than confront prejudices against talbukja directly, the show’s
force comes from its understated but insistent position that North Korean migrants
are likeable fellow citizens who can (and do) fit into the larger societal framework.
The program pursues serious discussion of issues without the inherent othering
and hierarchical assumptions of South Korean superiority seen in shows from con-
servative broadcasters. In other words, Best Friends recognizes heterogeneity but
takes as a philosophical starting point an acceptance that North Koreans and South
Koreans are equal but different. This attitude stems in no small part from drawing
on and targeting youth in its attempt at open-minded education.
The first episode’s opening sounds the keynote; Seo Gyeong-Seok, the middle-
aged host of Best Friends, appears facing the camera, seated behind a table around
which four pairs of chairs are placed. He then introduces himself together with
a glossed account of the show’s title, “Best Friends, a South and North Korean
teenagers’ reunification project” (nambuk shipddaedeurui tongil peurojekteu,
ddak joeun chingudeul). His words provide a framework for interpreting what
follows, as he explains that ddak joeun chingudeul stands for ddakchingu, a term
that he expects his listeners from South Korea to find unfamiliar inasmuch as it
is a Northern equivalent of danjjak chingu (“best friends”). Seo’s explanation
introduces another usage that becomes regular throughout the program he relates,
that the term originates in the witdongnae, “upper village/neighborhood,” a coun-
terpart to the phrase araet dongnae (“lower neighborhood”), which is in common
usage in North Korea as a way to describe South Korea without attracting nega-
tive attention. The use of witdongnae stands in relief to the much more common
bukhan, which strips North Korea of its preferred name for itself (joseon) and
treats the country as a wayward polar opposite to South Korea (hanguk). Best
Friends thus also indicates a desire to avoid insofar as possible the associations
 Revealing voices? 181
that “north” (buk) and “south” (nam) have accrued over decades; this simple but
significant strategy innovates and moves towards the North on its own terms.
In the show’s first 30 seconds, Seo emphasizes a generational gap in speaking
of the close friendships established among the young people whom the viewer
will encounter, friendships that adults brought up in a different era cannot even
imagine. The audience then meets in turn four young North Korean migrants,
three of them male, who become the show’s protagonists as half of pairs com-
posed of a teenager born in South Korea and a teenager born in North Korea. The
formula for the presentation of these young arrivals from North Korea deserves
notice. Along with name and age, the caption accompanying their introduction
relays current school, home town, and year of entry into South Korea. In other
words, the most salient aspects of their identity are that they are students with a
local affiliation, but they have also crossed the border from a specific origin point
in the North; their year of entry to the South is treated as a key marker in their
lives. These individual introductions of the North Koreans mark them as special
and the primary focus of attention. Here it is the Southern counterparts who will
be brought in and defined in relation to their migrant friends; the fact that they are
otherwise unexceptional normalizes friendship with North Korean peers as not
requiring unusual openness or compassion.
The reversal of the demographics of the talbukja community deserves attention;
the show appears to wish to offer support for young North Korean male migrants,
who are at times seen as at risk within South Korean society. Once all four have been
introduced, they are brought together in a still shot, divided into quadrants, beneath
which a caption reads “friends with abundant charm” (maeryeok neomchineun chin-
gudeul). The editorializing frame encourages viewers to respond positively to these
participants, who no doubt were chosen in large part because they do evince ready
charm in their interactions and often display winning smiles. Seo as the host also treats
his guests as appealing and endearing, as they reveal details about themselves, and fre-
quently speaks of the participants in complimentary terms to reinforce a positive view.
The first episode then provides separate portraits of the friendship pairs. The first
portrait, which can be taken as paradigmatic, involves talbukja Gun-Seong, who
grew up near Mt. Baekdu in the North; Juni, his best friend and dorm roommate
comes from Jeju Island in the South. The show follows Gun-Seong as he goes to
visit Juni’s home. The introduction to this segment emphasizes the distance that
Gun-Seong has travelled, and the use of this pairing to lead off the show appears
deliberate, as Gun-Seong’s journey to Jeju Island recalls a phrase that emphasizes
the unity of the Korean nation – “from Mt. Baekdu to Mt. Halla” (baekdusaneseo
hallasankkaji), the two tallest peaks north and south of the 38th parallel. The literal
instantiation of this well-known phrase marks desire for reunification.
A central feature of this segment is discussion of Gun-Seong’s dilemma of
how to reveal his Northern origins to Juni, previously undisclosed at his school.
Gun-Seong determines that it is best to take the initiative and divulge this infor-
mation, and the secret (bimil) strengthens the bond between them. Juni is asked
if he felt any different about Gun-Seong after the development of their friendship
upon learning that Gun-Seong is a talbukja, and is adamant, despite prodding, that
182 Stephen J. Epstein and Christopher K. Green
nothing whatsoever changed. Although the story depends on a tacit understanding
that concealing Northern origins might be natural, Juni’s attitude further normal-
izes acceptance.
Numerous clips of footage taken from beyond the studio allow viewers to see the
panelists interact with high school classmates more fully. These clips make evident
the esteem in which they are held by their peers, and the Northerners’ congeniality
and adaptability is emphasized. Insertion into a South Korean educational frame-
work in which they perform admirably encourages empathy from the audience.
Crucially, the panelists are depicted as eager participants in South Korean society
who adhere to normative rules of working hard and achieving good grades.
In other segments, the audience can compare divergences in Southern and
Northern manhood. The South Korean youth may appear stronger, and at times
filming angles make height differentials between the two groups readily apparent.
Nonetheless, despite slighter stature resulting from childhood diets lacking in the
protein of their peers, the Northerners demonstrate more virility and vigor than
their counterparts. Viewers witness how the young migrants possess skills from
Korea’s agrarian past that are in danger of being lost by South Korean youth and
evince an alternate vision of Korean masculinity that intertwines with notions of
indigenous authenticity, undiluted by urban modernity.
For example, during one episode, the pairs of friends go on an overnight outing
to Paju’s reunification village (tongilchon).12 There they are divided into teams,
and have contests set before them as Best Friends reproduces a typical convention
of South Korean variety entertainment (yeneung) shows. These events include a
firewood splitting contest in which the young men from the North prove them-
selves far more adept and powerful than their counterparts. The vignette offers
opportunity for humor at the clumsy attempts of the Southern boys to wield axes.
A caption reads “splitting firewood is not easy for the friends from the lower vil-
lage who have no experience.” In a post-match discussion, one of the Southern
youth remarks that their Northern friends have “know-how and skill.” As in the
Moranbong Club, the audience observes that, among Northern males, unassum-
ing appearance and impressive prowess can go hand in hand.
Overall, deliberate editing strategies (at times verging into the heavy-handed)
and wise choice in the show’s participants help Best Friends put forth a compli-
mentary vision of young North Korean men – friendly, charming, diligent and
handsome. These positive portrayals thus reassure viewers that these new arrivals
can readily become productive members of South Korean society. The show com-
bats stereotypes of Northern defectors as lazy and feckless, raised within a system
that encourages them to expect handouts from the state, a characterization more
commonly associated with defector males than females, given the latter’s reposi-
tioning as dynamic participants in the North Korean market economy. Although
the approach taken by Best Friends is hardly radical, the contrast to sensational,
sentimental and sexualizing treatments elsewhere in the South Korean media
towards talbukja makes it noteworthy. Ultimately, however, Best Friends remains
a niche educational product with little chance of major impact upon older frames
of understanding the North and its migrants.
 Revealing voices? 183
Engaging the ROK the BJ way
Perhaps one of the most significant recent developments in South Korea’s
media landscape has been the rise of self-broadcast, especially through the
interactive platform of AfreecaTV, which permits broadcasters to engage in
real-time with their audience. Launched in 2005, AfreecaTV derives its name
from the phrase “Any FREE broadcasting.” Individuals who assume the role
of a “broadcast jockey” (BJ) on this platform exercise greater control over
their own image and the subject matter of their productions than in the tradi-
tional media and have consequently brought about further transformations in
practices of media production and consumption. More significant is the plat-
form’s affordance of enhanced opportunities for affective bonds of solidarity
to arise between broadcast jockeys as producers and their audience with little
additional mediation.
In light of distortions introduced, by accident or design, in transferring
defector voices to other broadcast media, the availability of platforms that
empower them to reach the public directly furnishes multiple advantages.
Most famous among the resettled North Koreans who self-broadcast on
AfreecaTV is BJ Bom Hyang, a young woman whose archived defection story
had been viewed over five million times on YouTube by early 2018.13 Other
female talbukja have followed suit, including Lee So-Yul and, more recently,
Han Songi, who also started a YouTube page in 2018 that acquired 1000 sub-
scribers within a month.14
Equally noteworthy is their AfreecaTV male counterpart, BJ Ipyeong, who
broadcasts live six days a week beginning at 10 pm on the service. Born in 1994
in Chongjin, he travelled as a boy via China and Mongolia to South Korea,
where he now lives with his parents. As a 1.5 generation immigrant, Ipyeong
has experienced many of his formative years within South Korea. He admits
needing to research aspects of North Korea before his broadcasts, but like 1.5
generation immigrants elsewhere, socialization into two worlds allows him to
interpret between them.15 As such, he can perhaps permit himself the privilege
of transgression with less fear of backlash than other talbukja might experience.
Ipyeong adopts the trappings of trendy youthful South Korean masculinity, and
freely exhibits the artistic tattoos that cover his arm, in contrast to the reluctance
of older North Korean defector males to draw attention to their own, many featur-
ing pro-regime slogans that cause their owners distress when revealed (Huffington
Post 2015; JTBC News 2015). An on-screen bullet point list that appears in sev-
eral of Ipyeong’s broadcasts directly addresses issues of authenticity, liminality,
and multiple belongings – “NO plastic surgery; military service exemption for
defector citizens; my nationality is Republic of Korean” (NO seonghyeong; tal-
bukmineun gunmyeonje; gukjeokeun daehanminguk imnida).
In one of his most-watched clips, Ipyeong addresses questions that he
receives especially frequently from his audience, including his decision to
self-broadcast.16 He responds that he has found that in South Korea prevailing
understandings of North Korea differ substantially from his own. Because these
184 Stephen J. Epstein and Christopher K. Green
views are frequently projected onto talbukja, Ipyeong hopes to change precon-
ceptions even if his contribution is but a small one. Elsewhere he states that he
realizes that there is much that his peers do not know and that he can convey
information more readily because of his closeness to them.17 His account of
why he engages in self-broadcast may not tell the whole story of his motiva-
tions for doing so, of course; activism on behalf of community, the desire to
achieve an unedited form of self-expression, and monetary incentives are not
mutually exclusive.
Virtually every broadcast affords Ipyeong the opportunity to dispense informa-
tion about the nation he left, either via memory, discussion with his family and
the larger community, or research from a more informed starting point than many.
When the occasion arises for him to talk with nostalgic affection of his favorite
animated program from North Korea, “The Boy General” (Sonyeon jangsu), he
quickly searches clips on YouTube as he speaks and then shares his screen with
his audience so that they receive an immediate experience of the show that turns
his interaction into a multiple media experience. His most popular clip is his
defection story, a 28-minute account of how he arrived in South Korea. The clip’s
force derives in part from his skill as a storyteller, and the narrative is gripping.
His account is largely unembellished beyond him speaking directly to the camera
and, by extension, his audience with a sense of immediacy, but he shows himself
schooled enough in South Korean media tropes to seek the addition of sentimental
piano music once he begins his story in earnest.
Ipyeong’s broadcasts thus encourage the frisson of cognitive and emotional
pleasure that come from engaging with a North Korean, given the lingering
mystery that still attaches to the country. Certainly, though, Ipyeong’s professed
motivations for self-broadcast do not overlap completely with the expressed
interests of all his fans; when Ipyeong appears on Now on My Way to Meet You
he occasions a reaction close to swooning. The young man is well aware that
he has another crucial asset in twenty-first century South Korea and plays to it;
local standards of attractiveness treat him as unusually handsome. His interac-
tions with his followers therefore also draw on flirtatious modes and provide a
substantial helping of “fan service.” Ipyeong complies with requests for actions
that heighten his appeal, which can range from displays of cute affect (aegyo) to
stripping off his shirt to expose his bare chest and his “chocolate abs,” a favored
convention of K-pop stars. Editing effects underscore the moment; the screen
displays the English “Wow!” together with an emoji of a smiley face with eyes
bugging out as hearts and the Korean phrase “eomeona sesange,” perhaps best
rendered here as “OMG!”18
In one clip Ipyeong takes on a challenge from his audience to make a “reaction
video,” and follow along with clips suggested by his viewers. The requests seem
designed to mildly discomfit Ipyeong and inspire behavior that will elicit cute-
ness. For example, Ipyeong mimes to the choreography of the music video of “Mr.
Chu” from K-pop girl group A-Pink, before moving on to a North Korean chil-
dren’s song.19 In the clip Ipyeong addresses himself to “older sisters” (nunadeul),
a greeting that acknowledges a primary viewership of female admirers. Likewise,
 Revealing voices? 185
the avatars that scroll down the screen during AfreecaTV broadcasts as his fans
comment are almost exclusively gendered as female, and during broadcasts they
engage with one another as well as with Ipyeong.20 The two top comments on the
clip express admiration for Ipyeong’s good looks, and further point to fandom
among South Korean women. Commenters’ use of the language of affect, either
via local emoticons (ㅠㅠ, to suggest tears) or stylized speech (-yong for -yo, a
nasalized affectation of cuteness), further hint at emotional investment in an imag-
ined community of fellow admirers of Ipyeong.
Ipyeong’s active self-commodification creates a marketable product for South
Korea’s competitive neoliberal environment, and intertwines with use of the plat-
form for expression of an autonomous identity. Positive and negative aspects
present themselves in this phenomenon; on the one hand, Ipyeong as an individual
has taken advantage of the South Korean media market as he finds it, and has suc-
ceeded in developing an identity beyond that of “North Korean migrant.” He also
accepts the representative’s role and seems to relish the opportunity to associate
young male North Koreans with appealing masculinity. His success results from
combining styles favored by South Korean youth as an insider, with the uniqueness
of a North Korean birth. But the impact of his approach on representations of refu-
gees as a whole, to say nothing of general societal awareness of North Korea as a
distinctive social construct, may also be set back by the capacity for integration and
self-promotion shown by Ipyeong and others like him. Although this approach may
be the way of the future for refugee representation, and resonate with the young of
both the North and the South, for others it may necessitate a radical and perhaps dis-
orienting deconstruction of once coherent North Korean identities for South Korean
audiences. Such a deconstruction is unlikely to serve the interests of the community
as a whole, or indeed the cause of greater understanding between the two Koreas.

Conclusion
North Korean migrants occupy a special place in the South Korean imagination
as new members of society who fit into longstanding, if contested, visions of the
national fabric. Despite opinion surveys that show decreased interest in reunifica-
tion among young South Koreans, the popular imagination often longs to engage
with the North and assimilate suitable Northerners – male and female – into local
understandings of acceptable behavior and identity. As we have highlighted,
several cable television programs make talbukja their subjects. Although many
shows such as the aforementioned Non-Summit and Love in Asia treat foreigners
as collective new members of society worthy of attention, no other national com-
munity can claim a range of television series dedicated to the issues that face them
in South Korean society. The arrival of self-broadcast further accentuates distinc-
tions between North Korean defector-migrants and other foreigners. Not least,
they spotlight the importance of native-level literacy for thoroughgoing engage-
ment. Unless educated in Korean, very few foreigners or diaspora Koreans, even
if fluent, have the linguistic skills to control the fast pace of commenting found in
AfreecaTV’s freewheeling bombardment.
186 Stephen J. Epstein and Christopher K. Green
Despite discussions of alienation experienced by North Koreans in South
Korea, the proliferation of programming involving talbukja helps offer resettled
male North Koreans opportunities to push into the mainstream. Even if the majority
of resulting shows make little attempt to challenge established stereotypes and
hierarchies, several do. This situation reflects changes in South Korean soci-
ety’s fissure points. The approach taken to North Korea and North Koreans in
these media texts points up not only the split between conservatives and pro-
gressives that so regularly surfaces in South Korean society, but an increasingly
salient generational gap that has more to do with demography than the gender-
ing practices of “Southern Man, Northern Woman” (namnam bungnyeo). Best
Friends and BJ Ipyeong target youth, whereas the home of Moranbong Club,
TV Chosun and Channel-A address older audiences. As noted, Ipyeong’s abil-
ity to assimilate is distinctive in that his brand of homogeneity targets Koreans
of the younger generations. When he appears on Now on My Way to Meet You,
his tattoos disappear behind a long-sleeved collared shirt, which he pairs with
conventional slacks and shoes that render him more acceptable to older view-
ers who might feel alienated by the image he cultivates online. Indeed, an older
South Korean male panelist expresses surprise to learn of the self-broadcast
affordances provided by AfreecaTV. During Ipyeong’s appearance the show
has him convene a session so that viewers can see how self-broadcast works.
This destabilization of media structures corresponds to the arrival of both the
North Korean “new generation” (shinsedae) and South Korea’s own shinsedae,
whose values diverge from those of prior generations infused with an ethnic
conception of the nation (Campbell 2015; Lee and Denney 2017).
Ultimately, then, how are the case studies that we have analyzed to be under-
stood within a broader framework of media use and North Koreans? The soft
power of media institutions can play a crucial role not only in encouraging
Northerners to move southward but also in enabling more successful settlement.
North Korean migrants who seek input into how they are represented in South
Korean popular culture must contend with factors impeding their attempts to
provide first-person counterpoints to top-down portrayals foisted upon them. As
the South Korean media landscape evolves in the second decade of the twenty-
first century, North Korean migrants continue to contend with these challenges.
Some will embrace the multiplicity of cable television broadcasting, while oth-
ers will dismiss the traditional broadcast media as a lost cause. A few will avail
themselves of new platforms and rely upon talent and initiative to engage with
audiences on their own terms.

Notes
1 www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFlR6UFw8k4
2 In this chapter, we use the term talbukja in preference to saeteomin (“new settlers”) for
the sake of consistency rather than to make a political statement about terminology that
 Revealing voices? 187
is often fraught. Although talbukja is no longer the officially sanctioned designation,
it is the term most frequently used in everyday discourse. Conversely, for the sake of
variation in English and to suit context, we have been less strict in switching between
“refugee,” “defector,” and “migrant.”
3 The Ministry of Unification maintains basic up-to-date statistics on the composition of
the defector community at its website: www.unikorea.go.kr/unikorea/business/statistics/
4 www.youtube.com/watch?v=y60k-2z3A-8
5 See e.g. www.youtube.com/watch?v=y60k-2z3A-8
6 From 1:20 of www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LruyfIksaU
7 www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0rC6dEETDA
8 www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD5d8hB_Jq0
9 www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2Fa9nNL7MA
10 Comment made to one of the co-authors in a private conversation with staff of the
Korean Institute for National Unification about North Korean human rights on
November 1, 2017.
11 www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZxXcaJt8-8
12 www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mBFc0D1sV8
13 www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZPfjRSk9SI
14 BJ Lee So-yul’s YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UC9jMdW7ZEnP
BYhQ-sIksoDw. Han Songi YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/
UCG2KKCanr2bEsE8Xr8tR5bw.
15 www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Qxg5tngo4
16 www.youtube.com/watch?v=KARR1W6QPfU
17 www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkYKYeFx_QY
18 www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppEEHSJ5UtU&t=10s
19 www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Qxg5tngo4
20 www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFj77QxFohk

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Index

active audience 164, 166–7 daetgeul 164–7, 169–72, 174

AfreecaTV 176, 183, 185 Defector TV 30
agency 2, 25 Descendants of the Sun 5
anti-communism 27 digital fans 6–7; see also fandom
audience reception 167 digital technologies 9–10, 21, 32, 47
audience study 121, 123 discourse 150–3, 159
audiences 150–1, 153–4, 157, 159, 177, Donju 15
183, 185 drama 4–5, 56–7, 96, 98–9, 10–2, 104;
see also K-drama
Berlin File 136, 138, 141 DVD 8, 14, 59, 96
Best Friends 180–2
BJ (broadcast jockey) 176, 183 Eastern Europe 10, 66
black market 16, 69, 74–5, 96–7, 101; economic imbalance 11
black market generation 19–20; see also economic liberalization 84, 91
Jangmadang economic sanctions 11
border people 28 education 28
bribe 23, 61 elites, North Korea 9–10, 88–90
empowerment 30, 177
capitalism 7, 10, 16 entertainment 9, 22; utopian function
censorship 67–8 of 22
China 16–7, 19, 66 entertainment product 67, 69–71, 73, 76
Choi Seong-Guk 164, 168 ethnography 121–2, 127
class 15, 61 everyday life 23–4, 30
collective talk 23
comments section 163–4, 167 famine 13–14, 17, 109–11, 117–8; see also
computer, North Korea 9 Great Famine
Confidential Assignment 136, 138–41 fan service 184
consumer culture 9–10, 15, 19 fandom 184–5; see also digital fans
copyright law 84, 88 fashion 109, 112, 114–6, 119
critical discourse analysis 151, 153 femininity 112, 114
cult of personality 10, 63; see also God feminization, North Koreans 143–4
cultural capital 72 foreign content 67–8, 70, 72, 74–77
cultural convergence 71–3, 76 frame analysis 151–3
cultural economy 49 freedom 19–20, 47, 55
cultural invasion 51
cultural resistance 122, 127 gaze, South Korean media 177
cultural unification 172–3; see also gender ideology 129–30
unification global identity 72
culture 96–8, 100–5 global branding 72
curiosity 21, 96, 98, 102–5 globalization 4, 6, 10, 48
190 Index
God 20, 63–4; see also cult of personality
Great Famine 96–7, 100–2; see also
famine
Hallyu 1, 12, 56, 73–7, 96, 120–1, 124,
127, 130, 137, 145–6; digital Hallyu 6;
see also Korean Wave
Hanawon 169
human rights 16, 32, 61, 105–6
ideology 163, 167–8, 173; ideology of
media 150, 153
illegal economic activities 14
imagination 18, 22, 117–8, 185
individual self 20–1
informal economy 84–5
information 7, 56, 62, 97–100, 103–6
Internet 9, 12, 29, 59–60
intimacy 164–6, 172
Jangmadang 60, 95–7, 99, 101, 121, 126,
129; see also black market
Jewel in the Palace 5
JSA 26, 136–7, 141, 145
Juche ideology 10, 87
K-drama 75; see also drama
K-pop 5, 73–4, 76, 95, 99
Korean culture industry 4
Korean Wave 1, 5, 43, 96–8, 100–3, 105;
see also Hallyu
lack 24–5
lifestyle 154–5,157–8
loudspeaker broadcast 15
make-up 109, 112, 114–5, 118–9
manhwa 165
market 109–12, 115, 118–9
marketization 14
masculinity 113, 139–41,143, 176, 179, 185
media, North Korea 11, 96–105, 110–18
media consumers 84–6, 92
media culture 67, 70, 72, 75, 83, 86–7,
91–2
media effects 149, 154, 156–7
media image 25
media ownership, state-owned 84
media piracy 83
media regulations 83
media representations 177
mediascape, South Korea 176–7
mediated experience 19–20
mediation 3, 19
men, North Korea 110, 112–4, 119
micro changes 24, 121, 124
migration 17–8, 97–8, 105; mediated
migration 18
mobile phone access 90
mobile phone ownership 8–9, 90
mobility 3
Moranbong Club 30, 60, 178–9
movie 57–8, 96, 98–9, 101, 104
MP3 player 8
nam pung (southern wind) 109
nam nam buk nyeo (South Korean men
North Korean women) 173
nation branding 3–4, 6, 49, 72–3; cool
brand 43
national cultural policy 45
National Human Rights Commission of
Korea 162
national identity 27
National Intelligence Service (NIS), South
Korea 169–71, 173
new generation 186
news frames 154–7; of freedom 154–5; of
unification 154–6; of cultural exchange
156–7
non-local knowledge 21–2
North Korean defectors 19, 27, 30,
66, 113–4, 120, 129–30, 149–153,
155–8, 162–4, 167–8, 170, 172–4;
representation of 149–151; narratives
of 150–1; defector-turned journalists
152–3, 158; survival narratives of 29;
see also talbukja
North-South Daetgeul Summit 164,
170–2
Notel (or Note-Tel) 8, 14, 59
Now on My Way to Meet You 30,
176, 179
nuclear weapons 11
Nye, Joseph 3, 6, 41, 145, 147
Orientalism 151
Other(ness) 25–6, 149–151, 158–9, 177
patriarchy 110
popular culture 2, 22–3, 97, 100; see also
transnational popular culture
postcolonial periphery 4, 50
poverty 17
propaganda 11, 109–10, 113
public 109
Public Distribution System 112
Public Hearing of the UN 115–6
 Index 191
pull factor 17, 97, 101–2, 105 talbukja 176–7, 179, 182–3, 185; talbukja
push factor 101–2 community 181; see also North Korean
defectors
radio 15 technology 12, 86
Radio Free Asia (RFA) 15 The King 2 Hearts 136, 141–6
reflexivity 3, 21–2 The Suspect 136, 138, 140
reign of terror 55 tourism 5–6, 13, 46
resistance 164, 167 transmedia storytelling 165
Rodong Simmun (Labor Interrogation) transnational popular culture 1, 20; see
164–5, 168, 170, 172 also popular culture
role, North Korea 111–2, 114
unification 27, 30, 180, 185; see also
SD card 8, 59, 66 cultural unification
Secret Reunion 136–7, 139 USB 8, 14, 59, 62, 66, 96, 104
self-broadcast 185–6
self-commodification 185 Voice of America (VOA) 15
self-expression 19, 184–5 voices 176–7
shadow economy 14, 67–8, 75–6, 78
Shiri 26, 136–7, 140–1, 145 war on culture 7
smuggling 87–90 webtoon 29, 164–8, 170–4
socialist command economy 16, 64 Winter Sonata 5, 44, 46, 57
soft power 3, 6–7, 9, 12–3, 32, 41–2, 46, women, North Korea 18, 110–9
63, 97–8, 100, 102, 105, 128, 145–7,
155–6, 186 yeneung (variety entertainment) 176
structural changes 121 younger generations, South Korea 164,
subculture 86, 90 172–3
youth, North Korea 109–12
tablet 9 youth culture 125–6
tactic 23–4 YouTube 12, 30–1, 176, 183