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North Korea steps up efforts to stamp out consumption of illegal foreign media – but entertainment-hungry citizens continue to flout the ban
By Sarah A. Son, University of Sheffield
Consuming and sharing foreign media in North Korea can be punishable by death. But that did not stop more than 83% of those who escaped the country between 2016 and 2020 using increasingly sophisticated means to access foreign music, TV shows and films before they left.
According to a survey report that was released by the South Korean Ministry of Unification, illegal media consumption among those who left in the five years up to 2020 increased by 15% compared with the previous five-year period.
Since the mid-1990s, over 34,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea. However, North Korea closed its borders during the COVID pandemic, and since then the steady flow of escapees has slowed considerably.
The number of informants has dropped and the information they bring may be somewhat dated by the time they reach the South. But many tell a common story of huddling around a TV or laptop behind locked doors, consuming foreign media that was smuggled into North Korea on USB sticks and SD cards.
Escapees also tell how knowledge of the outside has changed North Korean consumer behaviour, relationships and trust in the Kim family’s regime. This has prompted North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to adopt increasingly harsh measures to combat access to illegal media.
Crackdown
Research that I conducted with my colleagues in 2019 while working for a human rights documentation NGO in South Korea found that public execution had been used by the North Korean state against people convicted of consuming or disseminating foreign media. The BBC reported one such case having recently taken place.
Forcing friends and neighbours to witness the punishment of those known to them for such a crime is a powerful deterrent deployed by a state that considers outside knowledge a profound threat to its ideology and the control of its people.
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