North Koreans turned on but tuned
out By Andrei Lankov
One might expect North Korea to be the
target of many outside Korean-language stations.
After all, it is one of the few despotic regimes
whose survival still largely depends on myths
about the country's situation and its place in the
world.
However, almost no outside
broadcasting targets North Korea.
Until
the mid-1990s, it didn't make sense to broadcast
to North Korea. Authorities since the 1960s had
dealt with the "foreign broadcast problem", which
created so much trouble for other communist
regimes, by outlawing all radios with free tuning.
Radios sold in North Korea had fixed tuning and
thus could receive only three or four official
channels.
If North Korean citizens
purchased a radio in one of the country's
hard-currency shops, which
accepted foreign cash and had a wider variety of
items, or when overseas, it had to be submitted to
police where technicians would "fix" (disable) it,
making sure its owners could only listen to
ideologically wholesome programs about the deeds
of their Dear Leader - Kim Jong-il.
This
ban was enforced with remarkable efficiency. It
was largely entrusted to the heads of the
"people's groups" or inminban, to which all
North Koreans belong. Typically, such group
consists of 30 to 50 families living in the same
block, and is headed by an official. These
low-level officials were required to regularly
check all radios in their neighborhoods, making
sure that they could not be used to listen to
foreign or, more likely, South Korean broadcasts.
The punishment could be harsh. One
official said in the 1980s she discovered that a
family in the neighborhood under her supervision
had a radio that could tune into foreign
broadcasts. She duly reported her discovery, and
the family was immediately exiled to the
countryside.
Only a few elite families as
well as some soldiers had access to radios that
were not tampered with, and even they took great
risks when they listened to a South Korean
broadcast.
But this is no longer the case.
Things started to change in the mid-1990s
when the border control collapsed and crowds of
refugees and smugglers began to cross the North
Korean-Chinese border. Among the many goods they
brought back were small radios. Unlike the
1950s-style bulky radios produced in North Korea,
these new transistor radios are small and easy to
hide. Though every North Korean house is still
subject to periodic random searches, chances of
finding such a small item are low. Furthermore,
officials lost their earlier zeal and started to
accept bribes.
In December, a survey of
defectors found that 45% had listened to a foreign
broadcast prior to fleeing the North. The
willingness to defect could mean a person is more
inclined to listen to a foreign broadcast, but it
might be the other way round as well: information
received from outside might prompt the decision to
flee.
At any rate, North Korea is not a
radioless country any more and its citizens could
find out what is going on in the world and in
their own country.
But apart from South
Korea's state-owned Korea Broadcasting System
(KBS) - which is officially known as the "social
education radio" and does its best to be as
inoffensive as possible for fear of "irritating"
Pyongyang - three stations specifically target the
North Korean audience.
The first and most
important is Radio Free Asia (RFA), a version of
Radio Free Europe that once broadcast into East
Europe - the segment that targeted the former USSR
was known as the Radio Liberty. RFA began
Korean-language broadcasts in 1997 when the South
Koreans withdrew from the airwaves. Currently,
broadcasts are four hours daily. With its current
staffing, it can produce only two hours live,
which is then repeated. Unlike KBS, RFA does raise
tough questions.
Another station is Free
North Korea (FNK), launched as a small online
station whose writers and announcers are North
Koreans living in the South. From December, FNK
began using transmitters in Russia. However,
Moscow is as unenthusiastic as Seoul about
prospects of an "unstable" North Korea, so FNK had
to move its transmitters to Mongolia.
From
the beginning, FNK had to deal with problems. The
pro-Pyongyang lobby staged noisy rallies in front
of the building where the station was located, so
it had to move to two windowless rooms in the
basement of an unremarkable building on a distant
outskirts of Seoul. Wages are small, and some
contributors work for free. Few, if any, are
professional radio journalists and the shortage of
funds means FNK stays on air only one hour a day.
Still, even its limited presence gets
under the skin of Pyongyang's officials, who refer
to FNK broadcasters as "traitors, lackeys of the
American imperialism, slaves of the conservative
forces" and demand they be removed from the
airwaves.
The third station is Voice of
America (VoA), but true to its name its focuses on
promoting America's image in both Koreas. The
station does some critical reporting about North
Korean affairs, and surveys show that some
defectors listened to VoA before they left North
Korea. However, because the topics of VoA programs
are largely about the US, its appeal is somewhat
limited (especially in a country whose population
has been educated to believe that the US is the
embodiment of evil).
Thus, while North
Koreans want to know more about the outside world,
they are still limited when they switch on their
smuggled or illicitly repaired radios. Most of the
time the air is clear of any subversive messages
that would upset their leaders. Even if they
listen to RFA or FNK, the stations cannot tell
them too much because air time is short and the
broadcast offerings limited.
Many
observers talk about the "North Korean problem"
and a huge amount of money is spent on the issue.
Jay Lefkowitz, US special envoy for human rights
in North Korea, has suggested increased radio
broadcasts on world events and in support of
Korean defector groups as key ways to empower the
North Koreans. And some members of the US Congress
have proposed increasing broadcasts by
American-funded radio stations to 24 hours a day
and dropping radio receivers into North Korea by
balloon.
Still, radio, the easiest and
cheapest way to bring about change from within
North Korean society, is not utilized to any
significant extent. North Koreans who want to
learn even the most basic facts about their
society and the world are kept in the dark not
only by their own government but by the rest of
the world as well.
When they want to learn
what is going on, they have to rely on North
Korean newspapers. They know only too well that
these newspapers lie, but nobody gives them much
of an alternative.
Dr Andrei Lankov
is a lecturer in the faculty of Asian Studies,
China and Korea Center, Australian National
University. He graduated from Leningrad State
University with a PhD in Far Eastern history and
China, with emphasis on Korea, and his thesis
focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has
published books and articles on Korea and North
Asia. He is currently on leave, teaching at
Kookmin University, Seoul.
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2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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