Hello everyone, I hope this is the right place to inquire, but since I do not speak Korean it’s hard to find actual sources on that.
As a German person I’ve seen South Korean pop culture becoming extremely popular in my country since around 2016.
But what I found most interesting was what North Koreans, or rather the intelligentsia of the North might think about it, and how South Korean popular phenomena are explained to ordinary North Koreans, if at all.
The reason why I ask is because my country was once divided too, into a “good” side (West Germany) and a rather bad side. East Germany might not have been as bad as North Korea, and its citizens could access western TV and Radio, and even make (monitored) phone calls to the west. Because the government weren’t able to keep East Germans from consuming West German Media, they badmouthed it. West German TV Formats were widely enjoyed in those regions where the signal reached the east, and so the East German state media commented on it, analyzed it from a socialist point of view and relayed that negative interpretation to its citizens whilst reminding them of the illegality of consuming enemy media. For example, Western Music was said to be “decadent, dehumanizing and stultifying”.
It is no secret that even ordinary North Koreans may enjoy media from the south through smuggling of USB drives. Kim Jong Un is said to enjoy some American movies from time to time.
Do North Korean Media or North Korean officials comment on South Korean popular culture at all? I mean picking apart stuff like “Squid Game” for its brutality and portrayal of poverty in South Korea would be extremely easy for them, they may even succeed in scaring people away from the South right? I imagine content like that out of context would be traumatising. Is there any way to research this?
I saw that some people are picking up the terrestrial feed of NK’s TV. There also seem to be many leaks nowadays. Is this at all discussed in South Korea? Because when Germany was still divided, it was a full on culture war.
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