A North Korean soldier looks across the DMZ. Image Credit: US Army Photo by Edward N. Johnson
Alexandre Dor, The Diplomat: North Korea's Achilles Heel: Propaganda Broadcasts
South Korea’s propaganda broadcasting is a potent weapon, challenging the North’s monopoly on information.
When two South Korean soldiers had their legs amputated due to North Korea’s placement of box mines in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the Republic of Korea responded by blasting weather reports, K-pop hits, and Buddhist teachings over the zone via loudspeakers. Infuriated, North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un raised all military and reserve personnel to a “quasi-state of war,” threatened to turn South Korea into a “sea of fire,” and recommenced broadcasts of their own propaganda.
Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency then asserted that “the resumption of the propaganda loudspeaker campaign is a direct provocation of war against us,” giving Seoul an ultimatum — stop the propaganda broadcast or be held responsible for it as an “open act of war.” Fortunately, the August crisis was deescalated through high-level talks and marathon negotiations.
WNU Editor: I concur with this analysis. Information is North Korea's Achilles Heel .... and the best way to ferment change in North Korea is to broadcast/disseminate/educate/and publicize not what life is like in North Korea (the North Koreans are well aware of how they live), but to publicize what life is like in South Korea. South Korea will not even need to broadcast "propaganda" .... just show what their lives are like, starting with the consumer goods that they have.
I personally saw how information can be a powerful tool .... in both the Soviet Union and in China. In the case of China, I was stationed in Fujian province in the 1980s (Fujian is across from Taiwan) .... and when the Chinese started to have TV sets and access to Taiwan's transmissions .... it was amazing to see how this impacted Chinese society. Case in point .... the streets of Quanzhou where I was stationed (in 1988) were always busy at the end of the day when families took a walk outside after supper .... this was always the case but once a week for one hour the streets were inexplicably empty. I found out later that it was during this time that the latest broadcast of the American show "Dallas" was on .... beamed directly from Taiwan. I knew all about the show, and I explained to everyone that the show Dallas was just a soap opera .... a work of fiction .... but many Chinese did not care, and many firmly believed that the Ewing family in the show was a reflection of American life .... that many in America had a Mercedes, big house, nice clothes, and more food than you can handle. Years later I am still wondering if this lost of control over information may have helped in creating the political protests that gripped China in 1989 .... culminating in the Tienanmen Square massacre. The timing of this information explosion followed by growing resentment among many young Chinese students on their standard of living .... it all started at this time .... and the coincidence makes me wonder.
In the old Soviet Union .... same story. Because of my father's work I had the opportunity to travel abroad as a young kid .... so I saw how people lived. This disconnect from the Soviet message and what the truth really is/was did not hit me until I was a young adult. And when I explained to everyone that yes .... living conditions and opportunities were far better in the West than in the East .... everyone was either sceptical and/or thought I was a liar. What changed everything was technology .... more to the point .... it became harder to block the message from western Europe to eastern Europe, and then from eastern Europe to the Soviet Union. Years later I attended a gathering where Mikhail Gorbachev and Rupert Murdock were the guest of honors. I will never forget this .... in his remarks Mikhail Gorbachev mentioned that it was people like Rupert Murdock and organizations like CNN that forced the Soviet Union to change, and they had to change because they were no longer in control of the message. Yup .... Mikhail Gorbachev made many mistakes .... and I am not a fan of him nor his legacy ..... but he did foresee how advances in technology .... particularly in communications .... would make control of information next to impossible for the Soviet state. His response was perestroika and glasnost. Perestroika (reforming the Communist Party) failed .... but glasnost (openness) fortunately exceeded even beyond my own hopes and dreams.
5 comments:
WNU,
Please correct me if I've got this wrong, but my impression of the old Soviet Union and China now, is that everyone knows everyone is lying, but that no one knows what the truth is, even up to the ones in charge of "information". So nothing is believed by one, but anything (Dallas, J R and the boys) by the other.
I remember being in Germany and when Germans found out I was from Texas they were convinced that it was nothing but sand, cacti, and cowboys and absolutely nothing I said would convince them otherwise. So I gave up and told the biggest whoppers I could think of which were accepted without question. My favorite was the much feared snattlerake, a deadly and aggressive sub species of rattlesnake. It was with great difficulty you discern between the two since the only visual difference was the head and tail were on different ends.
Not to butt in, but great story, James. :)
WNU, it seems to me that the China paragraph also reveals the limits on the information factor. It did all end with Tiananmen Square. A regime whose political elite has both the resources (i.e. a security apparatus) and the willpower to maintain control will not collapse due to either inability or reluctance to control information. Glasnost did not kill the Soviet Union; glasnost in conjunction with the general decline and demoralisation of its rulers did. Likewise I suspect the Kims are going to hang on for a while, though if and when they do fall this will be a major factor.
Thanks Daniel,
You should have seen the look on their faces. Another one was when they wanted Indian stories, so I told them about the great "Comanche Uprising of 53", how terrible it was with Dairy Queens looted and burned from Odessa to Lufkin. How it was stopped by the heroic stand of hamburger meat vendors at the (5 minute) siege of Stuckey's in Waco. I'm sure I helped German-American relations for decades.
The burned down and looted the Dairy Queens!!!!! Damn those Comanches!!!!!
Yes WNU,
An experienced frontier hand could judge the size and direction of a war party by the number empty chocolate malt cups strew across the land and double cheeseburger wrappers waving melancholy in the wind.
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