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March 18, 2005
North Korea Falls Prey To The Soap Opera
When I was in Berlin shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall it was obvious which parts of the city and surrounding country used to be communist and which were not. There is a good reason totalitarian states like North Korea do not want their people to know what life is like in free countries. Just One Minute links to this New York Times story describing the sudden rise of VCRs in North Korea.
"They are within the reach of the average family," said Dr. Lankov, who regularly interviews recent defectors. "They watch, almost exclusively, smuggled and copied South Korean movies and drama. Only a few weeks after airing here, they will go throughout North Korea."More than showing middle-class family lifestyles, which can be staged in a studio, the soap operas also provide images of a modern Seoul - the forest of high-rise buildings, the huge traffic jams, the late-model cars.
With such images showing a stark contrast with primitive conditions in North Korea, Mr. Kim ordered the formation of a special prosecutor's office last November to arrest people who deal in South Korean goods, largely videotapes, or who use South Korean expressions or slang, analysts in South Korea say.
Posted by Pete at March 18, 2005 02:24 PM
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