Mobile phones “instill students with unhealthy ideology,” right here, too!
Oh dear, the saintly Kim is shutting out another link to the outside world. I only say saintly because Trump said he knows Kim's people 'just love him'. Another view in to Trump's uneducated, uninformed and unread mind. Read once in a while and listen for a change Mr. T.
When fearless leader understands that you can control the masses/propagandize through Facebook and whatever version NK/China will use, pesky little things like pornography, cheating on rote exams, and pop music will cease to be of any importance. I think that people's desire to communicate and believe they have agency over their lives will overcome governmental qualms at about the same time they gain control over their use.
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I’m all for suppressing Kpop. And American pop too.
But then, I love music.
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South Korea was once a country that harshly controlled pop culture. For authoritarian rulers in the past, comic books were the sign of decadence, for instance.
North Korea seems to be similar to the past S Korea, but it’s hard to predict whether rising interests in foreign cultures will bring more freedoms to the country. As there’s no recent case that an authoritarian country was successfully transferred to a more politically democratic one.
It’s up to the North Koreans. If they want to be more like China or Singapore, who can block it?
I have been to North Korea.
And that photo of Korean in front of those portraits - deja vue all over again.
I was there 5 years ago.
Our phones did not work there and we were cautioned not to display them in public. Not one of our guides or minders, a video photographer (about 6 in total) ever had a phone.
We went to a library where they were learning English. I was talked into giving them a lecture on importance of English - about 50 to 60 in that class.
Not one had a phone. So, everyone listened.
And my experience tells me that when they say phones are proliferating - it's confined to that Potemnkin village of Peyongang.
Five years ago - Peyongang and outside of it - two countries that never meet.
Finally one observation on that photo of little rocket man at phone factory.
What the heck is that white powder being weighed in upper left hand.
And in lower right hand - that man assembling but with a pair of kitchen cissors at his side.
Interesting??
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@Neil I was in NK in 2014 and again just 3 months ago. Your assessment of 5 years ago aligns with what I found in 2014. In September of this year the majority of people in Pyongyang had a mobile phone and all our guides had one - our main guide had three! I sighted a lessor number of mobile phones outside Pyongyang for sure but they are definitely there. I would say 6 million through-out the country sounds plausible if perhaps a tad on the high side given population of 25 million. Obviously what North Koreans could access on their phone was limited to local content (intranet) and they most certainly did not use them in school classes. In addition to the intranet they have access to many games and no, they are not 'shoot Americans up' games!
In 2018 there was no restriction whatsoever on bringing in/ displaying phones including South Korean Samsung phones. These days customs officials are suspicious of foreigners coming in without a mobile phone! Everyone tourist that I saw had one - mostly using them for photography which, incidentally, is a lot less restricted than it previously was too. Our phones were individually registered on entry supposedly to ensure we took them out again. No checks were made on exit in this regard for anyone in our group.
While I didn't get one, it is possible for foreigners to buy a sim card in NK which gives access to international calls and the international internet. Foreign tourists cannot make local calls or access the local intranet.
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@Neil
Peyongang? cissors? What were you doing in North Korea? Teaching English?
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NK is trying to hold back the tide. They will be drowned the same way fools are who try to defeat the ocean.
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This is interesting...I play a mobile game called Clash of Clans and recently we were up against a North Korean clan in war...my first thought is "do they really have mobile phones in North Korea"...I guess they do
the kids will find a way.
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Not in the restrictive sense of the N Koreans, but as a means to bring some sanity to our nation, to our films. tv and newspapers, who daily propagate and sensationalize killings by gunfire. murders of all types, drug-taking, alcohol, to the detriment of the entire population in the US, not only to the young, we SHOULD restrict generally these happenings that are made, almost deliberately, to seem so attractive.
Sweet, wonderful pornography! It created the market for VCR's in the 1980's, expanded interest in the World Wide Web in the 1990's, and will eventually cause North Korea's closed society to open. Is there anything it can't do?
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@Steve Acho Also allowed Blu-Rays to defeat HD-DVD's.
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File sharing & the watching of Kdramas & Bangtan Sonyeondan a.k.a. BTS has been going on in North Korea for a very long time, in the case of Kdramas, long before smart phones. Yet I'm sure that the people will figure out ways to work around the government interventions as they always do.
My only quibble with this article is that anyone who know a whit about BTS & their music/lyrics/message does not consider them Kpop and most find that label offensive. Korea has all genres of music as we do - indie, hip hop, pop, rock, et.al. - but our media labels all music from Korea as Kpop which is a total absurdity. This is why people don't like us. All x look alike. All Korean music is Kpop.
It reminds me of our Miss USA from Nebraska who made fun of Miss Viet Nam & Miss Cambodia for not speaking English at the Miss Universe pageant in Bangkok this past week. The glee around the globe when Miss Viet Nam made the top five but Miss USA was eliminated in the top 20 was pretty loud & earth shaking.
These are things that may seem petty to many of us arrogant Americans, and yet reveal so much about our attitude toward the world & the world's attitude about us. I wish our media were able to notice to these daily slights which pile up to mountainous resentment. This is especially true in East Asia where we cannot distinguish differences in many more important ways than condescending music labels.
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File sharing & the watching of Kdramas & Bangtan Sonyeondan a.k.a. BTS has been going on in North Korea for a very long time, in the case of Kdramas, long before smart phones. Yet I'm sure that the people will figure out ways to work around the government interventions as they always do.
My only quibble with this article is that anyone who knows a whit about BTS & their music/lyrics/message does not consider them Kpop and most find that label offensive. Korea has all genres of music as we do - indie, hip hop, pop, rock, et.al. - but our media labels all music from Korea as Kpop which is a total absurdity. This is why people don't like us. All x look alike. All Korean music is Kpop.
It reminds me of our Miss USA from Nebraska who made fun of Miss Viet Nam & Miss Cambodia for not speaking English at the Miss Universe pageant in Bangkok this past week. The glee around the globe when Miss Viet Nam made the top five but Miss USA was eliminated in the top 20 was pretty loud & earth shaking.
These are things that may seem petty to many of us arrogant Americans, and yet reveal so much about our attitude toward the world & the world's attitude about us. I wish our media were able to notice to these daily slights which pile up to mountainous resentment. This is especially true in East Asia where we cannot distinguish differences in many more important ways than condescending music labels.
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If you go to a karaoke room in Korea, Western music is all labeled pop. You'll find The Beatles, Michael Jackson, and Bob Dylan in the same category as Muse, Justin Timberlake, and System of a Down. It's just the way people treat foreign things. They get lumped into one category.
Also, no one here considers K-pop an insult.
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"Even pornography."
Like Tumblr, starting yesterday?
Who is in favor of cheating on exams?
I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.
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They will figure out that they want the population focused on empty amusements like k-pop and even porn rather than their rights and politics.
Aldous Huxley got that right.
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We should air drop hundred of thousands of cheap phones into North Korean.
Finding religious information is also a big driver.
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"Information control is seen as key to maintaining Mr. Kim’s grip on totalitarian power and the personality cult surrounding his family, which has ruled the North since its founding at the end of World War II."
As different as we seem from the DPRK, the same levers of control can erode our freedom here too if we let media corporations become partisan, or don't regulate tech in a way that allows some giant internet company can become a virtual monopoly on providing information. Media driven by algorithms and targeted ads can leave us in an artificial world that blinds us to what we really need to know. Tech is changing us faster than we have time to process, to reflect upon, and to regulate wisely. Now not only state adversaries (Russia, China) but even non-state actors (Google, Facebook) without accountability mold our minds and it seems even voting... to limit our nation's power and enrich their cabal.
Wake up America! Capitalism's unbridled greed and the competition with China for AI hegemony will take our children to the same dark place as a North Korea, if we do not carefully establish 21st century protections for both privacy and freedom of information.
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