Millennial North Korea
Forbidden Media and Living Creatively with Surveillance
Suk-Young Kim
October 2024
262 Pages
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North Korea may be known as the world's most secluded society, but it too has witnessed the rapid rise of new media technologies in the new millennium, including the introduction of a 3G cell phone network in 2008. In 2009, there were only 70,000 cell phones in North Korea. That number has grown tremendously in just over a decade, with over 7 million registered as of 2022. This expansion took place amid extreme economic hardship and the ensuing possibilities of destabilization. Against this social and political backdrop, Millennial North Korea traces how the rapidly expanding media networks in North Korea impact their millennial generation, especially their perspective on the outside world.
Suk-Young Kim argues that millennials in North Korea play a crucial role in exposing the increasing tension between the state and its people, between risktakers who dare to transgress strict social rules and compliant citizens accustomed to the state's centralized governance, and between thriving entrepreneurs and those left out of the growing market economy. Combining a close reading of North Korean state media with original interviews with defectors, Kim explores how the tensions between millennial North Korea and North Korean millennials leads to a more nuanced understanding of a fractured and fragmented society that has been frequently perceived as an unchanging, monolithic entity.
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INTRODUCTION
Into the New Millennium
“Turn your eyes toward the world while having your feet grounded in your homeland!”1 Introduced in 2009 and prominently displayed in public squares, above factory entrances, and in school hallways nationwide, this slogan captures the aspirations and paradoxes of North Korea in the twenty-first century. In a country where smugglers of foreign media can still face public execution,2 how do North Korean citizens gain knowledge of the world—especially millennials, who are more prone to adopt new technology and whose lives are most acutely affected by the changing media landscape? What kinds of forbidden foreign media do millennials watch, and why do they watch them despite the grave risk? How does the North Korean state control information, and how do people navigate through the tricky waters of state control and surveillance?
Millennial North Korea explores divergent ways the state and the people use media and technology with often-conflicting objectives in mind. From VCDs (video CDs) to cell phones, from smuggled South Korean TV dramas to North Korean state-produced YouTube channels, the past twenty years have seen a rapid change in how North Koreans produce and consume media in an increasingly discursive manner. Exploring this process demands tactful agility, engaging with the broader shifts in economic reforms and sociocultural changes that engulfed North Korea, the changing media landscape led by the government, the actual media content surreptitiously circulated among the people, and the consequential shift in people’s value system as a result of consuming foreign media.
Coinciding with the irreversible process of marketization, the unstoppable spread of new media platforms and technology heralded unprecedented sociocultural shifts in North Korea. The millennial generation plays a crucial role in exposing the increasing tension between the state and the people, between the premillennial generation who lived under the state’s centralized governance and millennials who have been relatively free from it,3 and between thriving entrepreneurs and those left out of the growing market economy. Exploring the tensions between millennial North Korea and North Korean millennials leads to a more nuanced understanding of a fractured and fragmented society that has been largely perceived by the outside world as an unchanging, monolithic entity. Combining a close reading of North Korean publications and media to assess the state’s media policy with interviews with North Korean millennial resettlers to understand their engagement with media technology, this book investigates the diversifying social strata that have come to characterize today’s North Korea and the implications such changes bear for the world.
This research highlights a unique form of tech savviness brought about by media transformation in a country seldom associated with technological advancement. The book considers a broad network of media platforms but places a particular emphasis on cell phones since their rising use induced both bottom-up social changes and top-down government initiatives more viscerally than did other media platforms. Although known to be the world’s most secluded society, North Korea has witnessed the rapid increase of new media technologies in the new millennium—most prominently, the introduction of a 3G cell phone network in 2008,4 and the ensuing growth of cell phone use (see figure 0.1). In 2009, there were only seventy thousand cell phones in North Korea, 60 percent of which were owned by Pyongyang (Pyeongyang) residents in their twenties to fifties. That number has grown tremendously in just a decade: in 2019, there were six million registered users spread throughout one hundred cities and towns. As of August 2022, North Korea is simultaneously developing 4G and 5G broadband-cellular-network technology for future service.5 This expansion took place under the careful watch of the state, which has actively secured foreign investment and partnerships to catch up with the world standard in communication technology.
FIGURE 0.1. Mobile telephone shop on Mirae Street, Pyongyang, May 2018. Photo courtesy of Koryo Tours. Reprinted with permission.
But the growing number of cell phones cannot be automatically interpreted as increased freedom for users. The North Korean state allows only intranet access for its people, officially blocking the free flow of information while using the network as a convenient means of surveillance. If the State Security Agency had to eavesdrop on citizens in person in the past, it can do the same work more effectively nowadays by tapping into cell phone conversations. When South Korean network-security specialist Gang Jingyu analyzed the software files on Arirang 151 (the smartphone model North Korea manufactured in 2017), he discovered a cell phone spy app embedded in the game app named Gopseuli, a North Korean copy of the popular virtual-kitten-companion app Talking Ginger. According to Gang, this spy app can monitor incoming and outgoing phone calls of any cell phone unit and send that information to an untraceable control center.6 No wonder North Korean cell phone users firmly believe their phones are constantly under surveillance.7 Although most defectors could not explain the exact mechanism, the suspicion of government surveillance was so ubiquitous that most took measures to evade the state’s unsanctioned access to their phones. For instance, a male user in his early thirties, who left North Korea in November 2010, notes in an interview with South Korean media scholar Kim Yonho [Gim Yeon-ho], “It’s not easy to use a mobile phone. In order to make sure the mobile phone frequencies are not being tracked, I would fill up a wash basin with water and put the lid of a rice cooker over my head while I made a phone call. I don’t know if it worked or not, but I was never caught for using a mobile phone. If you’re caught, you have to pay a heavy fine, and could be expelled [from Pyongyang].”8 On the other hand, there are other North Koreans, such as Gim Ha-na (female born in 1988 in Hyesan who left North Korea in 2014), who believe they have seen tangible proof of phone surveillance: “In preparation for crossing into China, I went to stay with my aunt in [the border city of] Hyesan. One day, I saw several black cars circling around my aunt’s house. I panicked and told my aunt, who had just made a phone call to a broker in China. It is said that when you make a phone call across the border, the phone signal will be detected in thirty seconds [by the authorities]. In a minute, the authorities start recording the conversations.”9
As these interviewees’ paranoia attests, North Korean cell phone users are extremely careful in self-censoring their conversations, but fear does not stop them from using their phones. Even though cell phones in North Korea serve as a tool for state censorship, they have vitalized the marketplace outside the state’s centrally planned economy by enabling merchants to compare prices in various markets throughout the country in real time. Bak Hyun-suk (female in her forties, born in Hyesan, who left North Korea in 2013), who supported her family by trading in a marketplace, emphasizes the significance of accessing information as the key element of success: “Nowadays, people can exchange information in real time by making phone calls.”10 The inseparable relationship between the exchange of economic information and cell phone communication is eloquently summed up by Kim Yonho: “Mobile telecommunications service is a double-edged sword for the North Korean government. It provides a tool to potentially support economic development, by allowing the state to control production, establish standards, and coordinate between the capital and more remote areas of the country in ways that were not previously possible. This could be an innovative way to increase productivity and efficiency for the dysfunctional planned economy.”11 While North Korea’s marketization is hugely responsible for the proliferation of cell phones in ways that have reshaped the traditional top-down social network into a need-based, trust-based kinship (to be fully explored in chapter 2), it has also greased channels for corruption that strengthen North Korean cadres who collect bribes from prosperous merchants; these merchants pay in order to possess multiple cell phone units, which is illegal in North Korea.
But the most subversive use of technology is when cell phones are transformed into rebellious gadgets: USBs, secure digital (SD) cards, or multimedia cards (MMCs) loaded with forbidden foreign-media content can be connected to cell phones, allowing North Korean users to gain access. Being confined to using the intranet by no means limits users in North Korea as they find other creative means to communicate with the outside world. Media and technology have always been at the core of subtle shifts and power dynamics in a society that appears impenetrable and immovable from the outside world. To be more precise, what they watch and why they watch it using their electronic gadgets are of utmost importance for discovering subtle yet irreversible changes at a grassroots level.
Technology cuts both ways, introducing stronger measures of both state control and civilian freedom. Technology steers North Korea into subtle turns and changes, providing the people with a perspective on the world and the state with a highly effective means to surveil them and profit from the expanding market economy. But for the North Korean state, the escalating use of cell phones increases the risk of citizens being exposed to alternative perspectives that could threaten the legitimacy of its authoritarian regime.
The increasing tension between the technological need to be on par with the world and the ideological need to block the free flow of information shapes the incompatible faces of the Kim Jong Un (Gim Jeong-eun) era. To reach out internationally and resuscitate its devastated economy, the state has made unprecedented diplomatic moves to participate in the failed US–North Korea summit in 2018–19 and invest heavily in tourism all the while tightening its grip on the domestic population. Many North Korean resettlers say that it became much more difficult to cross the North Korea–China border under Kim Jong Un’s regime as barbed-wire fences and closed-circuit televisions (CCTVs) have been installed under the new leader’s watch. The regime intensified the War against Impure Recorded Materials (Bulsun rokhwamulgwaeui jeonjaeng), a campaign introduced in 2004 when the current leader’s father, Kim Jong Il (Gim Jeong-il), established the so-called 109 Gruppa, an organization to censor foreign-drama content. Members of the Gruppa often enter schools to search students’ bags and exercise a draconian degree of control by confiscating items and reporting owners of foreign media to the North Korean police. As one anonymous interviewee (female in her midthirties, born in Cheongjin, who left North Korea in 2019 and came to South Korea in 2020) attests, 109 Gruppa’s crackdown was so severe that she did not dare play any South Korean content on her cell phone.12
On a broader plane, studying millennials, cell phone networks, and media consumption calls into question the convoluted relationship between technology and surveillance, intellectual property and a sense of ownership, and the ironic ways millennials achieve some degree of freedom under constant state supervision. Similar to how North Koreans can accumulate private property while not having any legal means to guard it,13 North Korean citizens can use cell phones subversively to access outside information and think beyond state-approved ways while lacking measures to protect their freedom of thought. This predicament prompts people to use coded neologisms and bodily presentation to perform trust and gain access to secretive groups, in effect creating alternative social networks, which often provide business partnerships and other means of livelihood. As North Korea analysts Nat Kretchun and Jane Kim note, “Outside information and the activities North Koreans engage in to access it also are fostering the creation of horizontal connections between North Korean citizens. These horizontal bonds, facilitated by shared implication in prohibited behaviors, economic interactions, or simply curiosity about the outside world, and created outside the watch of the state, are a breeding ground for ideas that go beyond or run counter to the regime’s espoused reality.”14 As a result, the vast majority of North Koreans today seem to exist in an ambivalent way between forced socialist collectives and spontaneously formed social networks. Millennials in particular learn to constantly negotiate and perform their allegiance to the state for political survival while forging social ties for economic survival and cultural diversification.15
Many scholars point to the existence of draconian surveillance in North Korea,16 but few articulate how that surveillance has to be performed in a legible way for people to thwart it. While developing a watchful eye toward censors, young North Koreans learn from smuggled media how to stage coded fashions and use language subtle enough to gain the trust of like-minded peers. In other words, there has to be a degree of legible trustworthiness among the network of people who share the forbidden media. Most are “inducted” into consuming foreign cultural materials through their intimate—and carefully guarded—social networks. Such unique circumstances provide a possibility for considering North Korea not just as a passive—and illegal—smuggler of foreign media but also as a uniquely subversive yet proactive circulator of global-media content.
Millennial North Korea, North Korean Millennials
On a broader plane, this book is about the multilayered tension between North Korean millennials and the North Korean state in the new millennium. Like millennials in many other parts of the world, those in North Korea struggle to cope with technologically stimulated social shifts, though without access to the conventional social benefits. In general terms, “millennials” refer to the group of people born between 1981 and 1996 who have reached adulthood in the twenty-first century. Such generational classifications emerge primarily out of the US social and historical context, but even the millennials in the United States by no means represent a monolithic entity as their experiences vary widely according to gender, race, ethnicity, class, and cultural heritage.17 Millennials in North Korea likewise are not a uniform group.
Similar to the conventions in the United States where approximately thirty years constitutes one generation marked by distinctive life experiences (such as the golden generation, lost generation, and baby boomers), in North Korea, there is a tradition of naming a generation after the representative state policy and their corresponding life experience during their twenties and thirties. North Koreans rely on the following categorization: the so-called partisan generation refers to those who were born in the 1900s to 1920s and were in their twenties and thirties during the Japanese colonial period; the so-called Chollima generation refers to those born in the 1930s and 1940s who came of age during North Korea’s Chollima economic plan;18 the so-called Arduous March generation refers to those born between the 1950s and 1970s who experienced extreme economic hardship in their twenties and thirties; and the so-called marketplace generation refers to those born after the 1980s whose livelihood depends on their marketplace participation.19 Slight variations on this model exist. For instance, Ji Hye-yeon groups North Korean generations into categories identical to the aforementioned first and third generations but points out that the second generation was born between the 1930s and 1950s and the fourth generation, between the 1970s and 1990s. She adds a fifth generation to refer to those born after the 1990s.20
Although North Korean millennials are predominantly people in their thirties and forties, this book does not define millennials simply according to the facile generational classification. More significant than biological age is the fact that “millennial” is a constructed, claimed, and carefully performed identity. The definition used in this book primarily reflects an individual’s receptiveness to changes and openness to the outside world. In the case of North Korea, this means that those born between the mid-1970s and mid-2000s who have claimed and performed inclinations toward accepting notable economic, sociocultural, and technological changes in the past two decades share a significant number of performative strategies with biological millennials and therefore should be seen as sharing cultural affinities.
The structural categorization by age groups should by no means be the only measure to determine who North Korean millennials are since even a single generation can share variable experiences. As performance and media scholar Abigail De Kosnik notes, “We are in the age of micro-generations. Huge differences [exist] between micro-generations. Different micro-generations have different commitments to different social media.”21 This is most true in North Korea. Although North Korea’s conception of social media is distinctively understood as networks of trusted people who operate offline to share forbidden media secretly, their varying attitudes toward such networks are what make North Korean millennials an amalgamation of microgenerations.
In light of how North Korean millennials are a group of microgenerations whose overlaying characteristics emerge through their curation of ideological, cultural, and economic affiliations, the best known North Korean conjugation of “millennials” is the marketplace generation (jangmadang saedae)—mostly defined as those born in the late 1980s who experienced neither the central rationing system nor the strict centralized education system. This book uses a more fluid definition of the marketplace generation as those who support and participate in the marketplace economy. South Korean journalist O Ga-hyeon notes that the emergence of this new generation was marked by “positive notions about wealth, preference of individualism over collectivism, and flexible and open attitudes toward foreign cultures.”22 Reflecting these trends, a term more inclusive than “marketplace generation” is “N Generation,” coined by the South Korean scholar Gim Gap-sik. This versatile term refers to North Koreans born after the mid-1970s;23N simultaneously signifies “new,” “network,” “new consumption,” and “nuclear weapons” to collectively present the novel life experience of this generation. The N Generation is known for their audacity to depart from the previous modes of political devotion to the state, and it is not uncommon to hear an N Generation person say things like “He [Kim Jong Un] is not going to feed us, so let us take good care of ourselves.”24 The N Generation provides a productive starting point to think through the distinctive characteristics of the millennials whose life trajectories differ significantly from their predecessors’.
Extending the generational rubric further to the most recent times, the neologism gangnam generation emerged to refer to a more specific microgeneration of North Koreans. Gangnam here stands as an abbreviation for “liking South Korea beyond the river” (gang-geonneo namhan-eul joa-handa).25 As the name suggests, the gangnam generation is marked by their passion for South Korean culture, but as Na Min-hui (female born in 1991 in Pyongyang who left North Korea in 2014 and came to South Korea in 2015) notes, “What makes the gangnam generation different from the previous generation, who also consumed South Korean culture, is their proactive emulation of the South Korean lifestyle.”26 An example is changing their names to “sophisticated-sounding ‘Ji-ae’ and ‘Yu-mi,’ styled after South Korean drama protagonists.”27 A microgeneration, the gangnam generation closely reflects the popular-culture-consumption patterns that have changed the lifestyles of predominantly young North Koreans.
All these distinctive ways to comprehend a new kind of North Koreans dispersed through microgenerations present attractive possibilities, but in order to accommodate these variegated segments of North Korean youth, I adhere to the comprehensive term “millennials.” I use it to reference the generation in North Korea who face technologically driven social shifts in the new millennium; it has the flexibility to encompass the social-economic-military spectrum captured in various Ns and the proactive cultural practices of the gangnam generation. “Millennials” in this book will inevitably fall short of capturing the immense diversity of these microgenerations, but the term will be used as a shorthand to reference a group of North Koreans who are hybrid subjects of both a draconian state and a fast-changing digital culture.
The diversity of North Korean millennials rests with not only the terms used to describe them but also their gender, class, and regional differences and various performative strategies to anchor these identity-related vectors. The wide spectrum of their life experiences—from an impoverished teenager being sold into a forced marriage in China, to a top university student being privileged to study overseas on a full government scholarship—demonstrates the range of the millennial generation even in such a seemingly homogenous nation. Gender creates further divergent experiences since the millennial generation has seen an exponential increase in women’s participation in the market economy (discussed in chapter 2). Oftentimes, various stories of North Korean youth seem as if they emerged from people who lived in different eras and in different countries.
In a racially homogenous country like North Korea, class background and economic status become huge factors in the diversity of life experiences. Millennials considered in this book hail from all walks of life. However, economically advanced citizens are more likely to use new technology. Kretchun and Kim note that “elites are important early adopters, who have the means to acquire and use advanced technologies.”28 In this regard, technology creates a gap between the “hereditary elite” and the “economic elite,”29 further complicating the social stratification that results from North Korea’s political caste system known as seongbun and todae.30
Lastly, in investigating the misalignment between North Korean millennials and North Korea in the new millennium, this book does not overlook the fact that Kim Jong Un himself is a millennial whose self-presentation in the public media differs from that of the previous generation of leaders. When he succeeded his father in 2011 as a young leader still in his twenties, the initial response from North Koreans was a sense of enthusiasm, even prompting many young women, such as Ryu Hui-jin (female born in 1991 in Pyongyang who left North Korea in 2012 and came to South Korea in 2015), to remark, “How great the young general looks!”31 According to Gim Ha-na (female born in Hyesan in 1988 who left North Korea in 2014), “When Kim Jong Un appeared on TV, we were quite touched since he looked so much like his grandfather. The older generation especially felt as if his grandfather was born again as a young man.”32 At public engagements, the awe-inspiring new leader was accompanied by an equally young wife, Li Seol-ju, who held his arm. North Koreans previously had never seen leaders’ spouses in public, not to mention physical intimacy between the leader and his spouse. To take the display of youthful leadership to another level, in 2023, Kim even showcased his preteen daughter in high-profile public engagements, showing unbridled fatherly affection and his status as a young patriarch of his family—another first in North Korean media coverage of national leaders.
Born in 1984, Kim Jong Un is portrayed by the official state media as a leader who deeply cares about young people and new technology. Digging deeper into official coverage of the new leader’s vision for a strong nation, one quickly discovers that national strength is frequently predicated on the rhetoric of “fostering the youth” (cheong-nyeon), as Kim Jong Un’s public speeches demonstrate: “Our country set a good example of solving the problems of youth. There are many countries that pay attention to youth, but no other country has placed young people at the core of the national and party strategic plans and foregrounded a strong nation of youth [cheong-nyeon gang-guk].”33 Official North Korean propaganda produced an abundance of articles with titles such as “The Great Leader Paved the Everlasting Foundation for a Strong Nation of Youth” (Cheongnyeongangguk-ui mannyeongiteuleul maryeonhayeo-jusin widaehan ryeongdoja), which sings boundless eulogies of how, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, “the ideology of prioritizing youth culminated in the party’s focus on emphasizing the importance of youth.”34 To further cement the image of the leader as a strong supporter of the youth, arts were actively deployed to the point that there is an entire collection of songs, March Forward, Strong Nation of Young People, dedicated to that purpose.35 The collection even features a song titled “My Country Is a Strong Nation of Young People” (Nae joguk-eun cheong-nyeon-gang-guk):
Ah, love the young people.
Advancing even further the national project to prioritize young people,
Which had been adopted by previous leaders,
The dear leader opened a period of prosperity
Marked by his love for the next generation and for the future.
Ah, even though the world changes a thousand times over,
Even if the earth is one day destroyed,
My brilliant country will soar up unharmed.
It is a strong nation of youth paralleled by none.36
Putting aside the famed North Korean tradition of deifying the nation’s leaders, there is something different about Kim Jong Un when compared to his predecessors. Stepping onto the international stage as the untested leader, he had to mark himself as qualitatively different from his father, Kim Jong Il, whose reign left mixed legacies of a painful deterioration of the North Korean people’s quality of life and the state’s emergence as a nuclear power. Also, having seen the world beyond North Korea in his youth, Kim shares the millennial generation’s desire for technology adoption—to the point that he wanted to distinctively characterize his era by tech innovation. According to Radio Free Asia reports, “There was a rumor among the elite that the newly named successor Kim Jong Un would try to introduce a new cult around himself, partly supported by mobile telecommunications. Indeed, propaganda materials distributed to people in early 2011 claimed that the successor had been thoroughly conversant with the global trend of informatization since high school and that mobile telecommunications service had been realized, thanks to his bold initiatives.”37 Official North Korean propaganda also paints the new leader in a distinctive light—as focused on strengthening the nation through science and technology. In 2016, the North Korean magazine Chollima published an article, “Bolstering the Nation with Strength in Science, Technology, and Talented People” (Gwahak-gisul-gang-guk, injaegang-guk geonseol-ui naraereul pyeolcheojusiryeo), praising Kim Jong Un’s leadership after he declared his plan to build the Center for Science and Technology. The article confirms how the centrality of Kim’s leadership is embedded in his support of science and technology: “The workers reflected upon the significance of the multifunctional Center for Science and Technology and reminisced how previous leaders in the 1980s built the Great Hall of People’s Learning [Inmin-dae-hakseupdang] and ignited the passion for learning among people. Just like them, the Dear Leader is addressing the needs of the twenty-first century by establishing a multifunctional and technologically advanced Center for Science and Technology in order to pave a way for our country to become a nation with strength in science, technology, and talented people. All marveled at his grand plan, inimitable skills, and deep wisdom.”38
In fact, Kim Jong Un was not the only one who emerged as a visionary leader of youth; his sister and his wife have also surfaced as notable public figures in the new millennium. Li Seol-ju is the first in North Korean history to have appeared in public as a spouse of the North Korean leader, gracing the front pages of domestic and international media with her youthful looks and high fashion. She quickly became the icon of the new North Korean woman, often inspiring her followers to emulate her signature “party-leader” (dang ganbu) style exuding affluence and power. Whereas Li Seol-ju captivated the new generation of North Korean women with her feminine looks, Kim Yeo-jeong, as the leader’s sister, started to wield considerable power in North Korean realpolitik. During the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, she came to South Korea as the North Korean emissary to pave the way for peace talks. She also accompanied her brother to the historic—yet failed—2019 Hanoi summit between the United States and North Korea, assisting Kim Jong Un every step of the way. The retinue of female figures surrounding Kim Jong Un further includes a child literally born in the new millennium. Kim Ju-ae, allegedly born in 2012 or 2013, made her debut in the North Korean public and the world when she accompanied her father to a test launch for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on November 18, 2022. A year later, the North Korean state designated the date as Missile Industry Day (Misail gong-eob-jeol) in order to commemorate the successful launch. But perhaps more significantly, the day was declared a special occasion to highlight Kim Ju-ae’s public debut. Her public appearances continued into 2023, sealing the impression of this young person’s role as the possible future leader of North Korea. When she was addressed as the “morning star of Korea” in the public media in late November 2023, many North Korea specialists saw it as a clear sign of Kim Ju-ae’s strengthening political status since this is a special title traditionally dedicated to the leader’s future successor.39
Kim Jong Un and prominent female figures of his retinue are ambivalent embodiments representing both the emergent energy of the new generation and the unchallenged authority of his family’s sacred bloodline. In this regard, North Korea’s paradox is increasing with the passage of time, and North Korean millennials—among them Kim Jong Un—must face and live with such inconsistencies most directly.
Why This Research Now?
The study of North Korea’s recent media-technology development is a burgeoning field. Among the few existing studies, the vast majority are quantitative works driven by hard-data collection and analyses in the service of government agencies or think tanks. In rare cases where qualitative interpretation has been provided, it is for ideologically inflected projects on how proliferating technology, especially cell phones, affects US national security and international relations.40 On the other hand, the study of North Korea’s younger generation has been conducted by scholars such as Sunny Yoon but not to the fullest extent of tracing the correlation between the millennials’ cultural inclinations and the digital transformation of the North Korean state over the past two decades.41 Most crucially, there has been no full-length-book project that provides a close-up analysis of South Korean media content as a way to explain its transformative appeal in North Korea. This study dives deep into humanistic communication and interpretive narrative analysis based on the methodology of media and performance studies. It fully considers both the liberating and the oppressive roles of technology in today’s North Korea, with data distilled from the North Korean state media and the North Korean millennial resettlers themselves.
My analysis also takes into account the complex diversification of today’s North Korean experience, moving beyond Pyongyang-centric methods. Because North Korea has always been a highly centralized state where political and cultural power coalesce in Pyongyang, the capital city has seen a faster rise of technology than the rest of the country in the new millennium. According to a South Korean visitor, “Cell phones could be found practically in everyone’s hands on the streets [of Pyongyang]” by November 2018.42 Complicating this phenomenon is the fact that information flow within Pyongyang—the beacon of North Korean statehood—is more strictly controlled than outside the capital; An Hye-gyeong (female in her thirties, born in Cheongjin, who left North Korea in 2006) notes that Pyongyang residents are subject to a higher degree of surveillance when it comes to illegal consumption of foreign media.43 While there is an undeniable gap in living standards and social infrastructure between Pyongyang and other places, the rapidly spreading communications technology has played a crucial role in revitalizing markets in provincial towns, especially those along the North Korea–China border, which serve as gateways for the influx of telecommunication technology and media content from foreign lands. Gim Hae-suk (female in her forties, born in South Pyeongan Province, who left North Korea in 2018 and came to South Korea in 2019) recollects how her husband wanted to move to the border area in order to start trading in the marketplace. She first refused to leave South Pyeongan Province since she wanted to be close to the capital city. But once she began crossing the border through Rajin-Sonbong Special Economic Zone, she started to see the reality beyond North Korea: “I was able to access more information through USB memory sticks that came from China. Pyongyang residents might have pride, but it’s not the case that the capital city provides you with more things. Those with some resources might have a good time in Pyongyang, but the rest have to struggle.”44 Go Na-hae (female born in Dancheon, South Hamgyeong Province, who left North Korea in 2018 and came to South Korea in 2019) agrees: “Unless you have a good political background, have access to foreign countries, or are just simply rich, there is no reason to live in Pyongyang.”45 An anonymous interviewee (female in her twenties, born in Hyesan, who left North Korea in 2017) nails the point: “Hyesan is the best. Much better than Pyongyang. You won’t starve there as you can work in trading [with China] and work as a broker.”46 The millennial reality in North Korea seems to have reconfigured the preexisting spatial hierarchy into a slightly more lateral playing field where border towns and other urban centers, such as Sinuiju, appear as attractive as the capital city. These are the fluid and fast-changing circumstances of today’s North Korea that await deep interpretive analyses.
Notes on Interviews
The multidirectional flow of technology and information requires a broader consideration of various urban and provincial markets and social ties formed by the constant movement of people, information, and merchandise. There is nothing better than the voices of North Koreans themselves to explain how regional, generational, and gender diversity emerge through technology networks. Since conducting free, open research and interviews in North Korea is not possible at the moment, I instead turn to a group of North Koreans who ended up settling in South Korea. As of December 2022, an estimated 33,882 North Korean defectors from various walks of life have settled in South Korea. According to the 2023 White Paper on Korean Unification published by the South Korean Ministry of Unification, 72 percent of them are women. The reasons for their defection vary: 52.6 percent defected due to economic hardship, 17.2 percent due to family members’ defection, 8.5 percent due to recommendation by other people, and 7.4 percent due to dissatisfaction with the North Korean regime. In terms of age, the vast majority are millennials because escaping North Korea involves the dangerous and grueling process of crossing many borders—a physical toll that not all generations can take. People in their thirties constitute 28.7 percent, and people in their twenties and thirties together make up a staggering 57.1 percent.47 Therefore, the demographic makeup of the North Korean resettlers in South Korea is ideal for researching the millennial generation.48
A sizeable number of these North Korean defectors-cum-settlers in South Korea has created an active presence in cyberspace. Some join online communities while others appear on talk shows and variety shows to share their life stories on TV. Some become prominent YouTubers. Much useful information about the proliferation of new technology and the impact it has on their lives has been documented in these forums, and these accounts are considered with the defectors’ particular background (gender, age, family, educational level, place of birth, and residence) in mind.49
In this regard, I also resort to a sizeable number of prerecorded interviews available in the public sphere, such as TV, online streaming, and social media. I am cognizant of the fact that on-camera interviews produced for these venues have notable limitations; the editing process can influence—and distort—the way the narratives are presented. Often, the stories become sensationalized to attract more viewers. Interviewees also have to curtail sensitive information and use predetermined scripts, and their full knowledge of their words’ lasting nature and availability to a wide audience inevitably invites self-censorship. When interviewees are aware that recording is under way, it changes the dynamics of their storytelling.
For these reasons, I attempted to conduct as many in-person interviews as possible. To secure the safest possible environment and enable the resettlers’ stories to emerge organically, the interviewees had a choice to speak with full anonymity; when they requested not to be identified, they are marked as “anonymous.” The same principle applies to the identification of their place of birth, gender, age, and when they left North Korea. However, some interviewees clearly wished to be identified by their full names; in those cases, I have respected their intention and listed their personal information with their permission. This is why real names and “anonymous” are simultaneously used in the list of interviewees whom I personally interviewed. In total, I personally interviewed fourteen resettlers, five of them being male and seven of them female (the full list of primary interviews, together with forty-four interviewees cited from secondary sources, appears in the appendix). Although the sample number is not large by any standard, they represent a wide variety of millennial North Koreans. From political dissidents to economic migrants, from active seekers of better opportunities to unwilling border crossers who simply could not remain in North Korea, they constitute a diverse group in terms of gender, age, economic status, place of birth, schooling, career, profession, and when they left North Korea.
The interviews I personally conducted were not recorded in order to allow for free-flowing storytelling on the part of resettlers and deep listening on my end. I wanted each interview—usually lasting sixty to ninety minutes—to be as close to a natural conversation as possible. The use of recording devices may “produce very large amounts of data quite rapidly,” and “the more intensive, micro-focused forms of analysis” might be useful for data-driven quantitative analysis,50 yet the main aim of conducting interviews with North Korean resettlers is not to present as cohesive data as possible but to let the inconsistent and discursive experiences of North Korean millennials unravel. Akin to theater educator Kathleen Gallagher’s use of “storytelling as a robust mode of research,”51 I let their stories about their encounters with new technologies and forbidden media guide the unfolding of new knowledge. In a sense, these interviews can be a more concentrated way of investigating various modes of being and living, which extends the spectrum of knowledge and studies “what might be, not simply what is,” as Gallagher contends.52 Hearing out the dimensions of possibilities and imagination made up the most rewarding moments in interacting with these interviewees, who saw the confines of their daily realities in North Korea as inspirations for an alternative world.
Notes
1. This slogan first appeared in North Korea in December 2009 when Kim Jong Il sent a handwritten directive to Kim Il Sung University, which was later prominently displayed at the institution. North Korean leaders’ directives often become political slogans displayed throughout the country.
2. Li Ung-gil, who worked as a distributor of smuggled VCDs in the Hoeryeong area in North Korea, witnessed the public execution of his accomplice in 2004. Li Ung-gil, [in Korean,] interview by Baena TV, Tal tal tal, December 18, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afjRARYTfeo.
3. In the late 1990s, North Korea experienced devastating famine, resulting in the death of an estimated 330,000 people. During this time, commonly known as the Arduous March, control by the central government weakened, resulting in economic migrants’ unprecedented movement around and beyond the country in search of food. In 2002, the North Korean state announced that it would gradually halt the central food-rationing system, prompting the rapid introduction of a marketplace economy. The millennial generation was born and raised during these critical times of socioeconomic transition.
4. In 2008, Koryolink began operating as a wireless-telecommunications provider, offering the first 3G mobile network in North Korea. Koryolink was founded as a joint venture between Egyptian Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding and the North Korean state-owned Korea Post and Telecommunications Corporation.
5. Gang Jin-gyu, “North Korea Develops 4G and 5G Simultaneously in Preparation for the Future” [Da-eum-sedae idongtongsin junbihaneun bukhan 4G, 5G, dongsi yeongu], NK Economy, August 12, 2022, http://www.nkeconomy.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=10707.
6. Gang Jin-gyu, email interview by author, December 27, 2019.
7. Voice of America, “Cell Phones in North Korea?,” March 20, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txUmNFQUBc8.
8. Nat Kretchun and Jane Kim, A Quiet Opening: North Koreans in a Changing Media Environment (Washington, DC: InterMedia, 2012), 53.
9. Gim Ha-na, [in Korean,] interview by Baena TV, Tal tal tal, October 30, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7-IdvTbIA0&list=WL&index=2.
10. Bak Hyun-suk, “Baenamu Hakdang,” interview by Baena TV, Baena TV, May 20, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdcUhoCTt40.
11. Kim Yonho, Cell Phones in North Korea: Has North Korea Entered the Telecommunications Revolution? (Washington, DC: US-Korea Institute; Voice of America, 2014), 8.
12. Anonymous, interview by author, Seoul, Korea, August 3, 2022.
13. North Korean officials often extort private citizens’ wealth by demanding bribes. Bribery is so pervasive that it has become a major means for North Korean state employees—from lower-level police to major government officials—to absorb money from the private sector into the government.
14. Kretchun and Kim, Quiet Opening, 3.
15. For the merchant community and the younger generation in their twenties and thirties, “cell phones are seen as a necessary item.” Bak Jun-hyeong and Yi Seok-yeong, “Phone Handset Prices Fall as Users Rise” [in Korean], Daily NK, May 20, 2011.
16. See, e.g., Kim Suk-Young, Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010); Ken Gause, Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment: An Examination of the North Korean Police State (Washington, DC: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012); and Kim Yonho, Cell Phones.
17. For more detailed coverage on the diverse makeup of millennials in the United States, see Samantha Raphelson, “Amid the Stereotypes, Some Facts about Millennials,” NPR, November 18, 2014, https://www.npr.org/2014/11/18/354196302/amid-the-stereotypes-some-fact…; and William Frey, “Diversity Defines the Millennial Generation,” Brookings Institution, June 26, 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2016/06/28/diversity-defines-….
18. Chollima refers to a legendary winged horse known for its ability to travel swiftly.
19. Jeon Jae-u, “Perspectives on Generational Changes in the North Korean Power Elite and Policy Direction” [Bukhan paweo eliteu-ui sedae-byun-hwa-wa jeong-chaek-ui bang-hyang-seong jeon-mang], Korean Defense Issues and Analyses 1726 (August 2018): 5.
20. Ji Hye-yeon, “What Are the Characteristics of North Korean Generations Seen through Historical Stages?” [Yeok-sa-jeok-eu-ro bon bukhan saedae-ui teukjing-eun?], South Korean Ministry of Unification Blog, February 21, 2012, https://unikoreablog.tistory.com/1902.
21. Abigail De Kosnik et al., “Transcultural Fandom in the Age of Streaming Media” (panel, Transforming Hollywood: U.S. Streaming and International Co-productions, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, December 3, 2021), https://transforminghollywood.tft.ucla.edu/previous-years/transforming-….
22. O Ga-hyeon, How to Deal with North Koreans [Bukhan-saram-gwa geo-rae-ha-neun beop] (Seoul: Hangyeore, 2019), 27.
23. Yi Jae-won et al., “N Generation Kim Jong Un: New North Korea beyond Imagination” [in Korean], Money Today, May 1, 2018, http://news.mt.co.kr/mtview.php?no=2018043021204646432.
24. Gim Chang-pung, “Changes in North Korea” [in Korean], Brunch Blog, January 20, 2018, https://brunch.co.kr/@cpk78/71.
25. Na Min-hui, [in Korean,] interview by Channel A, On the Way to Meet You [Ije mannaro gabnida], June 24, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-nFPfRNOUU.
26. Na Min-hui, interview, On the Way to Meet You, June 24, 2018.
27. Na Min-hui, interview, On the Way to Meet You, June 24, 2018.
28. Kretchun and Kim, Quiet Opening, 45.
29. Kretchun and Kim, Quiet Opening, 47.
30. In North Korea, todae is used in reference to one’s political status based on class categorization. Seongbun similarly defines one’s social status demarcated by family origin and political orientation. Until marketization started to transform North Korea, where money now can buy convenience and even social privilege, todae and seongbun exerted formidable power over the fate of North Koreans. For more detailed accounts, see Gang Sun-gyeo, My Hometown [Naeui saldeon gohyangeun] (Seoul: Hangbok Eneoji, 2015); Kim Yong and Kim Suk-Young, Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2009).
31. Ryu Hui-jin, [in Korean,] interview by Channel A, On the Way to Meet You [Ije mannaro gabnida], October 13, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ktqTO6nTI.
32. Gim Ha-na, interview.
33. Gim Seong-guk, “Our Country Placed Young People at the Core of the National and Party Strategic Plans and Established a Strong Nation of Young People” [Uri naraneun cheongnyeon jungsireul danggwa gukgaui jeonryak-jeok-roseon-eu-ro suriphago geonseolhan cheong-nyeon gang-guk], Cheolhak, Saheo-jeongchihak Yeongu 3 (2019): 33.
34. Li Seong-nam, “The Great Leader Paved the Everlasting Foundation for a Strong Nation of Youth” [Cheongnyeongangguk-ui mannyeongiteuleul maryeonhayeo-jusin widaehan ryeondoja], Chollima 8 (2018): 15.
35. Li Seol-ju, ed., March Forward, Strong Nation of Young People [Cheong-nyeon gangguk-i-yeo appeuro] (Pyongyang: Munhakyesulchulpansa, 2016). The editor’s name is identical to that of Kim Jong Un’s wife, but I could not verify if they are the same person.
36. O Jeong-ro, “My Country Is a Strong Nation of Young People” [Nae jogukeun cheongnyeon gangguk], Joseon munhak 1 (2016): 10.
37. Mun Seong-hwi, “North Korean Mobile Network Expands to Counties” [in Korean], Radio Free Asia, February 10, 2011, http://www.rfa.org/korean/in_focus/cell_phone-02102011113753.html.
38. Bak Gwang-cheol, “Bolstering the Nation with Strength in Science, Technology, and Talented People” [Gwahak-gisul-gang-guk, injaegang-guk geonseol-ui naraereul pyeolcheojusiryeo], Chollima 6 (2016): 32.
39. Kang Hyun-kyeong, “Has N. Korean Leader’s Daughter Been Confirmed as Heir Apparent?,” Korea Times, December 3, 2023, https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2023/12/103_364361.html.
40. See Alexandre Mansourov, “North Korea on the Cusp of Digital Transformation,” Nautilus Institute, October 20, 2011, http://www.nautilus.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/DPRK_Digital_Transfo…; Ellen Nakashima, Gerry Shih, and John Hudson, “Leaked Documents Reveal Huawei’s Secret Operations to Build North Korea’s Wireless Network,” Washington Post, July 22, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/leaked-documents….
41. See Sunny Yoon, “South Korean Media Reception and Youth Culture in North Korea,” in South Korean Popular Culture and North Korea, ed. Kim Youna (London: Routledge, 2019), 120–32.
42. O Ga-hyeon, How to Deal, 58.
43. An Hye-gyeong, [in Korean,] interview by Baena TV, Baenamu isahoe, December 16, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LrzoSH5k_I.
44. Gim Hae-suk, interview by author, Seoul, Korea, July 27, 2022.
45. Go Na-hae, interview by author, Seoul, Korea, July 28, 2022.
46. Anonymous, interview by author, Seoul, Korea, July 22, 2022.
47. Ministry of Unification [Republic of Korea], White Paper on Korean Unification [Tong-il Baek-seo] (Seoul: Ministry of Unification, 2023), 121.
48. Throughout this book, I will use “resettlers” to refer to the diverse group of people who originated from North Korea but have left the country and settled elsewhere—predominantly, in South Korea—for political, economic, personal, and family reasons. I use this term to encompass various needs and address predicaments that are embedded in alternative terms, such as “defectors” and “refugees,” and to emphasize their rooted agency.
49. The most prominent platform for in-depth interviews with North Korean resettlers is Baena TV, a YouTube channel specializing in the coverage of North Korean resettlers’ stories from their own perspective. Cable TV shows—On the Way to Meet You (Ije mannaro gapnida) on Channel A being the most representative—provide some insight into the lives of North Korean millennials as well. However, due to the sensationalized nature of the cable shows in which certain stories are distorted and exaggerated to elicit higher ratings, I use Baena TV’s interviews more extensively in this book.
50. Martyn Hammersley, “Ethnography: Problems and Prospects,” Ethnography and Education 1, no. 1 (2006): 3–14, https://doi.org/10.1080/17457820500512697.
51. Kathleen Gallagher, Hope in a Collapsing World: Youth, Theatre, and Listening as a Political Alternative (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022), 80, ProQuest Ebook Central.
52. Gallagher, Hope, 81.
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