North and South Korea are waged in the underground war

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The boundary between North and South Korea is littered with a dense barbed wire fence and hundreds of protective pillars. But there is something even more unusual among them: giant, green disguised speakers.

When I stood, looking at midnight on the day of last month, one of the speakers began to explode South Korean pop -fossils that interspersed with sabotage messages. “When we go abroad, it makes us, the woman’s voice came across the border – a clear insignificant one, when the North Koreans cannot leave the country.

On the North Korean side, I could poorly hear military propaganda music when its regime tried to silence inflammatory broadcasts.

North and South Korea remain technically in the war, and although years have passed, both sides fired at the second, both sides fight on a thinner front: war of information.

The south tries to get information north, and North Korean leader Kim Jong UN is fiercely trying to block her when he tries to protect his people from information.

North Korea is the only country in the world that the Internet does not penetrate. All TV channels, radio stations and newspapers go to the state.

“The reason for this control is that so much mythology around the Kim’s family is composed. A lot of what they tell people is a lie,” says Martin Williams, a senior employee of the Styson Center, based in Washington, and an expert in North Korean technology and information.

Expose these lies enough for people, and the regime can collapse as thinking in South Korea.

Lotgers are one tool used by the South Korea government, but a more complex underground movement flourished behind the scenes.

A small number of broadcasters and non -profit organizations transmit information to the country on dead nights on short and medium -sized radio waves, so the North Koreans can be set up to listen secretly.

Thousands of USB -sticks and micro -sd cards also control the border every month, loaded with foreign information -among them South Korean films, television drama and pop -foams, as well as news designed to challenge North Korea propaganda.

But now those who work in this area are afraid that North Korea is gaining top.

Kim not only splits much into those who have fallen into foreign content, but the future of this work may be threatened with disruption. Most of it is funded by the US government and has been hit by US President Donald Trump’s recent assistance.

So where does it leave both sides in its long -standing information war?

Each month, the Unify Media Group (UMG) team, a South Korean non -profit organization, is sifted through the latest news and entertainment to collect play lists that they hope will resume with those in the north.

They then load them to devices that are classified depending on how risky they are viewed. Low -risk USBS – South Korean television drama and pop -fights – they recently included a Netflix Romance series if Life will give you tangerines, and a hit of the popular South Korean singer and rapper Jenny.

High-risk options include what the team calls “educational programs”-information for North Koreans’ learning about democracy and human rights, it is believed that anyone is most afraid.

The discs are then sent to the Chinese border, where the UMG trusted partners transfer them across the river to North Korea at high risk.

South Korean television drama may seem harmless, but they reveal the ordinary life there – people who live in multi -storey apartments, drive fast cars and food in supermarkets. This emphasizes both their freedom and how North Korea lags behind.

This causes one of Kim’s largest products: that those in the south are bad and unhappy depressed.

“Some (people) tell us that they cried while watching these dramas, and that they made them think about their own dreams for the first time,” says Li Kwang Beck, director of the UMG.

It is difficult to find out exactly how many people get access to USBS, but testimonies from the latest defectors believe the information is disseminated and affected.

“The last North Korean restructuring and refugees say foreign content motivated them to risk their lives to avoid,” says Sockel Park, whose organization Liberty in North Korea is working on the distribution of this content.

North Korea has no political opposition and known dissidents, and protesting is too dangerous – but Mr. Park hopes that some will be inspired to resist individual actions.

Kan Gury, who was 24, grew up in North Korea, where she was running a fishing business. Then at the end of 2023, she fled to South Korea on the boat.

Observation of foreign TV shows partially inspired her to admission, she says. “I felt so suffocated and I suddenly had The desire to leave.“

When we met at the Sunny Day Park in Seoul last month, she recalled that she remembers listening to radio broadcasts as a child. When she was 10 years old, she received her first K-Drama when she was 10 years old, she learned that USB Sticks and SD cards are smuggled into the country inside the fruit box.

The more she looked, the more she realized that the government was lying to her. “I used to think it was normal, that the state had so much restricted us. I thought other countries lived with this control,” she explains. “But then I realized it was only in North Korea.”

Almost everyone she knew there, watched South Korean TV shows and movies. She and her friends would change USBS.

“We talked about popular dramas and actors, and K-Pop Idols, which we thought look good like some BTS members.

“We would also talk about how South Korea’s economy was developed; we simply couldn’t criticize the North Korean regime right away.”

The show also influenced how she and her friends talked and dressed, she adds. “North Korea’s youth changed quickly.”

Kim Jong Un is too aware of this risk to his regime.

During the pandemic, he built new electrical fences along the border with China, which makes it difficult to smuggle, and the new laws passed since 2020 increased the sentence for people who are consuming and divided by foreign media. One stated that those who distribute the content may be imprisoned or executed.

This had a cold effect. “These media were available for buying in the markets, people were openly selling it, but now you can only get the people you trust,” Mr. Lee says.

After the repression began, Mrs. Kan and her friends also became more careful. “We no longer talk to each other when we are not really close, and even then we are much more secret,” she admits.

She says he knows about the younger people who will be shot for being caught with South Korean content.

Recently, Kim also hacked behavior that could be related to K-Drama viewing. In 2023, he made a crime to use South Korean phrases or act in a South Korean accent.

Participants of the Youth squads, a patrol through the streets who instructed the monitoring of young people’s behavior. Ms Kan recalls that she stopped more often before she fled, and said for dressing and hair style as a South Korean.

The bumpy will confiscate her phone and read her text messages, she adds to make sure she did not use any South Korean conditions.

At the end of 2024, the daily NK (SEOUL SEAULS Media Organision’s News Service OMG was smuggling outside the country (Seoul Media Organision UMG).

The phone was programmed so that when the South Korean version is introduced, it automatically disappears, replaced by the North Korean equivalent – the Arvel step.

“Smartphones are now part and a parcel of how North Korea is trying to become people,” says Mr. Williams.

After all these repression measures, he believes that North Korea is “starting to prevail” in this information war.

Upon returning Donald Trump to the White House earlier this year, the funds were dismantled for a number of assistance organizations, including some working on informing the Northern Koreans. He also suspended funds for two federal financial services, Radio Free Asia and America’s voice (VOA), which were broadcasting to North Korea at night.

Trump has accused VOA of “radical” and anti-tramp “, while the White House said that this step” provides “to ensure that taxpayers would no longer be on a hook for radical propaganda.”

But Steve Herman, a former head of the Voa Bureau based in Seoul, claims: “It was one of the few windows in the world that had the North Korean people, and he was silent without explanation.”

UMG is still waiting to find out if their funding is constantly cut.

Mr. Freedom Park in North Korea claims that Trump “gave Kim a help and calls this step” short-sighted “.

He claims that North Korea, which expands the nuclear weapon collection, poses a great security threat – and that, given sanctions, diplomacy and military pressure, did not convince Kim of denuclearization, information – the best weapons.

“We are not just trying to restrain the threat of North Korea, we are trying to solve it,” he says. “To do this, you need to change the character of the country.

“If I were an American general, I would say,” How much this material costs, and it is really good use of our resources. “

The question remains who should finance this work. Some questions why he almost fell into the USA.

South Korea may be one of the solutions to make a bill – but the issue of North Korea is actively politicized here.

The liberal opposition party usually tries to improve relations with Pyongyang, that is, the information war of financing is not to go. Prospective parties in the next week’s presidential election have already noted that it will turn off the speakers if they are elected.

However, Mr. Park remains hoping. “The good thing is that the North Korea government cannot enter the head of the people and pick up the information that has been built for years,” he emphasizes.

And as the technology develops, he is convinced that the dissemination of information will become easier. “Ultimately, I really think it will be what North Korea changes.”

Best picture: Getty

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