New study: N. Koreans gaining more access to foreign media

[PhilipLaos]

From: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2...worldview.html

A US government-funded study says North Koreans have unprecedented access to foreign media, giving them a more positive impression of the outside world. The study, titled "A Quiet Opening: North Koreans in a Changing Media Environment," says restrictions that threaten years in prison and hard labor for activities like watching a South Korean soap opera or listening to foreign news broadcasts have been tightened since the mid-2000s, but are enforced less than in the past. People remain wary of government inspection teams, but fewer citizens appear to be reporting on each other.....

.....The report is based on research involving several hundred North Korean defectors and refugees during 2010-2011. The Associated Press obtained the study ahead of its formal release Thursday. Nearly half of those interviewed said that while in North Korea they had watched a foreign DVD, the most commonly used type of outside media. About a quarter of people had listened to a foreign radio news broadcast or watched a foreign news station. Nearly one-third of television watchers whose sets were fixed to state-run programming had modified them in order to capture a signal from outside stations detectable along the Chinese and South Korean borders......

.....Access to technology in the isolated state has picked up rapidly in recent years, fueled by cheap imports from China. Some 74 percent of those interviewed had access to a TV when they lived in North Korea, and 46 percent had access to a DVD player. Computers, portable USB drives and illegal Chinese mobile phones that can make international calls — unlike local cellphones — also have begun entering the country in substantial numbers, especially among the elite.

However, there is no access to the Internet beyond a small number of computers in highly secure or highly monitored areas.....

[PhilipLaos]

I'm not sure how much weight I give to that report given that those interviewed were defectors who likely lived near the Chinese border where both escape and access to foreign media would be much easier.

Also, TVs and DVDs need electricity and it seems, at least from satellite photos, that there isn't too much of that in North Korea.

Apart from the one bright light you can see here, which is Pyongyang - the capital.



Philip

[PhilipLaos]

Mind you, satellite nighttime images don't show too much light around here either.

But I think I can see my house.



Philip