Why Kim Jong-un is waging war on slang, jeans and foreign films
By Laura Bicker, BBC News, june 6, 2021

North Korea has recently introduced a sweeping new law which
seeks to stamp out any kind of foreign influence - harshly
punishing anyone caught with foreign films, clothing or
even using slang. But why?

Yoon Mi-so says she was 11 when she first saw a man executed
for being caught with a South Korean drama.

His entire neighbourhood was ordered to watch.

"If you didn't, it would be classed as treason," she told
the BBC from her home in Seoul.

The North Korean guards were making sure everyone knew the
penalty for smuggling illicit videos was death.

"I have a strong memory of the man who was blindfolded,
I can still see his tears flow down. That was traumatic
for me. The blindfold was completely drenched in his tears.

"They put him on a stake and bound him, then shot him."

'A war without weapons'

Imagine being in a constant state of lockdown with no
internet, no social media and only a few state controlled
TV channels designed to tell you what the country's leaders
want you to hear - this is life in North Korea.

And now its leader Kim Jong-Un has clamped down further,
introducing a sweeping new law against what the regime
describes as "reactionary thought".

Anyone caught with large amounts of media from South Korea,
the U.S. or Japan now faces the death penalty. Those caught
watching face prison camp for 15 years.

And it's not just about what people watch.

Recently, Mr Kim wrote a letter in state media calling on
the country's Youth League to crack down on "unsavoury,
individualistic, anti-socialist behaviour" among young
people. He wants to stop foreign speech, hairstyles and
clothes which he described as "dangerous poisons".

The Daily NK, an online publication in Seoul with sources
in North Korea, reported that 3 teens had been sent to a
re-education camp for cutting their hair like K-pop idols
and hemming their trousers above their ankles. The BBC
cannot verify this account.

All this is because Mr Kim is in a war that does not
involve nuclear weapons or missiles.

Analysts say he is trying to stop outside info reaching
the people of North Korea as life in the country becomes
increasingly difficult.

Millions of people are thought to be going hungry. Mr Kim
wants to ensure they are still being fed the state's
carefully crafted propaganda, rather than gaining glimpses
of life according to glitzy K-dramas set south of the
border in Seoul, one of Asia's richest cities.

The country has been more cut off from the outside world
than ever before after sealing its border last year in
response to the pandemic. Vital supplies & trade from
neighbouring China almost ground to a halt. Although some
supplies are beginning to get thru, imports are still limited.

This self imposed isolation has exacerbated an already
failing economy where money is funnelled into the regime's
nuclear ambitions. Earlier this year Kim himself admitted
that his people were facing "the worst-ever situation
which we have to overcome".

What does the law say?

The Daily NK was the first to get hold of a copy of the law.

"It states that if a worker is caught, the head of the
factory can be punished, and if a child is problematic,
parents can also be punished. The system of mutual monitoring
encouraged by the N Korean regime is aggressively reflected
in this law," Editor-in-Chief Lee Sang Yong told the BBC.

He says this is intended to "shatter" any dreams or
fascination the younger generation may have about the South.

"In other words, the regime concluded that a sense of
resistance could form if cultures from other countries
were introduced," he said.

Choi Jong-hoon, one of the few defectors to make it out of
the country in the last year, told the BBC that "the harder
the times, the harsher the regs, laws, punishments become".

"Psychologically, when your belly is full and you watch a
South Korean film, it might be for leisure. But when there's
no food and it's a struggle to live, people get disgruntled."

Will it work?

Previous crackdowns only demonstrated how resourceful people
have been in circulating and watching foreign films which
are usually smuggled over the border from China.

For a number of years, dramas have been passed around on
USB sticks which are now as "common as rocks", according to
Mr Choi. They're easy to conceal and they're also password
encrypted.

"If you type in the wrong password 3 times in a row, the
USB deletes its contents. You can even set it so this
happens after one incorrect input of the password if the
content is extra sensitive.

"There are also many cases where the USB is set so it can
only be viewed once on a certain computer, so you can't
plug it in to another device or give it to someone else.
Only you can see it. So even if you wanted to spread it
you couldn't."

Mi-so recalls how her neighbourhood went to extreme
lengths to watch films.

She says they once borrowed a car battery & hooked it up
to a generator to get enough electricity to power the TV.
She remembers watching a South Korean drama called
"Stairway to Heaven".

This epic love story about a girl battling first her
step-mother and then cancer appears to have been popular
in North Korea around 20 years ago.

Mr Choi says this is also when fascination with foreign
media really took off - helped by cheap CDs and DVDs
from China.

The start of the crackdown

But then, the regime in Pyongyang started to notice. Choi
remembers state security carrying out a raid on a
university around 2002 and finding more than 20,000 CDs.

"This was just one university. Can you imagine how many
there were all over the country? The govt was shocked.
This is when they made the punishment harsher," he said.

Kim Geum-hyok says he was only 16 in 2009 when he was
captured by guards from a special unit set up to hunt down
and arrest anyone sharing illegal videos.

He had given a friend some DVDs of South Korean pop music
that his father had smuggled in from China.

He was treated like an adult & marched to a secret room for
interrogation where the guards refused to let him sleep.
He says he was punched & kicked repeatedly for 4 days.

"I was terrified," he told the BBC from Seoul where he
currently lives.

"I thought my world was ending. They wanted to know how I
got this video & how many people I showed it to. I couldn't
say my father had brought those DVDs from China. What could
I say? It was my father. I didn't say anything, I just
said, "I don't know, I don't know. Please let me go."

Geum-hyok is from one of Pyongyang's elite families & his
father was eventually able to bribe the guards to set him
free. Something that will be near impossible under
Mr Kim's new law.

Many of those caught for similar offences at the time were
sent to labour camps. But this didn't prove to be enough
of a deterrent, so the sentences increased.

"At first the sentence was around a year in a labour camp
- that changed to over 3 years in the camp. Right now, if
you go to labour camps, more than 50% of the young people
are there because they watched foreign media," says Mr Choi.

"If someone watches two hours of illegal material, then that
would be 3 years in a labour camp. This is a big problem."

We have been told by a number of sources that the size of
some of the prison camps in North Korea have expanded in
the last year and Mr Choi believes the harsh new laws are
having an effect.

"To watch a movie is a luxury. You need to feed yourself
first before you even think about watching a film. When
times are hard to even eat, having even one family member
sent to a labour camp can be devastating."

Why do people still do it?

"We had to take so many chances watching those dramas. But
no-one can defeat our curiosity. We wanted to know what was
going on in the outside world," Geum-hyok told me.

For Guem-hyok, finally learning the truth about his country
changed his life. He was one of the few privileged North
Koreans allowed to study in Beijing where he discovered
the internet.

"At first, I couldn't believe it [the descriptions of North
Korea]. I thought Western people were lying. Wikipedia is
lying, how can I believe that? But my heart and my brain
were divided.

"So I watched many documentaries about North Korea, read
many papers. And then I realised they are probably true
because what they were saying made sense.

"After I realised a transition was going on in my brain,
it was too late, I couldn't go back."

Guem-hyok eventually fled to Seoul.

Mi-so is living her dreams as a fashion advisor. The first
thing she did in her new home country was visit all the
places she saw in Stairway to Heaven.