Tearing down South Korea's information wall
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used to show a satellite photo that told the story of the Korean Peninsula in one image: North Korea at night — pitch black. South Korea — ablaze with light. The difference wasn't just electricity. It was freedom.
North Korea's playbook is well-known: block outside information, prevent emigration, control all foreign contact. Yes, just about everyone knows about North Korea's controls, but what about South Korea's? The South Korean government recently started tearing down its own information wall when it overturned decades of law by allowing South Koreans to access information from North Korea.
South Korea is the free part of the peninsula, yet in dealing with the North, it has maintained laws that mirror Pyongyang's controls, even if enforcement is inconsistent.
North Korea's controls are total, violent and enforced through imprisonment, forced labor and execution, while South Korea's restrictions are legalistic, selective, inconsistently enforced and subject to judicial review.
The National Security Law (which prohibits contact with North Korea and pro-regime activities), enacted in 1948, may have then been imposed on a society still open to ideas circulating from the North. According to historian George Katsiaficas, citing a U.S. military government poll of 8,500 Koreans conducted in August 1946, 70 percent of respondents supported socialism, 7 percent supported communism, 14 percent supported capitalism and 8 percent were noncommittal.
South Koreans of the 1940s may have been open to raw socialism, but after a civil war, repeated cross-border incursions, armed attacks, decades of militarized confrontation and North Korea's failed state, does anyone believe South Koreans are still so naive?
Former North Korean diplomat and former South Korean National Assembly member Thae Yong-ho doesn't think so: "If we open North Korean broadcasts, people worry that the public could fall for North Korean authorities' and Kim Jong-un's propaganda and pose a national security threat, but the level of consciousness of our people is very high. They no longer easily fall for communist propaganda."
Consider the parallel structures. Pyongyang blocks outside information from reaching its population; Seoul makes it illegal for South Koreans to access North Korean media. The North prevents emigration; the South bans travel to the North. The Kim regime controls which foreign nongovernmental organizations can operate on its territory; South Korea heavily restricts which of its own civil society organizations can work on North Korean issues. South Korea's National Security Law prevents South Koreans from contacting North Koreans without government authorization. Pyongyang controls all economic interactions with the outside world; Seoul restricts economic engagement with North Korea beyond government-approved channels.
Stephen Linton of the Eugene Bell Foundation identified this pattern years ago at a Cato Institute policy forum: "South Korea tries to approach North Korea the way North Korea approaches South Korea, by funneling everything through government ministries, by strangling in a sense or denying its private sector full participation."
I have read North Korean propaganda from Uriminzokkiri, the now-defunct external propaganda outlet of the North Korean regime. I experienced North Korean propaganda directly when, in 2014, Pyongyang publicly named Freedom Factory, an organization where I was leading the North Korea project, and also named Park Yeon-mi, a North Korean refugee I was mentoring at the time and co-hosted a podcast with. That triggered a coordinated campaign against us, with personal attacks and mudslinging that continues to this day against Park — from official North Korean outlets and sympathetic foreign actors who amplified the regime's narratives. A few years ago, I was targeted by “Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang.”
If South Korea cannot trust its citizens to read North Korean propaganda without becoming regime loyalists, how can it move toward policies that would help people? Policies like legalizing contact between North Korean refugees and their families back home, or allowing refugees to send remittances to support relatives who are struggling — activities that happen anyway but remain illegal.
That is not without security and privacy concerns. Some North Korean refugees have publicly stated they were misled or coerced into coming south, that they regret their resettlement or that they want to return to the North. The most prominent case is Kim Ryon-hui, who has repeatedly insisted she was deceived during her journey and wants to go back. There could be concerns that by allowing North Korean refugees to return, they could be blackmailed by North Korea. Still, I will take them at their word. As North Korean refugee Aeran Lee told me: Send her back and drop her off at the DMZ.
South Korea's greatest advantage over North Korea is the legitimacy that comes from respecting human freedom and dignity. When Seoul restricts what its citizens can read, where they can travel or how civil society can operate, it chips away at that legitimacy.
That satellite photo showed the world what freedom has created.
Casey Lartigue Jr. (CJL@alumni.harvard.edu) is chairman of Freedom Speakers International, adjunct professor in public speaking at the Seoul University of Foreign Studies, co-country director of Giving Tuesday Korea, a member of the board of directors of the Korea-America Association, a columnist with The Korea Times, a member of the Harvard Graduate School of Education Alumni Council and an alumni admissions ambassador at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.