North Korea's hidden revolution

Dr. Tony Docan-Morgan

Jieun Baek's "North Korea's Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground is Transforming a Closed Society" (2016, Yale University Press) examines how media flows secretly into and out of North Korea, as well as how this information affects North Korean society.

Baek illuminates how networks of citizens take enormous risks as they disseminate and consume illegal content including foreign films, TV shows, books and news. The author discusses the ways in which forbidden information is spread through gossip, freedom balloons, radioand USBs.

She utilizes in-depth interviews with 10 North Korean defectors, and cites a variety of academic sources, news websites, governmental documents, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The author argues that foreign media "may be instrumental in someday bringing down one of the most brutal and repressive regimes in modern history."

Baek explains the interlinked networks of actors who push illegal media into North Korea, including compassion-driven networks (e.g., good-will driven organizations which raise funds to create content and fill USBs), profit-driven networks (e.g., smugglers who work for profit to move USBs), and demand-driven networks (e.g., those who consume the content).

She contends that "This active flow of goods and information now plays a central role in the social consciousness of North Korean individuals, and has sparked irreversible changes inside North Korea."

This text offers a coherent picture of the inflow of illicit media. Baek illustrates how the Great Famine drove people away from their work assignments and toward illegal markets and trade. CDs and VHS cassettes with Korean, Chinese, and American films became available on the black market.

To counter such cracks in the system, police began to conduct home inspections looking for illegal media, and there ensued bribery or punishment. The author pieces together her interviewees' stories intelligibly, illustrating that citizens are "more curious than afraid."

Regarding "old school" media, Baek argues "word of mouth was, and still is, the most trusted and widely used source of information for North Koreans." She also addresses the use of "freedom balloons" to deliver pro-democracy literature, radios and USBs loaded with foreign media. However, balloon launches have the potential to cause threats to national security.

Baek provides a thorough discussion of the use and importance of radio. The author lays out interviewees' testimony about their previous use of radio when living in North Korea, as well as defectors' production of programs aimed at North Korean consumption.

The content of these radio programs varies from news, music, South Korean dramas, descriptions of South Korean society, North Korean defector memoirs, biographies of the Kim family, and content pertaining to history, human rights, and democracy. The Unifcation Media Group has "a joint goal of reaching one million North Korean adults within the next five years in order to spark organic changes from within the country."

In her discussion of the digital underground, Baek more fully explores the dissemination of information via cellular networks and content-filled USB drives.

Up to 2,000 calls using cell phones are made between South Korea and North Korea each day; many of which allow family members to remain in touch and coordinate the transfer of money and goods to North Korean relatives via brokers in China and North Korea. Despite tracking, surveillance and the risk of punishment, illegal cell use continues to grow.

In her discussion of a new generation rising, Baek describes the "jangmadang" generation ― those who grew up during the Great Famine who never received state rations, and utilized street markets to survive.

Baek labels this new generation as capitalistic, individualistic, more apt to take risks, non-reliant on the government, likely to have watched foreign media and less loyal to the state. The author contends, "more information will drive more social and cultural changes."

In her conclusion, Baek argues, "Civil society organizations and possibly government agency-powered efforts to increase the flow of information into North Korea may well be the most reasonable, sustainable, cost-effective and peaceful way of creating positive change inside North Korea."

The availability of more information, Baek argues, gives the North Korean people "the agency, self-determination and knowledge to write their own future and destiny as a nation."

She informs readers that they too can become involved with organizations that send information into North Korea, which may include "researching best practices from comparative situations, ?nding and/or creating technologies for dissemination purposes, creating and editing original digital content, fundraising, and more."

Notable nongovernmental organizations that have shaped the landscape of the information underground include the North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity; Free North Korea Radio; North Korea Strategy Center; No Chain: the Association of North Korean Political Victims and Their Families; Free the NK Gulag; and Now, Action and Unity for Human Rights.

Baek's "North Korea's Hidden Revolution" is a valuable examination of the transformative power of media and information. The timing of her work is opportune as "now, more than ever, North Korean people are taking extraordinary risks to learn more about the world that exists outside of their universe."

Dr. Tony Docan-Morgan (tdocan@uwlax.edu) is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, the U.S.