North and South Korea are in an underground war

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The border between North and South Korea is flooded with layers of a solid fence with barbed wire and hundreds of security posts. But dotted among them is even more unusual: giant, green camouflage speakers.

As I was staring at the north one afternoon last month, one of the speakers began to blow up South Korean pop songs intertwined with subversive messages. “When we travel abroad, it charges us,” the woman’s voice exploded across the border – obviously lightly, given the North Koreans, they have no right to leave the country.

On the North Korean side, I could little hear military propaganda music as its regime tried to drown inflammatory shows.

North and South Korea are still technically at war, and although years have passed since the other ones have passed the other, the two sides have been fighting on Fin Front: War of Information.

The south is trying to get information north, and North Korea leader Kim Jong -un is trying to block her furiously as he tries to protect his people from external information.

North Korea is the only country in the world that the Internet has not penetrated. All television channels, radio stations and newspapers are run by the state.

“The reason for this control is that such a large part of the mythology surrounding Kim’s family is made up. Many of what they say to people is a lie,” says Martin Williams, a senior associate at the Washington -based Incentive and North Korean Center.

Explore these lies to enough people and the regime can fall apart is how thinking in South Korea goes.

The speakers are a tool used by the South Korea government, but behind the scenes a more complex underground movement flourishes.

A small number of television operators and non -profit organizations transmit information to the country on the night of short and medium -sized radio waves, so that the North Koreans can adjust to listen secretly.

Thousands of USB sticks and micro -SD cards are also smuggled across the border every month, loaded with foreign information – among them, South Korean films, television dramas and pop songs, as well as news, all created to cause North Korean propaganda.

But now those who work in the field fear that North Korea wins the upper hand.

Kim not only breaks down heavily on people caught with foreign content, but the future of this work may be in danger. Much of it is funded by the US government and is affected by the latest redundancies of US President Donald Trump.

So, where does this leave both sides in their long -standing information war?

Each month, a team of the Unification Media Group (UMG), a South Korean non-profit organization, sifts the latest news and entertainment suggestions to make playlists who hope to resonate with those north.

They are then loaded on devices that are categorized according to how risky to be viewed. Low -risk USBS are South Korean TV dramas and pop songs – they recently included a romantic Netflix series when Life Give You Tangerines and a hit from popular South Korean singer and rapper Jenny.

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

The discs are then sent to the Chinese border, where the reliable UMG partners carry them across the river in North Korea with enormous risk.

South Korean television dramas may seem harmless, but they reveal a lot about ordinary life there – people living in high -edged apartments, drive fast cars and eat at Upmarket restaurants. This emphasizes both their freedom and how North Korea has been lagging for many years.

This provokes one of Kim’s biggest fabrications: that those in the south are poor and miserable.

“Some (people) tell us that they were crying as they were watching these dramas and that they made them think of their own dreams for the first time,” says Lee Quang-Baek, director of UMG.

It is difficult to know exactly how many people have access to USB, but the testimonies of the latter defects seem to suggest that the information is distributed and influences.

“The most defects and refugees in North Korea say that foreign content has motivated them to risk their lives to escape,” says Sokile Park, whose Liberty organization in North Korea works to spread this content.

There is no political opposition or well -known dissidents in North Korea and protest collection is too dangerous – but d -N -Park hopes some will be inspired to carry out individual resistance acts.

Kang Guri, who is 24 years old, grew up in North Korea, where he runs a fishing business. Then, at the end of 2023, she fled to South Korea by boat.

Watching foreign television shows partly inspired her to go, she says. “I felt so suffocated and suddenly had Call for leaving.“

When last month we met at a park on a sunny afternoon in Seoul, she reminded of listening to radio broadcasts with her mother as a child. She caught her first K-drama when she was 10 years old. Years later, she learned that USB sticks and SD cards are smuggled in the country inside the fruit boxes.

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

Almost everyone who knew there watched South Korean television shows and films. She and her friends would exchange USB.

“We talked about the popular dramas and actors and the K-POP idols we thought they were looking good, like some BTS members.

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

The shows also influenced the way she and her friends talked and dressed, she adds. “North Korea’s Youth has changed quickly.”

Kim Jong Un, too aware of this risk for his regime, is fighting.

During the pandemic, he built new electric fences along the border with China, making it difficult to smuggle information. And the new laws, introduced since 2020, are increasing penalties for people who are caught consuming and sharing foreign media. One stated that those who distribute the content can be closed or executed.

This has a freezing effect. “This media was available to buy markets, people have found people openly, but now you can only get it from people you trust,” says G -N -Lee.

After the repression began, Dj Kang began and her friends also became more precautions. “We are no longer talking about this, unless we are really close and even then we are much more subtle,” she admits.

She says she is aware that more young people have been executed for being caught by South Korean content.

Recently, Kim also fell into the behavior that can be related to watching K-drama. In 2023, he made a crime of people to use South Korean phrases or to speak with South Korean accent.

Members of Youth Wrestling Squads patrol the streets loaded with monitoring young people’s behavior. D -Ja Kang remembers that she was stopped more frequently before she escaped, and blames her hair as South Korean.

The units will seize her phone and read her text messages, she adds to make sure she has not used any South Korean conditions.

At the end of 2024, a mobile phone in North Korea was smuggled outside the country by Daily NK (UMG News Service -based media organization).

The phone was programmed so that when a South Korean version was introduced, it automatically disappears, replaced by the North Korean equivalent – the move of Orwell.

“Smartphones are already part of the way North Korea is trying to indoctrinate people,” says G -n -Williams.

After all these measures to fight, he believes that North Korea is now “beginning to win the upper hand” in this information war.

After Donald Trump’s return to the White House earlier this year, the funds were allocated to a number of help organizations, including some working to inform the North Koreans. He also stopped the funds from two federally funded news services, Radio Free Asia and Voice of America (Voa), which aired at night in North Korea.

Trump has accused Voa of being “radical” and anti-Trump, while the White House said this move “would guarantee that taxpayers were no longer on the radical propaganda hook.”

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

UMG is still waiting to find out if their funding will be reduced constantly.

Mr. Park from Liberty in North Korea claims that Trump is “accidental”, gave Kim’s hand and calls this move “short-sighted”.

He claims that North Korea, with the expanding collection of nuclear weapons, is a major threat to security – and this one, given the sanctions, diplomacy and military pressure fail to persuade Kim to denuclearize, the information is the best remaining weapon.

“We are not just trying to contain the threat from North Korea, we are trying to resolve it,” he said. “To do this, you need to change the nature of the country.

“If I were an American general, I would say” how much these things cost and in fact it is a pretty good use of our resources. “

The question that remains is who should fund this work. Some questions why it has fallen almost entirely to the United States.

One solution may be to raise the bill – but the issue of North Korea is highly politicized here.

The Liberal Opposition Party tends to try to improve relations with Pyongyang, which means that financing information about war is out of work. Party’s front election font next week has already indicated that it would exclude the speakers if elected.

Still, the Park remains hope. “The good thing is that the North Korean government cannot enter people’s heads and remove the information that has been being built for years,” he said.

And with the development of technology, he is confident that the dissemination of information will become easier. “In the long run, I really believe that this will be the thing that changes North Korea.”

Top Image Credit: Getty

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