North Korea cracks down on soap opera smuggling
Date January 30, 2015 - 4:39PM
Choe Sang-Hun
Jang Se-yul, who defected from North Korea after watching South Korean soap operas, sends DVDs of the shows back to the North. Photo: New York Times
Seoul: As a maths professor in North Korea, Jang Se Yul was among the nation's relatively privileged classes; he got to sit in special seats in restaurants and on crowded trains, and he was given priority for government food rations. Then he risked it all – for a soap opera from South Korea.
The temptation in this case was Scent of a Man, an 18-episode drama about the forbidden love between an ex-convict and his stepsister. A graduate student had offered him the bundle of banned CDs smuggled into the north and, too curious to resist, Jang and five other professors huddled in one of their homes binge-watching until dawn. They were careful to pull the curtains to escape the prying eyes of neighbours. But they were caught anyway and demoted to manual labour at a power plant.
Jang said they most likely escaped prison only because they paid bribes, but facing a lifetime of social stigma – and having had a glimpse of the comforts of South Korea in Scent of a Man – he decided to defect. He now leads a defectors' group that sends soap operas and other entertainment to the north to try to empower people to demand an end to authoritarian rule.
"I am sure these soaps have an impact on North Koreans, and I am the proof", he said. "In the future, if they spread, they can even help foster anti-government movements".
North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, has issued increasingly pointed warnings to his subjects about the "poisonous elements of capitalism" crossing China's border with the north. Defectors say there has been a severe crackdown on smugglers, and in the fall, South Korean intelligence reported hearing that Kim was so shaken by the spread of the soaps that he ordered the execution of ten Worker's Party officials accused of succumbing to the shows' allure, according to lawmakers who briefed the news media.
Defectors say the soaps have had an outsize impact, less for their often outlandish plots than their portrayals of the creature comforts of South Korea. It was those portraits of wealth, Jeon Hyo Jin said, that inspired her to make the dangerous decision to flee in 2013 at the age of 18.
"The kitchens with hot and cold tap water, people dating in a cafe, cars clogging streets, women wearing different clothes each day – unlike us who wore the same padded jacket, day in day out," said Jeon, who now lives in Seoul. "Through the dramas, I learned how strange my own country was, how full of lies."
New York Times
