From frequent executions of the closest government aides of Kim Jong Un to appalling nuclear tests despite the outcries of the international community at large, North Korea’s behavior is unpredictable and menacing. Frighteningly, the Korean War of the 1950s is still unresolved, with a temporary stalemate being the only minuscule factor preventing World War III from engulfing the Korean Peninsula. However, South Korea has been taking increasingly bold steps towards destabilizing the Kim regime’s lunacy and aiding in reunification, sensing an impending collapse in the Hermit Kingdom, and they may just be working.
South Korea and their Northern neighbor couldn’t be more different technologically and culturally. South Korea is the land of K-Pop, the musical genre which has become a global sensation with hits like Gangnam Style being amongst the most well-known songs of this generation. And South Korea’s economy, dubbed the Miracle on the Han River for its postwar economic boom, is among the most advanced in the world. South Korea can boast having among the world’s highest technology usage rates and standards of living and education. The nation is a resounding success, a testament to the power gained through a robust alliance with the United States.
North Korea is the polar opposite. Their music and culture are throwbacks to the Soviet Union of the 1970s, with cults of personality and sappy patriotic hymns being North Korea’s only unfortunate contributions to the arts. And while it may be fun to poke at Kim Jong Un’s laughable physique and haircut, and while we as a nation will continue to mock Kim’s supposed 2014 hospitalization after fracturing his ankles due to the pressure created by wearing high-heeled shoes, North Korea’s backwards, brutal policies and horrific human rights abuses must be realized for what they are. The nation, its despotic leader, and their national plight are not to be mocked, but must be approached with concern and with legitimate solutions.
South Korea has recently gained attention for unconventional tactics for destabilizing the regime. Because military action would be collaterally damaging, and because of the current innate inability to reunify Korea diplomatically, new tactics were developed, incorporating Korea’s zany and vibrant music world. After January’s North Korean Hydrogen Bomb test, the South Korean government decided that they would broadcast K-Pop over loudspeakers over the border. With lyrics such as “I’ll set this place on fire to burn up your heart, I wanna make you go crazy!”, the songs chosen were by no means a method of inspiring the North Korean people to rebel, but instead to de-antagonize South Korea and make them appear as brethren rather than foes. Park Chang Kwon, a leading South Korean defense analyst, commented about the intent of these messages in a press release.
“Broadcasts from South Korea can reach deep and far into North Korea’s society, imbuing the minds of its people with the images of a free nation and hurting the oppressive personality cult.”
Other, more conventional tactics are also being implemented by South Koreans in order to spread the message of freedom to the repressed people of North Korea. From broadcasting messages detailing the human-rights violations of the North Korean government, broadcasting the positive testaments of North Korean defectors who now reside in refuge in the South, to sending pamphlets with information as mundane as jokes and South Korean domestic news, the ideas seem endless.
A campaign in the 1990s to distribute adult content was the most bizarre. The North Korean government obviously doesn’t condone these acts but views them as a territorial and ideological violation. The government of South Korea periodically decides to turn off the broadcasts in times of peace and cooperation, which realistically have not been frequent or lengthy. But the distribution of propaganda is seen to be a successful policy, one that has been proven to educate North Koreans, or at a bare minimum to alleviate the immense hostilities between the two rival nations.
South and North Korea have been in a state of cold war since the end of the bloody Korean War which claimed millions of lives more than half a century ago. The tensions are indescribable, with alarming kidnappings of a South Korean fisherman, and annual shelling of islands close to South Korea’s northern border. However, with the brave patience and willingness to compromise that South Korea has exhibited, the subcontinent appears to be somewhat stable, even if stability means a constant state of readiness for war. South Korea’s clever methods of humanizing North Korea’s perception of them will be instrumental to success in eventual reunification, and South Korea’s broadcasts are leading the North Korean people to question the authority of their dictatorial ruler.