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Defector: Naver Infiltrated by NorkBots!

Hmmm. I wonder if we’ve seen some of those types around here?

Writer Jang Shin-Jung (former employee of the United Front Department), a North Korean refugee, testified that North Korea’s United Front Department has adopted a new propaganda strategy against South Korea by operating a new internet commenting team to reflect South Korea’s change in media culture. [….]

Jang conjectured that about 30 team members at contact station 101 were cultural experts of South Korea. He described their proficiency in the latest slangs as proficient while posting among the South Korean online community. It was to the point that when Jang knocked to enter the team’s office, the reply would be in South Korean slang.

The teams post on contentious South Korean societal issues on varieties of well-known portal sites, such as Daum and Naver. They also comment on these issues to amplify criticisms. The goal is the same as the number 1 goal of all media propaganda strategies against South Korea, to increase the power of pro-North Korean factions within South Korea. Jang agreed, saying “I saw psychological warfare such as posts insisting that North Korean nuclear weapons are in reality beneficial for South Korea. [Open News]

If this is true, and it seems plausible to me, it would be a completely legitimate tactic. Bring it on, just bring on some counterspeech to correct the record. In fact, I wish our government would train a few bloggers to read, write, and post in Chinese, Pashto, Arabic, and German to argue against all of the urban myths that pass for serious political discourse in what the dumbest among us sometimes refer to as a Global Village.

The problem with this, of course, is that for North Korea, speech is warfare by other means, not a way for people to find their own way to a better life. Stated differently, it’s not a two-way street:

As foreign information flows into its society in the form of smuggled goods from China and interaction with other states, the North Korean authorities have once again emphasized that people should reject capitalist culture and stick with the North Korean system.

Minju Chosun (Democratic North Korea), a publication by North Korea’s cabinet, claimed on Saturday in a commentary piece, “We should never be attracted by the scent of capitalism,” and that, “The imperialists are penetrating us with all kinds of rotten bourgeois lifestyles, using the nature of our sensitive young generation on a massive scale. [Daily NK]

I wonder if it ever occurred to the North Koreans that if their propaganda were less snicker-inducing, literally dozens of adolescent losers in this country might write pro-North Korean blog comments, if only as a vehicle to spite their parents.

It went on to claim that in the former Socialist Bloc the young generation had been rendered psychologically disabled by the touch of capitalism.

Minju Chosun emphasized, “Capitalist elements including America continue to viciously blow a sweet capitalist scent into our country in order to devastate our political and ideological position. Therefore, it is very important work to educate our young so they will not be dazzled by that capitalist wind and to save their fate and guarantee the bright future of the nation.

The publication urged, “Once they are paralyzed by the sweet capitalist wind, they will fall into corruption, ignore the revolution and focus on individual pleasures, so we have to be awake to the enemies’ strategy.

In September, Rodong Shinmun also emphasized the ideology of the younger generations in an editorial. It asserted that harboring any illusion about capitalism is the same as drinking poison, and that blocking the capitalist wind is more important than war with guns.

Surely a country with our ability to put technology into the hands of ordinary people can find a way to give internet access to the North Korean people, though I think the propaganda may overstate the power of free speech. Its reference to the danger of “individual pleasures” brings to mind an army of 1.2 million suddenly rendered incapable of operating any weapon requiring the use of both hands.

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  1. The irony here is just incredible – the fear and propoganda must be checked before the damage becomes irreparable – all the more reason to expose the present DPRK regime for what it truly is….using the technological means at our disposal and a “one-on-one” between the world’s best democracy and the world’s most reclusive regime.

  3. More on the effect of the crackdown on women and food sanctions: when North Korea’s ration system collapsed during the mid-1990s, markets sprang up across the country, as desperately-hungry people bartered whatever valuable possessions they owned for food…(notwithstanding the forced “famine” during the 1990’s in the “countryside”).
    The vast majority of the population in NK, especially women, almost completely depend on this market system to earn a living and bring food home – the crackdowns, even a fine or the confiscation of a bicycle, is leading to her entire family going hungry, the children suffering the most…again, all the more reason to do something soon.

  4. The Muntarbhorn report you cite, @Irene,according to this solid dispatch from Al Jezeera, also focuses ire on internal surveillance in the DPRK and the whole songun system itself.

    Unfortunately I am unable to find a link to the complete report — but here is an excerpt from Muntarbhorn’s press conference on October 22:

    Asked to react to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s rejection of his assertions at the Third Committee this morning, Mr. Muntarbhorn said that delegation’s reaction was very familiar to him, and he recognized that those representatives had to react that way for home consumption. He noted that no other countries spoke in favour of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s position. “Any rhetoric was available to anyone, everywhere,” he said.

    What was important, he stressed, was that the door was open at all levels for the country to work with the international community on rights issues, even within the nuclear dialogue, although the issues were officially kept separate.

    Harder approaches to the country could possibly work but it was hard to tell if sanctions were working in the security realm. Sanctions could have a moral message, he asserted, saying that it was possible that sanctions had had an effect on loosening up the regime. He recommended a graduated approach: “not carrot, not stick, but everything and more — turnips”.

    Asked if the estimate of 154,000 political prisoners was accurate, he said that was an estimate he heard, but there was no way to confirm a number. Many people wind up in camps, many were even born there, he remarked.

    Asked what he thought of the return of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to the country, he said there was general agreement that food aid must be provided, although development aid was questioned unless it was directly related to food security.

    Finally, he confirmed that there was still de facto stratification of society, including an elite that had a comfortable lifestyle, a generally lower and middle class in various levels of deprivation, and a group that was the worst off, being targeted for punishment.

    Unfortunately Ban Ki-moon wasn’t asked about the report at his press conference today — the Secretary General was just here in Seattle but do my knowledge didn’t meet with any of our local Korean-American groups, although he found time to have breakfast with Bill Gates mere miles from the location of a recent LiNK event in the Microsoft-heavy Bellevue area.

    So as not to be wholly off topic here, I would agree with Joshua that we need more American bloggers writing in Chinese!!!

    And links to the Muntarbhorn report, if such can be found, would be appreciated!