North and South Korea are in an underground battle

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The border between North and South Korea is swamped with layers of dense barbed-wire fencing and a whole bunch of guard posts. However dotted amongst them is one thing much more uncommon: large, inexperienced camouflaged audio system.

As I stood trying into the North one afternoon final month, one of many audio system started blasting South Korean pop songs interspersed with subversive messages. "After we journey overseas, it energises us", a girl's voice boomed out throughout the border - an apparent slight given North Koreans aren't allowed to go away the nation.

From the North Korean aspect, I might faintly hear army propaganda music, as its regime tried to drown out the inflammatory broadcasts.

North and South Korea are technically nonetheless at battle, and though it has been years since both aspect shelled the opposite, the 2 sides are preventing on a extra delicate entrance: a battle of knowledge.

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The South tries to get info into the North, and North Korea's chief Kim Jong Un tries furiously to dam it, as he makes an attempt to protect his folks from exterior info.

North Korea is the one nation on the planet the web has not penetrated. All TV channels, radio stations and newspapers are run by the state.

"The rationale for this management is that a lot of the mythology across the Kim household is made up. Loads of what they inform folks is lies," says Martyn Williams, a senior fellow on the Washington-based Stimson Middle, and an skilled in North Korean expertise and data.

Expose these lies to sufficient folks and the regime might come crumbling down, is how the pondering in South Korea goes.

The loudspeakers are one software utilized by the South Korean authorities, however behind the scenes a extra refined underground motion has flourished.

A small variety of broadcasters and non-profit organisations transmit info into the nation at the hours of darkness on quick and medium radio waves, so North Koreans can tune in to hear in secret.

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/de99/live/173be410-3bd1-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/de99/live/173be410-3bd1-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/de99/live/173be410-3bd1-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/de99/live/173be410-3bd1-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/de99/live/173be410-3bd1-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/de99/live/173be410-3bd1-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/de99/live/173be410-3bd1-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/de99/live/173be410-3bd1-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp" loading="lazy" alt="Getty Images BTS pose with an award" class="sc-d1200759-0 dvfjxj"/> Getty Photos USB sticks loaded with international TV dramas and Ok-pop music are smuggled into North Korea (pictured Ok-pop boyband BTS)

1000's of USB sticks and micro-SD playing cards are additionally smuggled over the border each month loaded with international info - amongst them, South Korean movies, TV dramas, and pop songs, in addition to information, all designed to problem North Korean propaganda.

However now these working within the area worry that North Korea is gaining the higher hand.

Not solely is Kim cracking down exhausting on these caught with international content material, however the way forward for this work may very well be in jeopardy. A lot of it's funded by the US authorities, and has been hit by US President Donald Trump's current help cuts.

So the place does this go away either side of their longstanding info battle?

Smuggling pop songs and TV dramas

Each month, a group at Unification Media Group (UMG), a South Korean non-profit organisation, sift by means of the most recent information and leisure choices to place collectively playlists that they hope will resonate with these within the North.

They then load them onto units, that are categorised in keeping with how dangerous they're to view. On low-risk USBs are South Korean TV dramas and pop songs - not too long ago they included a Netflix romance sequence When Life Give You Tangerines, and successful from in style South Korean singer and rapper Jennie.

Excessive-risk choices embrace what the group calls "schooling programmes" – info to show North Koreans about democracy and human rights, the content material Kim is believed to worry essentially the most.

The drives are then despatched to the Chinese language border, the place UMG's trusted companions carry them throughout the river into North Korea at large danger.

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South Korean TV dramas could appear innocuous, however they reveal a lot about odd life there - folks residing in high-rise flats, driving quick vehicles and consuming at upmarket eating places. It highlights each their freedom and the way North Korea is a few years behind.

This challenges one in every of Kim's largest fabrications: that these within the South are poor and miserably oppressed.

"Some [people] inform us they cried whereas watching these dramas, and that they made them take into consideration their very own goals for the very first time", says Lee Kwang-baek, director of UMG.

It's tough to know precisely how many individuals entry the USBs, however testimonies from current defectors appear to recommend the data is spreading and having an influence.

"Most up-to-date North Korean defectors and refugees say it was international content material that motivated them to danger their lives to flee", says Sokeel Park, whose organisation Liberty in North Korea works to distribute this content material.

There is no such thing as a political opposition or recognized dissidents in North Korea, and gathering to protest is simply too harmful – however Mr Park hopes some will likely be impressed to hold out particular person acts of resistance.

An escape from North Korea

Kang Gyuri, who's 24, grew up in North Korea, the place she ran a fishing enterprise. Then in late 2023, she fled to South Korea by boat.

Watching international TV reveals partly impressed her to go, she says. "I felt so suffocated, and I abruptly had an urge to go away."

After we met in a park on a sunny afternoon in Seoul final month, she reminisced about listening to radio broadcasts together with her mum as a baby. She bought maintain of her first Ok-drama when she was 10. Years later she learnt that USB sticks and SD playing cards have been being smuggled into the nation inside bins of fruit.

The extra she watched, the extra she realised the federal government was mendacity to her. "I used to assume it was regular that the state restricted us a lot. I assumed different nations lived with this management," she explains. "However then I realised it was solely in North Korea."

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/8d8b/live/9cbc86d0-3bd1-11f0-b6e6-4ddb91039da1.png.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/8d8b/live/9cbc86d0-3bd1-11f0-b6e6-4ddb91039da1.png.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/8d8b/live/9cbc86d0-3bd1-11f0-b6e6-4ddb91039da1.png.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/8d8b/live/9cbc86d0-3bd1-11f0-b6e6-4ddb91039da1.png.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/8d8b/live/9cbc86d0-3bd1-11f0-b6e6-4ddb91039da1.png.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/8d8b/live/9cbc86d0-3bd1-11f0-b6e6-4ddb91039da1.png.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/8d8b/live/9cbc86d0-3bd1-11f0-b6e6-4ddb91039da1.png.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/8d8b/live/9cbc86d0-3bd1-11f0-b6e6-4ddb91039da1.png.webp" loading="lazy" alt="Kang Gyuri" class="sc-d1200759-0 dvfjxj"/> Kang Gyuri fled to South Korea by boat in late 2023

Virtually everybody she knew there watched South Korean TV reveals and movies. She and her associates would swap their USBs.

"We talked in regards to the in style dramas and actors, and the Ok-pop idols we thought have been good trying, like sure members of BTS.

"We might additionally discuss how South Korea's financial system was so developed; we simply could not criticise the North Korean regime outright."

The reveals additionally influenced how she and her associates talked and dressed, she provides. "North Korea's youth has modified quickly."

Youth crackdown squads and punishments

Kim Jong Un, all too conscious of this danger to his regime, is preventing again.

Through the pandemic, he constructed new electrical fences alongside the border with China, making it harder for info to be smuggled in. And new legal guidelines launched from 2020 have elevated the punishments for people who find themselves caught consuming and sharing international media. One said that those that distribute the content material may very well be imprisoned or executed.

This has had a chilling impact. "This media was once that can be purchased in markets, folks would overtly promote it, however now you'll be able to solely get it from folks you belief," says Mr Lee.

After the crackdown started Ms Kang and her associates turned extra cautious too. "We do not speak to one another about this anymore, until we're actually shut, and even then we're far more secretive," she admits.

She says she is conscious of extra younger folks being executed for being caught with South Korean content material.

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/8541/live/cdb164f0-3c84-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/8541/live/cdb164f0-3c84-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/8541/live/cdb164f0-3c84-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/8541/live/cdb164f0-3c84-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/8541/live/cdb164f0-3c84-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/8541/live/cdb164f0-3c84-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/8541/live/cdb164f0-3c84-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/8541/live/cdb164f0-3c84-11f0-aa24-d1c64c46ace6.png.webp" loading="lazy" alt="AFP via Getty Images People on bicycles along a barbed wire fence of the Demilitarized Zone " class="sc-d1200759-0 dvfjxj"/> AFP by way of Getty Photos The results of a few of President Trump of insurance policies might have inadvertently given North Korea a serving to hand within the info battle, in keeping with some

Not too long ago Kim has additionally cracked down on behaviour that may very well be related to watching Ok-dramas. In 2023 he made it a criminal offense for folks to make use of South Korean phrases or converse in a South Korean accent.

Members of 'youth crackdown squads', patrol the streets, tasked with monitoring younger folks's behaviour. Ms Kang recollects being stopped extra typically, earlier than she escaped, and reprimanded for dressing and styling her hair like a South Korean.

The squads would confiscate her telephone and skim her textual content messages, she provides, to verify she had not used any South Korean phrases.

Inside a telephone smuggled out of North Korea

In late 2024, a North Korean cell phone was smuggled in another country by Every day NK, (Seoul-based media organisation UMG's information service).

The telephone had been programmed in order that when a South Korean variant of a phrase is entered, it mechanically vanishes, changed with the North Korean equal - an Orwellian transfer.

"Smartphones are actually half and parcel of the way in which North Korea tries to indoctrinate folks", says Mr Williams.

Following all these crackdown measures, he believes North Korea is now "beginning to acquire the higher hand" on this info battle.

Funding cuts and the Trump impact

Following Donald Trump's return to the White Home earlier this yr, funds have been severed to plenty of of help organisations, together with some working to tell North Koreans. He additionally suspended funds to 2 federally financed information providers, Radio Free Asia and Voice of America (VOA), which had been broadcasting nightly into North Korea.

Trump accused VOA of being "radical" and anti-Trump", whereas the White Home stated the transfer would "guarantee taxpayers are now not on the hook for radical propaganda".

However Steve Herman, a former VOA bureau chief primarily based in Seoul, argues: "This was one of many only a few home windows into the world the North Korean folks had, and it has gone silent with no rationalization."

UMG continues to be ready to search out out whether or not their funding will likely be completely lower.

Mr Park from Liberty in North Korea argues Trump has "by the way" given Kim a serving to hand, and calls the transfer "short-sighted".

He argues that North Korea, with its increasing assortment of nuclear weapons, poses a significant safety risk - and that given sanctions, diplomacy and army strain have did not persuade Kim to denuclearise, info is the very best remaining weapon.

"We're not simply attempting to include the specter of North Korea, we're attempting to resolve it," he argues. "To try this it is advisable to change the character of the nation.

"If I used to be an American normal I would be saying 'how a lot does these items value, and really that is a fairly good use of our sources'".

Who ought to foot the invoice?

The query that is still is, who ought to fund this work. Some query why it has fallen virtually totally to the US.

One answer may very well be for South Korea to foot the invoice - however the concern of North Korea is closely politicised right here.

The liberal opposition occasion tends to attempt to enhance relations with Pyongyang, which means funding info warfare is a no go. The occasion's frontrunner in subsequent week's presidential election has already indicated he would flip off the loudspeakers if elected.

But Mr Park stays hopeful. "The nice factor is that the North Korean authorities cannot go into folks's heads and take out the data that is been constructing for years," he factors out.

And as applied sciences develop, he's assured that spreading info will get simpler. "In the long term I actually consider that is going to be the factor that modifications North Korea".

Prime picture credit score: Getty

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