Just how awful is North Korea? Today, in an industrialised country surrounded by three of the world’s largest economies, close to seventy percent of the North Korean population suffer from malnourishment; nearly two hundred thousand people are incarcerated in a vast and brutal network of concentration camps; and millions of women are subjected to unimaginable levels of sexual violence, whilst children are indoctrinated and forced to endure manual labour.
North Korea has set a benchmark as a practitioner of abuse. In doing so, its horrors are often difficult for us to comprehend, let alone act upon. But act we must, for the reality of North Korea is more crushing than any numbers. Ordinary people are enduring extraordinary suffering on our watch.
Many people question why we have not seen a popular uprising against the North Korean regime or why acts of mass civil disobedience are not common? The reason partly lies in the physical brutality of the state, where executions, beatings, and life-long prison sentences reign supreme, but absent revolution is also attributable to the North Korean mind. Indoctrination and propaganda are not quirks of a bygone era, they exist and function for a very specific purpose in North Korea today: to ensure complete psychological control over an entire population.
One tool of psychological control is mass media. A 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry on human rights in North Korea found that “Citizens are denied the right to access information from independent sources” and that “state-controlled media is the only permitted source of information”.
Where so much has to be done to challenge Pyongyang’s abuses, breaking the information blockade must be a priority.
In September 2015, Tony Hall, the BBC Director-General, declared that the BBC World Service would reach out to ordinary North Koreans through a new daily news programme via shortwave radio. The BBC’s timing could not have been more timely. North Korea was ranked 179th out of 180 in the Reporters Without Borders 2015 World Press Freedom Index and evidence suggests that more North Koreans than ever before are seeking out foreign media.
The BBC is likely well aware of the consequences for those caught consuming foreign media in North Korea. A few months ago, a video smuggled out of North Korea by the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea showed two men being put on public trial for simply watching a Hollywood film.
Does this mean that the BBC should not broadcast into North Korea, lest citizens are caught, tried, and even executed for listening to its programming? I would strongly argue that it should not. The risks are high, but so are the consequences of inaction. Doing nothing simply is not an option.
Pyongyang will attempt to censor and jam broadcasts. It will lodge formal protests and delve into its time-honoured bag of threats — but in an age of global interconnectivity, these actions will count for little. The North Korea of today is swiftly coming to an end and the BBC will, perhaps unknowingly, plant seeds in the minds of those who will become the first generation to witness a free North Korea.
As the BBC begins to compile a team to man its service, hopefully including UK-based North Korean refugees, and decides upon the content of broadcast, the actions of the organisation and all those involved are to be commended. Following the anticipated approval of the Foreign Secretary, Phillip Hammond, for the new service, a floodgate will open and North Korea will never be the same again. When freedom comes to North Korea, the BBC and Britain will now be able to say that they acted when they should have.
This article was authored by James Burt, EAHRNK Research and Policy Officer.
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