Can Information Really Pry Open North Korea?

Much has been discussed about the power of outside information to open the eyes of the North Korean people and convince them of the truth about the outside world. Some high-profile defectors have even cited American movies and South Korean dramas as catalysts that pushed them to defect - Park Yeon Mi famously credited the movie Titanic with her moment of realization. But is this kind of information campaign really enough to change North Korea from within?

 

Jieun Baek's new book - North Korea's Hidden Revolution - focuses on this exact question. In this episode, Korean Kontext host Jenna Gibson sits down with Baek, who is currently a Ph.D candidate at Oxford Universtiy, to discuss how information has changed North Korean society already - and the limits to what it can accomplish. 

 

Photo from comradeanatolii’s photostream on flickr Creative Commons.