Asia-Pacific
The Koreas
Warming Trend
For the first time in more than 50 years, South Koreans can legally receive North Korean television broadcasts. On Oct. 22, President Kim Dae Jung lifted the ban as part of his policy of engagement with the North.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Unification in Seoul said that the decision was a bid to smooth relations with Pyongyang “and reflected a new confidence that Pyongyang’s propaganda was no great threat,” reported Hong Kong’s centrist South China Morning Post on Oct. 23.
The broadcasts are roughly 41 percent entertainment, 23 percent news, and 36 percent propaganda, reported the South China Morning Post. “If you have a sense of humor, the propaganda parts are really very funny,” an expert on North Korea told the newspaper. “I think someone would have to be quite confused to believe this stuff.”
Since few South Koreans are likely to buy the expensive satellite equipment required to receive the weak signals from the North, the ministry “will show the broadcasts at two locations in a bid to educate the public about reunification issues.”
In related news, Chon Shi-yong reported on Oct. 26 in the English-language, independent Korea Herald of Seoul that President Kim vowed to erase the “last vestiges of the Cold War” from the Korean peninsula by 2003—the 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean War and the end of his term.
