North Korean TV Viewers

Bored with North Korean television? Who can blame you?

According to interviews conducted with North Korean defectors in South Korea and North Korean traders and migrant workers in China by Time reporter and Stanford fellow Donald Macintyre, most North Koreans were said to be bored with North Korean television, and were attracted to songs and movies from South Korea, albeit in pirated form.

Indeed, their fascination for South Korean television was inadvertently stoked by the North Korean regime. Because beginning in the 1980s, the North Korean media had begun showing how "bad" people's lives were in the South.

But yet, instead of noticing the decadence of the South, viewers in the North noticed that their southern brethren not only appeared well-dressed, buildings in the South also looked "sturdy."

Also, as one woman remarked, "when we saw demonstrations with South Korean people throwing bottles, we couldn't believe it. We would have kept the bottles!"