North Koreans are No Different

When people in the modern age think of North Korea, the first things that come to mind are all related to politics. Whether it be “Rocket Man” or the tension between the North and South, there aren’t many people that take into consideration that what we see and hear about North Korea is only a small portion of what actually goes on behind the scenes. The parts that I want to focus on here are some of the restrictions set on the North Korean citizens.

It’s nothing new that North Koreans are forbidden from leaving their country without the government’s permission. However, people don’t really think about what happens to people that are allowed to leave. North Korean individuals have participated in competitions and events around the world. However, whether they be athletes or top tier students, they are monitored 24/7 to keep them in check and must attend special ideological debriefs once they return to North Korea to prevent adopting foreign ideas.

"Before we left North Korea, our team was warned not to be swayed by the capitalism we would see in the outside world. And we were told specifically not to meet or talk with South Korean students at the contest." – Jeongyol Kim, who competed in the International Math Olympiad before defecting.

In the closed off country, people find ways to smuggle foreign media and interact with the outside world, even if communication is one sided. Obviously, possessing outside material and information is illegal. North Korea has its own Internet browser with extremely restricted access and phones and radios that only connect within a government-controlled system. Therefore a secret North Korean police cracks down the consumption and spread via USB of foreign media. The government also rewards people for reporting their peers, making it harder to consume foreign media even privately. The severity of the punishments has increased since Kim Jong-un came to power.

“I used to hide in my room, close the curtains, and watch foreign movies when I was younger. I can still sing along to some South Korean pop songs. But in the last five years, the government stepped up the crackdowns on foreign media. After witnessing a public execution in 2012, I didn’t dare watch any of the CDs of soap operas I had copied.” – In Kyung, escaped North Korea in 2017

The main thing I want to convey is that people in North Korea are no different than people in any other country. They enjoy media like pop songs and movies, attend competitions, and cheer for their favorite sports team. Even with all the restrictions form their government, they take measures to preserve some of that normalcy of everyday life we may take for granted in our own lives. North Koreans are no different from us.

Tommy Y