Channel News Asia is reporting North Korea is cracking down on foreign films after a university student was caught watching recent South Korean movie "Haeundae" (해운대) on his computer.
It is reported the student downloaded the movie from their relatives house in Chong-Jin north-eastern of North Korea. He then took the downloaded film back to Pyongyang to watch it with his University friends.
North Korea has been awash from popular culture from South Korea for a couple of years now, something North Korean authorities have ignored, as it mostly ignored much of the many markets that has sprung up around the country. But recently, North Korean authorities have starting cracking down those markets, so it looks like popular culture from the South has to go as well.
Why is South Korean pop culture is seen as threat to the North? Some, like Andrei Lankov claim that witnessing South Korea's prosperity can make the North look bad. Bryan Myers, says that the danger is not seeing the material success of the South (which most people in the North probably already know), but seeing that South Koreans do not want a united Korea, one that is under the leader of the North (Kim Jong-Il). Whatever the reasons, the effects are pretty much the same.
On the other hand, South Korean popular culture has been losing its cache in the North for some time, so maybe the North Korean authorities cracking down on South's products is not a bad thing after all.
Anyway, I do find it quite interesting that an illegal download of the blockbuster "Haeundae" (now the fourth biggest film all time in Korea) was able to create trouble for the North Koreans.
1 comments:
I'd never thought that North Koreans had broad band Internet.
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