Why North Korea is so afraid of K-pop

North Korea tightens its controls 0:52

(CNN) -

North Korea is doubling down on its culture war, warning citizens to stay away from everything related to South Korea, including its fashion, music, hairstyles and even jargon.

In the past decade, South Korea has become a formidable cultural force, with products ranging from makeup to K-pop to K-drama and has found enthusiastic fans around the world.

But one place trying to prevent South Korean influence from penetrating its borders is its neighbor to the north.

For decades, North Korea has been almost completely isolated from the rest of the world, with tight control over the information that enters or leaves.

Foreign materials, including movies and books, are prohibited, with only a few state-approved exceptions;

those caught with foreign contraband often face severe punishment, defectors say.

However, the restrictions have eased somewhat in recent decades, as North Korea's relationship with China expanded.

Tentative opening steps have allowed some South Korean elements, including parts of its pop culture to seep into the hermit nation - especially in recent years when relations between the two countries have thawed.

However, the situation in North Korea is now rapidly deteriorating, and strict rules have returned to their place, in a crackdown reminiscent of its previous history of isolation.

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North Korea tightens its controls 0:52

Earlier this month, South Korean lawmaker Ha Tae-keung said, after attending a briefing by the country's spy agency, that the North Korean regime implemented strict rules on how young people dress and speak.

For example, South Korean women often use the term "oppa" for their romantic partners;

it is now banned in the North.

Instead, North Korean women should refer to their lovers as "male comrades," Ha said.

The propaganda videos in the country also denounce behaviors that show "foreign influence", such as public displays of affection.

Those who break the rules are the "sworn enemy of the revolution," Ha said, citing South Korea's National Intelligence Service.

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Last Sunday, the regime criticized foreign ways of life in an article in the state newspaper Rodong Sinmun, urging young people to be "faithful to the vocation of their country."

"The struggle in the field of ideology and culture is a war without gunfire," the article read, quoting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Without specifically naming South Korea, he added that losing the culture war "would have consequences many times more serious than on the battlefield."

The clothes, hairstyles and language were "a reflection of the state of mind and spirit," he added.

"Even if young people sing and dance, they should sing and dance to melodies and rhythms that suit the needs of the time and the national sentiment of our people, and make our style of culture flourish."

These restrictions may seem outlandish, but things like jargon, innocuous on the surface, represent a much more complicated struggle for power and control, experts say.

And North Korea's tolerance for foreign influence is constantly changing, changing along with its economic well-being and international diplomacy.

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North Korea's relationship with South Korea has remained strained since the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953. No peace treaty was ever signed, meaning the war never formally ended.

North Korea had once been among the most industrially developed parts of East Asia, said Andrei Lankov, director of the analysis firm Korea Risk Group and a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul.

But after decades of isolation, its people now live in utter poverty.

North Korea's economy took a nosedive in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which ended the flow of aid to the country, leaving China as the country's largest trading partner.

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By contrast, South Korea is Asia's fourth-largest economy, with per capita GDP on par with European nations such as France and Italy.

Its soft power has exploded as cultural exports, such as music, food, and beauty products, have gained popularity around the world.

That is why North Korea is so cautious about allowing any foreign influence like South Korean jargon, Lankov said, because it means "acknowledging that the alternative model of society worked and the North Korean model did not."

North Koreans who adopt South Korean manners - fashion, hairstyles, vocabulary - indicate two things, Lankov added: access to prohibited materials and "an indication of admiration and sympathy for South Korea."

The potency of this soft power is based on the enormous inequality between countries.

People are starving in North Korea, where supply shortages mean that the prices of some staples are skyrocketing.

Kim has acknowledged the "tense food situation", although he blamed a series of typhoons and floods.

They acknowledge problems feeding North Korea 0:47

It is not necessarily that North Korean leaders fear a mass uprising from a disgruntled public, Lankov noted: The regime is "brutal" enough to punish "all who dare to open their mouths."

But increasing knowledge about the outside world, and how much worse things are in North Korea, could erode the legitimacy of the regime and its entire ideological framework, similar to how the clamor for Western products in Soviet Russia's the 1980s contributed to public disillusionment and its eventual downfall.

"It certainly poses a threat if young North Koreans watch South Korean dramas and see what life is like for Koreans outside their country, because they see images of Seoul, how well they live, the freedom they live with," said Jean Lee, a senior fellow at the US-based Wilson Center and a former Pyongyang bureau chief for the Associated Press.

And young people are the biggest target of repression because they are "the most vulnerable to new influences," Lankov said.

"Older people don't want change ... but all the new ideas are spreading among the younger generation."

Politics and pop culture

Talks between the North and the South have started and stalled numerous times over the years, and North Korea's attitude toward foreign pop culture appears to have relaxed and hardened accordingly.

After Kim came to power in 2011, he initially favored a more liberal approach, according to Lankov, even allowing some Western music and forming a North Korean girl band.

Lee, who lived in the capital Pyongyang during those early years, said foreign influences became apparent as the rules were relaxed.

North Koreans would casually blurt out South Korean slang as a "cunning way of implying that they were watching South Korean dramas," he said.

Tourist attractions began to adopt English signage.

Elite North Koreans were allowed to travel more, mainly to China.

But Kim soon took a more conservative approach and began cracking down on USB sticks and other technologies that could be used to smuggle information, Lankov noted.

Tensions rose in 2016 and 2017 with a series of North Korean missile launches.

But relations began to unfreeze after South Korean President Moon Jae-in took office: In late 2018, Moon and Kim had vowed to formally end the Korean War and work towards full denuclearization.

That same month, Kim and his wife attended a rare concert by South Korean singers and performers in Pyongyang, the first time in more than a decade that South Korean musicians traveled to North Korea.

South Korean girl band Red Velvet is seen after their performance in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Sunday, April 1, 2018.

The same change occurs in the South as well, Lee said, where North Korean products and culture become "fashionable" during times of diplomacy, and are taboo when tensions rise.

"It is the political climate that affects pop culture," he added.

But the talks fell apart in 2019 after a summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump fell through, and communication finally broke down.

In early 2020, the country completely closed its borders due to covid-19, cutting off almost all trade with China, its main economic livelihood.

The state of North Korea's economy often dictates its restrictions.

And with the country in an increasingly desperate situation, the regime is not at risk.

In December, North Korea passed a new law to prevent the dissemination of content not approved by government censors;

This February, Kim suggested that tighter controls on social content could come;

the following month, a North Korean propaganda website accused K-pop labels of "slave exploitation."

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It's impossible to say for sure what triggered Kim's latest crackdown on foreign influence in the past two or three years, Lee said, but added it could be related to border closures and extreme economic hardship.

"Goods and people don't cross the border, so they can't get the things they want or long for, he said." So what we know from this edict that was passed on is that they are telling their people to stop desiring. those things.

And [they are] expressing it in a way that has to do with the identity of North Korea: let's go back to our tradition, our language, who we are, and let's not be so greedy for foreign things. "

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But, he added, things can change quickly depending on the state of diplomacy between South Korea.

"The party is constantly changing the rules on what is acceptable when it comes to foreign content, and people have to pay attention," he said.

And the message now is: "There may have been a period when it was okay to covet these things, to desire these foreign goods. But it's not okay anymore."

Origins of the tension between the two Koreas 5:32

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