Kangnam i can hear your voice
He has reportedly increased the flow of workers and officials to neighboring China, both to bring in cash for the strained regime and to study Chinese-style capitalism.īut in the end, it may not be entirely up to Kim when and how his country modernizes.
Kim presents himself as a younger, more huggable version of his beloved grandfather, Kim Il Sung, and there is some indication he’s interested in change. Will the Western-educated Kim move to modernize his country and open it up to the outside world? Or will he take a hard-line, military-first approach to governance like his father? Since North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jung Un, took power after his father’s death in December 2011, there has been much speculation about what kind of regime he will lead. culture was clearly seeping into North Korea, but it was hard to fathom what effect it was having. It was disconcerting to hear her reciting lines from the Adam Sandler flick “Big Daddy.” U.S. One had been given Hollywood screenplays in college to help improve her English language skills. My female guards would swoon at the sight of these acoustic-guitar-playing performers dressed in army garb.īut my guards were not totally unaware of outside pop culture. I was able to watch television with my guards on certain evenings, and as far as I could tell, the closest thing the North Koreans had to a pop sensation was a group of handsome singers from the military choir who belted out old-fashioned love songs and patriotic anthems. In contrast to the frenzy of the South, life there was slow and antiquated, a land frozen in a Cold War time warp.Īll media in North Korea are tightly controlled by the country’s propaganda network. The North was like no place I’d ever been. Three years ago, I got a unique glimpse of the so-called Hermit Kingdom after I was taken prisoner by North Korean soldiers along the Chinese-North Korean border while working on a documentary. It’s safe to say that North Korea’s notorious propaganda machine would never willingly let its impoverished population see the original “Gangnam Style” video, which parodies the riches and excess enjoyed in Seoul’s trendy Gangnam neighborhood. The average citizen has no knowledge of YouTube, Facebook or Twitter.