North Korea's New Propaganda Look

[lpetrich]

North Korean State TV Gets A Makeover : NPR

There's an evening show on North Korea's state TV that brings soldiers news from their hometowns.
Last September, the show on the regime-run Korean Central Television, or KCTV, was interrupted for an urgent update.
"Another piece of news from our families on the homefront, just in from the Kangson steel factory," an announcer says.
"Soldiers from Kangson will be happy to hear that," the anchor replies, beaming.
The update: A soldier's father says he and fellow factory workers are so motivated that they will beat production targets by 50%.

The news show looks almost like a South Korean one. The presenters dress in business casual and they talk in chatty fashion.

In the past, stern-faced anchors stolidly read their scripts, and there were few visuals. For major events, such as nuclear tests, presidential summits and the death of national leaders, state television would wheel out veteran anchor Ri Chun Hee. She is known for her dramatic spiels, delivered wearing a traditional hanbok dress and in front of a backdrop of the crater atop Mount Paektu, the mythical birthplace of founding dynast Kim Il Sung.

In recent months, though, the network's business reports have begun to use digitally designed charts and graphics. Weather forecasters have stood up from their desks. Previously unseen TV studios and control rooms have begun to appear on-screen.

Why look like South Korea? Because it is harder and harder to keep out information about the outside world. Information that is very contrary to the official line that the nation's domestic and foreign policies are succeeding.

Something like what happened to the Soviet bloc in the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's. Many people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe learned of what it was like in Western Europe and North America, and they discovered that those nations were not the evil empires that Soviet-bloc officialdom portrayed them as.