Technology pokes holes in NoKo isolation

Revolutionary Meatspace P2P! VCRs cast off by newly-minted Chinese DVD owners trickle into North Korea, along with tapes of South Korean TV shows.

The construction of cellular relay stations last fall along the Chinese side of the border has allowed some North Koreans in border towns to use prepaid Chinese cellphones to call relatives and reporters in South Korea, defectors from North Korea say. And after DVD players swept northern China two years ago, entrepreneurs collected castoff videocassette recorders and peddled them in North Korea. Now tapes of South Korean soap operas are so popular that state television in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, is campaigning against South Korean hairstyles, clothing and slang, visitors and defectors have said.

"In the 1960's in the Soviet Union, it was cool to wear blue jeans and listen to rock and roll," said Andrei Lankov, a Russian exchange student in the North at Kim Il Sung University in 1985, who now teaches about North Korea at Kookmin University here in the South. "Today, it is cool for North Koreans to look and behave South Korean, as they do in the television serials. That does not bode well for the long-term survival of the regime."

Link to NYT story: "How Electronics Are Penetrating North Korea's Isolation." See also "Electricity Is Carrot in North Korea Talks": Link to NYT story. (via justoneminute, which points to related blog discussions. Thanks, dfinnecy)

Previously on Boing Boing: North Korea promotes vacations with wacky Flash movie, and North Korea wages war on long hair.