What can be done to the help the North Korean people in their struggle with a totalitarian government? Get information into the country. The North Korean people, writes Olivia Enos, are hungry for it: “One report found 16 percent of North Koreans accessed computers, one-fourth of the population listened to radio broadcasts, and 42 percent of defectors reported access to DVD players. […] There may be as many as 100,000 privately owned computers in North Korea, but there are an estimated two million government-owned computers, many of which elites in Pyongyang use. These elites can access the Intranet, a government-monitored form of the Internet, and some especially trusted elites enjoy full access to the Internet.” The best way for the South Korean government to defeat Pyongyang’s information firewall is not to impose its own monopoly on disseminating information into the North. Enos writes that the South Korean government should grant private organizations access to AM frequencies for the purpose of broadcasting to the North: “Interviews with defectors reveal that (1) North Koreans have limited access to NGO broadcasts, but upon leaving North Korea they realized that NGO broadcasting was more relevant than government-run broadcasts; and (2) North Koreans prefer entertainment-oriented broadcasts to the analytical and often demeaning news broadcasts disseminated through government programming.”
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