Is North Korea Freer Than South Korea?

I have seen several apologists for the North Korean regime on social media argue that people in North Korea have more freedom than people living in South Korea (e.g., videos on the Instagram channel @behudaattv). One way we can tell which nation has more individual and economic freedom is to identify which nation will imprison or execute you and your family for possessing unapproved books or communication devices. Andrei Lankov in his book The Real North Korea describes how starting in the 1960s, the Kim Il Sung regime maintained a brutal surveillance and censorship state that far outmatched those of Stalinist Soviet Union and Maoist China. The North Korean government feared that if their people were exposed to liberal ideas or if they saw the affluence of the South Korean people after their economic boom in the 70s, the Kim regime would be overthrown. Under the reign of Kim Il Sung, foreign books were destroyed and foreign newspapers were prohibited. Even newspapers from the Soviet Union and China were banned for having too many liberal ideas. People wishing to view foreign publications at a library had to obtain a security clearance. Tunable radios were also banned to prevent citizens from listening to foreign broadcasts. Lankov writes that “From around 1960 onward, all radios officially sold in North Korea had fixed tuning, so that only a small number of official North Korean channels could be listened to” (p. 43). Anyone with a foreign radio had to turn it over to the police to disable the tuner and seal the radio so that the tuner could not be repaired. Police conducted random household searches to ensure all radios remained sealed. Even today, the Kim regime severely restricts foreign media to keep their people docile and brainwashed. Eunhee Park, a North Korean refugee, describes the fear she felt the first time she watched a South Korean television drama smuggled on her friend’s USB drive before her defection in 2012, stating “My hands trembled. I knew that if anyone found out I was watching a South Korean drama, it wouldn’t just mean prison—it could mean public execution” (p. 87). If you fear being sent to a labor camp or being publicly executed for watching a K-drama, you do not have freedom.

-- Colin Braman

References

Lankov, Andrei (2013). The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia. Oxford University Press.

Park, Eunhee (2025). The Courage to Die: A North Korean Woman’s Escape and Rebirth in Freedom. Self-Published.