“NOTHING can stop the South Korean people’s righteous fight to drive out the darkness of dictatorship and…usher in the dawn of a new democracy.” The phrase could almost be mistaken for the rallying cry of one of the millions of South Koreans who have joined weekly protests to unseat their democratically elected president, Park Geun-hye. But it actually appeared last month in North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of a dark dictatorship.
Since an influence-peddling scandal surrounding Ms Park erupted in October, the chance to jeer at her misfortune—North Korea routinely insults her as a “miserable political prostitute”—has been too good for its propagandists to pass up. They have published news and pictures of the demonstrations with impressive speed, and cheered Ms Park’s impeachment in December by South Korea’s National Assembly.
Public protests against the government of the South are “pure gold” for the North’s regime, says Sokeel Park of Liberty in North Korea, a group that works with defectors. Yet denigrating the South is not as easy as you might think. In its latest...Continue reading
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