Sino-NK

Kim, Suk-Young. Millennial North Korea: Forbidden Media and Living Creatively with Surveillance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Books, 2024. 262 pp. ISBN: 9781503614918.

Cover image: Stanford University Books, 2024

Suk-Young Kim offers a sophisticated exploration of millennials in North Korea, employing a methodology rooted in humanistic communication and interpretive narrative analysis (p. 17). By drawing on media and performance studies, Kim moves beyond traditional political frameworks to examine how North Korean millennials construct their identities through lived experience. Kim defines the North Korean “millennial” not by biological age, but as a constructed identity for those born between the mid-1970s and mid-2000s who actively embrace global culture and technological change (p. 8).

By synthesising 14 primary interviews with North Korean re-settlers in South Korea and 44 secondary accounts, Kim offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the cultural affinities of this generation (p. 17). This multifaceted approach allows her to unravel the inconsistent and discursive experiences of North Korean millennials, explaining why certain external media texts resonate so powerfully within what has traditionally been considered a closed society.

Global Commonalities and Economic Capital: Survival in Surveillance Gaps

Many readers still hold an impression of North Korea as a nation frozen in famine or a primitive state of communication. Kim corrects this perception in Chapter 1 by detailing the regime’s efforts to catch up with global trends through the development of its IT industry and mobile telecommunications. This forces the reader to reconcile with the fact that while North Korea remains a closed society, it is far from being isolated technologically. Within this context, Kim frames computers and mobile phones as a potent form of economic capital.

However, the author also highlights the surreal gap between the regime’s digital aspirations and the reality of its limited resources. Ultimately, the burden of modernisation frequently falls on its citizens; for instance, students were often required to contribute personal funds to enable their schools to purchase computers (p. 33).

Access to cell phones is mired in bureaucratic barriers, as prospective users must often navigate a web of corruption, bribing officials to secure a permit (p. 36). With handsets priced at $1,000, phones have become primary symbols of wealth and social status (p. 36).

A tension persists between state surveillance and grassroots subversion. While the regime intends for mobile technology to be a tool of total oversight, Kim’s interviews reveal how savvy citizens exercising their agency actively circumvent these controls. According to an anonymous interviewee, this is done by employing dual operating systems, one official North Korean system to show inspectors and a South Korean system for private use. North Korean millennials effectively transform instruments of state monitoring into gateways for South Korean media and external information (p. 50-51).

Perhaps the most surprising revelation in these chapters is how the proliferation of cell phones has reached deep into the lives of teenagers and middle school students. Kim cites cases where children as young as 13 or 14 are already active mobile users, signalling that the device is no longer a luxury reserved for the adult elite (p. 59). Kim draws a striking phenomenon in a global context: much like American students who are distracted by their devices in class, North Korean students exhibit a similar digital yearning. In the hidden corners of school campuses, these students use their phones to secretly consume South Korean dramas and K-Pop (p.59). This highlights how technological access has enabled even the youngest generation to carve out private spaces for intellectual and cultural transgression within a highly closed environment.

In Chapter 2, the most intriguing observation is the development of an anti-language, a secret language used to exchange forbidden media. A prime example is the rebranding of the South Korean drama Descendants of the Sun as the North Korean film Mother’s Happiness (p. 70). By utilising these “anti-languages”, millennials create a clandestine cultural space that remains invisible to the state’s linguistic radar.

Kim highlights how “creative trickery” (p.76) has become an essential tool for navigating a prohibited landscape. The story of Gim Ha-na, who used a simple piece of tape inside a remote control to fool inspectors and preserve access to foreign TV channels, exemplifies the grassroots ingenuity of this generation (p. 76). Using the account of Choe Yu-jin, who escaped punishment for consuming South Korean media after her father intervened with a bribe, Kim exposes how material and social capital allow the wealthy to circumvent the law, while those without means are left to the mercy of the correctional system (p. 84). This institutionalised corruption has finalised the divorce between the North Korean millennial and the state, cementing a worldview where individual survival is the ultimate virtue.

These creative acts of defiance vividly illustrate the agency of the North Korean people. In the face of high-pressure authoritarianism, the millennial generation are not passive subjects of state brainwashing, but active agents possessing a double consciousness. They have become masters at performing loyalty in the public sphere while simultaneously utilising various technological means to erode the state’s ideology and restrictions in private. This dynamic, captured by the proverb ‘those above have policies, those below have counter-measures’, is more than just a survival tactic. The North Korean regime may control the physical movements of its citizens, but through cell phones, coded language, and the power of money, the younger generation has constructed an entirely independent mental world within clandestine cultural and economic networks.

Cultural Translation and Identity Construction: Media as a ‘Textbook’ for Modernity

Chapters 3 and 4 explore the South Korean media within the North, framing it as a catalyst for profound cultural and cognitive shifts. While there is a potential bias among the interviewees who, as re-settlers living in South Korea, may naturally lean toward South Korean culture, these accounts still provide a rare and intimate perspective on how North Koreans actually decode and understand South Korean media.

A key contribution of this book is Kim’s analysis of how media technology challenges totalitarian information structures. The rise of mobile networks has fostered a sense of “ownership of knowledge” among the youth (p. 120). By sharing content via SMS in the South Korean drama Boys Over Flowers, the North Korean audience has started transitioning from passive consumers of state propaganda to active user-generators of information (p.120). This decentralised mode of communication allows individuals to own and control the flow of media, bypassing the central state’s intervention.

Kim argues that for North Koreans, K-dramas serve as more than mere entertainment; they are “textbooks” for a modern South Korean lifestyle (p.117). By depicting nuanced themes of family bonds, romantic friendships, and evolving gender roles, these dramas act as an enlightenment tool. As North Koreans find emotional resonance in the daily lives of their Southern counterparts, a form of cultural unification occurs from the bottom up, erasing psychological borders long before the physical ones are dismantled (p. 123).

While Kim provides a sophisticated analysis of the dissemination of South Korean media, a critical link warrants further exploration: the specific aesthetic and ideological characteristics of North Korea’s domestic film and television productions from the same period. A comparison of North Korean state media with South Korean dramas might offer a more lucid explanation for the profound attraction these works hold for North Korean audiences. Does this allure stem primarily from South Korea’s material superiority, or is it a byproduct of the North’s domestic media being so mired in grand political pedagogy that it has suffered a total collapse in both artistic expression and emotional authenticity?

In Chapter 4, Kim argues that the elements of violence in South Korean gangster films strike an unexpected chord with North Korean viewers. The cinematic depiction of gangsters illegally seizing property or inflicting physical harm over unpaid debts resonates deeply with North Korean viewers, as it mirrors the brutal survival logic found within their own society. Although ‘official’ gangsters do not exist in the North, when individuals are unable to repay their debts, they face the threat of gangsters taking away their homes. These portrayals of underworld violence strike a powerful chord, as they reflect the unofficial, yet ruthless, mechanisms of debt collection and survival that permeate North Korea’s underground markets.

The universal appeal of emotional reflection in K-pop resonates uniquely with North Korean listeners, reflecting themes of friendship, community support, and a profound longing for national unification (p. 163). For the North Korean millennial, K-pop is far more than emotional reflection. By imitating the choreography, fashion, and gestures of K-pop idols, North Korean youths engage in a form of role-playing that serves as an attempt to reclaim control over individual bodily expression beneath the gaze of ideological surveillance (p. 160).

Kim analyses a variety of TV shows. For example, The Return of Superman, where mothers are absent from the domestic space, which unexpectedly reverberates with the reality of the North Korean ‘jangmadang’ generation (who have grown up with informal marketisation). In these households, mothers are often away for long periods to provide for the family at the markets, while fathers remain at official, state-assigned jobs that provide only symbolic wages (p. 166).

In Grandpas Over Flowers, the South Korean protagonists are characterised by early-life industriousness followed by the liberation of global travel in their senior years. For North Korean millennials, this life trajectory serves as a symbolic projection of hope. They see in these men a potential future where their own arduous youth might eventually yield to a prosperous and free retirement (p. 170). While Kim’s inference that North Korean youth identify with these generational travel values is compelling, it lacks direct, corroborating empirical evidence from interviews. Given the global phenomenon of generational disconnect within Gen-Z, it remains an open question whether North Korean youth truly resonate with the suffering-to-success narrative of their elders, or if they are simply captivated by the raw allure of unhindered freedom of movement.

The book focuses almost exclusively on the impact of South Korean culture. However, as North Korea’s largest trading partner and a primary source of cultural inflow, China’s media also plays an indispensable role in shaping the millennial worldview. Unlike South Korean media, which must be consumed in secret, many Chinese dramas are officially permitted and broadcast on state television. This visibility allows them to serve as a legitimate window to the outside world, offering North Koreans a version of modernity that is politically safer and more acceptable to the regime. Incorporating the perspectives of North Korean millennials on Chinese or Western media would have provided a more holistic and nuanced understanding of this generation’s cultural identity.

Millennial North Korea serves as an essential cultural guide for a diverse audience. Beyond its academic value for scholars of North Korean and communication studies, the book is highly recommended for policymakers and general readers who wish to look past the conventional headlines of famine and autocracy. It is particularly rewarding for those well-versed in South Korean media, as Kim offers a revelatory re-reading of familiar cultural texts through a North Korean lens. Ultimately, the book arrives at a conclusion that was surprising even to the author: the story of North Korean millennials is fundamentally not that different from their peers elsewhere in the world (p. 176). They are not a monolithic, brainwashed mass, but rather complex individuals navigating a rapidly morphing world, using community networks and fragmented information to piece together the truth. We must update our obsolete perceptions of North Korea: the cracks in a totalitarian society reveal a pulse synchronised with the rest of the world. This de-demonising observation is the book’s greatest contribution.