North Korea’s Forbidden Love? Smuggled, Illegal Soap Operas
SEOUL, South Korea — As a math professor in North Korea, Jang Se-yul was among the nation’s relatively privileged classes; he got to sit in special seats in restaurants and on crowded trains, and more important in a country where many go hungry, was given priority for government food rations. Then he risked it all — for a soap opera from South Korea.
The temptation in this case was “Scent of a Man,” an 18-episode drama about the forbidden love between an ex-convict and his stepsister. A graduate student had offered him the bundle of banned CDs smuggled into the North and, too curious to resist, Mr. Jang and five other professors huddled in one of their homes binge watching until dawn. They were careful to pull the curtains to escape the prying eyes of neighbors taught to turn in their fellow citizens for seditious activities. But they were caught anyway and demoted to manual labor at a power plant.
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“The kitchens with hot and cold tap water, people dating in a cafe, cars clogging streets, women wearing different clothes each day — unlike us who wore the same padded jacket, day in day out,” said Ms. Jeon, who lives in Seoul. “Through the dramas, I learned how strange my own country was, how full of lies.”
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Recognizing the danger, Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, who died in 2011, set up swat teams that barged into homes, cutting off the electricity before entering to prevent viewers from removing discs from their DVD players. But defectors say the suppliers have worked hard to foil inspectors, importing battery powered DVD players as well as more easily hidden flash drives.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/north-koreas-forbidden-love-smuggled-illegal-soap-operas.html?_r=0
This is an interesting article. I wish I could post more.
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