North Korea is the most secretive country in the world today, with its main railway lined with walls so high that its foreign passengers can’t see the countryside. It is also, as Bradley Martin’s book makes clear, the most repressive and brutal country in the world, with entire families sometimes executed if one member gets drunk and slights the Dear Leader. It is at the same time by far the most totalitarian, with nearly every home equipped with a speaker that issues propaganda from morning to night.
– From a great book review by Nicholas Kristof.
Yipes.
While studying at HebrewU i was lucky enough to have access to one of the world’s largest collections of books and papers regarding NKorea. For my studies i was often stuck in that section of the library. Truly, NKorea is a fascinating place, in a Kafka sortaway.
Despite what the review/book states, NKorean flats are *NOT* equipped with “loud speakers”, in the way we think of them in the West. I think this might be a technical mis-understanding or translation upon the authors part, or his handlers??? Regardless, i assure you, North Korean citizens are not blasted by bigbrother speakers in their homes. That’s silly, even by NKorean standards.
Here’s what i think the author might have been getting at…
NKorean radios do not operate in a standard, Western-style, radio-wave broadcast method. Instead, they essentially have radio-by-cable. Although early radios in NKorea (1960’s) did recieve transmission via radio-waves over the air (whose frequency dials were dutifully soldered to a single, state-transmitted number on the dial), later units were not so prone to counter-revolutionary citizens’ efforts to loosen/remove the solder — and thus be able to tune in the plethora of corrupting running-dog-capitalist stations spewing from the Southern prison-state (their words, not mine). Instead, citizens merely turned on (or, if you were brave, off) the radios. No tuning was ever necessary. On-off, nothing else.
However, technology has progressed in NKorea…
(“Life is becoming more fun AND cheaper by the day!” — old Soviet slogan)
Now all radios (and TV’s) are hooked up to wires that safely transmit state informatasiah and uplifting-diversion to the proleterait.
So, if radios are to be considered loudspeakers, then yes, they have these in their dwellings. I guess.
I have many, many worse factoids and experiences regarding NKoreans, but homes forceably equipped with loudspeakers ain’t one of them. Children eaten by starving dogs… that’s another story. ;-|
That said, the streets of most “large” cities in NKorea are, indeed, lined with loudspeakers at every major junction; And, yes, they are quite loud.
rob@egoz.org
Can the radios be turned off? Because I was having these images of every North Korean being involuntarily woken up every morning by pronouncements from the Dear Leader.
Yes, they can be turned off.
That’s why i took semantic-exception to the word “speaker”, as we understand it here in the West. EG: Generally speaking a “speaker” bought in Yonkers does not have an on/off switch. That’s why i also described the PRK’s history of soldering the Soviet imported radio tuning dials.
I did a Google on:
radio & “north korea” & solder
This site brings to light what i’m talking about:
http://www.areastudies.org/documents/nyt-defectors.html
—
In North Korea, “all the tape recorders and radio have to be registered,” said Ms. Lee, who was a housewife until she left 18 months ago. “At registration, they cut off and solder the tuning dial to make sure you don’t have a `free’ radio. If you have a cassette player, sometimes the police come to your apartment to check your cassette library.”
—
rob@egoz.org
Will you marry me? Oh, wait, you’re already taken. Don’t worry, though — stalker tendencies are latent in me, so feel free to go the market undeterred.
Seriously, I absolutely love your blog — it’s one of my must-reads. I’m a sucker for intelligence, you see.
And I’ve also entered the blog arena, as of this morning. I hold you as a beacon. LOL But, gotta admit, that blank screen staring me in the face was kinda intimidating. P’haps it’ll get better.
Thsi post is nerd porn at its best. (Especially the comments.)
I need to go back to reading the book reviews. It takes all week, and it leaves no time to read books, but they’re so good!