Through faint flows crossing borders, informal distribution channels and limited technological contact, people in North Korea still become aware that another world exists. File Photo by Jeon Heon-kyun/EPA
April 29 (UPI) — The author prefers to use the lowercase “n” to challenge the Kim family regime’s legitimacy.
“The marriage between Nazi propaganda and the radio.” (from How to Win an Information War)
I paused for a long time on this single sentence in the book. It is short, but it contains an entire era compressed within it. Technology often appears to be a neutral tool, yet depending on whose hands it is in and what purpose it is bound to, it takes on a completely different face.
The radio was not simply a means of communication. It was the first mass medium capable of delivering the same message, the same emotion, to millions of people almost in real time.
And propaganda operated at its most powerful precisely on that structure — repetition, a single voice, a world in which only selected information exists. That combination did not merely describe reality; it began to construct it.
Reading this sentence again in the context of today’s world raises another layer of questions.
We already live inside a digital platform and algorithm-driven information environment. Information is overabundant, yet at the same time it is filtered and arranged, and the way it reaches individuals is becoming increasingly structured.
The medium has shifted from radio to digital networks, and the speed is incomparably faster. But the essential fact remains unchanged: When information merges with power, it reshapes reality.
At the same time, in another part of the world, there still exist systems where digital transformation has not fully expanded, and where information itself is structurally controlled. In such places, information is not freely flowing data, but a resource delivered only in approved and selected forms.
north Korea’s information system operates within a deliberately designed “closed ecosystem,” cut off from direct connection to external networks. Its control is not simply about “preventing access.” It forms a multilayered and highly engineered web.
First is the physical locking of hardware. Radios and televisions distributed in north Korea are manufactured with frequencies fixed only to official state channels. The very possibility of tuning channels is removed, and any attempt to modify them is strictly monitored and punished.
Second is digital containment through technology. Instead of the global Internet, only a closed national intranet known as Kwangmyong is allowed. With the spread of smartphones, the “Red Star” OS further strengthens a digital signature system that blocks any unauthorized files or external media from running.
Third, there is legal and institutional fear. The recently strengthened “Law on Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture defines the viewing and distribution of foreign media content as ideological infiltration, punishable even by the highest penalties.