Apparently, North Korea’s younger generation is getting a taste for South Korean merchandise. Or so says Yonhap News. In a piece that I have neither the time nor the inclination to translate tonight (I should get to it tomorrow, however), the “Korean Wave” (Kor: han-nyu) - the rising popularity of South Korean pop culture in East Asia - is finally making its way into that space between the DMZ and the Yalu River. According to one North Korean source:
In regional markets in North Korea, customers are being seduced by South Korean products like ramyon, makeup, and electric rice cookers when the Southern trademarks are openly displayed… Even the police who control the markets are helpless [to stop it].
The biggest thing driving the Wave, however, appears to be South Korean dramas. According to other North Korean sources:
Despite controls set by the North Korean authority, South Korean dramas, movie videos and CDs, brought into North Korea from across the border with China and by those who have been abroad on business, have taken the entire country by storm.
South Korean pop music is also becoming popular, and while this will probably come as no surprise, Yun Do-hyeon is particularly popular among the ladies of North Korea.
North Korean sources also claim that North Korea’s young people are “competitively imitating” the fashions and hairstyles of the actors that appear in South Korean dramas - some are going as far as dying their hair! Pyongyang youth even naturally deride Chinese-made clothes as unfashionable and rustic.
The piece ends with a quote from a North Korea expert here in the South:
Unlike Chairman Kim Il-sung’s older generation, among those between the ages of 20 to 40, the desire for reform and change is rapidly spreading… If the young generation, who think in this way, lead North Korea, the North Korean system can be transformed into a market economy in a controlled and stable fashion.
As you can probably figure, I disagree with that last part. Moreover, all this talk from “North Korean sources” makes me a little suspicious - they may simply be trying to convince their South Korean patrons that change in the North is really at hand, when in fact, it couldn’t be further away. Still, it’s an interesting piece, and maybe a sign that even in North Korea, it’s difficult to keep the rest of the world out forever.
