The end of broadcasting hope

South Korea presidents seem to alternate between hard and soft in their attitude towards the North. Currently, with Lee Jae-myung, we’re very much on the soft side. Here’s Kang Dong Wan at the Daily NK on the latest idiocy:

After 52 years of broadcasting hope into the darkness of North Korea, the silence is deafening. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) has pulled the plug on these vital transmissions—a decision that left me stunned and dismayed. What makes this even more shocking is the timing: NIS Director Lee Jong-seok made this choice less than a month into his tenure. This isn’t just a policy shift; it’s an abandonment of the state’s most fundamental duty and a clear violation of law.

North Koreans live in almost complete isolation, cut off from the outside world. These broadcasts represent their only window to see beyond their borders. No previous administration has ever had the NIS suspend radio broadcasts to North Korea, making this truly unprecedented. The flow of information into North Korea remains our most effective and strategic weapon for bringing about change within North Korean society. Civilian organizations have long wrestled with this same challenge: how to effectively deliver information to North Koreans.

The Lee Jae-myung administration declared upon taking office that peace means winning without fighting. Given North Korea’s advanced nuclear capabilities, the real path to victory without fighting lies in psychological and information warfare. North Korean authorities teach through political indoctrination that “South Korea is a rotten, diseased capitalist society full of homeless beggars.” But when North Koreans secretly encounter Korean movies or dramas, they discover a different reality. They express shock at South Korea’s economic prosperity and, above all, its guarantee of freedom and human rights. External information opens their eyes to another world entirely. Such information ultimately becomes a Trojan horse that can crack the foundations of dictatorship.

Yet since taking office, the Lee Jae-myung administration has banned leaflets to North Korea, stopped loudspeaker broadcasts, and now suspended NIS broadcasts. When you consider who benefits most from these measures, the answer becomes clear….

North Korean young people now think differently from their parents. They aren’t the “human bullets and bombs” generation willing to sacrifice their lives for Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Instead, they question: “Why should I sacrifice my life for Kim Jong Un?” This ideological shift stems directly from exposure to external information.