WASHINGTON — A U.S. government-funded study says
North Koreans have unprecedented access to foreign media, giving them a more
positive impression of the outside world.
But it says North Korea still has the world's most
closed media environment, and those changing perceptions are unlikely to
translate into significant pressure on their repressive government in the short
term.
The study was commissioned by the State Department
and conducted by a consulting group, InterMedia. It is based on research
involving several hundred North Korean defectors and refugees during 2010-11.
The Associated Press obtained the study ahead of its formal release Thursday.
The study, titled "A Quiet Opening: North
Koreans in a Changing Media Environment," says restrictions that threaten
years in prison and hard labor for activities like watching a South Korean soap
opera or listening to foreign news broadcasts have been tightened since the
mid-2000s, but are enforced less than in the past. People remain wary of
government inspection teams, but fewer citizens appear to be reporting on each
other.
Nearly half of those interviewed said that while in
North Korea they had watched a foreign DVD, the most commonly used type of
outside media. About a quarter of people had listened to a foreign radio news
broadcast or watched a foreign news station.
Nearly one-third of television watchers whose sets
were fixed to state-run programing had modified them in order to capture a
signal from outside stations detectable along the Chinese and South Korean
borders.
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