North Korea’s Efforts To Boost Tourism Industry Results To Increasing Number Of Citizens Gaining Knowledge About Life In South Korea

Despite North Korea's efforts to shun South Korean practices and living standards from its people, tour guides in the North have been observed to have an increasing knowledge on the South's life and culture evidently implying that information on their rival country is widely spread, reported Radio Free Asia on Wednesday.

During a recent four-day trip to North Korea of a Chinese national with a Korean ethnicity, he observed that "tour guides showed a greater interest in South Korea" and "inquired about every detail" on the life in South. What surprised him even more is how these tour guides were putting themselves in danger by asking about South Korea just to feed their curiosity.

Another source from the North Hamgyong province revealed that North Korea's elite share information about life in South Korea and that even judicial officials "pass around South Korean soap operas confiscated from the public and exchange their impressions with one another."

"Although [regime leader] Kim Jong Un tries to isolate North Korea by completely blocking information from the outside, he cannot shut the mouths of businessmen traveling in and out of China and others who go abroad," the source added. "North Koreans have a real interest in and a substantial understanding about life in South Korea, so it is hard to stop them [from seeking out more information]."

According to Independent on Oct. 29, 2014, at least 50 North Koreans, including several party officials, were publicly executed in 2014 for watching South Korean soap operas.

The state is also imposing strict control over television and media and has limited the nation's internet access. Despite the crackdown, foreign shows and films have been spreading widely in the North, which some believe are smuggled into the North or sold in black markets.

"The more people are exposed to such media the more likely they are to become disillusioned with the regime and start wanting to live differently," said a North Korean defector.

The people of North Korea know less about what life is like outside their soil due to the dictatorship of their Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and his forefathers Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, noted The Daily Signal on July 28.

"Three generations of Kim regime leadership brutally repressed the people, to the point where the North Korean people don't even realize that there is something beyond North Korea," said research associate in the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation Olivia Enos. "And it's not getting better."

"Even if you are a North Korean that doesn't find themselves in a prison camp situation and you're living a normal North Korean life-to say that ordinary North Korean people are enduring unbelievable repression of freedom is accurate," Enos added.