North Korea has now decided to be a film and web series critic, well, it certainly seems Pyongyang is getting a lot of propaganda material to force-feed it’s helpless population. The latest being it’s an expert commentary on the South Korean Society. In the country where the internet is contraband, you can hardly expect the average North Korean to know about Netflix or of Squid Game but Kim-Jong-Un and his cronies will hear none of it, and ladies and gentlemen, let us welcome North Korea to the critics club for mindless propaganda.
A North Korean propaganda website published an article Tuesday arguing that the series reveals that life in South Korea is “infested by the rules of survival of the fittest, corruption and immorality. “The audience feels sad about the reality of South Korean society, which is becoming a brutal situation where humanity is destroyed in the extreme competition,” and the show also depicts “a world where only money matters — a hell-like horror,” and celebrates a society where “corruption and immoral scoundrels are commonplace” the article published on the website Arirang Meari said of the dystopian drama.
Released last month, the show, though wildly popular in South Korea, also hit a nerve for its cruel depiction of the problem of personal debt and the difficulty of paying it off in the country. North Korea routinely criticizes South Korean culture and its capitalist system, contrasting it with its false depiction of itself as an egalitarian society.
Influence from abroad and outside information are seen as threats to North Korean leadership, and the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, has long been ordering his citizens to shun foreign influence, from fashion to dance moves. A new law introduced in December calls for up to 15 years in labor camps for those caught accessing South Korean entertainment and threatens the death penalty for those caught distributing it, according to KCNA.
The most repressive regime on this planet regards South Korean society as a tool of oppression. It explains why there is such a dichotomy in opinions, while south korea isn’t a paradise or a utopia it is nonetheless a society where there is freedom of speech and expression. While the North is far from anything that has known freedom.