North Korea's Information Blockade: Propaganda and Punishment

By D. R. Ashworth · November 25, 2024 · Updated October 17, 2026 · 4 min read

• North Korea
• Censorship and Propaganda

North Korea maintains one of the most complete systems of information control in the world. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry found in 2014 that its citizens suffer “an almost complete denial” of the rights to freedom of thought, opinion, expression and information, and that the state runs “an all-encompassing indoctrination machine” from childhood onward (UN Commission of Inquiry, paras. 26–27). It ranks 179th of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index (RSF). Yet information from outside keeps getting in — and the regime’s response has been ever harsher laws to punish it.

A monopoly on truth

“Throughout the history of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” the UN Commission wrote, “among the most striking features of the State has been its claim to an absolute monopoly over information and total control of organized social life” (para. 26). State-controlled media are the only permitted source of information. Access to television, radio and the internet is severely restricted; all media content is censored and must follow the directives of the Workers’ Party of Korea; telephone calls are monitored and mostly confined to the country (para. 29). The state’s Korean Central News Agency is the only permitted news source, and the few foreign agencies with an official presence operate under close surveillance (RSF).

The control is not only negative. The Commission found that the state’s propaganda serves “to propagate an official personality cult and to manufacture absolute obedience to the Supreme Leader (Suryong), effectively to the exclusion of any thought independent of official ideology,” and to incite hatred of Japan, the United States and South Korea (para. 27). Virtually all social activity is organized by the ruling party, through associations every citizen must join; surveillance permeates private life so that “virtually no expression critical of the political system or of its leadership goes undetected,” and citizens are rewarded for informing on each other (para. 28).

Locking the dials

Physical control of receivers is part of the system. All televisions, radios and personal computers in North Korea must be registered with the authorities, and sets brought in from abroad are modified so that they cannot tune in to foreign stations (Williams, 38 North). Within the country’s own intranet, according to Reporters Without Borders, the authorities have built technical measures that let them “completely control communications” (RSF).

The outside world gets in

The monopoly has been eroding. The UN Commission found that the growth of informal markets and advances in information technology “have allowed greater access to information from outside the country as information and media from the Republic of Korea and China increasingly enter the country,” and that the authorities respond with “regular crackdowns” and “harsh punishments” (para. 30). Foreign content now travels on USB memory sticks and fingernail-sized microSD cards that are easy to hide (Williams, 38 North). The researcher Jieun Baek has documented how this information underground is changing the way North Koreans see their own country (Baek, North Korea’s Hidden Revolution).

The Commission singled out the regime’s crackdown on these influences — “symbolized by films and soap operas from the Republic of Korea and other countries, short-wave radio broadcasts and foreign mobile telephones” — as one of the reasons for its gross human rights violations (para. 84).

The 2020 law

In December 2020 the Supreme People’s Assembly adopted a Law on Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture, aimed at South Korean films, dramas, music and publications. As originally enacted, it punished watching or possessing South Korean content with 5 to 15 years in prison, and importing or distributing it with life imprisonment or death. An amendment of August 2022 reduced the penalty for watching to 5–10 years (more for serious cases) and for distributing South Korean content to life imprisonment, though death-penalty provisions remain elsewhere in the law (Daily NK). A 2021 law aimed at “anti-socialist behaviour” among young people, and a 2023 law against South Korean speech patterns, followed (Daily NK).

Reports that people have been executed simply for watching South Korean videos are common in the press, but the evidence is disputed: Martin Weiser, writing in The Diplomat, shows that under the law’s own text “media consumption alone was only punishable with prison time,” with the death penalty reserved for importing and distributing such material in certain cases (Weiser, The Diplomat). As Weiser puts it, “the truth is bad enough”: North Koreans can spend a decade in prison for watching a soap opera.

Why it matters

Every communist state on this site controlled information; North Korea shows where that control ends when nothing restrains it. A state that registers every radio, permits one source of news and imprisons citizens for watching foreign television has defined its people’s minds as state property. That outside information keeps finding its way in on memory cards — and that the regime keeps writing new laws against it — shows how much it fears what its citizens would think if they knew.

Further reading on this site

• North Korea’s political prison camps — where the regime sends those it deems enemies.
• North Korean property control — the state’s ownership of everything.
• The Stasi — surveillance in another communist state.
• All articles on North Korea and on censorship and propaganda.