Japanese reporter says outside news blocked in North Korea
· UPIJune 28 (Asia Today) -- North Korea has largely succeeded in stopping foreign news and cultural content from circulating among its population through tighter border controls and increasingly severe punishment, a veteran Japanese journalist said.
Jiro Ishimaru, head of the Osaka office of Asia Press, has worked with North Korean citizen journalists for more than two decades to report on conditions inside the country.
"The border remains so tightly sealed that residents are not even allowed to touch the waters of the Tumen or Yalu rivers," Ishimaru said in a recent interview with Asia Today in Seoul.
"China has also strengthened controls on its side of the border, meaning that the flow of outside information into North Korea has effectively stopped," he said.
Ishimaru said Asia Press has lost contact with about half of the roughly 10 reporting partners it previously communicated with inside North Korea.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, portable storage devices such as USB drives and SD cards were more frequently smuggled into North Korea, while foreign radio broadcasts provided another source of outside information.
Those activities have since declined, Ishimaru said. North Koreans also have become increasingly reluctant to access or share foreign content because of the risk of severe punishment.
North Korea closed its borders during the pandemic and enacted a series of laws intended to stop foreign media, South Korean expressions and other outside cultural influences from entering or spreading within the country.
The measures include the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act, the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act and the Youth Education Guarantee Act.
"North Koreans remain highly interested in outside information, but they are increasingly avoiding it because the penalties for spreading it have become more severe," Ishimaru said.
"In the past, we could expect information to spread from one person to those around them," he said. "Now, the circulation itself appears to have been blocked."
Ishimaru also questioned whether recent estimates showing two consecutive years of economic growth in North Korea reflect improvements in ordinary people's lives.
The Bank of Korea estimated that North Korea's real gross domestic product increased 3.1% in 2023 and 3.7% in 2024, its strongest growth since 2016.
Ishimaru said the expansion was concentrated in certain sectors and did not reflect conditions in the consumer economy.
"When we look at consumer goods, daily necessities and the actual lives of North Korean residents, the economy is in a serious state of hyperinflation," he said.
A survey of prices in northern North Korea conducted by Asia Press found that rice prices in Yanggang and North Hamgyong provinces had risen 454% since 2023. Corn prices increased 124%, while the unofficial exchange rate for the U.S. dollar surged 715%.
Ishimaru attributed the market disruption partly to sharp increases in state wages and tighter government restrictions on private economic activity in markets known as jangmadang.
"The authorities sharply increased workers' wages about three years ago, which triggered hyperinflation and significantly reduced residents' purchasing power," he said.
"As residents became unable to buy products from state-run stores, sales declined and that eventually led to lower production," he said.
Ishimaru said aid and revenue North Korea receives through its relationship with Russia have not necessarily improved living conditions for the broader population.
"North Korean authorities and Kim Jong Un appear to have priorities in deciding how to use resources received from Russia," he said.
Those resources appear to have been directed toward strengthening the military, construction projects, the privileged class and domestic security organizations, he said.
"The North Korean economy has improved only from the perspective of the authorities and Kim Jong Un," Ishimaru said.
Ishimaru began investigating conditions inside North Korea to understand the mass defections that occurred during the devastating famine of the mid-1990s, known in North Korea as the Arduous March.
Beginning in the early 2000s, he recruited and trained North Korean volunteers who had traveled to China to work as journalists. Their reporting network has continued providing information from inside North Korea for more than two decades.
-- Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI
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Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260628010009663