North Korea cracks down on outside influences
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2021
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Recent reports from Pyongyang have hinted at an intensified effort to root out foreign fashion, slang and media in North Korea. Its regime has repeatedly punished people who smuggle in DVDs of South Korean TV and film dramas, but the penalties are now even harsher. Laura Bicker reports from Seoul on the risks for North Koreans who try to break their isolation, whether by consuming forbidden culture or even escaping the country themselves.
As Joe Biden meets other world leaders at the G7 summit in Cornwall, there are still many Americans who aren't yet convinced he is the legitimate President of the United States. Gabriel Gatehouse was recently given unusual insight into this mindset.
Press freedom in Pakistan is a touchy issue - and more so now after a string of incidents where reporters have been physically attacked. Secunder Kermani analyses where the 'red lines' lie for broadcast media, and the allegations that the country's security services have been directly pressuring journalists.
Turkey's Sea of Marmara is enduring a mucilaginous ordeal - as a slimy, choking layer of so-called "sea snot" smothers its shores. It's a catastrophe for local fishing villages; President Erdogan has launched a clean-up this week. Neyran Elden of the BBC Turkish Service happens to be an experienced scuba diver - so she suited up to go beneath the surface and take a look at the sea bed. What she saw wasn't pretty.
Citizens of EU countries in the UK are being strongly encouraged to sort out their residency status before the end of this month. For British citizens living abroad, the experience of getting their own paperwork has varied by country. Luke Tuddenham recently had a surprising brush with bureaucracy in Lower Saxony in Germany.
Producer: Polly Hope
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts |
| 0:05.6 | Today we hear of the red lines which journalists cannot cross in Pakistan and the serious consequences |
| 0:12.6 | if they do. And in America our correspondent joins the QAnon believers having a collective |
| 0:19.6 | bout of paranoid theories. We take a dive with a difference, a rather disgusting one, into |
| 0:26.4 | Turkey Sea of Marmara as a sticky growth called sea snot clogs its shores. And a correspondent |
| 0:33.6 | in Germany finds an unexpectedly human aside to its famously exacting bureaucracy on |
| 0:39.3 | a simple mission to renew a driving licence. |
| 0:43.5 | First to North Korea isolated politically its people insulated from foreign news, in |
| 0:49.2 | fact most things foreign, particularly from the world of popular entertainment, where there |
| 0:54.8 | appears to be a new push to stamp out any outside influence. Reading the true intentions |
| 1:00.9 | of the government in Pyongyang is never easy, but recently there have been official announcements |
| 1:06.8 | in North Korean newspapers and TV news bulletins of even harsher penalties for those called |
| 1:12.8 | watching and sharing foreign media. So what's going on? Laura Bickers in the South Korean |
| 1:19.0 | Capital's soul, where she monitors developments across the border. |
| 1:23.9 | Yoon Miso's voice dropped to a whisper as she described how she'd once been forced to |
| 1:28.7 | watch a man in her North Korean village being tied to a stake and shot. He'd been caught |
| 1:35.3 | with some DVD copies of a South Korean drama. The entire neighbourhood was ordered to watch |
| 1:41.4 | his execution. If you didn't, it would be classed as treason, Miso told me. She was |
| 1:47.8 | only 11 years old at the time, and her eyes were fixed on the blindfold. I can still see |
| 1:53.8 | his tears flow down. The blindfold was completely drenched in tears, she said. |
| 1:59.6 | The Pyongyang regime has always handed out harsher punishments to those caught selling or |
| 2:05.0 | watching foreign films, music or drama, especially if the material was South Korean. But now |
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