VOA标准英语2008年-South Korean Pop Culture Reaches Into North Kor

The popularity of South Korean movies and dramas has spread throughout Asia - including North Korea, which strictly¹ bans watching foreign television programs. Jason Strother in Seoul introduces us to a North Korean refugee who says South Korean dramas inspired her to flee to the South.

Byun Nan-hee is a North Korean refugee who has lived in Seoul since 2002. In the North, she says, television programs did only one thing: glorify² the government and its leaders.

Byun says that on North Korean television, there are only programs about Kim Jong Il or Kim Il Sung. Other dramas are about farmers or miners, nothing about ordinary people and relationships.

Twenty-eight-year-old Byun says the government uses the media to brainwash people by painting a picture that the outside world is much poorer than they are.

But her indoctrination began to unravel³ in 1997, when she and her two brothers crossed the border into China, in search of food and medicine.

There, for the first time, she watched South Korean television.

Byun could not believe what she saw.

She says that when she saw the South Korean soap operas, she could see how the people there live and that they have big houses. Then, she says, she knew that things were much better there.

Byun says she had never intended to go to South Korea. But after seeing the TV programs, she changed her mind.

With the help of a South Korean human rights group, she was smuggled⁴ through China to Thailand, and finally to South Korea.

North Koreans are not only exposed to South Korean media while in China, but also in their hometowns.

North Korean TV sets and radios are fixed⁵ to receive only government channels. But smuggled in videotapes and DVDs are hot commodities on the black market.

Park Sang Hak fled the North and now is president of the Seoul advocacy group, NK Gulag. He estimates that one out of every 100 North Koreans has seen South Korean television.

He was among them.

He recalls watching a South Korean drama that was about the fight against the former military dictatorship in Seoul. He was shocked to see that people could openly criticize the government. He thought that if North Koreans did that, they would be killed.

But Park says even watching those television shows could get a person branded as an enemy of the state.

He says the National Security Agency is on the look out for people watching or listening to South Korean media. If they are caught, they will be labeled a political dissident and sent to a prison camp.

Brian Myers is a North Korea expert at the South's Dongseo University. He says the Pyongyang authorities are eager to stamp out foreign influences because they undermine its claims that North Koreans live in a socialist⁶ paradise.

"Since the information blockade began crumbling⁷ in the mid-1990s, the regime has abandoned that claim and it has taken to acknowledging that the South Korean people are materially better off than North Korean people, but they are morally compromised and they are ethnically⁸ compromised by allowing themselves to be ruled by foreigners, the Americans," Myers said.

Myers says the North's propaganda states that all South Koreans secretly yearn⁹ to be unified¹⁰ under the rule of Kim Jong Il. But, he says, South Korean movies and TV shows would disprove this notion.

"I think it's a matter of time before the North Koreans realize by watching South Korean culture that North Korea is simply not important to the South Korean people. That the average South Korean person does not think of North Korea from the one day to the next," Myers said. "And I think once that realization¹¹ spreads among the North Korean population, the North Korean regime will have a serious problem"

But South Korean dramas might be getting harder to find in North Korea.

Human rights groups say China has increased its security along the border, preventing information from the outside world from entering North Korea, as well as keeping its people from escaping.

1 strictly   

adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地

参考例句：

• His doctor is dieting him strictly.他的医生严格规定他的饮食。
• The guests were seated strictly in order of precedence.客人严格按照地位高低就座。

2 glorify   

vt.颂扬，赞美，使增光，美化

参考例句：

• Politicians have complained that the media glorify drugs.政治家们抱怨媒体美化毒品。
• We are all committed to serving the Lord and glorifying His name in the best way we know.我们全心全意敬奉上帝，竭尽所能颂扬他的美名。

3 unravel   

v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开

参考例句：

• He was good with his hands and could unravel a knot or untangle yarn that others wouldn't even attempt.他的手很灵巧，其他人甚至都不敢尝试的一些难解的绳结或缠在一起的纱线，他都能解开。
• This is the attitude that led him to unravel a mystery that long puzzled Chinese historians.正是这种态度使他解决了长期以来使中国历史学家们大惑不解的谜。

4 smuggled   

水货

参考例句：

• The customs officer confiscated the smuggled goods. 海关官员没收了走私品。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Those smuggled goods have been detained by the port office. 那些走私货物被港务局扣押了。 来自互联网

5 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

6 socialist   

n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的

参考例句：

• China is a socialist country,and a developing country as well.中国是一个社会主义国家，也是一个发展中国家。
• His father was an ardent socialist.他父亲是一个热情的社会主义者。

7 crumbling   

adj.摇摇欲坠的

参考例句：

• an old house with crumbling plaster and a leaking roof 一所灰泥剥落、屋顶漏水的老房子
• The boat was tied up alongside a crumbling limestone jetty. 这条船停泊在一个摇摇欲坠的石灰岩码头边。

8 ethnically   

adv.人种上，民族上

参考例句：

• Ethnically, the Yuan Empire comprised most of modern China's ethnic groups. 元朝的民族成分包括现今中国绝大多数民族。 来自汉英非文学 - 白皮书
• Russia is ethnically relatively homogeneous. 俄罗斯是个民族成分相对单一的国家。 来自辞典例句

9 yearn   

v.想念；怀念；渴望

参考例句：

• We yearn to surrender our entire being.我们渴望着放纵我们整个的生命。
• Many people living in big cities yearn for an idyllic country life.现在的很多都市人向往那种田园化的生活。

10 unified   

(unify 的过去式和过去分词)； 统一的； 统一标准的； 一元化的

参考例句：

• The teacher unified the answer of her pupil with hers. 老师核对了学生的答案。
• The First Emperor of Qin unified China in 221 B.C. 秦始皇于公元前221年统一中国。

11 realization   

n.实现；认识到，深刻了解

参考例句：

• We shall gladly lend every effort in our power toward its realization.我们将乐意为它的实现而竭尽全力。
• He came to the realization that he would never make a good teacher.他逐渐认识到自己永远不会成为好老师。