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Starting this week, South Koreans can access North Korea’s top newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, at select locations without state approval.
Packed with missile tests, propaganda hailing the great leaders and tirades against the United States, North Korea’s “Workers’ Newspaper” was long considered so incendiary that South Korea banned its citizens from reading it.
But dovish President Lee Jae Myung is now seeking better ties with Pyongyang and has joked that he doesn’t believe the public will “become commies” by reading it.
Prospective readers no longer have to identify themselves and submit an application explaining their purpose, though they still must visit public libraries to view a copy.
Opinions in Seoul, the South Korean capital, were divided over allowing free access to Pyongyang’s propaganda.
The government tightly controls all media in North Korea, and the Rodong Sinmun is the mouthpiece of the repressive ruling Workers’ Party.
South Korea and the nuclear-armed North remain officially at war, and Seoul long banned all access to Pyongyang’s propaganda on security grounds. Many restrictions remain in place; North Korean websites are still inaccessible from South Korean IP addresses.
At Seoul’s national library on Friday, AFP journalists saw a handful of people flipping through copies of Rodong Sinmun, its pages replete with photos of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose name is always carried in bold type.
Seoul has vowed to “steadily expand access” to information on North Korea as it works to improve ties that are at their worst levels in years. The move is not reciprocal. North Koreans remain banned from accessing any South Korean content at all and risk heavy penalties if caught doing so.
Lee has described the relaxation of Cold War-era censorship as an “opportunity to understand the reality of North Korea accurately”.
