Cal's Lucas Beijing Correspondent

Beijing Correspondent

Updated Thursday, February 1, 2024-00:02

  • Patio Global The court to which the 'mother courage' of the girl who died from pollution clings

He wears a school uniform and speaks very British English. He likes ice cream, Harry Potter and living in his hometown,

Pyongyang

. She introduces herself as Song-a, a happy 11-year-old North Korean girl who shows the wonders of the North Korean capital on YouTube. She says off the top of her head, as if she were suddenly releasing all the text she has memorized, that Pyongyang is a paradise because it is full of amusement parks; that there is abundant food everywhere; that all the girls, after school, go swimming, rock climbing and watch 4D animated movies.

Song-a launched her channel in April 2022 and has more than 30,000 subscribers. Her videos were censored in the summer in South Korea along with two other North Korean

YouTube

channels that sold the benefits of Kim Jong-un's regime. But this "white propaganda," as analysts call it, is present on many platforms.

North Korean propaganda

has

been characterized as a bottomless bag of belligerent rhetoric from its leader. "We are ready for a ruthless war"; "Deranged American Madman"; "We will not hesitate to slap them"; "Damn Japanese imperialists"; "They must be destroyed." There are many phrases that North Korean speakers continue to put into Kim's mouth almost daily.

But in recent years, copying old propaganda strategies from neighbors like Russia and China, they have also tried to send more subtle messages through friendly

YouTubers

like Song-a. But what the girl does not say in her videos is that ordinary North Koreans cannot upload videos to Western social networks because they either do not have access to the Internet, or their browsers are blocked by censorship. "Song-a presents herself as an ordinary student who was taught English at home by her mother, but comes from one of the most powerful families in the country, the daughter of a diplomat who made a career in London and the great-granddaughter of a revered general during the war. of Korea," says Colin Zwirko, an analyst at NK News, a portal that tries to monitor everything that happens in

North Korea

with the help of satellite images, testimonies from inside the country and the experience of defectors.

Many of these dropouts are now

influencers

, too .

There are those who try to contrast North Korean propaganda by exposing the evils of the Kim regime

. Others seek to explain the culture and customs in the hermit country. Kang Na-ra, who has more than 370,000 subscribers on YouTube, explains some contrasts between the North and the South. "In North Korea, if you have big breasts, it's considered a negative thing. One of the things that surprised me the most when I arrived in Seoul was discovering padded bras and breast implants."

Another

influencer

, Yeonmi Park, frequently appears on

podcasts

in the US to describe the great famine she experienced as a child and how her father, who trafficked metals on the black market to support his family, ended up executed in prison. Park claims that, at the age of 13, she fled Korea with her mother thanks to the help of a group of Christian missionaries.

Among the deserters who stand in front of a camera, stories like those Park tells abound. The more outlandish and terrifying these stories are, the more followers they attract. But there are also experts who warn that some of these

YouTubers

are inflating their experiences in North Korea.