N. Korean citizens left in the dark on summit
State media might wait to cover it after it’s over
While most of the free world is being inundated with news about President Trump’s upcoming meeting with Kim Jong Un, North Koreans have been told almost nothing.
“They have been told there is a summit coming up,” said Hazel Smith, a professor at the University of London and expert on North Korea. Beyond that, the country’s state-controlled media outlet, known for its widespread propaganda, has said little.
The government has been extraordinarily successful at keeping the country’s citizens isolated from the tsunami of information washing over much of the globe.
The Internet is banned, and newspaper and broadcast media are controlled by Kim’s government. Reading
or watching foreign media is illegal and could mean a lengthy sentence in a labor camp, said Fyodor Tertitskiy, an analyst at NK News, which tracks developments in North Korea. Only a few elites in the country have access to satellite television or the Internet.
Little has been said about the upcoming summit, and the state media organization has barely mentioned the main topic of the meeting: denuclearization.
Editorials in Rodong Sinmun, the state-controlled newspaper, have made occasional vague reference to North Korea being part of a nuclear-free world, said Michael Madden, director of NK Leadership Watch, which tracks developments in the isolated nation.
That message supports Kim’s view of the summit as two major nuclear powers discussing arms reduction. But the Trump administration doesn’t see it that way. Washington has said North Korea must get rid of its nuclear weapons and dismantle its program.
By saying little about the summit in advance, the North Korean government will have more flexibility in shaping the message.
When Trump and Kim meet Tuesday, thousands of journalists will report their every move live. North Korea’s state media might wait until the meeting ends before covering it.
That’s in keeping with most of the Kim family’s foreign trips, such as Kim’s trip to China to meet with President Xi Jinping last month. Some of the secrecy is for security reasons, but it also allows North Korea’s media to control the message.
“There is a very good chance that they won’t report on the Singapore event until he is at least wheels-up or returned to the North,” Madden said.
North Korea experts have learned to carefully scrutinize North Korea’s media to get a glimpse into the country’s secretive government.
In the months leading up to the summit, North Korea’s media outlet has toned down its anti-U.S. rhetoric, cut back on images of missiles and tanks and even shown Kim with children in an effort to soften his image, BBC Monitoring reported recently.
The fact that the government acknowledged the summit is seen as a sign that Kim is serious about making it work.
“If you read between the lines, just acknowledging the meeting itself probably expresses as firm a commitment as you can get out of the North Korean regime,” said Lonnie Ball, managing editor of North Korean Review at the Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies in Seoul.
But most of the public is not interested in carefully vetting the state media, dismissing it as propaganda.
“State media is really boring,” Smith said.