State-run North Korean media—the only kind there is in that Stalinist country—often make hay of bad news out of the South. When a ferry sank off of South Korea in 2014, killing 300, for example, it drew attention to shoddy rescue efforts. And now with Seoul in the midst of a bona fide political crisis, Pyongyang’s propagandists are at it again.
South Korean president Park Geun-hye is under fire for her bizarrely close relationship with an old family friend. (For an excellent primer on the scandal, see here.) There are also corruption allegations swirling around her. In the face of this, South Koreans are doing what they do best: protesting. (The area of Seoul they are marching in, near Gwanghwamun Square, is the site of almost daily demonstrations.) But these marches are larger than most: Two weekends ago, roughly one million people gathered in central Seoul calling for Park’s ouster. That’s roughly 2 percent of the country’s total population—a testament to the remarkably high level of political engagement that defines present-day South Korea.
The leading North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun—it’s the newspaper of the ruling Workers’ Party—has highlighted the protests, even printing photographs of them. That’s not necessarily a wise move for the regime, given that protesting the government is often a capital offense in North Korea. Indeed, the photographs that Rodong Sinmun has printed would seem to make the case for democracy: They are a demonstration of Koreans making their political position known, without suffering physical or legal consequences. They are, fundamentally, an indictment of the system that Rodong Sinmun exists to promote.
The North Korean media seem to be betting on the notion that the people there value stability over liberty—the photographs are supposedly a demonstration of the “chaos” that has overtaken South Korea. Of course, many tyrants have made similar gambits, to disastrous effect. In the end, people often chose uncertain freedoms over the predictability of tyranny.
