As new technology enters our everyday lives, there is usually a predictable paranoia about how a government and other sinister forces could use technology to repress the citizens. In America there is currently a backlash against the new body scanners being used in airports by the TSA. Similar backlashes and concerns for privacy have occurred due to the growing use of CCTV in the United Kingdom and in many countries (including Australia) whenever the government considers introducing a universal identification card for its citizens. The paranoia is understandable, but although privacy and civil liberties should always be a concern, the technology that causes such concerns may have more advantages at freeing information and keeping governments honest and accountable.

Last week when the most direct fighting broke out between North Korean and South Korean troops since the ceasefire in 1953 it wasn’t hard to notice that the way we were seeing the fighting being reported was different than it had ever been before. Unlike previous skirmishes we were not limited to waiting until after a conflict had occurred and reading or hearing a summary the next day in the newspaper or on the 6pm news bulletin. A combination of fast internet and social media was telling us what was happening on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong in real time. On twitter helpful volunteers translated Korean to English faster than any news service and gave anyone interested an almost instantaneous view of what was happening as it was happening.

This is effecting governments in how they control the flow of information. Going back even as recent as ten years ago a similar incident of cross border fighting would have been dissected through official military liaisons to the media, giving governments an upper hand in how these incidents are reported. But now with the almost complete democratisation of information thanks to technology, the government can still try and influence how events are reported, but they are only one voice among many. The South Korean defence minister experienced this first hand, as pressure and criticism from the delay in returning fire on North Korean forces and the decision not to call in an air strike, he was forced to resign from his position a mere two days after the incident. Although social media didn’t cost Kim Tae-young his job, it did greatly increase the speed and wealth of information getting out that led to his resignation. This is a far cry from the time when the United States led a bombing campaign against Cambodia a secret from its citizens as recently as 1969. Keeping such a thing a secret is almost impossibility today in our hyper-connected world, and this leads to faster and more accurate criticism from an informed populace.

North Korea is one of the most repressive countries on the planet. Almost everything its citizens know about the outside world comes from official government sources. Its government goes to great lengths to keep any news coming from outside well beyond the reach of its citizens, less it undermine the official government line that North Korea is an idealised paradise that is the envy of the world, or that Kim Jong Il is some sort of demigod who scored 11 holes in 1 on his first game of golf, and that he doesn’t urinate or defecate.

The government issues radios that are hard tuned to government broadcasts and conducts random checks on its citizens to ensure that tech savvy individuals haven’t figured out how to tune into South Korean radio. There is no internet access for the average North Korean and due to the technological backwardness of the country the government has done an effective job in making sure that its citizens are largely ignorant of the outside world.

Slowly however, even in Stalinist North Korea this is changing, but not due to any position of its government but controlling the flow of information is becoming impossibility due to today’s technology. North Koreans who have escaped to South Korea in recent years have told that smuggled video cassettes, DVD’s, USB sticks and mp3 players have become more common in recent years. All of these pirated music, movies and other information may not seem important, but in a country where the only role of art is to glorify the state and the leader anything from outside can show North Koreans that the outside world is happier, healthier and richer than them. It can help break the illusion that the government tries to maintain.

A hacked North Korean radio that can pick up outside broadcasts may be too hard to hide for a North Korean citizen that is terrified of its government. A smuggled USB stick however could contain the complete works of Shakespeare, the deceleration of independence and thousands of other key texts and all in one small form that can easily be hidden from government authorities. In another 10 or 20 years technological change in how we pass on information could have improved in ways that we can’t currently imagine. Whilst I don’t think usb sticks and laptops alone can bring down the North Korean government, it may make it much harder for the government to be as repressive as it is with a more informed populace thanks to modern technology.

Wouldn’t it be an amazing thing if five years from now cheap and superfast and dirt cheap handheld computers the size of an iPhone smuggled from China are easily found in the North Korean black market, and with this they could get a clearer view of the outside world and the true horrors of their oppressive regime? With this device there would be enough space to store virtual libraries, newspaper archives (as well as pirated movies and music) as well as pick up South Korean radio and television broadcasts. Wishful thinking maybe, but thanks to technology and globalisation it isn’t science fiction and it could change the lives of the North Korean people and be a catalyst of change in the direction of the country.

Tags: north korea, technology, teh internet