South Korea will lift a decades-old ban on North Korean television, newspapers and other publications as part of efforts to promote mutual understanding between the two countries.
In a report sent to South Korea’s new president Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday, the Unification Ministry said that It will gradually open the door to the North’s press and television, to restore the Korean identity and prepare for a future unification of the peninsula.
Ministry officials said South Korea would begin allowing access to North Korean television broadcasts in a bid to encourage the Pyongyang regime to take similar steps. The ministry declined to provide further details, saying plans were still being discussed.
Divided by the most heavily fortified border in the world since 1948, the countries prohibit their citizens from visiting the rival’s territory, as well as exchanging phone calls, emails or letters, and block access to each other’s websites and television stations. one.
Jeon Young-sun, a professor at Konkuk University in Seoul, the South Korean capital, said the North is unlikely to respond because the flow of cultural content from South Korea would pose “a really huge threat” to the leadership. authoritarian Pyongyang.
Ruled by three generations of the Kim family since its founding in 1948, North Korea restricts citizens’ access to information from abroad.
In 2014, North Korean troops opened fire when activists from the South launched balloons with external disks containing information about the outside world and leaflets critical of the Kim family into the North.
Despite Pyongyang’s likely reluctance to reciprocate, Jeon Young-sun said South Korea needs to ease the ban because the restrictions have left foreigners dependent on intelligence gathering about the North, raising the danger that Seoul has a distorted image of North Korea.
Jeon said he believed the move would not promote pro-Pyongyang sentiments in the South.
Relations between the two Koreas remain tense due to the record number of missile tests carried out by the North this year: more than 20.
South Korea’s new president, Yoon Suk Yeol, a conservative, said he would take a tougher stance on Pyongyang, though he said he had “an ambitious plan” to improve the North’s economy if Kim Jong-un’s regime gives up. nuclear weapons.
Seoul and Washington believe that Pyongyang has been preparing for weeks to carry out the first nuclear test since 2017 and that its execution depends solely on an order from Kim Jong-un.
Source: Observadora
