Sephia pictures from a dark place

The Washington Post has an article highlighting the first Instagram pictures sent from North Korea. They are being sent by Jean Lee, the Associated Press bureau chief in Pyongyang, a Monster Island favorite.

The picture in this post is supposedly the very first one ever to come out of the reclusive country, which only came about after North Korea decided to allow foreigners in North Korea to have 3G access.

Will this taste of social media change anything? Does it ever?

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Is AP's Pyongyang bureau finally getting around to reporting some less-than-flattering stuff?

Over at One Free Korea, Joshua is highly critical of the Associated Press's presence in the North Korean capital, largely because of whatever secret agreement may have been penned between the AP and the DPRK about what to report. In short, it sometimes seems as if AP and their correspondent Jean Lee are unwittingly (or wittingly) playing the role of propaganda cogs.

But there are occasionally AP stories from Pyongyang that paint that harsh reality, including this one on how the hate-on North Koreans (are supposed to) have for the United States starts early:

For North Koreans, the systematic indoctrination of anti-Americanism starts as early as kindergarten and is as much a part of the curriculum as learning to count.

Toy pistols, rifles and tanks sit lined up in neat rows on shelves. The school principal pulls out a dummy of an American soldier with a beaked nose and straw-colored hair and explains that the students beat him with batons or pelt him with stones — a favorite schoolyard game, she says.

For a moment, she is sheepish as she takes three journalists from The Associated Press, including an American, past the anti-U.S. posters. But Yun Song Sil is not shy about the message.

"Our children learn from an early age about the American bastards," she says, tossing off a phrase so common here that it is considered an acceptable way to refer to Americans.

North Korean students learn that their country has had two main enemies: the Japanese, who colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945, and the U.S., which fought against North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War.

They are told that North Korea's defense against outside forces — particularly the U.S., which has more than 28,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea — remains the backbone of the country's foreign policy.

And they are bred to seek revenge, even as their government professes to want peace with the United States.

"They tell their people there can be no reconciliation with the United States," says American scholar Brian Myers, who dissected North Korean propaganda in his 2010 book "The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters." ''They make it very clear to the masses that this hate will last forever."

I don't know, though, if it was Jean Lee who threw in the interview with Professor Myers (who, no offense, is a bit of a one-trick pony when it comes to North Korea; just what will he do when/if North Korea shifts or scraps its propaganda tactics?).

If North Korea's propaganda machine really is approving AP's copy, maybe Ms Lee was able to get away with this piece because it included the "new direction" they want the world to think the Pyongyang regime is taking:

In recent years, state propaganda has shifted away from the virulent anti-American slogans of the past and has instead emphasized building up the economy. On the streets of Pyongyang, anti-American posters have largely given way to images of soldiers in helmets and workers in factories.

But is this new propaganda message a smoke screen or an indication of at least one faction's hope for change? I'm not sure myself, but I'm also not so certain that the most vehement of Pyongyang's critics can even allow for the latter to be happening even if it really were.

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AP = acquiescence to Pyongyang?

Joshua Stanton of One Free Korea has been beating the drum about the Associated Press's accommodating news coverage of the DPRK in exchange for the right to have the first (and thus far only) Western news bureau in the Hermit Kim-dom, which he likens to The Onion. His recent post (first link above) was prompted by a series of tweets by Chico Harlan, the WaPo's Man on Pyongyang (see here, here, here, and here).

Jean Lee of AP Pyongyang
bureau (Twitter feed)

Frankly, I share Mr Stanton's disdain for the Pyongyang regime, even in the post-Kim Jong-il era, as well as his concern that AP is being used as a propaganda tool.

Having worked quite some time in news media, I may perhaps be a little more grounded in pragmatism than idealism. That means that, unlike Joshua, I do see some potential value in a major Western news service constantly having boots on the ground in North Korea, when/if some serious sh¡t goes down up north.

Even with a generally compliant media partner like AP seems to have been so far, it would be harder for Pyongyang to contain news and information about, say, a North Korean version of an Arab Spring, were that to occur. (And I think it may be coming.)

There are two other potential positives here. One is that AP has a chance to show regular North Koreans (or as regular as you can find in the North Korean capital where one must be a party loyalist) being regular North Koreans. It's humanizing, in a way that's an antidote to the way an entire country gets demonized if they have a leader whose the subject of angry political speeches or late-night comedians.

Second, I dare say there may even by a sort of Hawthorne Effect at work here, whereby the authorities kinda sorta behave better knowing that there are observers in their midst.

Ultimately it comes down to this: North Korea allows no one into its house unless they agree to play by their rules, not some froufrou "international norms" that everyone else abides by, and AP knows it. Perhaps they thought they could effect more positive change by doing it this way. For now, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but Jean Lee and her editors back in Washington should know we're watching them (meant in a watchdoggedly diligent way, not a creepy way).

Pyongyang's position leaves us with two choices: go along to get in the door, or stay locked outside. Although I wouldn't want Reuters, AFP, the NYT, WaPo, LAT, BBC, etc., etc. to all choose this path, methinks it might be good that at least one agency is inside the lion's den.

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