CONTEMPORARY "ALIEN" INVASION

The NAPSNET Daily Report (see here if you want to sign up for daily updates) includes a piece on the DPRK reaction to an American "Cultural Invasion." I thought the tone of the piece was in some ways consistent with the themes we discussed in class today about how Korea saw foreign ("alien") threats in the late late-19th century:

The Associated Press ("N. KOREA: U.S. WAGING CULTURAL INVASION", 2004-09-14) reported that the DPRK on Tuesday accused the US of sending midget radios and "impure" publications into the country to destroy the isolated communist state with "rotten imperialist reactionary culture." The DPRK government has reportedly tightened surveillance in recent months, out of fear that some of its hunger-stricken people were receiving smuggled tiny transistor radios capable of receiving outside news. Some US-based Korean groups seeking democratic change in the DPRK have attempted to send small radios carried by balloons into the DPRK. "The US imperialists are now bent on their moves to send midget radios and TV sets into (the DPRK) in an effort to break up the single-hearted unity there and degenerate and disintegrate it from within," the official newspaper Rodong Sinmun said. "Out of the same motive, the US imperialists are trying to send impure publications."

plus ca change ...