Josh Smith -
As two typhoons hammered North Korea within a week of each other, state media broadcasts looked unusually reminiscent of international TV coverage, with correspondents standing knee-deep in floodwaters to provide rare, nearly real-time reports.
Thursday’s broadcasts were the latest example of a national media that is slowly evolving in the face of more competition from international media that seep into the isolated country, analysts said.
In unprecedented overnight broadcasts, correspondents and anchors were shown at locations around the country, shouting the latest developments while being lashed with wind and rain.
The format offered seemingly unscripted moments rarely seen on the Korean Central Television, including one rain-drenched reporter brushing off attempts by a man trying to hand him an umbrella in the middle of a report.
“It’s surprisingly fast and honest public service reporting from KCTV unlike anything we’ve seen before,” said Martyn Williams, a researcher at 38 North, a US-based think-tank that monitors North Korea.
The coverage is almost certainly part of a top-down response to leader Kim Jong Un’s recent call last week for more efforts to prevent damage from the typhoons, Williams added.
“The layers of censorship and approval needed are too complex to do this without pretty high-up approval,” he said.
EVOLVING MEDIA
The coverage reflects Kim’s policy of greater transparency and resolving issues head-on, rather than trying to hide them, said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a former North Korea open source intelligence analyst in the US government.
“Damage from natural disasters has always been a highly sensitive topic for North Korean state media, and showing near-real-time news reports from flood sites on state TV was unthinkable,” she said.
Since the early days of Kim’s rule, North Korean TV has experimented with various stylistic and formatting changes, ranging from bringing in a younger generation of TV news anchors, to showing more graphics during newscasts, to emulating South Korean entertainment shows, Lee said.
“Kim Jong Un seems to have realised early on that KCTV needed to keep up with the times to compete with the influx of South Korean and foreign media and entertainment content, and that explains KCTV modernisation efforts,” she said. — Reuters
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