Free Republic

Pyongyang Bids Korean Wave to Recede North Korean authorities are reportedly cracking down on DVDs of South Korean TV dramas and radios that can tune into South Korean broadcasts to stem the Korean pop culture wave that has belatedly hit the North. A source familiar with North Korean affairs on Wednesday said some 10 episodes of a 30-episode South Korean drama series are normally copied on a DVD in China and smuggled into North Korea. And these spread quickly among North Koreans via the black market. Many North Korean border guards or security officers charged with cracking down on the...

Illicit TV gives lie to Kim's paradise By Anna Fifield Published: November 21 2007 02:00 | Last updated: November 21 2007 02:00 At night, after hanging around doing little at work all day, Oh Man-bok would often go home and do what many television viewers around Asia do - switch on one of the South Korean -dramas that in recent years have swept across the region as part of a "Korean wave". But Mr Oh was watching them in North Korea, where Kim Jong-il has for years restricted access to outside information as part of his efforts to convince the...

Glamour at a price in Asia By Thomas Fuller International Herald Tribune TUESDAY, MAY 2, 2006 MAKHAM KHU, Thailand Neighbors gawk and children yell, "ghost!" The manager of the restaurant where Panya Boonchun worked simply told her she was fired. The cream that she applied to her face and neck was supposed to transform her into a white-skinned beauty, the kind she saw on page after page in women's magazines and on television. But rather than lighten her complexion, the illegally produced lotion she bought in a local grocery store near this village in southeastern Thailand disfigured her skin into...

June 28, 2005 Roll Over, Godzilla: Korea Rules By NORIMITSU ONISHI TAIPEI, Taiwan - Here in one of the first corners of Asia hit by the "Korean Wave" of cultural exports, a television series about a royal cook, "A Jewel in the Palace," proved so popular that it is now used to advertise South Korea on the Taipei subway. A huge hit in Mongolia, the drama also fueled a boom in tourists from Hong Kong visiting South Korea.A weepy love story, "Winter Sonata," became the rage in Uzbekistan after driving the Japanese into a frenzy last year. In Thailand and...