As North Korean leader Kim Jong Un struggles to cope with devastating floods in his country, his recent brash words have exposed his fear of South Korean influence over his people, analysts in Seoul said.
During a visit to a flood-stricken area last week, Kim slammed South Korean news reports about the flooding, claiming media outlets were producing fake news stories about the damage and death toll.
Kim accused the South Korean media of spreading false rumors, calling news reports "conspiracy propaganda" and "blasphemy" from "the country of waste." The South's media had reported that an estimated 1,500 people were dead or missing after the flooding, citing unnamed South Korean government officials.
While Kim often engages in bellicose rhetoric, his direct criticism of South Korean media stood out as rare. His sister, Kim Yo Jong, has often taken the role of verbally attacking the country's southern neighbor.
Anxiety over outside influence
Some analysts said Kim's denunciation of the South Korean media was spurred by his anxiety over North Koreans' greater access to outside information.
Cho Han-bum, a senior research fellow at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, told VOA Korean on Tuesday that thanks to modern technology, North Korean people receive information from the outside world more easily today.
According to Cho, there are around 34,000 North Korean defectors in South Korea these days. This is a 23.6% increase from the end of 2014, when there were 27,500, data from South Korea's Unification Ministry show.
"Many of them manage to talk frequently with their families in North Korea over the phone," Cho said. "The information from South Korea tends to spread faster through the intranet within North Korea, even though the internet connected to the outside world is blocked."
North Korean authorities are having more difficulty controlling the flow of information now than they did in the past, Cho added.
Nam Sung-wook, professor of North Korean studies at Korea University in Seoul, said the reopening of the North's border with China in the post-COVID-19 era has allowed more information to enter what is often called the "Hermit Kingdom."
"Those who live near the Chinese border area should be able to get hold of the foreign news," Nam told VOA Korean in a phone call Tuesday. "They must be upset to find out the regime's incapability in dealing with the disaster, and the regime, on the other hand, is trying to contain such dissatisfaction."
South Korea has always been an easy target for the North Korean regime to frame as a source of fake news, Nam said. North Korea would be hesitant to blame China, its longtime benefactor, he said, although it is likely that some North Koreans have heard from the Chinese side across the border along the Yalu River about the flooding, which has affected both countries.
Cha Doo-hyun, a researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said Kim might fear that his incompetence would be highlighted if he accepted support from South Korea, which made an offer earlier this month that Kim rejected.
"For Kim, the news reports of the offers from other countries only underscore that the Kim regime doesn't have enough capacity to handle the situation," Cha told VOA Korean on the phone Tuesday. "And that is what makes Kim Jong Un respond to the South Korean media even more defiantly."
Refusal of aid
In his speech last week, Kim also stressed that North Korea would "pioneer its own path with its own strength and effort," while admitting that several countries and international institutions had offered to help the North.
Kim's remarks suggested that the regime would refuse to accept any support from outside.
Lim Eul-chul, associate professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Changwon, South Korea, told VOA Korean on the phone Tuesday that Kim is trying to discredit the South Korean media.
"Kim Jong Un has already defined a new relationship with South Korea and is seeking an internal unity while escalating animosity toward the South," Lim said. "He cannot receive the humanitarian aid proposed by South Korea in this situation, so I think Kim is using this South Korean media report as an excuse to lower expectations about the humanitarian aid that South Korea was willing to provide."
Lim added that Kim is exploiting the natural disaster to more broadly limit South Korean influence among North Korean people.
The South Korean government interpreted Kim's remarks about its nation's news media as his attempt to "minimize public sentiment turning against the regime" by pointing fingers outward.
North Korea is "shifting the subject of criticism to the outside," Koo Byoung-sam, a spokesperson at South Korea's Unification Ministry, told a press briefing earlier this month.
