How the USB Taught North Korea to Love K-Pop

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets four members of the K-pop group Red Velvet and other South Korean music artists. Credit: KCNA A seemingly cheap and ordinary technology may have paved the way for a cultural exchange breakthrough that saw South Korean K-pop idols receive an unprecedented welcome from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. It was not the first time that democratic South Korea has sent music acts to North Korea as part of diplomatic overtures to the authoritarian regime. In 1999, two pioneering K-pop groups, including the girl group Fin.K.L. and the boy band Sechskies, performed in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. In 2003, a similar K-pop outreach concert featuring the K-pop boy band Shinhwa and the girl group Baby V.O.X. met with a fairly lukewarm reception from a blank-faced North Korean crowd. But this year's K-pop delegation received a standing ovation from a North Korean audience that included Kim Jong Un, whose presence at the April 1 concert marked the first time a North Korean leader has ever attended a South Korean performance in Pyongyang. For much of its existence, North Korea has closed itself off to the outside world through its militarized borders and government censorship efforts that have included arbitrary severe punishment for people caught possessing banned foreign material such as South Korean TV dramas or K-pop music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gliwvv8L8Uo One factor that could explain some of the difference in reception between the 2003 visit and the 2018 K-pop concert success in Pyongyang is a technological shift that has swept through North Korea. It's not based on any technology that most people would consider extraordinary, and yet it has probably had a profound impact on North Korea's relatively isolated society where the government tries to control all sources of information accessible through TV, radio or the country's limited Internet service.