Easing of censorship allows South Koreans a firsthand look at North’s propaganda

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Easing of censorship allows South Koreans a firsthand look at North’s propaganda

Published: 10 Feb. 2026, 07:00 Updated: 10 Feb. 2026, 13:00

MICHAEL LEE
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

A man picks up a copy of the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, at the National Assembly Library in Yeouido, western Seoul, on Jan. 7. [YONHAP]

For 59-year-old North Korean physician and defector Han Hyeon-yeong, the Rodong Sinmun — the official newspaper of Pyongyang’s ruling Workers’ Party — was a marker of her family’s politically privileged status during her childhood.

As a local party official, her father was entitled to regular deliveries of the paper. “That signified that we were of a certain class when I was a young girl,” she recalled, adding that she began reading its editorials regularly from the age of five to improve her literacy.

But for ordinary North Koreans, Han said, the Rodong Sinmun was often unavailable — as it was for most South Koreans until recently.

For decades, North Korean publications were classified as “special materials” and " enemy propaganda" under South Korea’s National Security Law. As a result, only institutions or individuals who completed formal screening procedures could read the Rodong Sinmun.

That changed in late December, when the South Korean Ministry of Unification announced that physical copies of the Rodong Sinmun would be reclassified as “general material,” allowing ordinary citizens to read the paper without prior approval.

The decision followed a policy review and public remarks by President Lee Jae Myung, who criticized restrictions on access as underestimating the public’s ability to judge North Korean information independently.

The changes mean that ordinary South Koreans can now read North Korean propaganda without going through the onerous process of obtaining official permission — and see firsthand how Pyongyang tries to shape the worldview of one of the world’s most isolated populations.

Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Nam-jung announces the easing of restrictions on viewing physical copies of the Rodong Sinmun during a press briefing at the government complex in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Dec. 30, 2025. [YONHAP]

Arguments for relaxing censorship

Although conservatives in Seoul have warned that loosening access to Pyongyang’s propaganda could allow pro-North Korean ideology to permeate South Korean society, experts believe such fears are exaggerated.

Lee Sung-yoon, a principal fellow at the Sejong Institute’s Center for Korean Peninsula Strategy, said the policy shift “doesn’t change much in practice,” citing “widespread apathy toward North Korean affairs” among South Koreans.

The South Korean government still blocks dozens of North Korean websites, including those operated by the Rodong Sinmun and the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). Lee notes, however, that experts and others who require access for professional purposes have long been able to circumvent such obstacles through virtual private networks.

In its December announcement, the Unification Ministry said it would further seek to ease access to these websites, citing confidence in South Koreans’ ability to critically assess such content without censorship.

In the meantime, Seoul’s reclassification of the Rodong Sinmun has made casual perusal possible — if still quite restricted.

Physical copies of the paper are available at only about 20 institutions nationwide, including the Information Center of North Korea on the fifth floor of the National Library and the Unification Ministry’s own North Korea Resource Center.

According to library staff, the newspapers are imported via third countries and often delayed by customs procedures. The center typically receives one to two weeks’ worth of issues at a time, meaning even the most recent copies are usually outdated.

Photography is prohibited, though staff at the National Library say there is little demand among visitors to view the Rodong Sinmun or the four other North Korean publications fixed to dedicated reading desks. “Most readers are researchers,” one employee said.

Digital access also remains limited for those seeking more recent editions. Older issues can be viewed through the library’s digitized archives, but only up to the end of 2024 and only on computers inside the building.

Under these conditions, this reporter read the Jan. 5 edition of the Rodong Sinmun, the most recent printed version available at the National Library on Feb. 3. Bound to a desk along with copies of the Jan. 1 to 4 editions, the issue offers a concentrated example of how the Workers’ Party presents itself, conveys leadership directives and portrays the outside world.

In this photo released by the Rodong Sinmun on Jan. 5, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, right, walks down a road near the site of what the newspaper described as a "hypersonic missile launch test" that took place the previous day. [NEWS1]

The ever-present leader and party

For a publication that functions as North Korea’s newspaper of record, the Rodong Sinmun is brief. Each issue runs six pages, with color photographs limited to the front page. On Jan. 5, that page was dominated by coverage of a hypersonic missile test conducted the day before.

While the article includes technical details that may interest foreign analysts, nearly half its text is devoted to remarks by leader Kim Jong-un. His name appears in a distinctive font throughout the paper, and his words are visually separated using double brackets and a different typeface.

Photographs further reinforce his prominence, showing him walking with senior generals, observing the launch, watching the arc of the missile’s plume and pointing at a map of the target area.

Readers seeking insight into the daily lives of North Koreans will find little of it — not only on the front page, but throughout the Rodong Sinmun, where nearly all articles serve to “reinforce the authority and benevolence of the Workers’ Party and its leader,” according to Lee.

A copy of the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, is on display at the National Library in Seocho District, southern Seoul, on Jan. 7. [YONHAP]

Almost every report includes a quote attributed to Kim before describing how local organizations are implementing his instructions. Advertisements are entirely absent, underscoring the paper’s role as an instrument of ideology rather than a source of civic or commercial information.

In a story on the party committee in Rason, officials are described as inspecting newly built and renovated facilities, including a university electronic library, to “ensure flawless operation.” These inspections are framed as practical applications of Kim’s assertion that “policies for the benefit of future generations are the Workers’ Party’s highest and permanent priority.”

Likewise, an editorial occupying all of page 2 declares Kim a “great leader” who embodies the Workers’ Party’s “absolute dignity and ruling authority.”

The editorial claims other socialist parties “disappeared into history” after “abandoning their founding principles,” and attributes the longevity of the North Korean Workers’ Party to its “singular ideology” and “unitary leadership.” Without irony, the authors contrast the party with “bourgeois” political organizations elsewhere, accusing them of masking “corruption and dictatorship” behind the language of democracy.

Lee said the paper is primarily aimed at domestic readers, unlike the KCNA, which he described as more outward facing. He cautioned, however, against viewing the Rodong Sinmun as a “one-dimensional party mouthpiece.”

“While its ritualized praise of the regime’s leadership can seem laughable, the paper does offer clues about policy direction if one reads carefully,” he said.

He noted that one of the most noticeable changes in the paper’s editorial lineup over the past decade has been the appearance of statements issued under the name of Kim Yo-jong, Kim’s powerful sister. These are closely scrutinized by South Korean officials for hints about Pyongyang’s next steps.

In this photo carried by the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North's ruling Workers' Party, on Jan. 5, residents of Jonchon and Chosan counties in Ryanggang Province celebrate the completion of new housing. [NEWS1]

‘Constant exhortations’

While domestic developments do appear in the Rodong Sinmun, they are usually framed in positive forms that double as moral instruction.

The top story on page 3 reports on the completion of new housing in Ryanggang Province, described as “modest yet modern” and emblematic of “rural civilization in our own style.” The project is attributed to Kim’s desire to make North Koreans “the happiest people in the world,” while workers are praised for “faithfully implementing party policy at every stage.”

Human interest stories reinforce the same message. An article titled “Let’s learn from the life values of socialist workers” holds up a locomotive engineer’s efforts to keep trains operational during the 1990s famine — known as the Arduous March — as a model of socialist virtue.

Han, who defected in 2009, said such stories became less credible as she grew older.

“Achievements were almost always exaggerated,” she recalled, citing stories about officials praised for keeping factories running despite shortages — only for people to later discover that they were unable to help in practice.

Such articles — which Lee described as “constant exhortations” to North Koreans to “sacrifice themselves to the regime for less pay and less food” — largely go unread by ordinary people, who are “too busy trying to make ends meet,” according to Han.

On the rare occasions when the paper mentions negative events, it does so “in passing to highlight regime triumphs or to deflect blame for policy failures onto lower-level officials,” Lee said.

North Korean commuters look at a copy of the front page of the Rodong Sinmun at Jonsung Station in Pyongyang on March 25, 2022. [AP/YONHAP]

Warnings of a dangerous world

Although Han noted that most North Koreans — especially younger generations — have little interest in reading the Rodong Sinmun, she said the exception is the international news section confined to the bottom half of the sixth and final page.

Even there, coverage of world events is almost exclusively focused on war, crime, social disorder and natural disasters.

In the Jan. 5 edition, Israel features prominently as an aggressor. One article on Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon warns that the “actions of Zionists risk escalating regional tensions,” while a photo caption depicts residents of the Gaza Strip struggling to survive in makeshift tents.

The United States appears primarily as a destabilizing force operating behind the scenes. In its coverage of protests in Iran, the paper relays remarks by Tehran’s foreign minister condemning “U.S. interference in internal affairs” and accuses the U.S. president of encouraging “impure elements” to undermine Iran’s social stability.

The international section also briefly describes knife attacks, shootings and armed assaults in Australia, Canada and several European countries, grouping them as evidence of social decay due to the “law of the jungle” governing these societies. “In the West, the strong prey on the weak,” the writer opines.

Natural disasters, including a drought in Brazil and an earthquake in Mexico, are presented with little context.

According to Han, it eventually dawned on her and most of her acquaintances that the negative portrayal of world events “was aimed at flattering the regime.”

She attributed her decision to escape North Korea to “word-of-mouth from people who had crossed the border into China that South Korea was much better off than we had been told.”

Lee said the regime is adept at “taking real news and assembling a believable narrative of rampant crime, drug use, racism and misery abroad” to convince its isolated people that the outside world is even worse off than they are.

BY MICHAEL LEE [[email protected]]