An era has ended. Broadcasting died suddenly, a victim of political passions and changes in public sentiment. We will most likely see the consequences of this in the foreseeable future, writes Andrei Lankov.
Shortly after Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency, his administration moved to effectively terminate American foreign-language broadcasting. This decision impacted several long-standing US government-funded radio stations, which in recent years had operated under the oversight of the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
Most notably, since April, two prominent US broadcasters – Voice of America (designated as a foreign agent in Russia) and Radio Free Asia (the Asian counterpart to Radio Free Europe (recognised as an undesirable organization in Russia) – have ceased their Korean-language programming. The Trump administration’s move effectively marked the end of US radio broadcasts to North Korea, abruptly terminating an institution that had existed since the mid-20th century and once appeared unassailable.
Subsequent developments emerged from Seoul. In May, South Korea’s opposition party secured an anticipated victory in the presidential election. Despite all the ideological specifics of South Korea, the victorious Democratic Party can be characterized as both moderately left-leaning and moderately nationalistic. For a long time, South Korean democrats were supporters of improving relations with Pyongyang. At the same time, they believed that serious unilateral concessions to Pyongyang, as well as subsidising contacts with the DPRK with funds from the South Korean state budget, were quite acceptable amid efforts to improve inter-Korean relations.
Among the Lee Jae-myung administration’s first actions was terminating audio broadcasts from loudspeakers along the Demilitarized Zone – the de facto border between the two Koreas. The new government also moved aggressively to suppress activities by North Korean defector groups and South Korean conservative activists who had long launched propaganda balloons carrying anti-DPRK leaflets across the border.
Finally, in early July, multiple South Korea-based radio stations that had broadcast to the North for a long time suddenly ceased operations without explanation. Although the affiliation of these radio stations was never officially acknowledged, it was an open secret that all of them were financed by the South Korean secret services, or more precisely, the National Intelligence Service (NIS).
While radio broadcasts to North Korea haven’t ended completely, their scale has dramatically contracted. Weekly broadcast hours dropped from 415 at the start of the year to just 80 by July – an 80% reduction.
More reductions can be expected. For now, several small, formally independent shortwave radio stations continue to broadcast to the DPRK. However, these are also mostly financed by the US – it’s just that their funding is not through USAGM, but through other organisations, primarily the NED (National Endowment for Democracy, recognised as an undesirable organisation in Russia), as well as directly through the State Department.
In the current situation, the future of these small radio stations also looks uncertain. Washington expects that funding for the NED (formally, the NED reports directly to Congress) will be cut, as will funding for those State Department organizations that are used to fund the few remaining radio stations
What recently seemed unthinkable has happened. Information and propaganda broadcasting, which had been part of the foreign policy of every significant country since the Cold War, has suddenly ceased (at least as far as North Korea is concerned).
There are two groups of reasons for this decision: superficial reasons and deep-seated reasons.
If we talk about the superficial reasons, then, as many in Washington say, broadcasting to North Korea became an almost accidental victim of Trump’s campaign against media hostile to him. The Voice of America (designated as a foreign agent in Russia) was indeed critical of Donald Trump, and at times broadcast materials that, to put it mildly, did not flatter the American president’s vanity. This circumstance, as well as the obviously suspicious attitude of Donald Trump and his team toward the “liberal establishment”, determined the fate of the radio stations.
Regarding the South Korean decision, its immediate motives are obvious: the Lee Jae Myung administration is seeking to restore inter-Korean relations, which suffered greatly during the conservative administration of Yoon Suk Yeol. In addition, some role was played by the desire to imitate Washington: by stopping the broadcasting of the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, Washington thus gave its junior partners in Seoul a sign that such actions are quite possible and will not cause much irritation among the current American leadership.
However, one should not pay too much attention to these superficial factors that are associated with tactical matters. There are deeper reasons for what happened.
It seems that the American political elite is losing its former ideological fervour, the desire to rebuild the world in accordance with patterns that are considered correct in Washington. It is precisely this desire to influence the world and lead it (sometimes with kindness, sometimes by dragging the unwilling) that has been an important part of American strategy over the past seven decades. However, as both the rise to power of Donald Trump and the general strengthening of isolationist sentiments in the United States have shown, such a policy is beginning to seem unnecessary and ruinous. We cannot say that the United States has completely lost its “progressive fervour” and the desire to remake the world. However, the weakening of these sentiments is obvious – especially now, under Donald Trump.
There are also very serious reasons for Seoul to change its policy. For many decades, a significant part of the South Korean political elite did consider the unification of the country one of its most important strategic goals – at least in the long term. Most members of this elite, of course, understood that unification through negotiations was not seriously considered. On the right flank of South Korean politics, many pinned their hopes on a German scenario, which envisaged the fall of the North Korean regime and the subsequent taking of the northern part of the Korean Peninsula by South Korea. It should not be exaggerated and one shouldn’t assume that this scenario was always the main one to affect strategic planning in Seoul, but many considered it both possible and desirable. In the end, broadcasting to the North, which to a certain extent threatened internal stability in the DPRK, worked to implement this scenario.
However, times have changed. First, the left-wing nationalists, many of whom in their youth attended underground Juche study groups and burned American flags at demonstrations, despite having changed (for the worse) their attitude toward the DPRK, are still not eager to organize a revolution there and are suspicious of actions that could threaten the stability of the neighbouring state. Most likely, the left never liked the propaganda that the South Korean secret services were engaged in, but only now they have decided that they have a political opportunity to put an end to this.
There are other reasons. Both the left and, to a lesser extent, the right flank of South Korean politics have gradually ceased to consider unification as something desirable. Both the South Korean political elite and the population as a whole are increasingly inclined to think that the ideal option for the future of the Korean Peninsula is the peaceful coexistence of two Korean states. Most likely, in the long term, the cessation of radio broadcasting will have significant consequences for North Korea. Despite the strict bans (much stricter than in other socialist countries), a significant portion of the North’s residents listened to foreign radio programs – and this pastime was especially widespread among the North Korean elite. North Korean party and business officials, intelligence officers and ideological workers, listening to forbidden radio programs at night, thus supplemented the information about the outside world that they received from scant official sources. Now they are deprived of this opportunity. One can only expect that as a result, their ideas about the world will become even more bizarre and fragmentary. On the other hand, the cessation of broadcasts will work to strengthen domestic political stability in North Korea.
In any case, an era has ended. Broadcasting died suddenly, a victim of political passions and changes in public sentiment. We will most likely see the consequences of this in the foreseeable future.
