Fertile Group for Psy-Ops

What Ordinary North Koreans Think of Their Neighbours

If one is unfortunate enough to live as a hermit the risks of developing ideas and world-views that are far from reality are high.  The population of North Korea, the Hermit Kingdom, provide an example.  

Here are some of the myths that have developed in North Korea.

Now, what do North Koreans think of China?  I am not sure about what the North Korean government thinks of China.  But most ordinary North Koreans don't like China that much.  North Koreans know that China has a better economy than North Korea.  But North Koreans think Koreans are more civilized and cultured people, with better manners than the Chinese.  North Koreans have this notion that Chinese people take a bath only once a year, don't keep their houses clean, wear shoes inside their house and so on--for these reasons, North Koreans think Chinese are filthy and therefore, less civilized than Koreans.

While South Korea is a heavenly place to North Koreans, North Koreans wouldn't ever want to live in China.  Mot of the time, North Koreans think China is worse than North Korea.  In North Korea, one can find derogatory terms and racial slurs referring to the Chinese and Japanese.  But no derogatory terms about South Koreans exist in North Korea.

Among South Korea, China, and Japan, the North Korean government may hate the South the most.  But ordinary North Koreans?  They hate Japan the most, with China second only to Japan.  But oh boy, North Koreans love South Korea and its pop culture and want to live there!  [Daniel Tudor (ed.) Ask a North Korean: Defectors Talk About Their Lives Inside the World's Most Secretive Nation (Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2017), p. 121f.]

Knowing that the world-view of the Kim regime is radically divergent in some aspects from the world-view held by a large percentage of the general population is intriguing.  It should provide plenty of fertile ground for what the professionals once called psy-ops.