Via One Free Korea comes this news that the BBC may begin radio broadcasting into North Korea:
This is just asking for a caption contest!
The BBC is planning a new North Korea service to give the totalitarian state’s 25 million people an alternative to Kim Jong-un’s propaganda.
In a move that could plunge the corporation into confrontation with the North Korean dictator, the World Serviceis examining how to set up a special news channel that will get around Pyongyang’s ban on foreign media broadcasts.
The plan has echoes of Western broadcasts into the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War, when the BBC, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America all broadcasted to listeners behind the Iron Curtain.
However, it is likely to spark fury from Pyongyang’s volatile leadership, and could lead to the British embassy in Pyongyang being targeted for protests or being shut down altogether.
It could also put Britain in the firing line for North Korean-led cyberattacks, such as the one that targeted Sony Pictures last year over its film “The Interview”, which lampooned Kim Jong-un. [BBC]
You can read the rest at the link, but I have been a supporter of radio broadcasts into North Korea for years. Hopefully the BBC follows through with this, but according to One Free Korea they may be having second thoughts. So is the BBC being scared off by cyberattack threats?
