Mick Hartley

The Daily NK, back to the vexed issue of North Korean youth listening to South Korean music:

When a Ministry of State Security agent stopped a young man in a Hyesan alley in mid-February 2026 and demanded to know why he was listening to “rotten South Korean music,” he likely expected contrition. He did not get it. The man cited the lyrics back at him, word for word, and explained precisely why they resonated. The agent filed a report. The case went to the city party committee. A citywide ideological lecture followed.

The man in his 20s had been walking alone through a secluded alley in Hyesan, Ryanggang province, MP3 player running, when the Ministry of State Security (MSS) agent stopped him. The MSS serves as North Korea’s primary secret police and internal surveillance body, with broad authority to investigate and prosecute ideological offenses.

The song in question was “If You Ask Me What Love Is,” a ballad by South Korean singer Roy Kim. When the agent pressed him during interrogation, the man defended himself, telling the agent that a particular lyric, “being able to cherish this familiarity more than the first flutter of excitement,” reflected his own inner feelings so closely that he had sought it out deliberately. The agent, unsettled by the young man’s composure and candor, treated the incident as a serious ideological breach and reported it up the chain. The case eventually reached Hyesan’s party committee, the municipal-level organ of the Korean Workers’ Party charged with overseeing political and ideological discipline within the city.

The city party committee responded by directing the city’s Korean Youth League to organize a formal lecture on eliminating anti-socialist and non-socialist behavior. The Korean Youth League serves as the party’s primary instrument for ideological supervision of North Koreans between the ages of 14 and 30, with organizations present at every level of society, from national institutions down to individual workplaces, schools, and residential units. The lecture took place in early March 2026, according to a Daily NK source in Ryanggang province who reported the incident recently. 

The lecturer cited the arrest as evidence of a broader ideological crisis among North Korean youth. “This shows how gravely the minds of our youth are rotting away under the infiltration of reactionary ideological culture led by the enemy,” the lecturer said. “The fact that he projected his own feelings onto a single song lyric is proof that he placed personal emotion above the party’s ideology.”

The lecturer framed South Korean popular music not as a cultural preference but as a tool of ideological subversion. “Music is not something to be taken lightly,” he said. “South Korean lyrics are like a disease-carrying demon that corrupts the soul. Listening to South Korean music must be seen not merely as a preference, but as losing the battle against that demon. The selfish, individualistic sentiment embedded in those lyrics is destroying our youth’s collectivist spirit.”

He concluded by stating that the only legitimate forms of love North Korean youth should cultivate are “revolutionary love” and “comradely love,” and vowed to intensify ideological education to prevent what he called “unconventional romantic feelings” from taking root among the population.

“Unconventional romantic feelings”? So the only legitimate love a young North Korean can feel is for Kim Jong-un.

Just as the only culture in North Korea is Kim worship, the only permitted passion is for the Kim family. Has any other society ever approached this level of Orwellian control?

Unfortunately we don’t learn what happened to the defiant youth. Nothing good, no doubt. We hear of lengthy labour camp sentences in such cases: even execution.