Op-Ed: Will South Korean soap operas bring democracy to the North?

A recent article confirmed to me something I was told about by a Special Forces sergeant major who once worked in Special Forces Detachment Korea. Today, people living in North Korea know what life is like in South Korea. In previous decades, North Koreans had been so brainwashed, they actually thought they were the lucky ones, living the good life while people in the South existed in squalor.

My contact related one story about a North Korean fisherman who was accidentally washed down river and by the time he emerged, discovered he was in South Korea. The South Koreans welcomed him, but the fisherman insisted he needed to be sent back home. He believed the lavish lifestyle he saw in the South was merely some type of trick, a propaganda ploy meant to deceive him. The South Koreans were shocked by this. The government even put him in a helicopter so he could see Seoul from the air with his own eyes, but he still didn’t believe it. In the end, it accommodated his request and sent him back to the North.