SOUTH KOREAN POP CULTURE FLOWING TO NORTH KOREANS: PATHS AND FORWARD-LOOKING DISCOURSE FROM THE SOVIET ESTONIANS WATCHING FINNISH TV
How exactly will the cumulative viewing of South Korean visual media by North Koreans reveal its potential? To address this question, this study examines the case of Estonia, a successful post-Soviet country and a parallel to the Korean Peninsula, looking back at times when Finnish TV and radio had become accessible in Tallinn, northern Estonia, from the early 1960s during the Soviet period. The method of this study is divided into two parts. The first part comprises a content analysis of previous studies related to the time-period-related dissemination of South Korean pop culture in North Korea, focused on visual media since the 2000s. The second part contains in-depth interviews with 20 Estonians, who had watched Finnish TV during the Soviet period to assess how these cumulative views function identified within North Korea and in the course of interKorean exchanges and cooperation.
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