From Mickey Mouse to mayonnaise, Kim Jong Un opens North a crack

In an evident small-scale relaxing of North Korea’s rigid isolation, young leader Kim Jong Un is allowing new kinds of Western and American pop culture symbols to appear in his country, including Mickey Mouse and NBA stars like former Chicago Bulls forward Dennis Rodman – figures well known in the West, but not until recently in the North. The regime of Mr. Kim, who took over the family’s totalitarian dynasty from his late father two-year ago, is also curbing its harsh intolerance of high-tech gadgets and consumer goods, the possession of which could sometimes mean prison or worse. Despite crippling conditions in many places, Kim has expanded the availability of previously forbidden products to a broader swath of the nation’s elite and their offspring in urban areas – partly to placate new generations of Koreans and party to offer perks to regime loyalists the Kim needs support from.

After years of economic reforms and exchanges with the outside world, the government is no longer able to control its citizens’ minds in the old rigid fashion.

Zhang Yushan, North Korea expert at China’s Jilin Academy of Social Sciences

Digital cameras, credit cards, and cosmetics – the basics of Western and Chinese consumer culture — are now showing up in one of the world’s most ideologically rigid states, as witnessed in a recent tourist visit. Analysts say aid from and trade with neighboring China is a significant source of wealth and goods. The message if not the reality is that daily life is improving. The relaxation is significant partly since the idea of leisure time was officially disallowed under Kim Jong Il, whose famed “military-first policy” kept the nation on high alert in anticipation of a potential US or South Korean attack. How much a new consumer and entertainment oriented direction might upset the stability of the regime, is a subject of speculation.

Asia-Pacific