S.K. pop songs aired though loudspeakers sway N.K. soldiers’ minds across border

Songs by South Korean singers IU, Big Bang, and Girls’ Generation effectively constitute lethal weapons to North Korean soldiers, new analysis suggests.

Researcher Park Joo-hwa at the unification policy research center under the Korea Institute of National Unification made this claim on Sunday in a report titled “Psychological effect on North Korea of South Korea’s propaganda broadcast through loudspeakers," part of an online report series. Park paid attention to the fact that music stimulates secretion of a neuro transmitter called "dopamine," which is related to the sense of joy and addition. If North Korean soldiers repeatedly hear songs through loudspeakers from South Korea, it will increase secretion of dopamine in their brain, and come to feel joy, the report suggests.

In the process, Park claimed North Korean soldiers come to experience "cognitive incompatibility," which means that they experience incompatibility between thought and behaviors as they sing along IU’s songs regardless of their feelings toward South Korea. Psychological knowledge suggests that human beings try to synchronize thought and behaviors to address such incompatibility. As a result, Park claim North Korean soldiers will resolve internal incompatibility by changing their hostile attitude towards South Korean society into positive ones.

Park said such psychological shift could eventually change their attitude to North Korean society negatively as well. Response to South Korean songs among young North Korean soldiers who like such songs could bring about positive attitudes towards South Korea’s broadcasts through loudspeakers and South Korean society. South Korea resumed its propaganda broadcasts through loudspeakers for the first time in 11 years due to the North’s provocation with wooden box landmines in August, but halted it after the August 25 inter-Korean high-level contact.