Government Censorship In North Korea

One of the many reasons why government censorship is so highly overlooked is because people are taught to trust solely in what they read. This is due to the fact that in some countries, there is only one newspaper, one news station, or even one branch of internet. In North Korea there is only one newspaper, Rodong Sinmun. The newspaper is run by the state, meaning that the only material published is approved by the communist party or even Kim Jong Un himself. Fake news is not a question in North Korea. The citizens of the country have full faith that what they are reading is accurate and done so for the best interest of the communist party. Additionally, Kim Jong Un has created a North Korean intranet that is completely monitored. Unlike the

This contradicts the argument that it is impossible to combat the internet and its highway of information. World leaders such as Kim Jong Un has easily bypassed the internet obstacles and managed to promote a wealthy line of cell phones at the same time, all while keeping up a front of technological ingenuity. Another country fighting the battle with internet is China. As a matter of fact, “Of three billion internet users in the world, 22 percent live in China...An estimated two million censors police the [Chinese] internet...yet...76 percent of Chinese questioned said they felt free from government surveillance...the highest rate of the 17 countries polled” (Bennett 1). This shows that not only do a large amount of internet censors exist within Chinese internet, but also that more than three quarters of the population don’t question what information they are being told, nor are they bothered by what they are missing. After all, trust and loyalty are what censorship hopes to create within the

A mix between translation errors and being required to cut out information regarded as inappropriate causes a wide range of foreign works to be misinterpreted. Translation errors can be easily caught. Instead, it is the demand to censor that begins to create issues. In China, there are many publication business employees that are forced to censor specific material or otherwise risk losing their job or even having their businesses closed. Certain topics that must be censored can include political content, sexual content, LGBT content, or anything criticizing of Chinese communist authority. Chinese publishers have even admitted that historical facts are often revised. Writer Tsering Woeser, a Beijing-based Tibetan dissident poet, says “the greatest danger with censorship is the deletion of history or the perpetuation of false histories” (Oleson 23). Without content that allows essential topics to be discussed, the citizens of China remain uneducated and further sheltered. Additionally, due to drastic revisions some authors refuse to even let their books be published further diminishing the reading pool of foreign opinions. For instance, Evan Osnos is an american writer who studied China for eight years in order to write Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in New China. When Osnos wanted to