North Koreans ‘secretly enjoying access to foreign DVDs’: study

Pyongyang -  North Koreans are secretly watching on foreign media through DVDs and radio, a new study has revealed.

The report commissioned by the US State Department claimed that although North Korea remains one of the world's most closed nations, and its people cut-off from the outside world for decades, but now the people "are beginning to look more critically" at their government.

According to The Telegraph, the study said that the communist regime's ultra-rigid controls began to deteriorate during the famine in the 1990s and North Koreans "today have significantly greater accesses to outside information" than they did 20 years ago.

The report showed in a survey of 250 North Korean refugees and overseas travelers in 2010, about a 48 percent claimed to have watched foreign DVDs while inside the country, which was up from just 20 percent two years ago.

However, the study found that DVDs had less influence on how North Koreans viewed the United States, which remained ‘too foreign to comprehend’.

The report also found a consistent audience for foreign radio, with elites looking for outside sources of news and less-educated North Koreans preferring to tune in to music or cultural programs.