Korea's Forbidden Soap Operas

North Korea’s Forbidden Love? Smuggled, Illegal Soap Operas

By CHOE SANG-HUN JAN. 24, 2015 NYT

SEOUL, South Korea — As a math professor in North Korea, Jang Se-yul was among the nation’s relatively privileged classes; he got to sit in special seats in restaurants and on crowded trains, and more important in a country where many go hungry, was given priority for government food rations. Then he risked it all — for a soap opera from South Korea.

The temptation in this case was “Scent of a Man,” an 18-episode drama about the forbidden love between an ex-convict and his stepsister. A graduate student had offered him the bundle of banned CDs smuggled into the North and, too curious to resist, Mr. Jang and five other professors huddled in one of their homes binge watching until dawn. They were careful to pull the curtains to escape the prying eyes of neighbors taught to turn in their fellow citizens for seditious activities. But they were caught anyway and demoted to manual labor at a power plant.