• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.40
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• pp.287-320
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• 2007

This study was to look into the press policy and the related activities performed by North Korea in the South during the Korean War and to evaluate them. In order to understand the concrete contents of the activities and their characteristics, the two representative newspapers published in the South by North Korea at that times - the Chosuninmin Bo and the Haebang Ilbo - were reviewed and analyzed. North Korea operated broadcasting and started newspapers just after the possession of Seoul. and also performed various positive press activities - such as the distribution of the newspapers and periodicals of North Korea and U.S.S.R., putting the movies on the screen, and founding the weekly, etc. But the target of all the media were the same. It aimed to support Kim Il-Sung's scheme which intended to carry out the war successfully and to make the South under occupation Communism System by introducing the Northern law and system. The two newspapers, as agent of power, made only such a role to agitate and exaggerate the false things with unrealistic optimism. They intended to ideologically mobilize the South people and to affect on their perspectives and acts. However the media including the two newspapers being operated in the South during the war had not got the faith or the good response from the South people as an audience. Most of South Koreans were tired with their endless and one-sided propaganda, agitation and ideological enlightenment. It could therefore be evaluated that the press activities by North Korea in the South during the Korean War resulted with many limitations in ideologically organizing and mobilizing the South Koreans.