A South Korean man collects litter that washes up to the beaches from North Korea to understand what is happening there
Representation pic
When the waves bring trash onto the beaches of front-line South Korean islands, Kang Dong Wan can often be found hunting for what he calls his “treasure”—rubbish from North Korea that provides a peek into a place that’s shut down to most outsiders. “This can be very important material because we can learn what products are manufactured in North Korea and what goods people use there,” said Kang, 48, a professor at South Korea’s Dong-A University.
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He was forced to turn to the delicate information-gathering method because Covid-19 has made it much harder for outsiders to find out what’s going on inside North Korea, one of the world’s most cloistered nations even without pandemic-led border closures.
The variety, amount and increasing sophistication of the trash, he believes, confirms North Korean state media reports that leader Kim Jong Un is pushing for the production of various kinds of consumer goods and a bigger industrial design sector to meet the demands of his people and improve their livelihoods.
“Current North Korean residents are a generation of people who’ve come to realise what the market and economy are. Kim can’t win their support if he only suppresses and controls them while sticking to a nuclear development programme,” Kang said, adding, “He needs to show there are some changes in his era.”
Kang said he was amazed to see dozens of different kinds of colourful packaging materials, each for certain products like seasonings, ice cream bars, snack cakes and milk and yogurt products. Many carry a variety of graphic elements, cartoon characters and lettering fonts. Some still seem out of date by Western standards, and are apparent copycats of South Korean and Japanese designs.
Kang recently published a book based on his work titled, Picking up North Korean Trash on the Five West Sea Islands.
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