North Korea leader warns of cultural invasion

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un has warned that a creeping “cultural invasion” is taking place in the country, local media reports.

Kim made the remarks at the closing ceremony of a conference for senior officials from the ruling Workers’ Party, official KCNA news agency reported on Wednesday.

People in North Korea have been isolated from the outside world; however, smuggled Chinese mobile phones allow people near the border to have contact with servers in China and make international calls.

Re-wired televisions also allow access to outside broadcasting, while smuggled DVDs, USB flash drivers and MP3 players provide people in North Korea with news and information.

“We must set up mosquito nets with two or three layers to prevent capitalist poison being persistently spread by enemies after sweeping across the border into our territory,” Kim said.

“We also have to take the initiative in foiling the imperialists’ plots for ideological and cultural invasion,” he added.

In January, a group of North Korean defectors now living in the South along with a group of American activists launched balloons carrying thousands of anti-Pyongyang leaflets and USB keys into North Korea.

The packages contained 1,500 USB flash drives loaded with the Korean-language version of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

The 500,000 leaflets in the packages were also accompanied with DVDs about human rights conditions in North Korea as well as some 50 tiny transistor radios.

Activists in South Korea regularly launch giant balloons loaded with propaganda leaflets, which Pyongyang has denounced as “an undisguised psychological warfare.”

North Korea accuses Washington of plotting with regional allies to topple the country’s government.