A South Korean reality show seeks to set up local men with North Korean women as part of an effort to further unify the two countries, Newsweek noted in a report Monday.
The show, titled Love Unification: Southern Man, Northern Woman, sets up local South Korean Korean men with female refugees from the North in what producers claim will help increase mutual understanding and inter-Korean relations, as well as an opportunity to move away from the bleak reality of North Korean life. The show often involves the men teaching their match about the differences about life in a wealthy and developed democracy such as South Korea.
Some critics reportedly accuse producers of following a trend known as “Defector TV,” where the stories of North Korean escapees are routinely shown on television describing their harrowing experiences of life under the North’s rogue communist regime.
They claim that this latest show is misrepresentation, sensationalism, and sexist stereotyping, whose proverbial title Nam Nam Buk Nyo plays to the long-held idea that South Korean men and North Korean women are more attractive than their geographical counterparts.
“The concern is that such a caricatured, immature and objectified image of these women is then extended to all North Korean defectors and the North Korean population in general,” Park Hyun-sun, a sociology professor at Ewha Womans University told Al Jazeera. “So South Koreans may end up looking down on North Koreans or thinking ‘We can treat them carelessly.'”
A North Korean defector woman, Kim Eun-seo, and her South Korean husband founded a matchmaking service with the same name – Nam Nam Buk Nyo – after having the idea in 2006 and finding significant demand for their help even among friends and acquaintances. As of 2013, Kim’s company had united over 400 couples.
The trend of programming following this pattern began in 2011 with the launching of a program featuring North Korean defectors that was reportedly part talk show, part talent show, and beauty contest.
Other shows reportedly push defectors into embellishing the details of their former lives for entertainment purposes, something which advocacy and human rights groups said undermined their efforts. However, such work often proves lucrative for North Korean defectors, most of whom struggle to earn a decent living after arriving in the South.
“I don’t blame these TV shows because they are telling people about North Korea and providing critical insight,” Kim Young-soon, a survivor of North Korea’s notorious Yodok prison camp, told Reuters. But I hate it when they make North Korea look like a place where only weird animals live.”
Last year, the number of North Koreans residing in South Korea fell to a record low of 31,339, with around 83 percent of those being female.
The two countries have grown closer over the past year, amid the beginning of peace negotiations by South Korea’s leftist President Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un’s communist regime, with some people hopeful the two countries may one day be fully reunited. On Tuesday, Seoul announced that the North had blown up ten of its front-line guard posts along the country’s border in a bid to further reduce tensions between the two countries.
Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.
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