North Korean Policy Elites - Defense Technical Information Center

people from fully processing new information. In order of appearance, these filters are selective
exposure, selective attention, selective understanding, and selective remembering. 97 The more
committed an individual is to current beliefs, the “thicker” these filters will be. Consider how
they might work for a typical North Korean.
The Kim regime is highly selective about what information it allows its people to receive.
For the information that does make it through that first filter, selective attention is not likely to be
a significant second-stage filter in North Korea’s under-communicated society, because outside
information is so scarce that people will pay attention to it. This is in contrast to Western
societies, where most media information is ignored. Selective interpretation, on the other hand,
may prevent information from being understood in the way the information source intends. North
Korean propaganda consistently - over time and across media – has taken the line that the United
States’ aim in all its endeavors is to subjugate the North Korean people. Even American foreign
aid is depicted as a kind of psychological operation. 98 North Koreans who believe this
propaganda will be inclined to interpret any information coming from the United States as
“imperialistic” propaganda.
Those North Koreans who have access to outside information - even if they have a
healthy skepticism of their own government’s propaganda - cannot help but notice that people all
over the world are voicing concern about growing U.S. military power and influence. These
knowledgeable cadres may well share the concerns and fears of less-enlightened North Koreans
that the United States is out to dominate the world, country by country, and that North Korea is
near the top of Washington’s target list. Such skepticism about U.S. intentions brings into focus
two important and related issues in communication and persuasion: latitude of acceptance and
communicator credibility.
Latitude of acceptance is another way of looking at how people resist changing their
attitudes. Beginning with the work of Hovland and his colleagues, it has generally been found
that communications are most persuasive when they are neither too different from nor too similar
to the audience’s current attitudes and experience. 99 Too similar, and the new information is
97 A good discussion is in David O. Sears, Jonathan L. Freedman, and L. Anne Peplau, Social Psychology, Fifth
Edition, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985. pp. 417-421.
98 About once a month, the North Korean press publishes a warning about the evil intentions behind U.S. foreign
aid; in 2003, this aid was often characterized as a type of psyops. For example, “The purpose of the United States’
‘aid operation’ lies in the paralysis of anti-U.S. independent consciousness by creating fantasy about the United
States in people and encouraging pro-U.S. flunkeyism that depends on the United States.” Cho Song-chol, “Let Us
Heighten Vigilance Against U.S. Imperialists’ Psychological Smear Campaign: Cunning Stratagem Abusing
Humanitarianism,” Nodong Sinmun, August 14, 2003, p. 6. FBIS KPP20030829000063.
99 For example C. Hovland, O. J. Harvey, and M. Sherif, “Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Reaction to
Communication and Attitude Change,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 55 (1957), pp. 244-252.
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