North Korea's 'New DPRK' YouTube channel: new public diplomacy attempt or international propaganda? A case study

The study addresses how North Korean diplomacy leverages social media—specifically the New DPRK YouTube channel—as part of efforts to diversify its diplomatic toolkit and project soft power internationally. Given restricted internet access within North Korea and recurring platform takedowns of DPRK-linked channels, the paper asks whether New DPRK operates as public diplomacy or as international propaganda. It situates the case within debates on public diplomacy and soft power, outlining the need to evaluate digital strategies, target audiences, and messaging (including the avoidance or inclusion of high politics) to determine alignment with accepted public diplomacy frameworks.

The article draws on Joseph Nye Jr.’s definition of public diplomacy and soft power, emphasizing three resources: culture, political values, and foreign policy, and the role of public diplomacy in transforming these resources into attraction. It notes that public diplomacy differs from traditional diplomacy in scope, forms, and duration. The review engages with current debates on the digitalization of public diplomacy, including: Manor and Huang (2020) on how digital technologies reshape norms and values of diplomatic practice; Manor and Pamment (2024) on the erosion of MFAs’ monopoly over external communication; Hai Liaw et al. (2020) and Huang (2020) on definitional and conceptual shifts in digital contexts; Manor (2023) and Bjola and Manor (2024) on the role of imagery/visuals; and Gincheva (2024) on platform interface and algorithmic impacts. It also references scholarship on audience-centric effectiveness (Merickova, 2013), the importance of target selection for DPRK (Grzelczyk, 2017), and convergence between propaganda and public diplomacy within hybrid media (Surowiec-Capell, 2024). The review sets expectations that effective digital public diplomacy emphasizes transparency, interaction, and audience engagement—criteria used to interpret the New DPRK case.

The study uses a case-study design analyzing videos from the New DPRK YouTube channel within a defined period. The primary sample referenced in the methodology comprises 96 publicly available videos published between November 10, 2019 and May 30, 2022, with analysis conducted on June 9, 2022. Videos were categorized into 12 analytic categories (detailed in the results) concerning objectives, target audience, composition, topics, soft-power resources, presence of leaders/ideology, and treatment of high politics. Amnesty International’s YouTube DataViewer was used to collect metadata; translation relied on automated tools (e.g., Google Translate) and professional translators for non-English content or where subtitles were absent. The approach emphasizes descriptive coding of content and metadata (language, subtitles, tags), topic classification (partly adapted from Park & Lim, 2020), mapping onto Nye’s soft power resources, and identification of ideological and leadership cues.

General metadata and reach cues: - Language of original audio (n=104 videos): 90 in Korean; 1 mostly Korean with some Chinese; 7 in Chinese; 5 in English; 1 with no voiceover. - Subtitles: 100/104 had subtitles; among these, 61% English-only, 19% English+Chinese, 18% Chinese-only, 2% English+Korean. Of the 100 captioned videos, 83 had embedded subtitles; 17 used YouTube closed captions. This indicates intent to reach foreign audiences, especially English and Chinese speakers. - Tags: 62.5% of videos did not use YouTube tags; 37.5% did. Tags most frequently referenced “North Korea,” “DPRK,” and “Pyongyang,” suggesting search optimization for DPRK-related queries. Some tags (e.g., “echo,” “echooftruth”) referenced a previously terminated DPRK-linked channel, suggesting continuity across efforts. Topics (n=104 mentions across videos): - Commercial promotion: 16 (15.38%) - Education: 14 (13.46%) - Tourism: 12 (11.54%) - Other: 12 (11.54%) - Ephemerid: 11 (10.58%) - Everyday life: 9 (8.65%) - Cooking: 8 (7.69%) - Culture: 8 (7.69%) - Sports: 8 (7.69%) - Health: 3 (2.88%) - History: 1 (0.96%) - News: 1 (0.96%) - Propaganda: 1 (0.96%) Soft power resources (per Nye): - None of the analyzed videos explicitly addressed foreign policy as a soft power resource. - Culture was the most prominent resource used across videos. - A substantial share (about 22.12%) could not be categorized under Nye’s soft power resources, often including commercial promotion or everyday-life content that lacked clear linkage to culture, political values, or domestic policy. High politics addressing: - 90.38% did not address high-politics issues; 9.62% did. Examples include videos referencing COVID-19 protective policies in schools and post-typhoon reconstruction emphasizing military logistics and leadership. Leadership presence: - Absent: 52.88%; Protagonic presence: 29.81%; Secondary presence: 17.31%. Despite expectations to avoid controversial leadership imagery in public diplomacy, a sizable minority foregrounds leaders. Ideology and party symbolism: - Ideological references (Juche, Socialist, Communist) found in 13.46% of videos; absent in 86.54%, indicating an attempt to keep content ideologically neutral for broader appeal. Platform use and audience targeting: - Heavy use of English and Chinese subtitles and DPRK-related tags indicates ambitions to reach global and Chinese audiences; New DPRK content also appeared on Chinese platforms (BiliBili, Weibo, Ixigua).

Findings indicate New DPRK aims to project an attractive, apolitical image of North Korea by emphasizing culture, daily life, tourism, and commercial showcases while largely avoiding high politics. While such topic selection aligns with soft power/public diplomacy practice, several features undermine alignment with contemporary public diplomacy theory: limited interactivity (e.g., disabling or not fostering two-way engagement), underutilization of platform tools (e.g., tags), and frequent inclusion of leadership imagery that can be controversial to foreign audiences. The content often fails to map coherently onto Nye’s soft power resources—especially foreign policy—and a significant portion cannot be categorized under these resources at all, suggesting weaker strategic integration. These characteristics, together with top-down messaging and absence of dialogic engagement, align the channel more closely with foreign propaganda than with modern, dialogic public diplomacy. Consequently, the channel’s potential to improve international perceptions or cultivate attraction (soft power) appears constrained by DPRK’s centralizing communication practices and discomfort with the decentralized, interactive nature of social media.

The case study suggests that the New DPRK YouTube channel exhibits some features of public diplomacy (international targeting via English/Chinese subtitles, emphasis on cultural and apolitical content) but overall functions more as foreign propaganda due to minimal two-way engagement, traditional top-down communication, limited use of platform affordances, and visible leadership promotion. North Korean digital outreach appears tentative and constrained, with public diplomacy not yet centered on internet strategies. The study calls for additional case studies to assess consistency across DPRK channels and to test how well such efforts map onto existing public diplomacy frameworks, potentially refining theory for authoritarian digital communication contexts.

- Persistent difficulties in obtaining unbiased, reliable information on North Korea. - Platform instability: the New DPRK channel was taken down during the research period, complicating longitudinal analysis and necessitating archiving. - The study focuses on describing characteristics rather than measuring effectiveness; inferences about impact on foreign audiences are not tested. - Some observations regarding bias or portrayal are informed by context and literature rather than new empirical evidence. - Reliance on automated and professional translation for non-English content may introduce translation nuances/errors.