美国国家公共电台 NPR Why Do Some South Koreans Believe A Myth That North Koreans Have Horns?

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

President Trump 1 will have his first face-to-face meeting with China's president this week. Front and center in that conversation will be what to do about the growing threat from North Korea. For more than two decades, the U.S. has been trying to convince China to put greater pressure on the North to halt its nuclear weapons program.

This past weekend, Trump said if Beijing won't, as he put it, solve North Korea, the U.S. will. The Korean peninsula has been in an official state of war since the North invaded the South in 1950. That is more than a half century of hostility 2 and mythmaking. NPR's correspondent in Seoul Elise Hu has this story about one of the enduring consequences.

ELISE HU, BYLINE 3: In the course of reporting here in Seoul over the past two years, a curious observation kept cropping up in interviews. This is Lee Gwang-sung, a North Korean defector who arrived in late 2015.

LEE GWANG-SUNG: (Through interpreter) I once met a senior in South Korea who asked me if North Koreans have horns on their heads. Are we cows? How can we have horns on our heads?

HU: Then in a separate interview for a different story with Shin Eun-mi, an elderly South Korean American who grew up near Seoul, Shin mentioned something similar.

SHIN EUN-MI: When I was in elementary school in South Korea, teachers taught me that North Koreans had horns on their heads like monsters.

HU: Or some other non-human beasts. She eventually realized it wasn't true.

SHIN: I knew that biologically it is impossible for human beings to have horns, but the demonized images of North Korea had lingered in my life.

HU: Researchers say the notion of North Koreans, who are the same ethnicity as South Koreans, as animal or beast-like is a product of years of propaganda and misleading education. Here's Seoul National University education researcher Park Sung-Chung.

PARK SUNG-CHUNG: It was quoting it from the government, and political leadership wanted people to believe that North Korea is the biggest enemy in the whole world.

HU: North and South Korea were split at an arbitrary line - the 38th parallel - and then engaged in years of bitter war, one that technically 4 never ended.

PARK: Back in 1970, it was about Cold War mentality 5. We were against any kind of thing that comes from communism, a communist country.

HU: So North Koreans do not have horns?

PARK: I never thought that - maybe when I was in elementary, I might have thought that they had the horns. But when I was in high school, I didn't believe it.

HU: But the thinking persists in people some 50 years later. How did it live on so long?

SHERI BERMAN: It's very hard to change people's opinions once they've been formed early in life.

HU: Sheri Berman is a political science professor specializing in authoritarian 6 regimes and propaganda at Barnard College.

BERMAN: The techniques for instilling 7 these beliefs have always been more or less the same, right? You want to start with children because they are the most impressionable, and that's where your belief systems tend to form and stick.

HU: Park, the education researcher remembers a hit animated 8 film shown across South Korea when he was little. It's called "Doree Changun."

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, " DOREE CHANGUN")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, singing in Korean).

HU: It pits dorees of courage, witty 9 kids against evil, red wolves who represent North Koreans.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, " DOREE CHANGUN")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character, speaking in Korean).

BERMAN: This is part of what dictatorships do to mobilize citizens for violence or the potential for violence.

HU: Take away your perceived enemies' humanity, and it's easier to fight them. The technique is used the world over throughout history.

BERMAN: It's very difficult once it's sort of begun to fight it back. But, you know, the best way to do that is by letting citizens gain free access to information.

HU: Information about North Korea was especially scarce during the height of the Cold War, says Professor Park.

PARK: We couldn't have any access to North Korea and North Korean people. We didn't have any access to the news releases from North Korea.

HU: That government censorship hasn't changed. A Cold War-era National Security Law is still on the books here making it illegal for South Koreans to share North Korean content like news reports. The government blocks internet users from accessing North Korean sites. The result - misinformation can live on longer as the North Korean defector Lee found out.

LEE: (Through interpreter) I thought, well, we're people. How can human beings have horns on their head? So I was very surprised and quite weirded out by that.

HU: A reminder 10 that even in systems considered free, long, indoctrinated beliefs can take generations to change. Elise Hu, NPR News, Seoul.