A morning walk through the streets of Kaesong. An idyllic drive through the North Korean countryside. An ordinary resident playing a mobile game on a modern smartphone.

At first glance, these videos and others shared by the new TikTok channel “Life in North Korea” bear the hallmarks of state propaganda aimed at portraying the country as a socialist paradise. International media have even described the account, which now boasts over 200,000 followers and counting, as Pyongyang’s latest foray into spreading propaganda online after past efforts on YouTube.

But a closer look reveals that the clips from the channel — and others like it — almost certainly have no links to the state and may not even be original material to begin with.

“This isn’t North Korean propaganda,” Martyn Williams, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, told NK News, identifying the channel and its videos as more likely to be the handiwork of tourists or TikTokers looking to increase view counts.

Williams said the style of the videos deviates from the “usual” content put out by North Korea’s sockpuppet Twitter accounts and YouTube vloggers, and he wrote on his website North Korea Tech that the clips were likely filmed before the pandemic.

“The videos are mostly taken from buses in tourist spots,” he added, noting that most North Koreans do not travel freely and would not typically have permission to shoot videos like these.

But while “Life in North Korea” and accounts like it may not be state-affiliated, some say that their proliferation could still further Pyongyang’s propaganda goals, while underlining a lack of moderation on the Chinese platform that the DPRK could eventually seek to exploit.

RISE OF ‘NORTHKOREATOK’

TikTok, an app originally meant to post short song and dance clips and most popular among teens and twentysomethings, is an unlikely platform for day-in-the-life style videos about North Korea.

But DPRK-related content accelerated on the platform soon after the COVID-19 pandemic halted all travel to the country.

Channels like @xhg1688, @love21004 and @nkorea_tiktok spearheaded the “NorthKoreaTok” trend. As with “Life in North Korea,” these accounts claimed to offer rare glimpses of North Korea and faced accusations they are regime mouthpieces, and it is similarly hard to verify whether their videos are original.

Of these, only love21004 remains active. The channel still occasionally posts pre-pandemic clips such as a Nov. 2022 post showing New Year’s Day in 2020, but also occasionally posts more recent DPRK-related TikToks from outside the country, such as clips of masked North Koreans in Laos.

love21004’s very first TikTok video was about a train ride from China to Pyongyang, suggesting the channel may be run by a Chinese tourist or is lifting videos from Chinese social media sites like Douyin, the China-only version of TikTok.

“I think because Douyin is inaccessible to many and vice versa, people lift this stuff without it triggering copyright warnings,” Williams said.

The Korean-language love21004 channel is also characterized by its use of non-DPRK terms like “Bukhan,” the South Korean name for North Korea, and soundtracks featuring songs from South Korea and other countries.

The “Life in North Korea” channel has picked up on what these accounts started, and like the earlier channels, it is rife with factual errors and unlikely narrative choices that suggest it is not linked to Pyongyang.

For one, the account uses “North Korea” in its name, even though actual propaganda accounts tend to favor the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The channel also mislabels Puhung Station on the Pyongyang metro as the nonexistent “Pyongyang Station,” boasts of the presence of foreign cars in a clip set to the music of Swedish DJ Avicii and uses the hashtag #DanceWithTurboTax in reference to a Super Bowl commercial, an apparent attempt to get a video to trend higher.

Perhaps most tellingly, “Life in North Korea” appears to have taken some of its videos from the love21004 channel, making it highly improbable that this channel is circulating original material authorized by North Korea’s leadership.

But NorthKoreaTok does not solely comprise these pseudo-propaganda channels, as some accounts like  @zoediscoversnk try to shine a spotlight on life in North Korea while clearly marking themselves as outsiders.

“My channel is in order to show this other side that’s otherwise not represented by other media outlets,” the U.K. TikToker running the account told NK News.

Zoe said she has visited North Korea several times in the past and wishes to return to the country once it eases its COVID-19-related border closures, and as such steers clear of content that could create friction with DPRK authorities.

The comments section of her channel and “Life in North Korea” comprise a mixed bag of users, with some staunchly pro-DPRK and others labeling the content as propaganda, but Zoe maintains her content is meant to inform viewers. 

“People who understand or have been following me for a while on different social media platforms, they’re more inclined to understand what I do and kind of appreciate that a little bit more,” Zoe said.

PROPAGANDA AND MISINFORMATION

While these accounts may not be linked to the North Korean regime, the visibility of “Life in North Korea” shows what TikTok can offer Pyongyang as it seeks to rehabilitate its international image through social media.

Countries like China and Russia have already employed the platform to spread their narratives among TikTok’s young users, who are increasingly turning away from mainstream media and getting their information from TikTok communities.

North Korea has already experimented with YouTube and other platforms to combat what it calls “fake news” spread by the West, and TikTok’s growing popularity makes it a prime choice as the next avenue for Pyongyang’s propaganda apparatus.

“It’s already been shown from previous attempts on YouTube that a TikTok channel backed by the Pyongyang government would be popular,” Alistair Coleman, a senior journalist with BBC Monitoring, told NK News, adding that the Chinese-owned app may be less proactive in shutting down DPRK-backed accounts than Western social media sites.

“Any attempt would most likely be disguised as an everyday user to distance itself from the Propaganda and Agitation Department,” he said, warning that such channels could be used to generate money for the regime by monetizing streams.

There is also a high risk that misleading information may spread through the network, particularly since the speed at which users browse short TikTok videos makes it tricky to convey context.

“If people are just consuming the media and they don’t do their own research, then they may see things like … North Korea is amazing, and they might start to think North Korea is great,” Zoe said.

Some countries have already banned TikTok — and the U.S. and others are considering blocking it — due to fears of Chinese influence and misleading information going viral.

And while the North Korea-focused TikTok community is still small, Coleman warned that if it grows misinformation could become a serious problem.

“With millions of users, a positive deluge of content, and only a finite number of paid moderators, the outcome would be the same as other platforms — misleading content staying on TikTok simply because they can’t moderate everything,” he said.

Edited by Arius Derr and Bryan Betts