As bizarre as some of its domestic projects and foreign policies may seem, North Korea’s strategies have succeeded in their singular quest — regime survival. While the world’s top military powers, skilled diplomats and intelligence agencies strive to freeze or roll back North Korea’s expanding nuclear and missile programs, there is a tactic that could be implemented easily and at a fraction of the cost of military, diplomatic and intelligence operations.

Foreign information and media should be sent into North Korea at higher rates as soon as possible.

Injecting information about the world outside a closed country’s borders is not a new idea. Ideological warfare and information campaigns between democracies and communist countries have taken place for over a century. Introducing new ideas to closed populations is an effective way to win the hearts and minds of the people.

While such campaigns can be used for nefarious purposes, there is a presumption that interested parties are pursuing the goal of sharing liberal values with North Korean citizens. Accessing unauthorised foreign information may not immediately induce regime collapse, but it will certainly start to open the minds of some citizens in North Korea. An informed population will inevitably produce thought leaders, dissidents, activists, and senior officials who turn against the regime. Given how stubborn and relentless the regime is, we can only assume that its citizens are equally as resilient. But perhaps they can channel such resilience towards building a positive future for their country.

Efforts to send foreign media into North Korea have been taking place on a small-scale for decades, and this phenomenon has picked up steam among North Korean defector-led organisations and NGOs in the last two decades. A variety of content, ranging from South Korean romantic comedies to information on current events, is pushed into North Korea through radio programs and storage devices. Radios, cell phones and multi-media devices are among the popular commodities that sell at the street markets, enabling the increasing consumption of foreign information by North Korean citizens.

Ideals-driven organisations (NGOs, donors and activists), profit-driven businesses (paid smugglers crossing into North Korea), and demand-driven consumers (North Korean citizens that crave foreign media) comprise the interwoven networks that collectively push and pull foreign information into the country.

Absent a cohesive, long-term vision for information efforts targeting North Korea, these campaigns run by cash-strapped NGOs do not fulfil the potential to saturate the market of willing consumers of foreign information. This is where governments and other public organisations can step in.

First, there needs to be an increase in the quality of content being pushed in. This can be achieved by partnering with existing organisations to create more content based on the demand inside North Korea. Conducting focus groups with recent defectors who could represent preferences inside North Korea is necessary, as is supporting skilled media and advertising professionals to work with existing organisations. Information campaigns should be based on current North Korean preferences, which would also be informed by historical campaigns in different contexts.

Second, a sustained campaign also needs to increase the quantity of content being pushed in by incentivising existing groups to collaborate and by supporting radio programs that specifically target North Korean listeners. Leaders on this project should request proposals for projects that meet certain criteria, like promoting liberal values and having entertainment value.

Third, the distribution networks need to be improved. This can only occur if there are innovative methods introduced to transmit information into North Korea that don’t depend on people to physically transfer goods across the Sino–North Korean border. Exploring the possibility of employing drones to drop media-loaded USBs into North Korea and other places where North Koreans work and reside like consulates, embassies and forced labour sites might be useful.

Fourth, researchers who are not tied to NGOs that send information into North Korea need support in their efforts to assess and analyse the effectiveness of campaigns over time. Such bodies of ongoing research, monitoring and evaluation can help create more effective and targeted campaigns in the future.

The benefits of a collective and sustained campaign outweigh the costs of such efforts. Inviting North Koreans into the global information sharing era is a no brainer. And North Koreans are willing consumers of foreign content. They also know better than anyone else about the risks involved in consuming unauthorised information.

These soft power initiatives to engage North Korean citizens are not mutually exclusive with pursuing current policies that strive to freeze or shrink North Korea’s nuclear and missile program. Supplying North Koreans’ growing demand for foreign information is the least that governments and organisations can do to support citizens while policies centred on militarisation and security on the peninsula carry on.

Jieun Baek is a PhD candidate in Public Policy at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and is the author of North Korea’s Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground is Transforming a Closed Society.