ABSTRACT
Foreign correspondents are often required to work with government-appointed fixers or minders in authoritarian regimes. This article is a case study of these frequently overlooked journalistic workers in North Korea and the structure of surveillance and social control they work within. Interviews with foreign journalists show that many of these locals are much more than mere government spies. The competing desires Pyongyang has for its fixer-minders—to both control and woo the correspondents—and a news environment increasingly open to Western media have led to a further diversification of roles among these journalistic workers. While minders from the State Security Ministry surveil journalists without directly interacting with them, English-speaking locals who work as photographers or writers contribute by taking pictures and writing stories. Foreign correspondents gradually form collegial rapport with the locals, which in turn makes them suspect in the eyes of the North Korean state despite the impeccable ideological credentials that earned them the posts in the first place. This makes the locals “Marginal Men” (Park 1926), people who belong to multiple cultures that are at odds with each other, people who have “one foot in and one foot out of prison.”
