How do Materiality and Corporeality Inform the Intellectual Property Debate?

The case of North Koreans watching illegally distributed South Korean media and Hollywood films shows that the discussion of intellectual property violation does not take into account the local context in which these goods are distributed and consumed. This chapter uses the concepts materiality and corporeality to show that material properties and the bodies matter in the smuggling of media goods across the border because the majority of North Koreans do not have Internet connection and the government deems possessing foreign media a crime. The chapter however cautions that Western news reports about the everyday life in North Korea are motivated to differentiate the East from the West. In these reports, North Koreans are deemed to be animal-like, and foreign media can lift them up to become enlightened beings. The dichotomy between the East and West, between North Koreans and Western beings is problematic because news discourse sees capitalism as a superior system, thus attributing negative qualities to non-capitalist systems.