It's done in a number of small ways. I passed through military checkpoints every time I left a town, and every time I arrived at one. In one, we had a police escort to the hotel (although, to be honest, I suspect the policeman just really wanted to turn on his siren and ride in front clearing the pedestrians off the road - exciting day for him). If you don't have a mandated reason to visit another town (or even leave your own town), you aren't doing it. There will be no underground network of revolutionaries without the ability to find each other or communicate.
Food; food was allocated (in the towns, at least - I don't know about villages) by your official food distribution centre, which often seemed to be the ground floor of the building you were living on. You got a few days in advance at a time. If you ever decided to try something (be it make a run for the border or have a revolution), you'd have three days' worth of food to make it work. Speaking of running for the (north) border, you'd better be able to make it on foot within a few days. You'll have to stay clear of the roads (what roads there are) so it'll be yomping over fields.
The media is the state media. There are a number of smuggled radios etc on the country. It's very hard to get figures on this; they seem to be clustered towards the north border where they drift in from China, and in the cities. The government control of the airwaves is not absolute, but they do engage in jamming and so forth.
It is as people say. The country is to a large extent a prison camp. Some of it is an "open" prison, some of it is working three generations of a family to death, sentencing children alongside their grandparents because they upset someone with power (or had something the powerful person wanted - many Japanese of Korean origin who foolishly moved there found themselves stripped of all the wealth they brought with them and reduced to poverty or simply dispatched to a labour camp) or maybe just said the wrong thing (turning each other in does not seem to be uncommon).
A DPRK spring in the style of the Arab spring is not, in my opinion, on the cards.
Food; food was allocated (in the towns, at least - I don't know about villages) by your official food distribution centre, which often seemed to be the ground floor of the building you were living on. You got a few days in advance at a time. If you ever decided to try something (be it make a run for the border or have a revolution), you'd have three days' worth of food to make it work. Speaking of running for the (north) border, you'd better be able to make it on foot within a few days. You'll have to stay clear of the roads (what roads there are) so it'll be yomping over fields.
The media is the state media. There are a number of smuggled radios etc on the country. It's very hard to get figures on this; they seem to be clustered towards the north border where they drift in from China, and in the cities. The government control of the airwaves is not absolute, but they do engage in jamming and so forth.
It is as people say. The country is to a large extent a prison camp. Some of it is an "open" prison, some of it is working three generations of a family to death, sentencing children alongside their grandparents because they upset someone with power (or had something the powerful person wanted - many Japanese of Korean origin who foolishly moved there found themselves stripped of all the wealth they brought with them and reduced to poverty or simply dispatched to a labour camp) or maybe just said the wrong thing (turning each other in does not seem to be uncommon).
A DPRK spring in the style of the Arab spring is not, in my opinion, on the cards.