South Korea's SEOUL — Kang Dong Wan can frequently be spotted seeking for "treasure" — garbage from North Korea that gives a glimpse inside a country that is closed to most foreigners — as the waves sweep trash onto the beaches of front-line South Korean islands.

        In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Kang, 48, a professor at South Korea's Dong-A University, said, "This can be really essential material because we can discover what items are created in North Korea and what commodities people consume there." Even without the widespread border restrictions, he was obliged to employ the sophisticated information-gathering strategy since COVID-19 has made it considerably more difficult for outsiders to learn what is going on within North Korea.

        He believes that the variety, quantity, and increasing sophistication of trash confirms North Korean state media reports that leader Kim Jong Un is pushing for the production of a variety of consumer goods and a larger industrial design sector to meet the demands of his people and improve their living conditions.

        Despite his dictatorial control, Kim cannot disregard the preferences of customers who now shop at capitalist-style stores since the country's communist public rationing system is broken, and the country's economic troubles have increased as a result of the epidemic.

        "The current generation of North Koreans is the first to understand what the market and economics are. Kim will not be able to earn their support if he just suppresses and controls them while pursuing a nuclear weapons program, according to Kang. "He needs to demonstrate that his period has changed."

        Kang used to travel Chinese border cities to meet North Koreans who were staying there before the COVID-19 epidemic. He also bought North Korean goods and photographed communities on the other side of the river. However, he is no longer able to visit there due of China's anti-virus measures.

        Kang has gathered roughly 2,000 items of North Korean rubbish, including snack bags, juice pouches, candy wrappers, and drink bottles, since September 2020, when he visited five South Korean border islands off the country's west coast.

        Kang was astounded to find hundreds of various types of colorful packaging materials, each for a specific product such as spices, ice cream bars, snack cakes, and milk and yogurt. Graphic motifs, cartoon figures, and writing typefaces abound in many of them. Some are clearly copycats of South Korean and Japanese designs, while some appear to be out of date by Western standards.

        "Picking up North Korean Trash on the Five West Sea Islands," a book based on Kang's labor, was just released. He's also started scouring eastern South Korean front-line beaches, he claimed.

        Other specialists use official media broadcasts and publications to analyze the range of commodities and package designs in North Korea, but Kang's garbage collection allows for a more extensive research, according to Ahn Kyung-su, the administrator of DPRKHEALTH.ORG, a website devoted to North Korean health concerns.Kang's art also provides an intriguing glimpse into North Korea.

        North Korea, for example, utilizes tree leaves as a sugar replacement, according to the ingredients of some juice pouches. Kang believes this is due to a scarcity of sugar and sugar-processing machinery. According to him, the presence of more than 30 different fake flavor enhancer packets might indicate that North Korean households are unable to buy more expensive natural components such as meat and fish, which are used to prepare Korean soups and stews. Because of health concerns, many South Koreans have ceased using them at home.

        "The buddy of housewives" or "accommodating ladies" are slogans printed on detergent bags. Because it is assumed that only women perform such job, it might be a reflection of women's poor position in North Korea's male-dominated culture. 

        Some of the claims on the wrappers are wildly inflated. A walnut-flavored snack cake, according to one source, is a greater source of protein than meat. Another claim is that collagen ice cream can help youngsters grow taller and have more supple skin. Another says that eating a snack cake made with a certain type of microalgae will help you avoid diabetes, heart disease, and aging. Kang has been unable to verify the quality of previous waste contents.

        According to Jeon Young-sun, a research professor at Seoul's Konkuk University, North Korean snacks and cookies have gotten more softer and tastier in recent years, albeit their quality still trails below that of South Korea's internationally competitive products.

        North Korean defector Noh Hyun-jeong described the South Korean bread and pastries she ate after arriving here in 2007 as "ecstatic." She described the sweets and candies she encountered in the North as bitter and "as hard as a rock."

        Another defector, Kang Mi-Jin, who owns a firm that studies North Korea's economy, claims that when she had South Koreans try new North Korean pastries and candies in blind taste testing, they mistook them for South Korean. The website's director, Ahn, however, described the North Korean cookie he acquired in 2019 as "tasteless."

        Kang explained that his garbage collecting is an attempt to better understand North Koreans and to research ways to bridge the barrier between the two Koreas in the case of future unification. Kang said in 2019 that he was denied admission to Shanghai's airport due to his previous, primarily unofficial activities near the China-North Korea border. Kang said he visited North Korea more than ten times during a prior phase of inter-Korean detente, which ended in 2008, but could only buy restricted things that didn't help him comprehend the nation.

        It's a difficult task picking up rubbish on the islands, which are around 4-20 kilometers (2.5-12 miles) from North Korean mainland. He frequently visits Yeonpyeong, a South Korean island blasted by North Korea in a 2010 strike that killed four people. Residents who spotted Kang gathering trash suspected he was doing something strange, so South Korean marines interrogated him on several of his excursions. When ferry services were suspended due to inclement weather, he was sometimes left stranded. Kang admitted to crying on the beach in frustration when he couldn't discover North Korean rubbish or received calls from friends mocking or criticizing his efforts.

        "However, as I collected more and more trash, I became more driven to figure out how many items exist in a nation where we couldn't travel and what we can get from that waste," Kang said. "Something usually washed ashore when the wind blew and the waves were high, and I was so delighted because I could find something new."