PYONGYANG, North Korea

The 20-year-old college student looked puzzled.

"Have I heard of Harry Potter?" asked Paek Su Ryon as she bit into a cabbage pancake at the Pyongyang Friendship Restaurant. "What nationality is he?"

Her friend laughed, and then she got it.

"Oh, the book!" she said. "I like it very much."

In a land that denies its people access to cell phones and curbs Internet freedom, and which weighs every printed or broadcast word for ideological purity, the magical world of Harry Potter is creeping into the upper reaches of society. So are Britney Spears, "Titanic" and trendy clothes.

"There is by all accounts a nascent youth culture in Pyongyang," said Brian Myers, an American who teaches at Inje University in South Korea. "Sons and daughters from well-connected families have more access than most to black-market cultural products from South Korea, China and the West.

"These students have taken to imitating South Korean dress, hairstyles and slang to an extent that is causing the party concern."

For journalists and academics making a rare and carefully orchestrated visit to North Korea, it's almost impossible to gauge the full impact of pop culture on what is probably the world's most regimented society.

But encounters with young people like Ms. Paek and fellow student Yon Ok Ju, both daughters of government officials, yield many surprises.

Ms. Paek wears a powder-blue hair clip and beige trenchcoat and carries a pink plastic purse -- a contrast to the utilitarian fashions that dominate the capital. A third-year student at the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, she studies English, speaks it fluently and was assigned, along with Ms. Yon, to translate for the group on visits to the city's landmarks. But at times, the conversation turned to lighter matters.

Ms. Paek, it emerged, can play the theme song from "Titanic" on the piano, but also likes North Korea's version of a pop music group -- Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble. Pochonbo is a village where Kim Il Sung, the country's communist founder, is supposed to have fought Japanese forces as a World War II guerrilla.

Ms. Paek has read "Jane Eyre" and "Romeo and Juliet" ("It's a love story, a sad story"), but her favorite is the North Korean novel "Kang Yong Ae," translated as "The Problem of Human Beings."

Ms. Yon, daughter of a foreign trade official, lived in India for three years. She said she prefers state TV dramas, documentaries and travel pieces to Western fare.

"Every North Korean song and every movie has a meaning. The Western movies and songs have no main gist."

State TV is dominated by propaganda -- the 60th anniversary of the ruling Workers' Party, military choirs singing patriotic songs, "great leader Kim Jong Il" visiting factories, exhibitions of flowers named for him. For children, there are North Korean cartoons featuring animal characters having adventures.

"There is no pop culture in the Western sense of the word; all culture is controlled by the Workers' Party and subordinated to party goals," said Mr. Myers, "But North Korea is now in a post-totalitarian phase."