Millions of North Koreans listen to dozens of foreign radio broadcasts transmitted by Japan, South Korea and the U.S., and the number is growing.

This is according to Peter Beck, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, who said that it is quite a phenomenon given that Pyongyang authorities distribute only radios with fixed dials, block foreign broadcasts, and imprison citizens caught listening to foreign radio for as long as 10 years.

Beck, who is also a Pantech research fellow at Stanford University's Asia Pacific Research Center, said that two of the most pop ular stations are Voice of America which broadcasts news from the U.S. and around the world, and Radio Free Asia which focuses on the communist regime and the lives of defectors in the South.

Beck added that the North Korean regime is losing its monopoly on the control of information and outside broadcasts are undermining loyalty to the leadership.