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North Korea executed 30 teenagers for watching South Korean shows: reports
Downward Angle Icon An icon shaped like an angle pointing downward. Kim Jong Un’s government is known for imposing severe restrictions on its citizens. Contributor/Getty Images
- North Korea reportedly executed 30 elementary school students for watching South Korean dramas.
- The programs were reportedly stored on flash drives that were smuggled across the border by North Korean defectors.
- North Korea has been accused of imposing harsh penalties on those caught watching South Korean media.
In North Korea, watching your favorite Korean dramas can end in tragedy.
According to reports from South Korean media outlets Chosun TV and Korea JoongAng DailyAbout 30 elementary school students were publicly shot last week for watching South Korean dramas.
The programs were reportedly stored on flash drives that were smuggled across the border by North Korean defectors.
Business Insider was unable to independently verify the report.
South Korean officials have not directly commented on the report, but according to the Korea JoongAng Daily, an unnamed official from South Korea’s Unification Ministry told reporters that “it is widely known that North Korean authorities strictly control and severely punish residents based on the three so-called ‘evil’ laws.”
One of them is North Korea Law of Reactionary Ideology and Rejection of Culturewhich prohibits individuals from disseminating media originating in South Korea, the US or Japan.
It is unclear whether these restrictions apply to foreigners visiting the country, such as Russian students prepare to attend summer camps in the country.
Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the North Korea Human Rights Committee, told BI that “under the circumstances created by the intensified crackdown on information from the outside world, initially conducted under the pretext of COVID, these reports are definitely plausible.”
This is not the first case of North Koreans allegedly killed for their association with content from their southern neighbor.
According to a 2022 report by the UN Secretary-General, a man in Kangwon province was killed by a public firing squad after his neighborhood watch unit spotted him selling digital content from South Korea.
A 2024 North Korea Human Rights Report, released by South Korea’s Unification Ministry, it claimed that phones in North Korea are regularly checked for “South Korean-style language” and that wearing white wedding dresses is punished for being “reactionary.”
A video has been released Earlier this year, two teenagers were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for watching a K-pop video.
Despite eyewitness accounts compiled by Amnesty InternationalThe North Korean government has denied that public executions take place in the country.
According to North Korean authorities, the last execution took place in 1992.
North Korea is still technically at war with its southern counterpart, with the conflict in the 1950s ending in a truce rather than a peace treaty.
A deserter told the Herald of Korea that in 2020, North Korean parents were forced to sign a pledge stating that they would ensure that their children would not watch “impure video content” at home.
Recently, experts speculated that North Korean military personnel could be sent to assist Russian efforts in Ukraine, after closer ties between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
North Korean officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.