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North Korea has reportedly executed 30 high school students for watching South Korean dramas.
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The programs were reportedly stored on USB sticks smuggled across the border by North Korean defectors.
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North Korea has been accused of imposing harsh punishments on people caught watching South Korean media.
In North Korea, watching your favorite Korean dramas can end in tragedy.
According to reports from South Korean news channels Chosun TV and Korea JoongAng DailyLast week, about 30 high school students were shot in public for watching South Korean dramas.
The programs were reportedly stored on USB sticks smuggled across the border by North Korean defectors.
Business Insider was unable to independently verify the report.
South Korean officials did not immediately comment on the report, but according to Korea JoongAng Daily, an unnamed official from South Korea’s Ministry of Reunification told reporters that “it is well known that North Korean authorities strictly monitor and severely punish residents under the three so-called ‘evil’ laws.”
One of them is North Korea Act for the Rejection of Reactionary Ideology and Culturewhich prohibits persons from distributing media originating from South Korea, the US or Japan.
It is unclear whether these restrictions also apply to foreigners visiting the country, such as the Russian schoolchildren prepare for summer camps in the country.
This is not the first time that North Koreans have been 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 spotted him selling digital content from South Korea.
a 2024 Report on Human Rights in North Korea, A report from South Korea’s Reunification Ministry found 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, it was revealed that two teenagers were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for watching a K-pop video.
Despite the eyewitness accounts collected by Amnesty InternationalThe North Korean government denies that public executions take place in the country.
According to North Korean authorities, the last execution took place in 1992.
North Korea is still officially at war with its southern counterpart, a conflict that ended in a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty in the 1950s.
A defector told the Korea Herald that in 2020, North Korean parents were forced to sign a pledge stating that they would ensure that their children did not watch “impure video content” at home.
Recently, experts have speculated that North Korean military personnel could be sent to support Russian efforts in Ukraine, after closer ties between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Representatives of North Korea and the North Korea Human Rights Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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