North Korea has executed 30 teenagers for watching K-drama, say reports

The North Korean regime has executed as many as 30 children for watching K-dramas, according to reports.

The North and South Koreas remain formally at war despite an armistice after the end of three-year Korean War in 1953. While South Korea is a modern democracy which leads the world in electronics industries and is a cultural soft-power, North Korea is a totalitarian communist dictatorship with abysmal standards of living for the commonfolk.

Earlier this year, North Korean dictator Kim Jon-Un announced South Korea as the enemy number one of the regime.

Amid such hostility, it is illegal in North Korea to watch South Korean entertainment content, including television shows that are otherwise wildly popular in the country. While ‘K-dramas’ are not streamed or broadcasted in North Korea, they are illegally available on pen drives which are smuggled into the country from outside.

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South Korean media outlets Chosun TV and Korea JoongAng Daily have reported that North Korea has executed up to 30 middle-schoolers for watching k-dramas. The claim cannot be independently verified.

While South Korean officials did not comment directly on the claims, the Korea JoongAng Daily quoted a South Korean Unification Ministry official as saying that “it is widely known that North Korean authorities strictly control and harshly punish residents based on the three so-called ’evil’ laws”.

One such law is the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act which bans people from disseminating media that originates in South Korea, the United States and Japan, according to Business Insider.

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While the latest reports of executions in North Korea cannot be confirmed, there have previously been reports of similar executions and punishments over South Korean entertainment content. In 2022, a UN Secretary-General report said that a man in North Korea’s Kangwon province was killed by a public firing squad after his neighborhood watch unit saw him selling South Korean digital content, as per The Insider.

Separately, the BBC News reported in January that it had accessed exclusive footage that showed two teenagers being sentenced to 12 years of hard labour for watching a k-pop video.

The report further noted that the North Korean regime’s stance has hardened in recent years. Previously, the report said, youth held guilty would be sent to labour camps instead of prisons and their sentences would be less than five years. The 12-year terms suggest the hardening of the stance.