In North Korea, watching your favorite Korean dramas could end in tragedy.
According to a report by South Korean broadcaster Chosun TV, around 30 middle schoolers were publicly shot last week for watching South Korean dramas.
The shows were reportedly stored on USBs that were floated over the border by North Korean defectors, it said.
Business Insider was unable to independently verify the report.
South Korean officials did not comment directly on the report, but according to Korea JoongAng Daily, one unnamed South Korean Unification Ministry official told reporters that “it is widely known that North Korean authorities strictly control and harshly punish residents based on the three so-called ‘evil’ laws.”
One of these is North Korea’s Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act, which forbids individuals from disseminating media that originates in South Korea, the US, or Japan.
It is unclear whether those restrictions apply to foreigners visiting the country, like the Russian schoolchildren preparing to attend summer camps in the country.
Greg Scarlatoiu, the executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 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 instance of North Koreans reportedly being killed for their association with content from their southern neighbor.
According to a 2022 UN Secretary-General report, a man in Kangwon Province was killed by a public firing squad after his neighborhood watch unit saw him selling digital content from South Korea.
A 2024 report on North Korean Human Rights, released by South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, 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 was released earlier this year showing two teenagers being sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for watching a K-pop video.
Despite eyewitness accounts compiled by Amnesty International, the 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 their conflict in the 1950s ending in a truce rather than a peace treaty.
A defector told the Korea Herald that in 2020, North Korean parents were forced to sign a pledge stating they would ensure their children do not watch “impure video content” at home.
Recently, experts have speculated that North Korean military personnel could be sent to aid Russian efforts in Ukraine, following closer ties between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Representatives from North Korea didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.
Correction: July 16, 2024 — An earlier version of this story stated that more than one news outlet had reported the initial claim, rather than a single broadcaster.
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