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North Korea has executed 30 high school students for watching South Korean dramas, according to reports.
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The programs were reportedly stored on USBs that were transported across the border by North Korean defectors.
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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 DiaryAbout 30 high school students were publicly shot last week for watching South Korean dramas.
The programs were reportedly stored on USBs that were transported across the border by North Korean defectors.
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, an 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 them is North Korea Rejection of Reactionary Ideology and Culture Actwhich 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 Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, told BI that “in 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 UN Secretary-General’s 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 North Korea Human Rights Report, released by South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, stated 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, showing two teenagers being 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, their conflict in the 1950s having ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.
A deserter told the Korean Herald that in 2020, North Korean parents were forced to sign a pledge stating that they would ensure their children did not watch “impure video content” at home.
Recently, experts speculated that North Korean military personnel could be sent to aid Russian efforts in Ukraine after closer ties between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
North Korean representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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