North Korea is reportedly killing kids just for watching K-pop and South Korean TV in a terrifying crackdown on foreign culture inside Kim Jong-un’s brutal dictatorship.
Harrowing accounts collected by human rights watchdog Amnesty International suggest anyone caught consuming its neighbouring country’s popular music or TV faces severe punishments, from being dragged off to labour camps to public shaming – and even death.
Defectors who escaped the regime say the country is gripped by a climate of fear. But in a grim twist, it is believed that those with money can sometimes buy their way out, with wealthy families allegedly bribing corrupt officials to dodge the worst punishments.
Horrified interviewees say pupils were marched out of classrooms and ordered to witness killings as a sickening warning of what happens if they step out of line. One defector, Choi Suvin, said she saw a man executed in front of a huge crowd in Sinuiju in 2017 or 2018, accused of spreading forbidden foreign media.
“Authorities ordered everyone to attend,” she said. “Tens of thousands of people from the city were forced to gather and watch. They execute people to brainwash us.”
Others described executions being treated like a school trip from hell, with teachers systematically ordering students to attend. “When we were 16 or 17, still in middle school, they took us to executions and showed us everything,” said Kim Eunju, 40.
“People were killed for watching or sharing South Korean TV. The message was clear: if you watch this, this happens to you too.”
Another defector, Kim Joonsik, 28, admitted he was caught watching South Korean dramas three times before finally fleeing the country in 2019. He escaped punishment because his family had the right connections.
“Usually when high school students are caught, if their family has money, they just get warnings,” he said. “I didn’t receive legal punishment because we had connections.”
But Kim said others weren’t so lucky. He revealed that three of his sisters’ school pals were sent to labour camps for years in the late 2010s for watching South Korean TV, simply because their families were too poor to pay the extortionate bribes demanded by officials.
Defectors reckon hit dramas from the 2010s have spread rapidly across the state, despite attempts by Jong-un’s regime to stamp them out. Among the shows secretly watched are smash hits ‘Crash Landing on You’ – set partly in North Korea – and military drama ‘Descendants of the Sun’.
One person said they were told by an escapee with family links in Yanggang Province that people, including high school students, were executed for watching ‘Squid Game’. The horror claim is backed up by Radio Free Asia, which separately documented an execution in North Hamgyong Province in 2021 for distributing the series.
Elsewhere, interviewees said the regime is also targeting anyone caught listening to South Korean pop music, with K-pop branded a dangerous enemy influence. Defectors named songs by boy band BTS as among the many forbidden tracks in the secretive country.
Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director, said: “These testimonies show how North Korea is enforcing dystopian laws that mean watching a South Korean TV show can cost you your life – unless you can afford to pay.
“The authorities criminalise access to information in violation of international law, then allow officials to profit off those fearing punishment. This is repression layered with corruption, and it most devastates those without wealth or connections.
“This government’s fear of information has effectively placed the entire population in an ideological cage, suffocating their access to the views and thoughts of other human beings. People who strive to learn more about the world outside North Korea, or seek simple entertainment from overseas, face the harshest of punishments.
“This completely arbitrary system, built on fear and corruption, violates fundamental principles of justice and internationally recognised human rights. It must be dismantled.”
