A video released by a group that works with North Korean defectors showed authorities in Pyongyang publicly sentencing two teenagers to 12 years’ hard labour for watching K-pop.
The South and North Development (SAND) Institute released footage which shows two 16-year-olds in Pyongyang convicted of watching South Korean movies and music videos. UK-based news broadcaster BBC first accessed the footage.
This is not the first time North Korea imposed tough sentences on anyone caught enjoying South Korean entertainment or copying the way South Koreans speak. In 2021, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un denounced K-Pop by calling it a ‘vicious cancer’.
He also imposed a sweeping new “anti-reactionary thought” law in 2020.
Choi Kyong-hui, president of SAND and Doctor of Political Science at Tokyo University, who defected from North Korea in 2001 told news agency Reuters that lifestyle of South Korean culture is prevalent in North Korean society.
“Judging from the heavy punishment, it seems that this is to be shown to people across North Korea to warn them. If so, it appears this lifestyle of South Korean culture is prevalent in North Korean society,” he was quoted as saying by news agency Reuters.
“I think this video was edited around 2022… What is troublesome for (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un is that Millennials and Gen Z young people have changed their way of thinking. I think he’s working on turning it back to the North Korean way,” he further added.
In the video made by North Korean officials a large public trial is being held where two students in grey scrubs are handcuffed while watched by about 1,000 students in an amphitheatre. The students were seen wearing face masks, suggesting the footage was shot during the COVID pandemic.
The students were sentenced, according to the video, after being convicted of watching and spreading South Korean movies, music and music videos over three months.
“They were seduced by foreign culture… and ended up ruining their lives,” the narrator states, as the video cuts away to young girls being handcuffed and Pyongyang women wearing South Korean fashion and hairstyles.
Reclusive North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and are divided by a heavily fortified demilitarised zone (DMZ).
(with inputs from Reuters)
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