ENTRE News – North Korea reportedly executed its citizens in public because they were caught listening to K-Pop music and distributing music and film content from neighboring South Korea. According to testimony in the Human Rights in North Korea report produced by the South Korean Ministry of Unification, the public executions will take place around 2022.
The resident is a 22 year old man and comes from South Hwanghae Province. The man was sentenced to death after being caught listening to 70 K-Pop songs, watching three Korean films, and spreading the content to colleagues.
This Unification Ministry report contains the stories of 639 North Koreans who defected to South Korea. This latest story is also considered to increasingly illustrate the brutality of Kim Jong Un’s regime in order to reduce Western and South Korean influence in this isolated country.
In recent years, Kim Jong Un has implemented a number of new regulations that have increasingly tightened North Koreans’ consumption of entertainment. Quoted by The Independent, through the Law on “Prohibition of Reactionary Ideology and Culture” which was passed in 2020, North Korea strictly prohibits its citizens from being exposed to Western culture, including South Korea, which is considered an “evil influence”.
According to a human rights report from the South Korean Ministry of Unification, North Koreans even regularly screen their cellphones to find out whether anyone uses South Korean spellings, expressions and slang terms such as “oppa” to address older brothers or male lovers.
One North Korean defector, a woman in her early 20s, said “the spread of South Korean cultural content is affecting North Korea very quickly. The younger generation follows and imitates South Korean culture, and they really like anything that comes from South Korea.”
“After watching Korean dramas, many young people wonder, ‘why do we have to live like this?’… I think I would rather die than live in North Korea,” said the woman, who now lives in South Korea, as quoted by The Guardian.
“Of course, we can’t say anything bad about Kim Jong Un in public, but among close friends, lovers or family members, we say those words,” he added.