According to the report, poorer North Koreans are far more likely to face execution or lengthy prison sentences, while wealthier citizens are able to evade punishment by bribing security officials.
North Korea is executing citizens, including schoolchildren, for watching South Korean television shows such as Squid Game and listening to K-pop music, global human rights organisation, the Amnesty International has said.
In a damning report, the human rights organisation said testimonies from escapees reveal a brutal system of repression in which access to foreign media is treated as a capital offence, with punishments often determined by wealth and political connections, according to NDTV.
Amnesty said people caught watching South Korean dramas or listening to K-pop are subjected to arbitrary punishments ranging from long-term forced labour to public execution. In several cases, children were reportedly forced to watch executions as a warning against consuming foreign content.
According to the report, poorer North Koreans are far more likely to face execution or lengthy prison sentences, while wealthier citizens are able to evade punishment by bribing security officials.
“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,” Amnesty’s Deputy Regional Director, Sarah Brooks, said.
“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.”
Amnesty said it conducted 25 in-depth interviews with escapees who fled the country between 2019 and 2020.
Several interviewees said they had heard of high school students being executed in Yanggang Province for watching Squid Game, while similar executions were reported in North Hamgyong Province in 2021.
In one widely reported case, a student who smuggled copies of Squid Game into North Korea from China in 2021 was executed by firing squad, according to Radio Free Asia.
Others who merely watched the show were sentenced to life imprisonment or years of hard labour.
The crackdown is enforced under North Korea’s 2020 Anti-Reactionary Thought and Culture Act, which brands South Korean content as “rotten ideology that paralyses the people’s revolutionary sense.”
Under the law, watching or possessing South Korean films, dramas or music attracts between five and 15 years of forced labour, while distributing “large amounts” of such content or organising group viewings can carry the death penalty.
Escapees also described the activities of a special police unit known as the “109 Group,” which conducts warrantless searches of homes, mobile phones and personal belongings in a relentless hunt for foreign media.
One defector quoted an officer as saying, “We don’t want to punish you harshly, but we need to bribe our bosses to save our own lives.”
Despite the risks, South Korean dramas and K-pop music continue to circulate inside North Korea, smuggled in on USB drives from China. Interviewees said consumption of foreign media is widespread, even among officials tasked with enforcing the bans.
“Workers watch it openly, party officials watch it proudly, security agents watch it secretly, and police watch it safely,” one escapee said. “Everyone knows everyone watches.”
Amnesty said public executions are routinely used as tools of “ideological education,” with students and entire communities forced to attend.
“They execute people to brainwash and educate us,” one former resident said.
Brooks described North Korea as an “ideological cage,” where the population is deliberately cut off from outside information through fear, violence and corruption.
“This completely arbitrary system violates fundamental principles of justice and internationally recognised human rights,” she said. “It must be dismantled.”