(CTN News) – South Korea said that a 22-year-old North Korean citizen was executed for spreading K-pop music and films.
A man from the Hermit Kingdom’s South Hwanghae province was executed in 2022 for listening to 70 South Korean songs, watching three films, and distributing them, according to testimonies published in the North Korean Human Rights report released by the South’s Unification Ministry on Thursday.
The research, compiled from 649 North Korean defectors, reveals Pyongyang’s ruthless crackdown on Western influence and information flow in the isolated country.
The North’s 2020 law prohibiting “reactionary ideology and culture” strengthened the prohibition on K-pop to protect civilians from the “malign influence” of Western culture.
The North has rejected criticism of the government’s egregious violations of human rights, claiming that they are part of a plan to overthrow the leadership.
Other “reactionary” habits that are penalized include supposed South Korean norms such as brides wearing white outfits, men carrying the bride’s sunglasses, and drinking from wine glasses.
According to the study, North Koreans’ mobile phones are constantly checked for contact name spellings, phrases, and slang terminology.
“The government does not tolerate pluralism, bans independent media, civil society organisations, and trade unions, and systematically denies all basic liberties, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, and freedom of religion and belief,” Human Rights Watch stated about North Korea in their 2023 world report.
One of the defectors, a lady in her early twenties, stated that South Korean culture is rapidly impacting North Korea. Young people admire and emulate South Korean culture and adore anything South Korean.”
“After watching Korean dramas, many young people wonder: ‘Why do we have to live like this?'” The Guardian paraphrased her as stating, “I thought I’d rather die than live in North Korea.”
“Of course, we cannot say anything bad about Kim Jong-un publicly, but among close friends, lovers or family members, we do say those words,” she said.
According to rights groups, North Korea has previously carried out executions in towns and prison camps where large crowds could gather.
However, it has progressively avoided executions in densely populated residential neighborhoods, where officials struggled to keep track of people present. It has also ceased carrying out executions near its borders and at places that are easily monitored by satellites.
The South has threatened to revive anti-Pyongyang propaganda in a Cold War-style campaign after North Korea restarted trash-carrying balloon launches.
North Korea has launched a fifth campaign of floating plastic bags across the border, seemingly in reaction to South Korean activists’ use of balloons to distribute political literature.
The 1950-1953 Korean War ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, hence the two Koreas are still formally at war.