Newly released video footage obtained by the BBC shows a North Korean court sentencing two 16-year-old boys to 12 years of hard labor for watching a South Korean television show, known as a k-drama, as the country continues cracking down on interaction and reconciliation with its neighbor to the south.
The video was released as tensions continue to rise on the Korean peninsula.
The footage was released by the South and North Development research institute, and appears to show two North Korean teenagers being handcuffed in front of a large stadium full of other children.
The research group—which includes defectors from North Korea—told the BBC the footage was distributed en masse to other citizens of the totalitarian country as a warning against watching foreign media.
The footage is reportedly from 2022, about two years after North Korea adopted a strict “Reactionary Thought and Culture Denunciation” law that banned foreign cell phones, South Korean, Japanese and American entertainment and even South Korea slang.
North Koreans who violate the ban face punishments of forced labor or even the death penalty, according to Human Rights Watch, though South Korean entertainment has long reached the north.
Key Background
Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen sharply over the last few weeks as North Korean rhetoric, missile tests and artillery barrages have threatened the ceasefire that paused the Korean War in 1953. On January 5, North Korea began firing a barrage of at least 200 artillery rounds near Yeonpyeong Island, a sparsely populated island just miles from the North Korean coastline but controlled by the South. The artillery barrage prompted South Korean officials to evacuate the island’s civilian population. On Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called on his country’s legislature to rewrite the constitution to define South Korea as their “primary foe and invariable principal enemy,” the Associated Press reported, citing North Korean state media.
Further Reading