North Korea is executing schoolchildren for watching South Korean TV shows and listening to K-Pop, including Netflix’s hit series “Squid Game,” according to Amnesty International.
Escapees told the human rights group that teenagers and even middle school students have been publicly executed, sent to labor camps or subjected to brutal public humiliations for consuming foreign media banned by the regime.
The accounts are based on 25 in-depth interviews conducted in 2025 with North Koreans who fled the country between 2012 and 2020, the organization said.
Most were between ages 15 and 25 when they escaped.
One interviewee said people, including high school students, were executed for watching “Squid Game” in Yanggang Province near the Chinese border.
Radio Free Asia separately documented an execution for distributing the show in neighboring North Hamgyong Province in 2021.
“Taken together, these reports from different provinces suggest multiple executions related to the shows,” Amnesty wrote.
The crackdown has intensified under North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose regime enforces the 2020 Anti-Reactionary Thought and Culture Act, which brands South Korean media as “rotten ideology that paralyses the people’s revolutionary sense.”
The law mandates five to 15 years of forced labor for watching or possessing South Korean dramas, films or music, with harsher penalties — including death — for distributing content or organizing group viewings, Amnesty added in its report.
Interviewees said punishment often depends on money.
“People are caught for the same act, but punishment depends entirely on money,” said Choi Suvin, 39, who fled North Korea in 2019.
“People without money sell their houses to gather $5,000 or $10,000 to pay to get out of the re-education camps,” he added.
Kim Joonsik, 28, said he was caught watching South Korean dramas three times before leaving in 2019 but avoided punishment because his family had connections.
“Usually when high school students are caught, if their family has money, they just get warnings,” he said. “I didn’t receive legal punishment because we had connections.”
Others were not so lucky.
Kim said three of his sister’s high school friends were sentenced to years-long labor camp terms in the late 2010s because their families could not afford bribes.
Several escapees described being forced, as children, to attend public executions as part of what authorities called “ideological education.”
“When we were 16, 17, in middle school, they took us to executions and showed us everything,” said Kim Eunju, 40, who fled in 2019. “People were executed for watching or distributing South Korean media. It’s ideological education: if you watch, this happens to you too.”
Amnesty said a specialized police unit known as the “109 Group” carries out warrantless home raids and street searches for foreign media.
Across different regions, 15 interviewees described the unit’s operations.
One escapee recalled officers saying, “We don’t want to punish you harshly, but we need to bribe our bosses to save our own lives.”
Despite the risks, foreign media remains widespread inside the country, the report said, smuggled in from China on USB drives and watched on notebook computers.
“Workers watch it openly, party officials watch it proudly, security agents watch it secretly and police watch it safely,” one interviewee said.
“Everyone knows everyone watches, including those who do the crackdowns,” they added.
The brutality described by escapees is consistent with years of reporting on the regime’s treatment of foreign media.
South Korean officials, UN investigators and US-funded broadcasters have previously documented public executions and labor camp sentences for listening to banned radio broadcasts or sharing South Korean films and music.
In early 2024, footage reported by CNN showed two North Korean teenagers sentenced to years of hard labor for watching and distributing South Korean dramas.
A UN human rights report released last year also warned that the regime has increasingly relied on public executions to instill fear, including for crimes tied to foreign information.
“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,” said Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director.
with Post wires
