The communist government in North Korea had publicly executed two teenagers for watching and circulating South Korean drama shows among their friends, media outlet Radio Free Asia quoted two eyewitnesses as confirming. The execution of the minors aged 16 or 17 was carried out in October this year, the report said.
According to the report, the teenagers were taken before the public, sentenced to death, and then shot down by a firing squad at an airfield in the city while residents in the area were forced to watch the execution.
“They said, ‘Those who watch or distribute South Korean movies and dramas, and those who disrupt social order by murdering other people, will not be forgiven and will be sentenced to the maximum penalty–death’,” a resident of the city of Hyesan, on the border with China, where the execution took place, was quoted by RFA as saying.
“Hyesan residents gathered in groups at the runway,” she said. “The authorities put the teen-aged students in front of the public, sentenced them to death, and immediately shot them.”
The students met in early October at a high school in North Korea’s Ryanggang Province, which shares a border with China, where they watched many Korean and American drama productions.
This is not the first time such atrocities have been carried out on people living in North Korea. The communist country strictly controls the lives of its citizens and all television and radios are tuned into state propaganda. If anyone is caught watching or listening to foreign broadcasts, they face harsh punishment.
Last year, a North Korean man had been sentenced to death for smuggling the South Korean Netflix series ‘Squid Game’ on USB through China and sold their copies after seven high school students were caught watching the show.
A student who bought the USB from the smuggler is given a life sentence while six others who saw it with him have been sentenced to five years of hard labour. Teachers and school administrators are also fired and banished to work in remote areas in mines, the report said citing sources.
