North Korea executes 30 teens for watching K-dramas
By Carl Samson
North Korea reportedly executed around 30 teenagers for watching South Korean dramas earlier this month. The deceased, who were all middle school students, allegedly consumed the prohibited content from USBs sent via balloons by North Korean defector groups from Seoul.
- Driving the news: The students were publicly shot. The executions underscore the harsh penalties under Pyongyang’s Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act, a 2020 law that punishes possession, consumption or distribution of South Korean media — including movies, videos, songs, books, photos and drawings — with years of labor or death. Earlier this year, a rare footage of two 16-year-old boys being sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for watching K-dramas made rounds in international media.
- Ongoing resistance: Despite the country’s draconian laws, there is ongoing resistance from the younger generation — known as the “jangmadang generation” — who reportedly continue to seek out and engage with forbidden content, demonstrating a persistent defiance against the regime’s oppressive control. Their stories, through eight defectors, were highlighted in a 2017 documentary.
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