News Outlet Claim North Korea Publicly Executed 30 Teenagers For Watching South Korean Dramas

According to reports, North Korea has executed 30 teenagers for watching South Korean K-dramas.

Chosun TV and Korea JoongAng Daily, two South Korean news sources, have reported that teens were shot in public for watching dramas.

The TV shows are thought to have been smuggled over the border on pirated USB sticks, despite the fact that media transmissions are thoroughly regulated.

Unnamed officials from the South Korean Unification Ministry informed Korea JoongAng Daily: "It is widely known that North Korean authorities strictly control and harshly punish residents based on the three so-called 'evil' laws."

North Korea maintains strict control over the media its civilians can consume. Getty Images

The culture that is allowed to be consumed by its residents is strictly regulated by the authoritarian north.

Seen as originating from South Korea, this involves intense animosity toward any material created there as well as any impact.

The level of animosity is so great that it is allegedly forbidden for North Koreans to speak in dialects or use language from the South for fear that it will be assumed that they are watching or consuming Southern media.

The reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act of North Korea is one part of this, which prohibits the dissemination of any media that originated in South Korea, Japan, or the United States.

Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, told Business Insider that although the rumours of the 30 children killed had not been independently confirmed: "Under the circumstances created by the intensified crackdown on information from the outside world, initially conducted under the pretext of COVID, these reports are definitely plausible."

The Ministry of Unification of South Korea released a report in 2024 detailing the measures taken to counter foreign influence in the geographically remote nation.

It stated that wearing a white wedding dress is considered "reactionary" and that citizens are forbidden from adopting "South Korean-style language."

A North Korean defector told the Korea Herald that parents were instructed in 2020 to make sure their kids weren't exposed to "impure video content."

Anyone found distributing or transmitting illegal content faces serious consequences.

People are even checked for not using South Korean language. Getty Images

According to a 2022 UN Secretary-General Report, a man from Kangwon Province was publicly executed by firing squad.

A 22-year-old man from South Hwanghae Province was "publicly executed for listening to 70 South Korean songs, watching three movies, and distributing them to others," according to a different report released by the South Korean Unification Ministry in 2024.

His death occurred as a result of an alleged complaint from a neighbourhood watch group regarding his sale of South Korean-originating digital content.

The communist north and the capitalist south of the Korean Peninsula have each claimed exclusive sovereignty over the peninsula since its division in 1948.

Even while North Korea benefited initially from Soviet help, it has grown more and more closed off from the outside world since the fall of the Soviet Union.