Mick Hartley

Last year we heard of three North Koreans executed for watching South Korean TV dramas. Now:

15 teenagers in Yanggang Province were recently put on public trial for watching American films and branded “traitors tainted by non-socialist ideology,” Daily NK has learned from sources who were forced to attend the proceedings, which are conducted by the State Security Department to instill fear in the population and send a ghastly warning to others secretly engaging in activities prohibited by North Korea's drastic penal code.

On the 21st, a Daily NK reporter spoke with a source in Yanggang Province, who told us that on Saturday, January 16th, a public trial was held in Hyesan City in front of the Hyesan Cinema. There, 16 and 17 year-old-students were placed on trial for watching American films before being handed over to the provincial Ministry of People’s Security [MPS, who act as North Korea’s police force] unit, for the preliminary hearing….

Fresh cases labeling the viewing of South Korean films treasonous and the subsequently grim punishments that were meted out has driven down the number of North Koreans viewing South Korean films more recently. The source speculated that the students may have watched the American movies thinking that the state’s tunnel vision to quash South Korean cultural content would shelter them from severe repercussions. 

She added that state fear tactics do little if anything to stamp out the inherent desire people have to absorb anything and everything from the outside world. In fact, they often pique the interest of the populace all the more. Nothing can change the fact that most North Koreans overwhelmingly find homegrown films stiff and monotonous, preferring to watch Chinese or foreign films. At the trial, no mention was made of the origin of the disk that held the American film in question, but “everyone knew that it came [smuggled] in from China,” the source pointed out. 

However, people do admit that punishing sensitive children harshly as a warning to others is by turns terrifying and infuriating. Criticism of the “hypocrisy of the regime” arose behind closed doors among many who were made to watch the show trial. “It should be the Party cadres [on trial] who watch them regularly,” a number of spectators pointed out afterwards. 

“Show me anyone of those accusers who hasn’t watched a foreign film at least once,” parents of some of the students told Daily NK’s source in private. 

North Korean defector Hyun Mi Yeon (43), who was sent to a re-education camp [kyohwaso] in 2014 for the crime of watching a South Korean drama while in the North, said, “When I was being interrogated by the MPS for watching a South Korean drama, I witnessed all of the personnel, right up to the chief, watching these dramas themselves. The interrogators would say to residents caught watching the [South Korean] dramas, ‘Wow, you’ve seen all the latest South Korean stuff!’” 

According to testimony by both defectors and those still residing in North Korea, after Kim Jong Un took over the country, surveillance units comprising personnel from various law enforcement bodies doubled down on punishments and crackdowns for those caught watching media from beyond the country’s borders, with a particular focus on rooting out South Korean programming content.