Mick Hartley

In yesterday's post about the two North Korean students recently put on trial for watching, copying, and distributing South Korean videos, I suggested that the unfortunate youths would likely end up in labour camps.

It could be worse than that. From today's Daily NK:

North Koreans caught importing or distributing foreign media content inside their country face being executed or sent to political prison camps with their families, Daily NK has learned. The country’s authorities are generating an atmosphere of fear by sticking to an outmoded system of “guilt by association.”

In a telephone conversation with Daily NK on Thursday, a source in North Korea said people who have imported recordings, videos, propaganda, printed materials, radios or books from South Korea “that could become illegal means of reactionary agitation” face execution. “Or, they get dragged off with three generations of their family to a political prison camp run by the Ministry of State Security,” he said.

Materials providing a summary of the anti-reactionary thought law, which were obtained by Daily NK earlier this year, say that bringing in or distributing movies, recordings, videos or books from South Korea is punishable by up to life in a forced labor camp or death, depending on the severity of the crime.

Though the law specifies life in a forced labor camp, violators are apparently being sent to political prison camps.