Pecohub People in North Korea, including schoolchildren, are being executed for watching Squid Game and other foreign media, according to new testimony.
Citizens also face being killed for listening to K-pop, a South Korean music genre that includes bands like BTS.
Interviewees have described a climate of fear in which the South’s culture is treated as a serious crime.
The less well-off are more likely to suffer the harshest punishments, while wealthier North Koreans are able to pay corrupt officials to dodge prosecution, it is claimed.
The testimonies were revealed by Amnesty International after conducting 25 in-depth interviews with escapees who have fled the secretive state run by Kim Jong-un’s regime.
The escapees said watching globally popular South Korean dramas, such as Squid Game, Crash Landing on You, and Descendants of the Sun, can lead to the most extreme consequences, including death.
One interviewee said they heard from an escapee with family links how people, including high school students, had been executed for watching Squid Game in Yanggang Province, which is close to the Chinese border.
Another execution for distributing the South Korean show was previously documented by Radio Free Asia in neighbouring North Hamgyong Province in 2021.
“Taken together, these reports from different provinces suggest multiple executions related to the shows,” Amnesty said in a statement.
