Video footage launched by an organisation that works with North Korean defectors reveals North Korean authorities publicly sentencing two youngsters to 12 years’ laborious labour for watching Okay-pop.
The footage, which reveals the 2 16-year-olds in Pyongyang convicted of watching South Korean motion pictures and music movies, was launched by the South and North Growth (SAND) Institute.
Reuters was unable to independently confirm the footage, which was first reported by the BBC.
North Korea has for years imposed powerful sentences on anybody caught having fun with South Korean leisure or copying the way in which South Koreans communicate in a battle on outdoors influences since a sweeping new “anti-reactionary thought” legislation was imposed in 2020.
“Judging from the heavy punishment, evidently that is to be proven to folks throughout North Korea to warn them. In that case, it seems this way of life of South Korean tradition is prevalent in North Korean society,” mentioned Choi Kyong-hui, president of SAND and Physician of Political Science at Tokyo College, who defected from North Korea in 2001.
“I believe this video was edited round 2022… What’s troublesome for (North Korean chief) Kim Jong Un is that Millennials and Gen Z younger folks have modified their mind-set. I believe he is engaged on turning it again to the North Korean approach.”
The video, made by North Korean authorities, reveals a big public trial by which the 2 college students in gray scrubs are handcuffed whereas watched by about 1,000 college students in an amphitheatre. All the scholars, together with the 2 16-year-olds, are carrying face masks, suggesting the footage was shot through the Covid pandemic.
The scholars have been sentenced, in keeping with the video, after being convicted of watching and spreading South Korean motion pictures, music and music movies over three months.
“They have been seduced by overseas tradition… and ended up ruining their lives,” the narrator states, because the video cuts away to younger ladies being handcuffed and Pyongyang ladies carrying South Korean trend and hairstyles.
Reclusive North Korea and the wealthy, democratic South are technically nonetheless at battle after their 1950-53 battle resulted in a truce, not a peace treaty, and are divided by a closely fortified demilitarised zone (DMZ).
