{"id":141298,"date":"2024-01-20T11:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-20T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2024\/01\/20\/north-korean-teens-sentenced-to-prison-with-hard-labour-for-watching-k-dramas\/"},"modified":"2024-01-20T11:11:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-20T11:11:00","slug":"north-korean-teens-sentenced-to-prison-with-hard-labour-for-watching-k-dramas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2024\/01\/20\/north-korean-teens-sentenced-to-prison-with-hard-labour-for-watching-k-dramas\/","title":{"rendered":"North Korean teens sentenced to prison with hard labour for watching k-dramas \u2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Rare footage obtained by BBC Korean shows North Korea publicly sentencing two teenage boys to 12 years of hard labour for watching K-dramas.<\/p>\n<p>The footage, which appears to have been filmed in 2022, shows two 16-year-old boys handcuffed in front of hundreds of students at an outdoor stadium.<\/p>\n<p>It also shows uniformed officers reprimanding the boys for not \u201cdeeply reflecting on their mistakes\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>South Korean entertainment, including TV, is banned in the North.<\/p>\n<p>Despite that, some are prepared to risk severe punishment to access K-dramas, which have a huge global audience.<\/p>\n<p>Footage such as this is rare because North Korea forbids photos, videos and other evidence of life in the country from being leaked to the outside world.https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/av-embeds\/68015652\/vpid\/p0h5pvw0<\/p>\n<p>This video was provided to the BBC by the South and North Development (Sand), a research institute that works with defectors from the North.<\/p>\n<p>It suggests authorities are coming down harder on such incidents. The clip has reportedly been distributed in North Korea for ideology education and to warn citizens not to watch \u201cdecadent recordings\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The video includes a narrator who is repeating state propaganda. \u201cThe rotten puppet regime\u2019s culture has spread even to teenagers,\u201d says the voice, in an apparent reference to South Korea. \u201cThey are just 16 years old, but they ruined their own future,\u201d it adds.<\/p>\n<p>The boys were also named by officers and had their addresses revealed.<\/p>\n<p>In the past, minors who broke the law in this way would be sent to youth labour camps rather than put behind bars, and the punishment was usually less than five years.<\/p>\n<p>In 2020, however, Pyongyang enacted a law to make watching or distributing South Korean entertainment punishable by death.<\/p>\n<p>A defector previously told the BBC that he was forced to watch a 22-year-old man shot to death. He said the man was accused of listening to South Korean music and had shared films from the South with his friend.<\/p>\n<p>Sand CEO Choi Kyong-hui said Pyongyang sees the spread of K-dramas and K-pop as a danger to its ideology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAdmiration for South Korean society can soon lead to a weakening of the system\u2026This goes against the monolithic ideology that makes North Koreans revere the Kim family,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>North Koreans started getting a taste of South Korean entertainment in the 2000s, during the years of the South\u2019s \u201csunshine policy\u201d which saw it offering unconditional economic and humanitarian aid to the North.<\/p>\n<p>Seoul ended the policy in 2010, saying it found the aid did not reach the ordinary North Koreans it was intended for, and that it had not resulted in any \u201cpositive changes\u201d to Pyongyang\u2019s behaviour.<\/p>\n<p>However, South Korean entertainment continued to reach North Korea through China.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you get caught watching an American drama, you can get away with a bribe, but if you watch a Korean drama, you get shot,\u201d a North Korean defector told BBC Korean on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor North Korean people, Korean dramas are a \u2018drug\u2019 that helps them forget their difficult reality,\u201d the defector said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn North Korea, we learn that South Korea lives much worse than us, but when you watch South Korean dramas, it\u2019s a completely different world. It seems like the North Korean authorities are wary of that,\u201d said another North Korean defector in her 20s.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source<\/strong>:\u00a0<a>BBC<\/p>\n<p><!-- AI CONTENT END 1 --><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rare footage obtained by BBC Korean shows North Korea publicly sentencing two teenage boys to 12 years of hard labour for watching K-dramas. The footage, which appears to have been filmed in 2022, shows two 16-year-old boys handcuffed in front of hundreds of students at an outdoor stadium. It also shows uniformed officers reprimanding the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":141299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>North Korean teens sentenced to prison with hard labour for watching k-dramas \u2013 - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2024\/01\/20\/north-korean-teens-sentenced-to-prison-with-hard-labour-for-watching-k-dramas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"North Korean teens sentenced to prison with hard labour for watching k-dramas \u2013 - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rare footage obtained by BBC Korean shows North Korea publicly sentencing two teenage boys to 12 years of hard labour for watching K-dramas. 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