Recently surfaced North Korean footage has captured the North Korean government’s crackdown on citizens, including teenagers, for consuming banned South Korean media.
The footage, obtained by South Korean production company KBS Media, shows a public denunciation session where a group of young girls, including a 16-year-old student, are publicly humiliated and arrested for the offense.
Pyongyang maintains tight control over the flow of information within its borders, forbidding citizens from accessing foreign music, films, and TV series. Those caught violating these restrictions face severe penalties, including public shaming, imprisonment, and in some cases, execution.
The Kim Jong Un regime views South Korean media as a direct threat to its ideological purity and legitimacy, heightening crackdowns on such content in recent years.
The footage shows a young girl identified only as Choi, breaking down in tears during a public denunciation session—a form of organized group criticism employed by communist regimes such as North Korea, the former Soviet Union, and China under former Chairman Mao Zedong.
“I made the mistake of listening to and distributing impure published propaganda,” Choi said into the microphone during the hearing, according to KBS’s translation. The footage then shows her being led away in handcuffs.
KBS/YouTube
Though such public punishments are commonplace, a North Korean defector surnamed Jang who fled the country in 2020 expressed shock at the public punishment of someone so young.
“I’ve never seen school students punished like this before,” she told KBS. “The fact that they were handcuffed is really shocking to me.”
The video is part of over 10 recordings obtained by KBS, most of which were produced after May 2021.
North Korea closed its borders in early 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country finally reopened its borders to returning citizens in August 2023.
KBS/YouTube
North Korea’s rigid control over media intensified in 2020 when Pyongyang enacted what have been dubbed the “evil laws” as part of its crackdown on perceived external threats to ensure loyalty to the regime.
These laws target foreign cultural products, including media and also South Korean slang.
The South Korean Ministry of Unification’s 2023 report on human rights abuses in the North highlighted testimonies from defectors who witnessed public executions of young adults for watching K-dramas and listening to K-pop.
Pyongyang earlier this year amended its constitution to label Seoul as its primary enemy.
KBS/YouTube
Despite the harsh punishments, South Korean media continues to penetrate North Korea, often via activists in the South who send USB drives filled with dramas and music into the North using balloons.
USB drives filled with South Korean media sent north by activists in the South have further inflamed tensions. The North has retaliated by sending balloons south laden with trash, and in some cases human waste.
A U.S. State Department spokesperson previously told Newsweek that Washington, DC advocates human rights and the free flow of information in and out of North Korea and condemns the country’s three “evil laws” and “draconian punishments and youth targeting.”
The North Korean embassy in Beijing, China, and U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to written requests for comment.
