North Korea has publicly executed a 22-year-old man for listening to and sharing K-pop as part of Pyongyang’s ruthless crackdown on foreign culture, according to a human rights report released by South Korea.
One testimony in the report speaks of how a young man from South Hwanghae province was publicly executed in 2022 after listening to 70 South Korean songs, watching three films, and distributing them – an act of defiance against the totalitarian dictatorship’s laws against Western culture.
The report, which was published by South Korea’s unification ministry yesterday, also detailed North Korea’s ample efforts to control outside information flow, as it falls under the umbrella of non-socialist culture.
The document compiles testimonies from nearly 650 North Korean defectors.
The ban on K-pop is part of a merciless campaign to shield North Koreans from the ‘malign’ influence of the West and its allies, that began under the former leader, Kim Jong-il and intensified under his son Kim Jong-un’s rule.
According to the US government-funded Radio Free Asia, the regime was cracking down on ‘capitalist’ fashion and hairstyles, targeting skinny jeans and T-shirts bearing foreign words, as well as dyed or long hair.
Other examples of practices North Koreans can be punished for include brides wearing white dresses, women wearing shorts, wearing sunglasses and drinking alcohol from wine glasses – customs which are seen as South Korean.
Experts say that South Korean popular culture seeping into the North could pose a threat to its extremist ideology.
But despite North Korea’s harsh measures, the influence of South Korean and general Western culture is proving an unstoppable force, reports suggest.
38 North, a website dedicated to offering analyses on North Korea, said its citizens have increasingly more options to consume outside information and media than ever before.
While they used to be limited to modified radios and television sets, they can obtain movies on DVD’s and USB’s and can also access them through computers and smartphones, prompting government officials to upgrade their methods of control.
One North Korean defector said that ‘the speed of South Korean culture influencing Norht Korea is seriously fast. Young people follow and copy South Korean culture, and they really love anything South Korean’, as reported by The Guardian.
In recent weeks, North Korea has dropped hundreds of balloons filled with faeces and trash onto South Korea in retaliation for propaganda leaflets scattered over the communist regime.
North Korean defectors have been known to send balloons to the North side containing anti-regime leaflets, and have also reportedly sent USB memory sticks of Korean pop music and videos, which are prohibited in North Korea.