North Koreans 'Publicly Executed' over K-Pop and K-Dramas: Report

North Koreans "are being publicly executed, sent to labor camps, or subjected to brutal public humiliation" for consuming and distributing South Korean media, according to testimonies published by Amnesty International (Lean Left bias).

The Details: "Interviewees described being forced, as schoolchildren, to attend public executions as part of their 'ideological education,'" the outlet reported. Amnesty International interviewed 25 North Korean escapees in 2025 and published its report on Wednesday. The outlet said, "reports from different provinces suggest multiple executions related to [South Korean] shows," noting a Radio Free Asia (not rated) documentation of a 2021 execution as punishment for someone distributing the show "Squid Game." One escapee, Kim Joonsik, reportedly told interviewers that "three of his sisters' high school friends received years-long labor camp sentences in the late 2010s for watching South Korean dramas because their families could not afford bribes." 

Multiple escapees mentioned the "109 Group" that "conducts warrantless home and street searches of bags and mobile phones, indicating a nationwide, systematic approach." The outlet quoted escapee Choi Suvin, who described an execution in which, "Authorities told everyone to go, and tens of thousands of people from Sinuiju city gathered to watch."

For Context: A similar United Nations (UN) Human Rights Office report from September asserted, "There have been significant regressions regarding freedom of expression and access to information, with the implementation of severe new punishments, including the death penalty, for a range of acts, including the sharing of foreign media." North Korea's Anti-Reactionary Thought and Culture Act, introduced in 2020, reportedly punishes South Korean media consumption with a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 to 15 years of forced labor, and "large" distributions or viewings with sentences as severe as the death penalty.

How The Media Covered It: American news media scarcely covered the Amnesty International report, and mainstream outlets across the globe largely omitted coverage as well. The Independent (Lean Left) prominently noted the "war on TV and pop music." Both The Independent and Daily Mail (Lean Right) appealed to their more Western audiences by mentioning "Squid Game" and K-Pop in their headlines. United Press International (Center) highlighted a Commission of Inquiry (COI) report from 2014 that "documented North Korean crimes against humanity, including torture, rape, execution, deliberate starvation, and forced labor, which it said were 'without parallel in the contemporary world.'"

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