North Korea toughens executions for watching foreign sequences and music, NGO denounces

A new report from the human rights organization Transnational Justice Working Community (TJWG) has revealed a strong increase in executions in North Korea linked to foreign culture, religion and “superstition.”

The Seoul-based NGO analyzed executions before and after the border closure decreed in January 2020 by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, officially, to protect the country from COVID-19. For his research, he interviewed 880 deserters from the regime.

According to the report, 153 people were sentenced to death in North Korea between January 2020 and December 2024 for various chargesrepresenting an increase of almost 250 percent compared to the equivalent period before border closures.

The increase is even more marked in cases related to culture, religion – including the possession of a Bible – and “superstition.” After January 2020, in less than five years, 38 people were sentenced to death for these reasons, compared to seven in the same previous period.

“Before the border closure, murder was the most common capital crime,” activists noted. In recent years, however, “the focus has shifted to crimes related to foreign culture and information, such as South Korean films, series and music.”

Consumption of foreign culture, despite repression

Experts say this shift reflects a growing willingness by Kim Jong-un’s regime to use lethal force to ensure loyalty and quell any signs of discontent. Even so, Large amounts of foreign content continue to circulate within the country.

“It is too late for the North Korean regime to put this genie back in the bottle,” said Greg Scarlatoiu, director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. “Repression is intensifying and the number of loyalists to the regime is decreasing. Violence is becoming its essential tool.”

According to the expert, “the sons and daughters of the North Korean elite in urban areas are ‘hooked’ on smuggled South Korean pop culture and American action movies. “They risk their lives to access that information.”

In 2018, Kim Jong-un himself seemed to show some openness by attending a concert by South Korean artists, but that period of “US diplomacy” ok pop” seems to have been left behind.

Public executions as a warning

In January 2022, a woman in her 20s and her partner were publicly executed in South Pyongan province for watching and sharing South Korean films and series, according to the Seoul-based media. Day after day NK.

The woman was the daughter of a high official of the Ministry of State Security, but that did not prevent her execution. The rest of his family was sent to a political prison camp.

Around 300 local residents were forced to watch the execution. About 20 people accused of having received or shared the audiovisual fabric had to sit in the front row and were later arrested.

“It’s creepy, but not surprising,” Tune Younger-chae, an academic and activist with the Global Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, told DW.

“These are the methods that the regime uses to exert retain an eye fixed on. And if they perceive that they are losing it as more North Koreans watch films from abroad, The only tool they have left is more violence,” he said.

“The regime fears music videos and television programs because they show the population what the world is like outside their borders and dismantle the idea that they live in a paradise,” he added.

Criticism of the ban on balloon advertising

Much of this foreign content comes into the country thanks to activists who store it on USB drives and send it across the border with balloons. However, South Korea banned the practice last year in an attempt by President Lee Jae-myung to improve relations with Pyongyang.

For Tune, the decision is “a big mistake.”

“This was one of the main demands of the government in Pyongyang, so it is clear that giving the population access to information alarms the regime,” he stated. “If we really want to help people in North Korea, we have to give them greater access to information.”

Scarlatoiu also called the move a “mistake of epic proportions.”

“I grew up in communist Romania. I understand the power of information from abroad. Up to 80 percent of Romanians did not trust the regime’s propaganda and were informed through stations such as Deutsche Welle, BBC, Order of The United States and Radio Free Europe. All played a vital role in the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime in December 1989,” he recalled.

“North Koreans must know the history of a prosperous, free and democratic South Korea. And that can only be achieved through leaflet balloons and other limited channels,” he concluded.

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