'Educational videos' show North Korean teens arrested, shamed for watching South Korean TV shows

Videos apparently depicting North Korean authorities handcuffing teenagers for watching South Korean dramas and publicly shaming their family members were released by a local public broadcaster on Wednesday.

A video obtained by South Korean broadcaster KBS shows North Korean authorities handcuffing teenage girls for watching South Korean drams. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Videos apparently depicting North Korean authorities handcuffing teenagers for watching South Korean dramas and publicly shaming their family members were released by a local public broadcaster on Wednesday.

South Korean broadcaster KBS obtained these videos and revealed them through a report on the broadcaster's 9 o'clock daily news program showing that North Korean teenagers were arrested, handcuffed and filmed for an “educational” video warning other North Koreans against watching South Korean content.

In the video, young girls are seen sitting in a row in front of authorities with their heads bowed. A 16-year-old girl then stands in front of a microphone with her mask removed and bursts into tears.

North Korean authorities disclosed the girl’s name, her school, age and her parents’ identities and declared that “we have severely punished several students who watched and distributed subversive propaganda material, including television dramas from the South Korean puppet state.”

Authorities in Pyongyang also publicly criticized the teens’ family members.

KBS reported that these videos contain about 10 hours of footage in total, are divided into 10 episodes, and were mostly produced after May 2021.

“As the economic crisis worsened after the suspension of trade with China during the Covid-19 pandemic, the human rights situation in North Korea has worsened as authorities strengthened control to prevent unrest among people,” reported KBS.

KBS also said that North Korean authorities are cracking down hard on the spread of South Korean content, defining it as a matter of life and death.

In one of the videos, a North Korean soldier in his 20s confessed to watching South Korean content, saying, “I watched 15 American films, 17 South Korean films and listened to more than 160 songs on my mobile phone.”

The mother of another soldier was filmed in one of the videos denouncing her own son, saying that he was arrested for watching South Korean videos in the military, saying, “I gave birth to a traitor.”

“There is a phenomenon in which impure recordings are purchased, viewed, stored and distributed using mobile phones, and in the process, even text messages are exchanged in the South Korean dialect,” said North Korean authorities in the videos. “We must consider the fight against this malignant tumor as a matter of life and death.”

BY HYEON YE-SEUL, LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]