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North Korea: Watching foreign films and killing your mother are reportedly considered equally ‘evil’ in North Korea.
As per reports, in October, the North Korean administration executed three teenagers. While two of them were sentenced to death for watching and distributing South Korean films, the third killed his stepmother.
The information about their killings only emerged last week amid the crackdown on foreign media by Kim Jong-Un’s dictatorship.
Reportedly, the witnesses were forced to watch as the boys were executed by firing squad on an airfield in Hyesan.The officials allegedly told the locals that the two crimes were “equally evil.”
The witnesses who were forced to see the executions confirmed the horrific killings to Radio Free Asia.
They said on the radio that the residents of Hyesan, located to the north of the country near the Chinese border, were gathered in groups on the runway to witness the execution.
They said: “The authorities put the teen-aged students in front of the public, sentenced them to death, and immediately shot them.”
The witnesses added that they were told: “Those who watch or distribute South Korean movies and dramas, and those who disrupt social order by murdering other people, will not be forgiven and will be sentenced to the maximum penalty: death.”
The two teenagers were reportedly caught selling the contraband films stored in small pen drives, in their local market.
Reports published on the foreign media claim on the statements of the witnesses that North Korean government plants spies among the public to report such sellers with intention to catch them ‘red handed’.
Just a week before the killing of the two boys, the locals claim that the officials of the Kim Jong-Un’s government made announcements in public meetings informing about the crackdown on foreign media specially those coming from a more democratic and prosperous neighbour – South Korea.
Reports claim that both Western and South Korean films, as well as music and TV shows, are smuggled into the North Korea stored in USB flash drives and SD cards, through China.
The crackdown on such media is targeted to save North Korean youth from getting impacted by South Korean culture.
According to the execution witness, merely watching a foreign film is enough for a North Korean to be sent to a disciplinary labour centre.
For second time offenders, a correctional labor camp has been made where they are kept for five years along with their parents, as they are held responsible for improperly educating their children.
However, being caught distributing or selling South Korean films can be sufficient grounds for the death penalty – even when those concerned are underage, reports claim.
Sources added that the executions were part of a new “reign of terror”, with the likelihood of future public killings “now higher than ever before.”
North Korea’s legacy of public executions extends even to members of Kim Jong-Un’s own family, with reports emerging earlier this year that his own uncle had been horribly killed by the state after it described him as “despicable human scum, worse than a dog”.
Jang Song-thaek was reportedly hunted and killed by 120 dogs that had been starved for three days prior, in 2013.Further reports suggest officials watched as the dogs tore into their meal, while eight of Jang’s close allies were also executed by the state.
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