Footage has emerged from North Korea which shows a pair of teenage boys being sentenced to 12 years of hard labour for an extraordinarily minor offence.
Footage has emerged from North Korea which shows a pair of teenage boys being sentenced to 12 years of hard labour for an extraordinarily minor offence.
Rare footage has emerged from inside North Korea highlighting a trial where two teenage boys were sentenced to 12 years of hard labour for an absurd crime in what is being described as a propaganda crackdown attempt.
Kim Jong-un’s government filmed the traumatising scene for its population to view, parading two handcuffed 16-year-old boys in front of an audience of young students inside a stadium.
According to the BBC, which obtained footage via its Korean broadcasting arm, the video offers a rare glimpse into the oppressive nation’s policies and brutal actions against its people.
The detained teenagers were accused of watching South Korean television, and in particular K-dramas, which is strictly banned in North Korea.
Their punishment was a 12-year sentence of hard labour.
As the handcuffed teenagers are paraded around, the narrator of the video says: “The rotten puppet regime’s culture has spread even to teenagers,” a reference to the South Korean government.
“They are just 16 years old, but they ruined their own future.”
North Korean soldiers can be seen berating the teens, abusing them for failing to “deeply reflect on their mistakes”, according to the BBC.
To humiliate the teens further, their names and addresses were announced out loud for audience members and viewers to hear.
The BBC was sent the video by South and North Development (SAND), an organisation that works with North Korean defectors.
Footage has emerged from North Korea which shows a pair of teenage boys being sentenced to 12 years of hard labour for an extraordinarily minor offence.
It is understood the video of the sentencing was taken and distributed through the hermit nation to discourage North Korean citizens from watching “decadent recordings” from the South.
Footage such as this is rare, because North Korea forbids photos, videos and other evidence of life in the country from being leaked to the outside world.
Previously, the punishment for watching K-dramas was less severe with guilty children generally being sent to youth labour camps for under five years.
The law changed in 2020 when the regime increased the punishment.
Watching South Korean television is now punishable by lengthy hard labour or in some cases death.
According to the BBC, unnamed North Korean defectors explained the K-dramas claim the North Korean regime’s propaganda is hollow and showcases a different world to what North Koreans are taught.
“In North Korea, we learn that South Korea lives much worse than us,” said one defector.
“But when you watch the South Korean dramas, it’s a completely different world. It seems like the North Korean authorities are wary of that.”
