North Korean parents who let their children watch Hollywood films are reportedly being threatened to be sent away to prison camps.
The East Asian country has ramped up its prohibition on all foreign - and particularly Western - media amid fears that younger generations might be influenced by external sources.
In the past, parents of children or teenagers who were caught in possession of foreign media had been able to get away with severe warnings.
But now, both parents and children will face shockingly strict punishments including being sent to prison camp.
Advert
Radio Free Asia (RFA) spoke to an anonymous source from within North Korea, who claimed that parents had been given the severe warnings at their weekly Inminban - compulsory neighbourhood watch unit meetings.
"The host of the meeting emphasized parental responsibility, saying that education for children begins at home,” the source said.
"If parents do not educate their children from moment to moment, they will dance and sing of capitalism and become anti-socialists.”
A major fear among North Korean officials appears to be younger generations picking up South Korean trends, slang terms, accents, and dances.
Now, children who are caught watching imported films can face up to five years in a prison camp.
.png)
Prison camps in North Korea are not a to be trifled with. Back in 2021, a UN report found that prisoners in the camps were being beaten, tortured, and forced to do almost impossible agricultural work.
"The severity of beatings described may constitute torture, which is prohibited without exception under international law," the report found.
Those who did not meet their labor quotas claimed they were punished with docked food rations, beatings, and periods in solitary confinement.
Meanwhile, the parents of children caught watching foreign films will have to go to a labour centre for six months.
Kim Jong-un reportedly sees South Korea as nothing more than a puppet state for the United States of America, and is incredibly cautious of any 'Western' media making it into North Korea as a result.
.png)
Smuggling Western media across the border could even be punished by execution - a law that horrifically made headline news last year when two teenagers were caught selling hard-drives loaded up with South Korean films and TV shows.
The two teens were executed alongside a third who stood accused of murdering his stepmother - though both alleged crimes were deemed equally evil, authorities told locals.
A resident told the RFA at the time: "They said, ‘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'."
Topics: News, World News, North Korea
Ali Condon