North Korea Executes Kids for Watching Netflix and K-Pop Shows

North Korean schoolchildren are being executed for watching K-pop and South Korean TV shows — including Netflix’s hit series Squid Game — according to disturbing new testimony released by Amnesty International.

The human rights group based its findings on 25 in-depth interviews with North Korean defectors, including 11 who escaped the country between 2009 and 2020. Most were teenagers or young adults at the time they fled.

Their accounts paint a terrifying picture of life inside the isolated dictatorship, where watching South Korean dramas like Crash Landing on You or listening to K-pop can result in brutal punishment — ranging from public shaming and years of forced labor to execution in the most extreme cases.

Former residents say enforcement is deeply unequal. Families with money or political connections can often bribe officials to escape severe punishment, while poorer citizens are left with no protection.

“When we were 16 or 17, still in middle school, they forced us to attend executions,” said Kim Eunju, now 40. “People were executed for watching or sharing South Korean media. It was meant to scare us — to show what would happen if we watched.”

Another defector, Choi Suvin, said she witnessed a public execution in the city of Sinuiju around 2017 or 2018 involving someone accused of distributing foreign media.

“Authorities ordered everyone to attend,” she said. “Tens of thousands of people gathered to watch. Executions are used to control and brainwash the population.”

She added that families without money often sell their homes to raise thousands of dollars just to buy their way out of so-called re-education camps.

Kim Joonsik, 28, said he was caught watching South Korean dramas three times before escaping in 2019. He avoided punishment because of family connections, but said several of his sisters’ classmates were sentenced to years in labor camps because their families couldn’t afford bribes.

“If a high school student is caught and their family has money, they usually get a warning,” he said. “I didn’t face punishment because we had connections.”

In 2020, North Korea passed the Anti-Reactionary Thought and Culture Act, which criminalized consuming South Korean media. The law mandates five to 15 years of forced labor for watching or possessing South Korean TV shows, movies, or music, labeling the content a “rotten ideology.”

The law also allows for the death penalty for distributing large amounts of foreign media or organizing group viewings.

South Korea’s unification ministry reported that a 22-year-old North Korean citizen was publicly executed last year for listening to and sharing K-pop music and films.

A separate report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that new laws and surveillance policies have dramatically tightened government control over everyday life in North Korea.

“These testimonies show how watching a TV show can cost you your life — unless you can afford to pay,” said Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director. “This is repression layered with corruption, and it hits the poorest people the hardest.”

The country, ruled by Kim Jong Un, has long banned foreign cultural influence, but human rights groups say the crackdown has intensified as outside media continues to seep into the country despite strict border controls.