North Korea has sentenced a man to death for smuggling and selling copies of the Netflix series, ‘Squid Game’ after authorities caught seven high school students watching the Korean-language global hit show.
The smuggler is said to have brought a copy of ‘Squid Game’ into North Korea back from China and sold the USB flash drives containing the series. Sources said his sentence would be carried out by firing squad.
That notwithstanding, a student who bought the drive received a life sentence, while six others who watched the show have been sentenced to five years of hard labor. Meanwhile, teachers and school administrators have been fired and face banishment to work in remote mines, according to sources.
Local media, RFA reported last week that copies of the violent drama had arrived in the reclusive country despite the best efforts of authorities to keep out foreign media. They began spreading among the people on flash drives and SD cards.
Sources in the earlier report noted that the show’s dystopian world, in which marginalized people are pitted against one another in traditional children’s games for huge cash prizes and losing players are put to death, resonates with North Koreans in risky occupations and insecure positions.
A source in law enforcement in North Hamgyong province narrating the whole story told local media that it all started when a high school student secretly bought a USB flash drive containing the South Korean drama, ‘Squid Game’, and watched it with one of his best friends in class.
According to the source, the friend then informed several other students, who became interested, and they shared the flash drive with them.
“They were caught by the censors in 109 Sangmu, who had received a tipoff”, the source said, referring to the government strike force that specializes in catching illegal video watchers, known officially as Surveillance Bureau Group 109.
The arrest of the seven students marks the first time that the government is applying the newly passed law on the ‘Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture’, in a case involving minors, according to the source.
The law, promulgated last year, carries a maximum penalty of death for watching, keeping, or distributing media from capitalist countries, particularly from South Korea and the U.S.
The source noted that currently, residents are engulfed by anxiety, as the seven will be mercilessly interrogated until the authorities can find out how the drama was smuggled in with the border closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Suggesting that a lengthy investigation would reveal the chain of distribution as each new person under investigation would be forced to tell where they got their copy from and who else they shared it with, the source said “the bloody winds of investigation and punishment will soon blow”.
Punishments will not stop with the smuggler and students who viewed the video, however, others who have no connection to the incident will also be held responsible, according to the source.
“The government is taking this incident very seriously, saying that the students’ education was being neglected. The Central Committee dismissed the school principal, their youth secretary, and their homeroom teacher”.
Source
According to the source, it is certain that they will be sent to toil in coal mines or exiled to rural parts of the country. He further noted that other school teachers are all worrying that it could happen to them too if one of their students is also caught up in the investigation.
A resident of the province speaking to local media disclosed that in the aftermath of the students getting caught, authorities began scouring markets for memory storage devices and video CDs containing foreign media.
Another resident, who requested anonymity to speak freely also revealed the residents are all trembling in fear because they will be mercilessly punished for buying or selling memory storage devices, no matter how small.
The source also made a shocking revelation where he noted that regardless of how strict the government’s crackdown seems to be, rumors are circulating that among the seven arrested students, one with rich parents was able to avoid punishment because they bribed the authorities with 3,000 dollars.
“Residents are complaining that the world is unfair because if parents have money and power even their children who are sentenced to death can be released”.
Source
Read also: Public not Privy to all Government Information- Dr. Dankwa
