North Korean man has been sentenced to death for smuggling in South Korean Netflix series ‘Squid Game’ on USB through China and sold their copies after seven high school students were caught watching the show. As per a report by RFA, the man would be executed by a firing squad.
A student who bought the USB from the smuggler is given life sentence while six others who saw it with him have been sentenced to five years of hard labour. Teachers and school administrators are also fired and are banished to work in remote areas in mines, the report said citing sources.
Squid Games is a popular South Korean drama on Netflix which shows a dystopian world where cash-strapped contestants are pitted against each other in a children’s game for huge cash prize. Losing players are sentenced to death in the show. The show quite resonates with the actual life of North Korean people who live in the recluse country and are subjected to hard labour and have an otherwise terrible life and standard of living. The communist country strictly controls lives of its citizens and all television and radios are tuned into state propaganda. If anyone is caught watching or listening to foreign broadcasts, they face harsh punishment.
Turns out, one of the students in high school secretly bought the USB with ‘Squid Game’ on it and saw it with some of his friends. The word spread and others also got interested. They shared the USB but were caught by censors. North Korea has a specialised task force, Surveillance Bureau Group, which catches illegal video watchers.
Recently, North Korea had passed a law on “Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture” which carries maximum penalty of death sentence for watching, keeping or distributing media and videos from capitalist countries especially United States of America and South Korea. As of now, the borders in North Korea as closed due to Coronavirus pandemic and now there is anxiety amongst residents as the ‘smugglers’ and students will be grilled mercilessly to find out how the television drama made its way into North Korea.
The school administration is dismissed and they are also expelled from the party. They will now be likely made to work in mines in remote rural areas. This has triggered fear in other teachers who fear same fate should one of their students is caught watching ‘illegal videos’.
