Amnesty International Reports North Korea's Execution of Citizens for Consuming Foreign Media
Amnesty International has released a report detailing severe human rights abuses in North Korea, where citizens, including children, are executed for watching South Korean television shows and listening to K-pop music. The report is based on testimonies from escapees and highlights a brutal system where access to foreign media is treated as a capital offense. Punishments are often determined by wealth and political connections, with poorer citizens facing harsher penalties such as execution or long-term imprisonment. The crackdown is enforced under North Korea's 2020 Anti-Reactionary Thought and Culture Act, which brands South Korean content as 'rotten ideology.' The law imposes severe penalties, including the death penalty for distributing large amounts of such content. Amnesty's Deputy Regional Director, Sarah Brooks, described the situation as a 'dystopian' enforcement of laws that criminalize access to information, compounded by corruption. 
