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Yoon Mi-so remembers that he was only 11 years old when he first saw the execution of a man caught by watching a movie made in South Korea.
All the neighbors were forced to witness the punishment being carried out.
“If you refuse, it is considered treason,” says the woman who now lives in Seoul.
North Korean guards tried to make sure that anyone who intended to smuggle the banned videos knew that they faced the death penalty.
“I remember very vividly that that man’s eyes were blindfolded, but I could still see him cry. It was a traumatic experience for me. The bandage that was blindfolded him was completely drenched with tears.
They tied him to the stake and shot him, “the woman said.
“War without weapons”
Imagine living in constant isolation: without the Internet, without social media, you can only watch some state-controlled television channels through which you can listen to what the government wants you to hear. This is life in North Korea.
The country’s leader, Kim Jong-Un, is only increasing the pressure: he recently announced a new law to combat what the regime calls “reactionary thinking.”
People with a large number of videos or music from South Korea, the United States or Japan will now be sentenced to death. Recipients who view this type of content will receive 15 years of concentration camps.
It’s not just about the movies people watch.
The dictator recently wrote a public letter to the state broadcaster asking the country’s Youth League to address the “unpleasant, individualistic and anti-socialist behavior” that prevails among young people. He would like to get rid of foreign languages, hairstyles and clothes, which he calls “dangerous poisons.”
The Seoul news portal The Daily NK reports that, according to unconfirmed data, the three teenagers have been locked up in a re-education camp because they cut their hair like K-pop (a popular music style in South Korea) and the pants were shortened. on your ankles.
This is all due to the fact that Kim Jong-un is engaged in a war that does not require nuclear weapons.
Analysts say it is doing everything it can to prevent outside information from reaching the North Korean people, as life in the country is only getting worse.
Millions of people are estimated to be starving or about to starve. Kim Jong-un wants to make sure they are fed at least carefully crafted state propaganda and don’t see the glorious life portrayed in the series from one of Asia’s richest countries, South Korea.
The country became even more closed as a result of the pandemic, as it had to close its border with its only partner, China. Many of the essential goods that came from China no longer reached the country. Although imports are now slowly recovering, they remain very limited.
Voluntary isolation has only exacerbated the crisis of a dysfunctional economy in a country where all money is being wasted by the regime’s nuclear ambitions. Earlier this year, the dictator himself admitted that his people were going through “the most difficult times they have ever had.”
What is written in the law?
The Daily NK was the first to obtain a copy of the text of the law.
“It says that if an employee is caught, the factory owner will also be punished, if the child is problematic, his parents will also be punished. The law is also backed by the law, which has the strong support of the North Korean government, “Lee Sang Yong, editor-in-chief of the South Korean newspaper, told the BBC.
He said the law was aimed at “destroying” the young generation’s fascination and dreams for a southern neighbor.
“In other words, the regime has decided that the influence of foreign cultures can provoke resistance.
One of the rare happy babies who managed to escape North Korea last year, Choi Jong-hoon, told the BBC that “the more difficult the times, the more brutal the laws and the punishments.
When you have a full stomach, watching a South Korean movie is very easy. And when you don’t have food and you’re struggling to survive, those movies can cause dissatisfaction, “he said.
It will work?
Previous deals have only shown how smart people can be if they want to watch and distribute foreign films, mostly smuggled across the border into China.
For years, recordings have been distributed on USB sticks which, according to Choi Jong-hoon, are now very common. Notes are easy to hide and can be encrypted with passwords.
“If the wrong password is entered three times in a row, the contents of the memory will be erased. If the contents are very sensitive, you can even set everything to be deleted after entering the wrong password.
USB is also used, which can only be connected to a specific computer and only once, so it cannot be used on another device or handed over to anyone else. “Only you can see the content, so even if I wanted to distribute it, I couldn’t,” said Choi Jong-hoon.
Yoon Mi-so remembers that her neighbors did real feats to watch movies. They once borrowed a car battery and hooked it up to a generator to produce enough electricity to power the television. They watched a drama in South Korea called “Stairs to Heaven”.
This is an extremely famous love story about a girl who has cancer and is struggling with her stepmother. This drama was very popular in North Korea two decades ago.
Choi Jong-hoon says that it was at this time that admiration for foreign records grew dramatically. This was helped by the abundance of cheap CDs and DVDs from China.
Start of coping
But then the Pyongyang regime began to take notice. Choi Jong-hoon recalls how the security services conducted a search of the university in 2002 and found more than 20,000 people. CD.
“It just came to our attention then. Can you imagine how many there are in the whole country? The authorities were surprised. That is why they toughened the sentences,” he said.
Kim Geum-hyokas says he was captured in 2009 by soldiers from a special squad of illegal video distributors. I was only 16 then.
He had gifted a friend several DVDs with pop music made in South Korea by his father smuggled in from China.
The boy was treated as an adult, was escorted to a secret interrogation room, and was prevented from sleeping by guards. He was constantly beaten and kicked for four days.
“I was scared,” the man told reporters in Seoul, where he now lives.
“I thought my life was coming to an end. They wanted to know where I got that record from and how many people showed it to me. After all, I can’t say that my dad brought those DVDs from China. What do I have to say? This is my father. I said nothing. I just repeated that I don’t know anything, let me go, “he said.
Kim Geum-hyok comes from an elite family in Pyongyang, so his father finally managed to bribe the guards and free him. This will no longer be practically possible with the entry into force of the new law.
Most of those arrested at that time for similar crimes were sent to labor camps. But this was not enough to deter petty crime, so the penalties were toughened.
“Initially, the punishment was for about a year in a labor camp. Then it was increased to more than three years. If you go to labor camps today, more than half of the young people are there because they saw foreign records, Choi Jong-hoon said. “If you watch two hours of illegal content, it will mean three years in a labor camp.”
There are reports from various sources that North Korean labor camps have grown in recent years. Choi Jong-hoon is convinced that the new strict laws have an impact.
“Watching movies is a luxury. First you have to find what to eat and only then start thinking about movies. At times when it is difficult to even feed, even sending a family member to a labor camp can be a severe blow. “
Why are people still taking chances?
“We took a lot of risks watching those movies. But no one could defeat our curiosity. We wanted to know what was going on in the outside world, ”said Kim Geum-hyokas.
When Kim Guem-hyok finally learned the truth about his country, his life changed. He was one of the privileged North Koreans who were allowed to study in Beijing. There he discovered the Internet.
“At first I couldn’t believe what was being said about North Korea. I thought Westerners were lying. Wikipedia is lying, how can I believe that? My heart and mind were divided.
So, I watched documentaries about North Korea, I read articles. And then I realized that this was probably true because everything that was said there was logical.
When I realized it, my brain switched to another mode, it was too late, I couldn’t go back, ”he said.
Finally, Kim Guem-hyokas fled to Seoul.
Yoon Mi-so fulfilled her dream of becoming a stylist. The first thing he did when he arrived in South Korea was visit all the places he had seen in the “Stairs to Heaven” series.
But these success stories are increasingly rare.
The escape from the country became almost impossible with the entry into force of the order to shoot the refugees at the strictly controlled border. The new law will also have an impact.
Choi Jong-hoon, who had to leave the family on the run, doesn’t think watching a movie or two will change the impact of decades of pumped-up ideological control. Still, he believes that most North Koreans suspect that state propaganda is not true.
“The people of North Korea carry the seed of pain in their hearts, but they don’t know where that pain is going,” he said.
“It just came to our attention then. My heart aches that they can’t understand it even when they are told. Someone has to wake them up, turn them on,” he said.
Prepared by BBC inf.
