In 2020, however, Pyongyang enacted a law to make watching or distributing South Korean entertainment punishable by death.
A defector previously told the BBC that he was forced to watch a 22-year-old man shot to death. He said the man was accused of listening to South Korean music and had shared films from the South with his friend.
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Rare footage obtained by BBC Korean shows North Korea publicly sentencing two teenage boys to 12 years of hard labour for watching K-dramas.
The footage, which appears to have been filmed in 2022, shows two 16-year-old boys handcuffed in front of hundreds of students at an outdoor stadium.
Footage such as this is rare, because North Korea forbids photos, videos and other evidence of life in the country from being leaked to the outside world.
The clip has reportedly been distributed in North Korea for ideology education and to warn citizens not to watch “decadent recordings”.
“The rotten puppet regime’s culture has spread even to teenagers,” says the voice, in an apparent reference to South Korea.
Seoul ended the policy in 2010, saying it found the aid did not reach the ordinary North Koreans it was intended for, and that it had not resulted in any “positive changes” to Pyongyang’s behaviour.
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