Four North Korean youths could face a year in brutal forced labour camps after reportedly being arrested for ‘talking like South Koreans’.
The group, all in their twenties, were arrested in Chongjin, the country’s third largest city, after being reported for mimicking lines from South Korean films.
State security authorities were tipped off by a local residents who had overheard the four.
The young adults are currently being questioned by Chongjin’s Ministry of State Security and could be sentenced to a year in Kim Jong-un’s cruel labour camps, according to Daily NK.
North Korea has increasingly cracked down on what it claims are South Korean influences in recent years.
Kim Jong-un has previously described K-pop as a ‘vicious cancer’ while they have targeted other slang words.
A 2020 law made the distribution of South Korean programmes punishable by death, while those watching it could face 15 years in a prison camp.
A year later the brutal regime passed a law, Article 41 of North Korea’s Youth Education Guarantee Act, which banned young people from speaking or writing ‘in odd speech patterns that are not our own.’
The use of ‘non-socialist’ language is also prohibited but South Korean slang is thought to be quietly spreading among young people.
‘These days, young people are careful to avoid South Korean speech during official activities because they know about the crackdowns, but when they’re with friends, they use it without hesitation—mimicking lines from South Korean movies and shows,’ a source told Daily NK.
People’s phones and messages are being searched for South Korean slang, according to a report from South Korea’s Unification Ministry based on the testimony of hundreds of defectors.
Searches of homes have also increased since 2021, with authorities looking for signs of outside culture.
Meanwhile, last year, footage emerged of two teenage boys being sentenced to 12 years of hard labour for watching K-dramas.
The rare footage showed two 16-year-old boys being handcuffed by uniformed officers in front of hundreds of students at an outdoor stadium at an unknown location.
The youngsters were arrested for not ‘deeply reflecting on their mistakes’ after they were caught watching South Korean television, which is banned in the North along with K-pop music.
Minors who broke the law would be sent to youth labour camps in the past, and generally the punishment would be for less than five years.
Footage from inside the hermit nation is rare as Kim Jong Un forbids the release of any video and photos of life in the country from being shown to the outside world.
Foreign media, particularly anything deemed to be ‘Western’, is strictly prohibited in North Korea – which brainwashes its population to support the ruling regime.
But in 2020, North Korea imposed a sweeping ‘anti-reactionary thought’ law that made enjoying South Korean entertainment punishable by death.
In December 2022, it emerged that two teenagers in North Korea had been executed by firing squad for watching and selling films from the South.
