North Korean defector Kim Il-hyuk testifies during a public session hosted by the U.N. Human Rights Office in Seoul on June 25, 2025. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, June 25 (Korea Bizwire) — Watching or distributing South Korean TV dramas or K-pop songs is being punished by execution by firing squad in North Korea, with one young man shot to death in public on such charges, North Korean defectors testified Wednesday.
The testimonies were given during public sessions hosted by the U.N. Human Rights Office in Seoul to shed light on the human rights situation in North Korea over the past decade.
Kim Il-hyuk was among several North Korean defectors who spoke at the sessions, having fled the North and arrived in South Korea in recent years.
“One 22-year-old man, whom I had known, was executed by firing squad in public for the crime of distributing three South Korean dramas and 70 K-pop songs,” Kim said during a session.
“Such public executions by firing squad took place about twice every three months, with up to 12 people shot to death in a single session. Half of them were those condemned for (violating) the law prohibiting reactionary ideologies and culture,” Kim noted.
Kim, a former resident of Kangryong in South Hwanghae Province, defected to South Korea in May 2023 by crossing the Northern Limit Line, the maritime inter-Korean border, aboard a boat with his wife and his younger brother’s family.
A female defector, who spoke anonymously during a separate session, also testified to the increased punishments for those caught watching South Korean dramas in the North.
She said the regime’s scrutiny began tightening in 2015 and intensified further around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, with offenders subjected to execution by firing squad.
“North Korea began imposing such (execution) punishments, viewing South Korean dramas (as harmful) as drugs. The regime appears to see them as a threat, as the Korean Wave has had considerable impacts on North Korean society,” she said.
Kim also spoke about steep increases in the prices of manufacturing goods and the severe hardships people endured during the pandemic, citing that period as the starting point for tighter controls on movement and the flows of information.
“Far more people died of starvation than from (COVID-19-related) diseases … while the regime propagated that it had brought in vaccines at the price of a cow per dose,” he noted.
The female defector also echoed Kim’s testimony, saying that the prices of rice almost doubled during the pandemic, while some people starved to death due to food shortages. Amid such economic difficulties, many children became orphans or homeless, she added.
Including the two defectors, the U.N. Human Rights Office in Seoul has interviewed nearly 400 North Korean defectors as it prepares an upcoming report assessing the human rights situation in North Korea over the past 10 years.
In September, the Seoul office will release the updated report building on the landmark 2014 Commission of Inquiry report commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council, which found systematic human rights violations by the North Korean regime.
The upcoming report will be presented to the council by the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.
(Yonhap)
