Watch Hollywood films, face prison: North Korea to punish parents for exposing kids to foreign content

Pyongyang: Parents whose children are caught watching Hollywood or foreign films in North Korea will face imprisonment as per new rules launched by the government in a bid to intensify its Western media crackdown.

Earlier, parents were pardoned with a “serious warning” if their children were found to be in possession of “illicit films” smuggled into the country. Recently, parents were being instructed at “inminban” – compulsory neighbourhood watch meetings that are held across the country – that authorities will no longer be lenient in persecuting parents and children.

Over the past couple of years, Pyongyang has been intensifying its efforts to ban any form of western influence that spread in the country through films and television programmes.

According to Radio Free Asia, parents of children caught viewing foreign films will be sent to labour camps for six months while children will serve five years of imprisonment.

In addition to this, children who “dance or sing like a South Korean” will also be incarcerated for six months, with their parents serving similar terms.

A source told Radio Free Asia, “The host of the meeting emphasises parental responsibility, saying that education for children begins at home. If parents do not educate their children from moment to moment, they will dance and sing of capitalism and become anti-socialists.”

The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un already views South Korea as an “American puppet state”.

Death for children for distributing South Korean films

The crackdown against anything that is not North Korean is so profound that authorities executed two minors last year for distributing and watching South Korean movies.

Sources who lived where the executions took place were reportedly told that “those who watch or distribute South Korean movies and dramas, and those who disrupt social order by murdering other people, will not be forgiven and will be sentenced to the maximum penalty-death.”

A human rights group said that North Korea had executed at least seven people over the past decade for watching and distributing K-pop videos.

Watch porn, face death

Last month, North Korea also ordered to “shoot down” anyone watching porn in the country in a bid to clamp down on foreign influences.

The group or squad that has been given the responsibility to shoot people viewing porn are known as “gruppa” or “non-socialist groups” who are tasked to ensure that people do not deviate from “the official ideology of the Communist Party.”

A report by Seoul-based Database Centre for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB) quoted a testimony saying, “… I’ve heard about people being shot for distributing impure cultural contents. There was one person who was executed for watching pornography and prostituting at his place after Kim Jong Un took office.”

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