North Korea Executes Man for Listening to K-Pop, Human Rights Report Shows

A newly released human rights report from the South Korean Unification Ministry states that North Korea publicly executed a man for listening to K-pop .

Knewz.com has learned that this is only the tip of the iceberg of Kim Jong-un 's hostile measures against Western and South Korean cultural influence on North Korea.

Released on June 27, the report from the Unification Ministry of South Korea contains testimonies from 649 North Korean defectors.

One of the anonymous defectors stated that a 22-year-old man from the South Hwanghae province of North Korea was publicly executed in 2022 for listening to 70 South Korean songs and watching and distributing three South Korean films , all of which were a violation of a draconian law imposed in 2020.

North Korea enacted the "DPRK Law of Rejecting Reactionary Thought and Culture" in late 2020 to strengthen its efforts to shield the isolated nation's populace from the information and culture of the outside world, especially South Korea.

Radio Free Asia reported in 2022 that the Kim Jong-un regime had begun a massive crackdown on “capitalist” fashion trends in North Korea. These included wearing certain items of clothing, such as tight-fitting pants or t-shirts with foreign words, or having hair longer than a certain length.

"The Socialist Patriotic Youth League held an educational session nationwide, where they defined the act of imitating foreign fashion and hairstyles as ‘capitalist flair,’ and examples of ‘anti-socialist practices,’" an anonymous source told the outlet at the time.

"The youth league’s patrols are cracking down on young people who wear long hair down to their waists, and those who dye their hair brown, as well as people who wear clothes with large foreign letters and women who wear tight pants."

"This time the crackdown mainly targets women in their 20s and 30s. If they are caught, they are made to wait on the side of the road until the patrols can finish their crackdown in that area. Only then will they be taken to the youth league office in the district, where they must write letters confessing their crimes . They must then contact someone at home to bring acceptable clothes for them, and then they are released," the source added.

The ban on K-pop is an extension of the efforts previously made by former Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Il and continued by Kim Jong-un.

The Guardian cited experts who stated that "allowing South Korean popular culture to seep into North Korean society could pose a threat to the ideology that demands absolute loyalty to the “infallible” Kim dynasty that has ruled the country since it was founded in 1948."

The report from the South Korean Unification Ministry also mentioned that the Kim Jong-un government has also been cracking down on other "reactionary" practices like brides wearing white dresses, grooms carrying the bride, wearing sunglasses, or drinking alcohol from wine glasses, all of which are considered to be South Korean customs.

"The government does not tolerate pluralism, bans independent media, civil society organizations, and trade unions, and systematically denies all basic liberties, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association, and freedom of religion and belief," the report noted, via The Independent .

However, the efforts have not been enough to keep the influence of South Korean culture, or at least, the fascination with the South, at bay, as revealed by a defector – a woman in her early 20s – who escaped North Korea on a boat in October 2023.

"The speed of South Korean culture influencing North Korea is seriously fast. Young people follow and copy South Korean culture, and they really love anything South Korean," she told reporters in a statement, per The Guardian .

"After watching Korean dramas, many young people wonder, ‘Why do we have to live like this?’ … I thought I’d rather die than live in North Korea," she added. "Of course we cannot say anything bad against Kim Jong-un publicly, but among close friends, lovers, or family members, we do say those words."