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Supreme People's Assembly (North Korea)
Photo: KCNA / REUTERS
Two teenagers in North Korea have been sentenced to 12 years of forced labor for watching South Korean K-pop videos.
The footage, first reported by the BBC, shows two 16-year-olds being handcuffed in front of hundreds of students at a stadium.
Uniformed officers are also seen reprimanding the boys for not "thinking deeply about their mistakes."
South Korean entertainment media is banned in the North.
Still, some are willing to risk severe punishment to gain access to K-dramas, which have large audiences worldwide.
Footage like the BBC's is rare because North Korea prohibits the sharing of photos, videos and other insights into life in the isolated country.
The video was provided to the BBC by the research institute South and North Development (Sand).
Sand works with defectors from the north.
The authenticity of the recordings shown by the BBC could not initially be independently verified.
Laws have been tightened in recent years
The clip was reportedly distributed in North Korea to educate people about ideology and was intended to warn citizens against watching "decadent footage."
In the video, a speaker can be seen repeating state propaganda.
"The culture of the rotten puppet regime has even spread to teenagers," says the voice, apparently alluding to South Korea.
"They are only 16 years old, but they have ruined their own future," it continues.
Officials also named the boys and published their addresses.
In the past, minors who broke the law in this way were sent to juvenile labor camps rather than put behind bars.
The sentence was usually less than five years.
However, in 2020, Pyongyang passed a law making watching or distributing South Korean entertainment programs punishable by death.
fin/Reuters