North Korean Sentenced To Death For Distributing Netflix's 'Squid Game' To Students

The Korean show Squid Game became an instant international hit, even topping the Netflix most-watched list in America and 90 other countries. Some countries including China and North Korea do not have access to Netflix but that has not stopped people from seeing what the hype was about. Illegal streaming of the show has been happening in China and Squid Game-themed merchandise sales has skyrocketed.

In South Korea's neighboring Northern country, an interest in the show from the South seems to have landed several people in a soup. One of them has even allegedly been sentenced to death for distributing the show in the country.

Authorities in North Korea apparently caught a man selling copies of Squid Game through USB drives as well as seven high school students watching the show. The man was sentenced to death for doing this by a firing squad, reported Radio Free Asia. The students were also not spared. The student who bought the drive was allegedly given a life sentence, while the six others who watched the show have been sentenced to five years of hard labor. The teachers and school administrators also seem to have been punished. They were fired and banished to work in remote mines.

A source from the law enforcement told the US government-funded private non-profit news outlet, that one of the students who had watched the South Korean show told the rest of his class about it and they got curious. Word spread and they were eventually caught by the censors, the Surveillance Bureau Group 109, who specialize in capturing illegal video watchers. The incident set off further investigation from the 109. “The residents are all trembling in fear because they will be mercilessly punished for buying or selling memory storage devices, no matter how small,” a second source explained.

They went on to state: “But regardless of how strict the government’s crackdown seems to be, rumors are circulating that among the seven arrested students, one with rich parents was able to avoid punishment because they bribed the authorities with the U.S. $3,000. Residents are complaining that the world is unfair because if parents have money and power even their children who are sentenced to death can be released.”

Last year, North Korea seems to have passed a new law called “Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture” that takes strict action against media from South Korea. The law imposes fines or prison for anyone caught enjoying South Korean entertainment or even copying the way South Koreans speak, reported Reuters. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been curbing outside influences for better homegrown entertainment. Under the new law, punishment for distributing media from South Korea, the use of unregistered televisions, radios, computers, foreign cellphones, or other electronic devices ranged from paying fines and 15 years in prison camps to even death.

Sokeel Park, of Liberty in North Korea, which supports defectors explained, “It all plays into this very longstanding sensitivity to young people especially being led astray and detaching from the glorious socialist revolution by being distracted with this very fancy but corrupt influence.” The county has also banned Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.