North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun showed people visiting flower shops on March 7 to buy flowers to celebrate the March 8 International Women’s Day. (Rodong Sinmun-News1)North Korea has stepped up crackdowns on young people’s love letters, condemning the phrase “I love you” as a sign of “decadent lifestyles.”
Officials from a factory’s Socialist Patriotic Youth League in Hamhung discovered a love letter during a routine inspection on Sept. 13 and turned it into an ideological issue, according to a Daily NK source in South Hamgyong province recently.
“They criticized the phrase ‘I love you,’ which was in the letter, and made a big deal of the matter,” the source said Friday.
The officials found the letter in a young person’s bag while checking personal electronic devices after holding criticism sessions for league members. The letter contained romantic expressions like “I love you” and “The only thing I think of is you.”
The deputy head of the factory’s Socialist Patriotic Youth League committee called the letter evidence of a “decadent lifestyle imbued with capitalist views of love” and immediately organized an ideological struggle session.
During the session, the letter writer was condemned for his “rotten spirit” and forced to publicly criticize himself in front of fellow members.
“Lovers often say ‘I like you,’ but use ‘I love you’ less frequently,” the source explained. “All he did was write down feelings he couldn’t express out loud, but officials turned it into a major issue. Other league members watched the struggle session with disgust, like they were chewing rotten cucumbers.”
Targeting foreign influence
Young North Koreans routinely consume foreign entertainment—music, films and TV shows from South Korea and China—without much concern about the source. Authorities view this as violations of the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act (2020) and Youth Education Guarantee Act (2021).
Officials have ordered youth organizations to conduct surprise inspections of electronic devices to catch consumption of foreign content. The love letter was discovered during one such inspection, where a simple expression of affection became an ideological problem.
“Young people have various ways to avoid detection, but they can’t escape surprise inspections by their organizations,” the source said. “The league made a big deal of this incident to intimidate young people and suppress even their personal feelings.”
News of the struggle session spread quickly, sparking public criticism mixed with sarcasm.
“People called it absurd, saying things like, ‘If “I love you” is decadent, then the entire world is decadent,’” the source said. “Most couldn’t understand why authorities would crack down on private emotional expressions.”