FILE PHOTO: A clip from a North Korean video showing a public struggle session obtained by Daily NK in March 2023. (Daily NK)
A Pyongyang man was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison at a public trial held in mid-March in the city’s Songyo district after investigators found he had spent years watching banned South Korean videos and music in violation of North Korea’s laws against “reactionary ideology and culture.”
“For years, a man in the Songyo district and his family members had been watching videos containing ‘reactionary ideology’ that undermines our socialist system,” a source in the North Korean capital told Daily NK recently.
The man had been sheltered by a relative holding a senior position in the Ministry of Social Security until neighborhood watch unit members reported his illegal activities early this year. He was arrested following a subsequent investigation.
Investigators found flash drives and other portable memory devices containing videos of defectors, South Korean movies and television programs, and songs by South Korean singers. All the files had innocuous names but contained prohibited content when opened. The attempt to disguise the files was treated as an aggravating factor in the case.
Police in Songyo district classified the incident as serious and conducted the investigation for nearly two months before the public trial was held in mid-March. The relative who held a senior position in the Ministry of Social Security attempted to make the case go away, but by then the investigation had progressed too far and the trial proceeded despite those efforts.
Senior official’s intervention fails as trial proceeds
The trial was held in the conference room at the Songyo district courthouse with officials from local government offices in attendance. Speaking in somber tones, the judge itemized each of the man’s crimes, including his rejection of the socialist system and his importation and propagation of “reactionary ideology and culture” from abroad.
The judge sentenced the man to 12 years and four months in prison for “deliberate, repeated and aggravated criminal acts” under the Criminal Procedure Act and the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Exclusion Act. The man’s family members were also forcibly relocated from Pyongyang to Changjin county in South Hamgyong province.
The judge stated that the harsh sentence was intended as a warning to others, a remark that reportedly produced an awkward silence in the courtroom.
The case has since triggered a wider security crackdown. “After this case and a series of crimes involving ‘reactionary ideology and culture’ that have been reported since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Social Security has instructed police at all levels to ratchet up their surveillance,” the source said. “Police officers have responded by sternly warning the public and urging them to report others or turn themselves in.”
Reporting from inside North Korea
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