North Korea: Severe punishment for watching foreign films or material related to foreign culture and religion

North Korea is one of the world’s most repressive states, where civic space is rated ‘closed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor. The government restricts all civil and political liberties for its citizens, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, association and religion. It prohibits all organised political opposition, independent media, civil society and trade unions.

According to Human Rights Watch, in February 2026, North Korea ‘maintains fearful obedience through torture, executions, arbitrary imprisonment, collective punishment, and forced labour. Freedom of expression, assembly, religion, and information remained severely restricted’. In April 2026, Amnesty International stated that “the government control over all aspects of life persisted, with strict constraints on freedom of expression and movement. Surveillance continued and distribution of foreign media was punished.”

On 13th March 2026, the UN special rapporteur on North Korea, Elizabeth Salmón, told the UN Human Rights Council that the human rights commissioner had assessed in September 2025 that North Korea's human rights situation “had showed no improvement and, in many instances, had degraded” over the past decade. Her annual report to the Human Rights Council proposed measurable indicators to track North Korea's implementation of the recommendations from other countries during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a UN process reviewing each country’s human rights record.

On 30th March 2026, the UN Human Rights Council during the 61st session in Geneva condemned North Korea’s “systematic, widespread and gross” violations of its people’s human rights, adopting a resolution that seeks to hold the regime accountable with the support of South Korea and 49 other countries.

In recent months, new reports have highlighted the severe punishment for watching South Korean television, and executions over foreign culture and religion. The arrest and conviction of individuals for watching South Korean content have persisted.

Expression

Report highlights severe punishment for watching South Korean television

A report by Amnesty International published in February 2026 found that North Koreans caught watching South Korean television face public humiliation, years in labour camps or even execution.

North Koreans who fled the country have told Amnesty of an arbitrary and corrupt system where secret consumption of South Korean TV is widespread but the penalties for violating vaguely worded “culture” laws banning foreign media are determined largely by wealth and connections. Many of those interviewed recounted living in constant fear of home raids and arbitrary detention, while some said they were forced to watch public executions.

Testimonies gathered by Amnesty International describe how accessing foreign culture or information was being actively punished, including by execution, at least before 2020. The introduction of the 2020 Anti-Reactionary Thought and Culture Act, which defines South Korean content as “rotten ideology that paralyses the people’s revolutionary sense”, enables these severe punishments to persist. The new law mandates between five and fifteen years of forced labour for watching or possessing South Korean dramas, films or music and prescribes heavy sentences including the death penalty for the distribution of “large amounts” of content or for organising group viewings.

Despite the severe risks, interviewees described a society in which consumption of South Korean and other foreign media is widespread. Dramas and films are commonly smuggled in on USB drives from China, which young North Koreans watch on “notetels” – notebook computers with built-in televisions.

Report indicates a sharp spike in executions over foreign culture and religion

A new report by the Transnational Justice Working Group (TJWG) published in April 2026 indicated a sharp spike in executions over foreign culture, religion and "superstition" in North Korea.

The TJWG investigated executions in North Korea before and after the border closure in January 2020, which the country's dictator Kim Jong Un ostensibly ordered to protect the country from the COVID-19 virus. As part of their research, they interviewed 880 defectors from the Kim dictatorship.

They found that 153 people were condemned to death in North Korea between January 2020 and mid-December 2024 on various charges. This marks a jump of nearly 250 percent compared to the equivalent time period before the January 2020 closure.

However, the jump is even more pronounced when it comes to death sentences related to culture, religion (including owning a Bible) and "superstition." TJWG data show 38 people were condemned to death over these offences in less than five years following January 2020, compared to seven people in the same length of time before that.

Arrests and convictions for watching South Korean content

There have been continued reports of arrests and convictions for watching South Korean content.

North Korean state security agencies detained dozens of people in January 2026 for watching videos of South Korean singer Cho Yong-pil’s wildly popular “This Moment Forever” performance on South Korean broadcaster KBS during the 2025 Chuseok holiday, recordings of which have circulated in the North via USB devices.

The Daily NK reported that dozens of young coal miners at a state-run mining complex in South Pyongan province were arrested in February 2026 after a joint inspection found they had been watching and sharing South Korean videos. Public denunciation sessions held on 13-14th April exposed the extent of the violations, which authorities framed as an existential threat to the state.

Inspectors from the Ministry of Social Security and the State Information Bureau (North Korea’s domestic intelligence agency, formerly known as the Ministry of State Security, renamed at the Ninth WPK Congress) conducted the joint crackdown beginning in early February 2026 at mines under the Pukchang Youth Coal Mine General Enterprise, a major coal production complex. The inspectors confiscated smartphones and SD cards from workers without warning and discovered that miners at the Namdok, Inho, and Hoean youth coal mines had been accessing and circulating South Korean content.

The videos watched and shared included not only South Korean films, television dramas, and entertainment programmes but also footage of North Korean defectors describing their lives after resettlement in South Korea, as well as South Korean travel vlogs.

In March 2026, a Pyongyang man was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison at a public trial 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.”

According to Daily NK, investigators found flash drives and other portable memory devices containing videos of defectors, South Korean movies and television programmes, and songs by South Korean singers.

The trial was held in the conference room at the Songyo district courthouse with officials from local government offices in attendance. Speaking in sombre tones, the judge itemised 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.