North Korea’s punishment of two teenage boys is troubling reminder of regime’s brutality

North Korea is in the news with the visit of President Putin, but little continues to be shared about the country’s atrocious abuse of human rights, as epitomised by the brutal punishment of two teenage boys for using and sharing songs and videos from South Korea. The ongoing abuses were recently covered in a UN Council discussion, but the specific threat to Christians was overlooked.

Two teenage boys in North Korea have been heavily punished for possessing and distributing South Korean pop music, and singing songs and performing South Korean dance routines in public. One has been given 15 years’ hard labour, with the other given a life sentence.

According to NK Today, the two boys had often played songs and videos of South Korean idol singers on USB flash drives, and sang and performed to them at school and in their community. They were reported to the state by a security informant.

At the trial – which was made public as a warning to others – the authorities said ‘the two boys can’t be allowed to live in the same society as other North Koreans’. The boys’ mothers wept aloud and fainted as they heard the verdicts.

“This inhumane punishment shows that Kim Jong-un is serious about prosecuting people who possess ‘illegal’ materials,” says Brother Simon*, Open Doors coordinator for ministry among North Koreans.

“They are using these poor boys to set an example,” he continues. “Recently, North Korea expanded the laws that deal with the possession of foreign media and increased the sentences. Kim Jong-un is afraid that the people will be corrupted if they are immersed in South Korean series, movies and music. But there are also special stipulations for possessing or spreading ‘superstitious materials’, by which they mean the Bible and other Christian resources.”
 

UN discusses abuses

News of the boys’ imprisonment comes as the United Nations Security Council held a meeting on 12 June to discuss the abuse of human rights in North Korea.

Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, was among various contributers to the meeting. He highlighted three laws that have made life more difficult for North Koreans: one deals with the consumption of foreign media; another criminalises the use of language not in line with the Pyongyang dialect; and a third forces youth to conform to a socialist lifestyle. 

“Put simply, people in the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) are at risk of death for merely watching or sharing a foreign television series,” he said.

  Gymhyok Kim, a North Korean, talked about his discovery of the ‘horrific truth’ of the regime – political prison camps, deaths from starvation, public executions, and people risking their lives to escape. “I realised that the Kim family that I had wanted to serve were not my heroes, but dictators denying countless people’s freedom just to build their own power,” he said.

He strongly criticised the arbitrary detentions, torture, public executions and forced labour, as well as the heavy investment in its military at the expense of the state’s responsibility to care for people. “If they developed the economy instead of missiles, there would be no need for any North Koreans to starve to death,” he said. “Please stand on the side of the North Korean people, not the dictatorship.”
 

Threat to Christians overlooked

The discussion is a welcome development, but according to Brother Simon*, it doesn’t go far enough. “People on the international stage often tend to forget that Christians are considered to be enemies of the state,” he says. “One of the laws that were mentioned at the UN Council meeting has a specific category for people who distribute or read biblical materials. Only, in the official text of the law, Christianity is called ‘superstition’.

He says there are three key things that international governments need to know. “Firstly, recognise that freedom of religion is a good barometer for the state of human rights in general,” he explains. “Second, the punishment for distributing religious materials is extremely high. Many Christians who are arrested receive sentences above ten years in hard labour in a penal colony. Thirdly, remember that Christians have no freedom to meet each other. Officially, there are only four churches in North Korea. In reality, all the visitors are members of North Korea’s ruling Worker’s Party.”

“Christianity is completely forbidden and the Bible is a book that’s almost always hidden, in case there are random house searches,” he adds. “Parents are afraid to tell their children about God. Instead, they are forced to teach them about the deeds of the leaders.”

*name has been changed for security purposes