Youth of North Korea Risk Extreme Punishment for Accessing Outside Media

By listening to strange music and other media, young Koreans are subtly defying censorship laws and providing hope for change in one of the most oppressive and mysterious countries in the world.

At a human rights conference on North Korea held in Washington on April 20, the South Korean government’s’s emissaries expressed that opinion, highlighting both the depressing state of life there and pleading with the West for assistance for small change agents.

Cho Hyun-dong, the Republic of Korea’s’s ambassador to the United States, claims that the” 2023 North Korean Human Rights Report ,” which was published in March, detailed the situation in that nation based on eyewitness accounts of more than 500 defectors.

According to Cho, who used the acronym for North Korea’s’s official name, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea,” the report makes it clear that the DPRK regime is denying civil and political rights through torture and inhumane treatment, arbitrary arrest, and disregard for the right to privacy and free movement.”

Instead of protecting the most vulnerable, he claimed,” They are denying financial, economic, and cultural freedom by depriving men of good medical care and access to food and schooling.”

Censorship Regulations

Park Jin, the foreign secretary of the Republic of Korea, spoke at the community via video and claimed that the ruling program is also tightening its intellectual control over its citizens through a number of censorship laws.

The Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act and the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act are two regulations that North Korea has recently enacted. According to Park, these regulations strictly forbid call with a development of inside information.

According to Lee Shin – wha, Korea’s’s ambassador-at-large for international cooperation on North Korean human rights, penalties for breaking those codes are severe.

For just watching and disseminating so-called unlawful content, Lee said,” The government blocks the flow of information through strict laws and terrible punishment, including the loss charges.” North Korean films, music, and the use of the dialect are all included in this articles.

According to Lee, the younger generation, who doubt the necessity of social protection, is much less effectively controlled by the regulations.

Despite having been hardened by crackdowns and controls, she said,” They are not like their parents.”

I just need to be more cautious, Lee said in response to the repression. Younger North Koreans just keep watching international media, but they keep it a secret from their friends.

The strict restrictions put in place by these laws are undeniable proof that capitalist tradition is also deeply ingrained in North Korean culture.