Video shows N Korea teens sentenced for distributing K-dramas

Rare footage obtained by BBC Korean shows North Korea publicly sentencing two teenage boys to 12 years of hard labour for watching and distributing K-dramas.

The footage, which appears to have been filmed in 2022, shows two 16-year-old boys handcuffed in front of hundreds of students at an outdoor stadium.

It also shows uniformed officers reprimanding the boys for not "deeply reflecting on their mistakes".

Pyongyang forbids consumption of South Korean entertainment.

Access to such footage is rare as North Korea strictly forbids the leakage of internal materials out of the country.

This video, provided to the BBC by the South and North Development (Sand), a research institute that works with defectors from the North, also hints at authorities coming down harder on such offences.

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Update 20 September 2024: This article has been amended to reflect that the teenagers had also distributed the K-dramas.