By David Young-
North Korean parents who let their children watch Hollywood films are reportedly being threatened to be sent away to prison camps.
The East Asian country has ramped up its prohibition on all foreign – and particularly Western – media amid fears that younger generations might be influenced by external sources.
Hardliner, Kim Jong Un, is executing a bullish crackdown against foreign films and TV series, with parents being warned they will face stiff punishment if their kids watch overseas movies, even for a first offence.
In the past, parents found guilty of the “crime” could escape with a stern warning
Sources inside the Hermit Kingdom say Pyongyang has rolled out “Inminban” – a compulsory neighbourhood watch meeting in which the regime’s orders trickle down to communities.
Parents will be told the state is no longer offering mercy for those found in possession of smuggled movies, reports Radio Free Asia.
Children found breaking the country’s law will face shockingly strict punishments including being sent to prison camp.
“The host of the meeting emphasized parental responsibility, saying that education for children begins at home,” the source said.
“If parents do not educate their children from moment to moment, they will dance and sing of capitalism and become anti-socialists.”
The severity of the restrictions are apparently to maintain cultural trends and dialects, and prevent their younger generations picking up traces of foreign accents and trends.
North Korean officials are already known to be against their children picking up South Korean trends, slang terms, accents, and dances. Assimilating into western culture in any form or shape is totally forbidden.
Children who are caught watching imported films can face up to five years in a prison camp.
Prison camps in North Korea are not a to be trifled with. Back in 2021, a UN report found that prisoners in the camps were being beaten, tortured, and forced to do almost impossible agricultural work.
“The severity of beatings described may constitute torture, which is prohibited without exception under international law,” the report found.
Those who did not meet their labour quotas claimed they were punished with docked food rations, beatings, and periods in solitary confinement.
Meanwhile, the parents of children caught watching foreign films will have to go to a labour centre for six months.
Kim Jong-un reportedly sees South Korea as nothing more than a puppet state for the United States of America, and is committed to preventing ‘Western’ media from impacting North Korea.
Smuggling Western media across the border could even be punished by execution – a law that horrifically made headlines
news last year when two teenagers were caught selling hard-drives loaded up with South Korean films and TV shows.
The two teens were executed alongside a third who stood accused of murdering his stepmother – though both alleged crimes were deemed equally evil, authorities told locals.
King Jun Un comes from a line of rulers. He is a son of Kim Jong-il, who was North Korea’s second supreme leader from 1994 to 2011, and Ko Yong-hui. He is also one of the grandsons of Kim Il-sung, who was the founder and first supreme leader of North Korea from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994.
Kim Jong-un is the first leader of North Korea to have been born in the country after its founding in 1948.
Following his father’s death in December 2011, state television announced Kim as the “Great Successor”. He is determined to preserve the lineage spirit of dominance and control over the citizens of his country, ensuring that the individual culture and ethos of the country is not lost through external influence.
Kin Jun Un’s style is undemocratic and highly restrictive of individual freedoms