North Korea has sentenced a man to death for smuggling the Netflix series The Squid Game. The man was caught after authorities in the country caught seven young high school students watching a copy of the series that he allegedly sold them.
Man sentenced to death for distributing copies of The Squid Game
The smuggler has been sentenced to be executed by firing squad. The young man who bought the copy was sentenced to life imprisonment, while the other six students will have to devote five years of their lives to hard labor.
The teachers and administrators of the school have been fired.
Prior to this event, RFA had already reported the arrival of copies of this series in the Asian country. The copies were distributed to people via hard drives and SD storage cards.
The young man who got hold of the copy told his best friend in class. This, in turn, told many other students who became interested and shared the hard drive they had with them. The young men were caught by the 109th Surveillance Group, which specializes in catching people watching illegal videos.
The arrest of these youths would be the first occasion in which the North Korean state would have applied the new ‘Elimination of Reactionary Thoughts and Culture” law in a case involving minors.
The law, enacted last year, can carry maximum death penalties for viewing, storing or distributing media content from capitalist countries.
