There’s an eerie silence in the stadium
as a 17-year-old boy is pushed onto the playing field in a squeaky wheelchair. His mother, among a crowd of about 10,000
people, is holding back tears. With his mouth gagged, he wriggles around
in the chair just as three soldiers point their machine guns at him. Nine shots are fired. His chest explodes. There’s a collective gasp in the crowd…then
silence…followed by frantic, rapturous clapping that lasts ten whole minutes. Can you imagine being in that crowd? Being the parent of the victim, a spectator
expected to clap? It sounds crazy, but this is life in North
Korea. So, what had this young man done to deserve
nine bullets in his chest? The answer is K-Pop. Yep, South Korean pop music. We know it's criminally bad, but come on,
being a fan shouldn’t warrant execution. The Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, doesn’t
like K-Pop. He hates it. He says it’s “evil.” He also believes that South Korean soap operas
and American pop music corrupt North Korean youths' minds. He hates foreign pop music and foreign dramas
because they show North Koreans a reality they’re not allowed to see. In 2021, it was reported that Kim Jong-un
had lost the plot where this was concerned. That year he pushed into law new rules about
what content people could and couldn’t watch. That pretty much meant they were allowed to
watch North Korean propaganda and nothing else. It meant that dancing to the music of “Girls'
Generation” or watching an episode of “The World of the Married” could get you killed. We aren’t exaggerating. Some teenagers were recently executed just
for watching Squid Game! It was revealed by activists that foreign
content had been coming into North Korea via the town of Hyesan, which is an important
trading hub with China. The problem with this proximity is tons of
illegal content was getting across the border, as were things such as mobile phones. North Korean security services got busy hunting
this content down. When they found it, often on teenagers, the
kids were sometimes executed, sometimes in front of their classmates, sometimes in front
of their parents in stadiums, as you’ve just heard. So, crazy law number one. Death for listening to pop music and watching
silly dramas. The regime calls them “anti-socialist and
nonsocialist. They are really strict about it these days. A South Korean NGO said in 2019 that it had
discovered 318 execution sites in North Korea. People were shot down in public in schools,
stadiums, markets, and rice fields, with the crime being anything from watching a foreign
soap opera to stealing someone’s cow. A defector said that when he was in a prison
camp in the 2000s, he and about 80 other inmates were forced to watch three women being executed. They’d been charged with having ideas about
running off to China. So, one law in North Korea could be said to
be, “The first rule about North Korea is you do not talk about North Korea.” Not to anyone else, anyway. We’ll explain later what happens if you
have the audacity to make an international phone call. The executions are almost always by a firing
squad, although there has been the odd hanging now and again. Usually, the victims are lined up. Three soldiers do the shooting, firing off
three rounds. One defector said he’d seen it happen. He noticed that the soldiers were upset about
it. He said they were drunk. Maybe they could only go through with it after
some booze. As you know, the regime hates the outside
world. Or, rather, they fear the outside world. That means anything associated with the outside
is treated like a virus that could spread easily within their perfect society. This is why schoolgirls have been sent to
do hard time in mines in the countryside just because they tried to sound like South Koreans
when they sang. Kim Jung-un has said that anyone mimicking
South Korean accents can expect to be packed off to those mines where they might never
return. The same goes for haircuts. Under no circumstances should North Koreans
try and copy the hairstyles of the West or the rest of Asia. You might not have noticed it when watching
videos, but everyone seems to have the exact same haircut, boys, girls, women, and men. You can see photos of good-looking women walking
down the street, perhaps chatting on their local-call-only mobile phones, and it seems
as though they’ve all been reading the same fashion magazine. It’s got nothing to do with personal choice. They have to look that way because if one
of them decides to branch out and look like Ariana Grande, they might end up in the mines. The same goes for men. The regime has approved just 28 hairstyles,
but none of them are what you might call risque. Men are told that they should keep their hair
short but never totally shaved. If it gets longer than 5cm, almost 2 inches,
it’s time for a cut. Flat tops, a North Korean favorite, are recommended. Women can grow their hair into a bob, but
not very long, and no way they can have it really short. That would look too manly, too rebellious. There was actually a TV show in North Korea
called “Let's trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle.” The show told folks why they should follow
hairstyle rules. It goes without saying that they don’t want
people to have any sort of individuality. As the saying goes, if the nail sticks out,
hammer it down. That’s actually a Japanese expression and
not too important now in that country, but in North Korea, it influences every part of
society. Spiky hair, green hair, or messy hair does
not adhere to socialist values, said the TV show. In one episode in 2005, a guy was dragged
off the streets. His hair was all over the place. The TV presenter said to the people watching,
“We cannot help questioning the cultural taste of this comrade, who is incapable of
feeling ashamed of his hairstyle. Can we expect a man with this disheveled mindset
to perform his duty well?” There was only one answer, of course. Still, an un-socialist hair-do won’t get
someone hard labor. Instead, when CCTV found such people with
itinerant hair, they were publicly shamed. They were reported at work and were ostracized
by their colleagues. The viewers heard some scientific facts, too,
North Korean style. The presenter said long hair affects “human
intelligence development” because it “consumes a great deal of nutrition.” If you have no access to decent books or the
internet, how would you ever be able to refute that? It's the same with clothes. People won’t get the machine gun treatment
for wearing the wrong kind of clothes, but they’ll be accused of having a bad “ideological
and mental state.” Once that gets back to their boss, they’ll
get snubbed by their colleagues. The newspapers might also make a meal of it,
bringing on more shame. A regime newspaper called “Nodong Sinmun”
wrote that people’s clothes show their “cultural standards and mental and moral state.” It explained, “No matter how good the clothes,
if one does not wear tidy shoes, one's personality will be downgraded.” We should say that there’s a big difference
between being a bit untidy to showing everyone you are totally into a western or South Korean
style. One could be blamed on laziness or unkemptness,
but western fashion-following is sedition. One is harmless; the other is exceedingly
dangerous. Human Rights Watch wrote in 2021 that a North
Korean might be executed or sent to a prison camp (kyohwaso) for 15 years for watching
just one episode of a South Korean soap opera. It also said that the new rules dictated that
merely uttering a few words of South Korean, even just to practice, can result in two years
of hard labor. There are reports of kids texting each other
and using some words of South Korean slang. The sentence for that was three months of
hard labor. In a letter to the Tenth Congress of Youth
League in 2021, Kim Jung-un explained why he was coming down on people so hard. It was a long letter, so we’ll just show
you a few snippets translated into English. It starts off positively, saying:
“The faithful millions of young people have always been a fortress for our Party, which
is leading the revolution to a great leap braving the worst-ever challenges….” These kids, he said, should be at war against
the capitalists. He said they should dress smart, speak well,
and learn revolutionary songs. He said some do that, but others had been
transformed by the “malignant tumors” of “anti-socialist” ideas coming from
foreign lands. He was executing folks for listening to K-Pop
because they were bringing in “dangerous poisons” of outside influence. As we showed you in the intro when the leader
makes a speech like that, you’re expected to clap like crazy, and we mean clap until
your hands hurt. People have been executed in the past for
not clapping enough, for looking like they didn’t care about the immortal speaker on
the podium. This is nothing new. It happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin. But can you imagine what would happen if you
fell asleep when the leader was speaking, just as happens all the time in the West? Napping in British Parliament is the norm. There’s no official law for this in North
Korea, but they can easily accuse someone of being seditious or at least unpatriotic. It happened to the former Defense Minister,
Hyon Yong-chol, who was usually a top-notch clapper. The state gunned him down in 2015. Some people said the reason was he was caught
napping while Kim Jung-un was speaking, but the real reason was likely that he’d just
gotten on the wrong side of the leader. No official reason was given in the end, but
Kim must have really hated him, because this time, the firing squad used an anti-aircraft
gun. It happened in front of 100s of people at
Pyongyang's Kang Kon Military shooting range. So, that’s another rule, or at least an
unwritten rule. Clap when you have to and don’t be the first
to stop. When the big man is talking, don’t you dare
think you can catch 50 winks. This is serious. 100s of officials in the past have been executed
because it was thought they were becoming slightly rebellious by not paying attention
when they should. This next bit of information sounds so crazy
you’d think it was western propaganda. You already know that you have to respect
the Supreme leader at all costs. In 2020, it seemed a woman living in Onsong
County, near China, let that respect lapse for a few minutes when her house caught fire
and her kids were stuck inside. As the flames tickled the sky, she rushed
into the house to collect her screaming kids. She should have been celebrated for her bravery,
but she was arrested. Guess why? The reason is like in every North Korean household;
there were portraits on the wall of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Their rotund faces lit on fire as the woman
concentrated on making sure her kids got to see puberty. The news somehow got back to the Ministry
of State Security, likely through a snitching neighbor. The case was investigated, and it was said
that a political crime might have occurred because she’d rescued her children and not
the portraits. What’s even more ridiculous is a farmer
had rushed in to save the portraits, and while the woman was condemned in the media, he was
hailed a national hero. What’s even more annoying is that the woman
was jailed during the investigation, which meant she couldn’t tend to her hospitalized
kids, who both had serious burns. The DailyNK, a South Korean newspaper writing
about everything North Korean, said that some neighbors wanted to help the mother buy the
antibiotics her kids needed, but they were too scared as they thought they might be charged
with political crimes. A source told the paper, “The mother will
be able to focus on caring for her children once the authorities end their investigation.” The Supreme Leader is a kind of divinity,
which is why myths abound, such as the ground cracking apart and lightning striking when
the last leader popped his clogs. It’s said that he once hit 38-under-par
over 18 holes, the first time he ever played golf. The official state document said on the 7,700-yard
championship course at Pyongyang; he hit 11 holes-in-one that day. Not bad for 52-years-old and 5-foot-3 in height
on a course that most professionals would struggle to make par. Only a God could perform such a miraculous
feat of sporting triumph. This is why in North Korea if you mention
the word Jesus, or Buddha, you are in for one hell of a bad time. The country is not big enough for two Gods. Only the Kims perform miracles. Gods have nothing on them. In 2014, an American named Jeffrey Fowle made
the mistake of his life when he thought it was a good idea to visit North Korea while
embracing the Christian tradition of spreading the word of God. This was about as prudent as taking a bath
while holding a plugged-in TV. It’s one thing keeping your God theories
to yourself in North Korea, but this guy went to a restaurant called the Chongjin Sailor's
Club and, on purpose, he left a bible in the restroom, hoping someone would pick it up
and later choose Jesus as their savior. Fowle was arrested and imprisoned. He appeared on TV later, telling the folks
back home he’d been treated well. They always say that. You’ll know why soon. After five months, the North Koreans sent
him back home, but with a warning: Keep your God in the USA. We don’t want him here. He’s persona non grata. Had Fowle not been used as a diplomatic bargaining
chip, he’d likely have been executed or at least spent a few years doing hard labor. Around the same time, the American-Korean
Kenneth Bae, an Evangelical preacher, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor, also
for spreading the good word. He surprised everyone when he told the West
that his prison labor camp wasn’t actually that bad. In an interview from North Korea, he said:
“Yes, people here are very considerate. But my health is not in the best condition,
so there are some difficulties. But, everyone here is considerate and generous,
and we have doctors here, so I'm getting regular check-ups.” Still, in 2015, North Korea executed six North
Korean people who’d been spreading the word of God. In 2011, a woman named Kwon Eun Som and her
granddaughter were blasted away by a firing squad in Osong County. Their crime was loving the Christian God and
telling others how great he was. You can’t even practice superstitious stuff
in North Korea. Shamans have been executed, as have fortune
tellers…lots and lots of fortune tellers. You can give 20 bucks to the same people in
the US, and they’ll tell you one day you’ll meet an important person named Gary…or Graham…it
begins with a G, anyway. Perhaps that’s exploitation, but it’s
hardly a crime. In 2017, it was reported that a 20-something-year-old
North Korean woman had been telling folks about their life down the line, and she was
later executed by firing squad in Chongjin. A news report at the time talked about other
fortune tellers that had been arrested. It said:
“One fortune teller, known as ‘Huisun,’ was sentenced to 18 years hard labor in Onsong,
while in Hoeryong, six fortune tellers remain under investigation by local police with rumors
that they may also face execution.” In 2019, the news said two young fortune tellers
were executed by firing squad in front of tens of thousands of people - factory workers,
students, and office workers – at a location in Hamgyong’s Chongjin city. Another person got life in the prison labor
camp because they’d been accused of “superstitious activities.” In another case, the condemned fortune teller
had used a three-year-old and five-year-old, saying they were possessed and so could see
into the future. The media reported that people were starving
and desperate, so they looked to anyone who could help, even a scammer who allegedly talked
to ghosts. Each one of the fortune tellers was accused
of “anti-socialist behavior,” which affected “the preservation of social order.” You might wonder what happens if North Koreans
get on the phone with South Koreans and are told that their lives are actually terrible
and they live in a place of sheer madness where their brains are washed as often as
their hands. If that happens and the person is caught,
they will likely die. Many North Koreans have been executed for
the crime of talking on the phone to someone outside of the country. As we explained in another show, North Korea
runs a tight ship where the truth is concerned. Just one phone call to someone outside will
likely get you executed, regardless of what is said. Remember the first rule of North Korea Club. In 2007, a South Pyongan province factory
chief was executed for this crime in front of 150,000 people at a local stadium. The giant lid on North Korea’s can of worms
has to remain closed. It does, for the most part, which is why most
people go along with stories of their leaders attaining golf scores that would make Tiger
Woods envious. But a quick phone call to the South can undo
such ridiculous lies. Another thing you’re not supposed to do
in North Korea is look at pornographic material. North Koreans might be living in a never-world,
but their brains work the same way as everyone else where sex is concerned. Like many of you guys and girls, they’re
suckers for images and videos of naked bodies getting down with a bit of coitus. It’s said that while North Koreans might
not have access to porn websites and Hustler-type magazines, people still share illegal videos
of women dancing while wearing not many clothes. The possession, distribution, and production
of this kind of thing can lead to many years in prison and even death. News stories in 2021 told us about how a teenage
boy caught watching porn got in big trouble. The stories don’t explain how he was caught,
but it’s said when his parents were away at the house in North Pyongan Province, the
kid put on a video and indulged in the age-old tradition of the five-knuckle shuffle. This was said to be anti-socialist behavior. The truth is it tore at the threads of North
Korea’s tapestry of lies. Foreign porn exposes a different life, even
if it’s just terrible actors picking up horny svelte hitchhikers. As per Article 29 of the law, the 15-year-old
kid was sent to a labor camp. His parents and even his high school principal
were also sent to the labor camp. More and more pornographic videos or smutty
content on USBs have been making their way across the border from China of late. Kim Jong-un says this is a threat to society
and has cracked down on such behavior. Even worse, some folks have had the gall to
make porn in North Korea. Defectors smuggled one video titled “The
Secret Story of the Republic” out of North Korea not long ago, although the film isn’t
available online…We tried to find it, for research purposes, of course. Kids have apparently been getting their hands
on sexy CDs and renting them out in school, with reports saying such CDs were going for
about 80 dollars in the past. That’s A LOT in North Korea. More recently, people have smuggled content
on Chinese phones, and with those, they can watch homegrown Chinese stuff online. The North Korean regime, as much as they hate
it, seems to understand how natural it is, so usually, if someone is caught with just
North Korean smut, they might get two to five years in the labor camps. The problem is when the porn is foreign, which
means opening up that can of worms. As you know, people get executed for watching
South Korean dramas, so American or Japanese hardcore is a big no-no… As Article 194 of the “Conduct of Decadent
Acts” says: “A person who watches or listens to music,
dance, drawings, photos, books, video recordings or electronic media that reflects decadent,
carnal or foul contents or who performs such acts himself or herself shall be punished
by short term labor for less than two years. In cases where the person commits a grave
offense, he or she shall be punished by reform through labor for less than five years.” This doesn’t count for the regime’s top
officials. It seems those guys can beat their meat to
their heart's content, or at least that’s what some researchers said in 2017. They said deep within the highest offices
of Pyongyang; top officials watched American porn sites such as Pornhub. These same guys were even going on Twitter
and Instagram, and Facebook, maybe even befriending some of you guys watching this video. As for if someone in North Korea likes people
of the same sex, well, that’s actually not illegal, but it seems most people don’t
even have a concept of homosexuality, even if they feel it in every inch of their bones. In 2015, a guy named Joo Sung-ha, who had
defected from North Korea after studying at its best university, told the New York Times
about homosexuality, “In my university, only half the students
may have heard of the word. Even then, it was always treated as some strange,
vague mental illness afflicting subhumans, only found in the depraved West.” Also in The Times, another guy said, “I
was too embarrassed to confess that I came here because I felt no sexual attraction to
my wife. I couldn’t explain what it was that bothered
me so much, made my life so miserable in North Korea, because I didn’t know until after
I arrived here that I was gay, or even what homosexuality was.” So, while there is no law that outright bans
homosexuality, coming out would certainly be taboo and, we imagine, might raise a few
eyebrows. Article 193 talks about "decadent" behavior,”
and it’s speculated that a gay person could be charged with this, but it’s hard to say. In totalitarian societies, laws are deliberately
very vague. A gay defector named Jang Yeong-jin said after
he jumped the fence, he experienced more discrimination in conservative South Korea. Still, since homosexuality isn't even ever
talked about in the North, it’s unlikely there will be discrimination. Even the little things can get a person in
trouble. Households are expected to be clean and tidy,
and people are absolutely expected to have pictures of their leaders on the wall, past
and present. In some societies in the world that aren’t
even totalitarian but are authoritarian, pretty much every household has a picture on the
wall of some ruler or monarch. Thailand was like this until the last king
died, and people there will still argue with you until they are blue in the face that this
was out of love and respect rather than a consequence of propaganda instilled in them
since they were just children. Reports say that portraits of leaders In North
Korea have to be hung high, so they look down on the occupants of the house. The police do inspections now and again to
ensure families follow this rule. If the pictures aren’t there, or if they
are dirty or hung in the wrong place, the adults in the house can expect punishment. An investigation into their habits and opinions
will try to ascertain if they are either bad socialists or just rubbish at looking after
pictures. It’s likely that if they’re charged with
something, they’ll do some time in the mine, or perhaps just have to do the walk of shame
at work. The security services will, of course, interview
the kids to ensure the parents have been routinely filling their brains with the right thoughts. This must be a nerve-wracking time for the
parents, whose four-year-old might blurt something that sends mommy and daddy to an early grave. It could be something innocent, such as, “Mommy
say Kim a bad man with dumpling face.” This kind of thing would seriously affect
the family’s “songbun” – social status ranking. Westerners don’t often feel the wrath of
the regime for acting or speaking out of line, but sometimes they do. Merrill Newman, an 85-year-old guy from California,
made the mistake in 2013 of telling his North Korean tour guide that he’d fought on the
wrong side in the Korean War. It was enough to get him arrested and later
appear on CNN confessing to his crime. He later said that he purposefully used awful
grammar in that video so the folks back home would know he’d been forced to say those
things. That’s why everyone always says things are
hunky-dory when they appear on TV. They have to. Many tourists will tell you that North Korea
is ok, the people are friendly, and all the talk of danger is overblown, but that only
remains true if you don’t break the rules. You can soon be called a “hostile,” though
admittedly, you’d have to be stupid or willfully ignorant to break those rules. They are pretty obvious. This doesn’t mean the locals will hate you,
even if you come from so-called imperialist America. One American returned from a trip and said
to the press: “I told them I was American and they were
pretty interested and were asking me questions. They didn’t seem to be intimidated by America
or have any hatred towards America, which was reassuring.” Still, break the law there at your own risk. You might not see a firing squad like a local,
but you might be sent back to the US looking rather under the weather. Now you need to watch our sister show to this
one, “North Korea's Crazy Internet Rules.” Or, have a look at “What Actually Happened
to an American Student in North Korean Prison.”
