Originally published 2021-05-30.
In spring 2021 reports emerged that North Korea had executed a man by firing squad in the port city of Wonsan for selling South Korean films, dramas and music. The account came from Daily NK, a Seoul-based outlet that relies on informants inside North Korea, and was repeated by British tabloids with extra detail, including claims that his family had been made to watch. No outside journalist could confirm it. What can be confirmed is the law behind it, and a pattern of similar reports that later reached United Nations documents.
This article sets out what was reported, what is known for sure, and how to judge stories from one of the most closed countries on earth.
What the 2021 report said
According to Daily NK's sources, a man was shot in Wonsan, Kangwon (Gangwon) Province, in April 2021, in front of a crowd of around 500 people. His alleged crime was selling South Korean content on CDs and USB drives. A month earlier the same outlet had reported that four people were publicly executed in Pyongyang for similar activity.
Later tabloid versions added more: that the man was surnamed Lee, that he was a senior engineer at a local farm management body, that his wife collapsed and was carried away, and that his customers were being hunted. These details have not been independently confirmed and should be read as unverified. The Wonsan execution itself was later cited in a report by the UN Secretary-General, which gives it more weight, but the specifics still rest on anonymous witnesses.
The law behind the crackdown
The report followed a new law passed on 4 December 2020 by the Presidium of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, usually translated as the Law on Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture. State media said its aim was to stop the spread of "anti-socialist" ideas.
The full text was secret at first, but Daily NK later obtained and published it. Among its provisions:
- Watching or keeping South Korean films, songs or books: 5 to 15 years of "reform through labour" under the 2020 version (later amended to 5 to 10 years, longer for serious cases).
- Importing or distributing South Korean content: life imprisonment, and under the original text, death.
- Mass distribution or organising group viewings of "enemy" material: life imprisonment or death.
- Speaking, singing or writing in a South Korean style, including slang: up to two years of labour.
- Failing to report someone else's violation is itself an offence.
The law was revised in August 2022. Analysts at 38 North have described it as part of a broader campaign that also tightened rules on young people's language, clothing and behaviour.
Why foreign media frightens Pyongyang
For decades, smuggled entertainment has been one of the few windows North Koreans have on the outside world. The format has changed with technology: VHS tapes in the 1980s, then video CDs and DVDs, then USB sticks and now tiny microSD cards that are easy to hide. South Korean dramas are especially popular, and they show a prosperous society speaking the same language, which directly contradicts state propaganda about life in the South.
The timing also mattered. North Korea sealed its borders in January 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and later added fences and electronic surveillance along the Chinese frontier. With trade and smuggling cut, food shortages worsened, and the leadership under Kim Jong-un stepped up warnings about "capitalist" influence. State newspaper Rodong Sinmun ran editorials comparing a country that lost its own lifestyle to a wall that collapses from damp, regardless of its military strength.
Similar cases reported since
The Wonsan story was not isolated. Daily NK and Radio Free Asia have since reported, among other cases:
- A man in North Hamgyong sentenced to death in late 2021 for smuggling the series Squid Game on flash drives from China.
- Two teenagers reportedly executed in Hyesan in October 2022 for selling South Korean films.
- Two 16-year-olds sentenced in 2024 to 12 years of hard labour at a public trial held in a stadium, footage of which was later broadcast in South Korea.
Rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and a UN human rights office report in 2025 based on hundreds of witness interviews, have described the same overall pattern: harsh punishments, public trials and pressure on neighbours to inform.
How to read stories from North Korea
North Korea allows almost no independent reporting, so readers depend on defectors, smuggled phone calls and outlets with networks of informants. Some of those reports have proved accurate; others have been badly wrong. A famous example is the repeated claim that senior figures had been executed, only for them to reappear on state television months later. Viral stories about compulsory state-approved haircuts also spread widely without solid evidence.
A few habits help:
- Look for the original source. Many tabloid stories are retellings of one Daily NK or Radio Free Asia piece, with extra colour added.
- Separate the pattern from the detail. The existence of the 2020 law and harsh punishments is well documented; the name or job of one victim may not be.
- Check whether later reports, UN documents or rights groups pick up the case. Corroboration from several independent channels makes a claim more credible.
- Be wary of quotes attributed to anonymous neighbours that sound polished or dramatic.
Treated this way, the 2021 Wonsan report is best described as credible but unverified: consistent with the law and with many later cases, yet resting on sources no outsider can check.
Sources: Daily NK: North Korea's law on rejecting reactionary ideology and culture, a backgrounder; 38 North, November 2021: North Korea intensifies war against foreign influence; Wikipedia: Law on Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture; earlier tabloid coverage by the Daily Mail.
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