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North Korea’s executions for watching K-dramas, foreign content surge during Covid-19: report

When people were told to stay home during the Covid-19 pandemic, watching K-dramas became a solace for fans of South Korea’s best-known export around the…

By Samantha Johnson / April 28, 2026
When people were told to stay home during the Covid-19 pandemic, watching K-dramas became a solace for fans of South Korea’s best-known export around the world. But for North Koreans, it spelled death.

A report released by North Korea-focused human rights organisation Transition Justice Working Group (TJWG) on Tuesday showed that the number of people executed for consuming South Korean cultural content – such as K-dramas, films and K-pop – and religious practices surged by 250 per cent after borders closed due to the pandemic, according to The Korea Times.

“As the regime pursues a fourth hereditary succession of power, there is a high risk of increased executions to strengthen cultural and ideological control and maintain political dominance,” the report said.

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The report, based on testimonies from 265 North Korean defectors and reports from five media organisations, examined executions and death sentences during North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s rule from 2011 to 2024.

Of the 144 confirmed executions over those 13 years, 65 happened after North Korea closed its borders in 2020. At least 153 people were executed or sentenced to death between January 2020 and the end of 2024.

A North Korean guard post near the border city of Paju, is seen along with a loudspeaker installation used to blare noise across the border into the South, in August 2025. Photo: Yonhap/dpa
A North Korean guard post near the border city of Paju, is seen along with a loudspeaker installation used to blare noise across the border into the South, in August 2025. Photo: Yonhap/dpa

Executions were high in the early years of Kim’s rule – with more than 80 people executed in 2013 – but tapered off from 2015 to 2019 following a United Nations Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the country.

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