Pyongyang city police summoned downtown residents on Feb. 1 to a public struggle session in Sosong district, where authorities publicly convicted a man arrested in November for possessing and distributing South Korean videos, music, and television programs, a Daily NK source in Pyongyang said recently, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
City police launched an investigation into what authorities described as rapidly growing infiltration of reactionary thought and culture in Pyongyang in October of last year. During the probe, they arrested the man on Nov. 30. He was held and investigated for several months on charges of consuming South Korean TV programs, movies, and music via a NoteTel portable media player and of distributing such content on portable storage devices.
During the public trial, police said the man cleverly distributed USB drives and SD cards containing music files, assigning numbers to each South Korean singer’s name, and hid his illicit material at a third location to avoid detection.
Young people targeted
Authorities were particularly critical of the man for distributing content primarily to young people, accusing him of “spiritually corrupting countless young people with horrible anti-Republic acts.” City police framed the offense not as a personal failing but as a serious crime against the socialist system, warning that individuals engaged in reactionary behavior continued to emerge despite sustained eradication efforts.
“The man at the struggle session was just skin and bones, perhaps because he’d undergone months of horrible questioning,” the source said. “He just stood there in handcuffs, his head bowed, throughout the entire session. And as soon as it ended, they put him in a vehicle again.”
The source added that while several people had previously been caught violating the law on reactionary thought and culture, the resumption of harsh public struggle sessions has cast a pall over the city. “Tension hangs over Pyongyang,” the source said.
A Note to Readers
Daily NK operates networks of sources inside North Korea who document events in real-time and transmit information through secure channels. Unlike reporting based on state media, satellite imagery, or defector accounts from years past, our journalism comes directly from people currently living under the regime.
We verify reports through multiple independent sources and cross-reference details before publication. Our sources remain anonymous because contact with foreign media is treated as a capital offense in North Korea—discovery means imprisonment or execution.
This network-based approach allows Daily NK to report on developments other outlets cannot access: market trends, policy implementation, public sentiment, and daily realities that never appear in official narratives. Maintaining these secure communication channels and protecting source identities requires specialized protocols and constant vigilance.
Daily NK serves as a bridge between North Koreans and the outside world, documenting what’s happening inside one of the world’s most closed societies.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: dailynk.com
