Wealthy parents are reportedly bribing authorities to spare punishment
(Picture: Netflix)A student has been sentenced to death for smuggling a digital copy of Netflix’s Squid Game into North Korea, it has been reported.
The man is believed to have brought in the series on a USB stick from China. It wasn’t until surveillance services caught him selling copies to fellow students that he got caught.
He will be reportedly executed by firing squad – similar to the horrific method in the Squid Game show.
According to Radio Free Asia, a source in law enforcement in North Hamgyong province said: “This all started last week when a high school student secretly bought a USB flash drive containing the South Korean drama Squid Game and watched it with one of his best friends in class.
“The friend told several other students, who became interested, and they shared the flash drive with them. They were caught by the censors in 109 Sangmu, who had received a tipoff,” referring to the government strike force, Surveillance Bureau Group 109, that specializes in catching illegal video watchers.
The seven students were reportedly arrested and have been sentenced to five years of hard labour. The news outlet reports that wealthy parents were able to bribe authorities with $3,000 to “spare a student from punishment.”
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“Residents are complaining that the world is unfair because if parents have money and power, even their children who are sentenced to death can be released,” they added.
This will mark the first time the government is acting on their recently passed law on the “Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture.” The new law carries a maximum penalty of death for watching, keeping, or distributing media from capitalist countries, mainly from South Korea and the US.
Authorities have allegedly claimed that students’ education was being neglected.
They have since fired the school principal, their youth secretary, and their homeroom teacher. The source is convinced they have been banished to “toil in coal mines or exiled to rural parts of the country.”
“The residents are all trembling in fear because they will be mercilessly punished for buying or selling memory storage devices, no matter how small,” they concluded.
