November 28 (RSTV)   

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Amid the surge in popularity of the Squid Game, various anti-DPRK media outlets, including the Daily NK, Radio Free Asia and Chosun Ilbo, are increasingly using it to write new fakes about life in the DPRK.

On November 23, Radio Free Asia, known worldwide as the US anticommunist propaganda mouthpiece, posted an article on its website titled 《North Korean Sentenced to Death After Schoolchildren Caught Watching The Squid Game》. According to the content of the article, the DPRK law enforcement officers allegedly detained a group of people who took part in the distribution of the South Korean series: the smuggler was executed; a student who bought a USB flash drive with South Korean content was sentenced to life imprisonment; and six spectators from among classmates were sent to a five-year reeducation through labor.

Despite the obvious inconsistency of punishments with the DPRK Criminal Code, this article was instantly reprinted by the world's leading media. It is also noteworthy that earlier "Free Asia" and the Daily NK have already published fakes about the adoption of "new draconian laws", which are supposedly designed to finally suppress free thought in North Korea. The soil for the cultivation of such fakes, obviously, was prepared in advance, which means that the scheme "invented the law - come up with the news" will be used by propagandists on an ongoing basis.

As for the article itself from Radio Free Asia, it does not stand up to scrutiny.

First, as of today, the DPRK has emergency anti-epidemic measures that have led to the complete closure of the borders. Foreign travel, as well as trade, is impossible in such conditions. The very assumption that some person simply comes to China and brings something forbidden from there is absurd.

Konstantin Asmolov, a leading researcher at the Center for Korean Studies, IFES RAS, in his commentary to the representative of Pulgynbyol TV, noted:

Such a low level of propaganda is probably caused by the absolute ignorance of the North Korean realities by the journalists of Radio Free Asia. If they at least read the media reports, not to mention the text of the DPRK Criminal Code, they could write something more believable than the story of a smuggler from China who returned during a pandemic and schoolchildren sent to mines.

Here it should be remembered that this is thrown to the audience without critical thinking, and not in order to shake the faith of the enemy or lure doubters over to their side. It is another matter that with a more competent approach, such propaganda could claim to be something more.

Secondly, the punishments described in the news, such as "the death penalty" and "indefinite corrective labor" for these offenses directly contradict the criminal legislation of the DPRK. Most of the sane articles of the DPRK Criminal Code (83, 184 and 185) do not imply imprisonment at all: there is a fundamental difference between corrective and educational work (ideological re-education) and corrective labor (labor re-education).

Consider the articles of the Criminal Code, under which the acts described in the news may fall.

Article 183 of the DPRK Criminal Code provides for punishment in the form of correctional and educational work for up to 1 year for the import without permission of objects of decadent culture. The same act, which entailed grave consequences, is punishable by corrective labor for a term of up to 5 years.

Conclusion: Article 183 of the DPRK Criminal Code does not provide for the death penalty.

Article 184 of the DPRK Criminal Code provides for punishment in the form of correctional and educational work for up to 1 year for listening to or viewing images, photographs, books, videos or electronic media of decadent, erotic or pornographic content. The same act, which entailed grave consequences, is punishable by corrective labor for a term of up to 2 years.

Conclusion: As in the previous case, Article 184 of the DPRK Criminal Code does not provide for indefinite labor or corrective labor for a 5-year period.

Article 185 of the DPRK Criminal Code provides for punishment in the form of correctional and educational work for up to 1 year for listening to enemy radio broadcasts, collecting, storing and distributing enemy materials without anti-state intent. The same act, which entailed grave consequences, is punishable by corrective labor for a term of up to 5 years.

Conclusion: In this Article, intent is of particular importance. The discussed news of Radio Free Asia does not contain a description of acts that may entail serious consequences, which means that Article 185 of the DPRK Criminal Code cannot be applied.

Thirdly, the "Squid Game" was awarded a generally positive assessment by the DPRK media. Observers stressed that the series raises important economic issues and contains strong criticism of the South Korean socio-political system.

On October 12, the Arirang Association published a detailed article, which noted the following:

 It is believed that the series, visually showing the process of the deadly game, makes the viewer realize the sad essence of the monstrous South Korean society, in which people, subjected to cruel social selection, lose their humanity.

In particular, through the image of a rich man, the organizer of the game, who takes pleasure in the horrific massacre, the series presents a society where tyranny and arbitrariness of those in power are rampant. It is he who comes up with the main rule of the game, which says that the one who could not take first place must die. Viewers note that this causes outrage at the unequal social order, which treats people like chess pieces.

For this reason, many South Koreans who watched this television drama reflected on the serious economic inequality that pervades South Korea: in today's South Korean society, the number of “dropouts” due to fierce competition for jobs, real estate and shares is increasing significantly. In such a society, the people who have become the winners stand by the corpses of the losers. The show is said to serve as a reminder of what a hellish life people are doomed to in a cursed world where people are judged only by money.

Based on the above, we can conclude that the propagandists from Radio Free Asia did not even bother to get acquainted with the North Korean press before riveting a fake. The question is, what realities of the North can such "experts" talk about?

The current state of affairs underlines several important points at once. On the one hand, US propagandists are gradually abandoning "subtle" propaganda in favor of high-profile headlines, since many stereotypes about the DPRK that are beneficial to the US government have already taken root in the world community. On the other hand, the very fact that the mainstream media are ready to blindly relay any nonsense in the pursuit of views clearly demonstrates the ever-worsening crisis in international journalism.

Recently, some journalists have become so carried away by cultivating hatred that they have forgotten the lesson of "Free Radio and Television of the Thousand Hills": sooner or later, you will have to be responsible for everything.