NK Shocked by Teenage Copycats

The North Korean authorities have moved to address a spate of copycat criminal acts perpetrated by teenagers after watching Chinese films and TV dramas.

“Nowadays the authorities are cracking down in response to copycat acts of gang violence and public indecency found in Chinese movies,” a source from North Pyongan Province reported to Daily NK on the 27th. “Students are getting their belongings searched on the way to school, not by their teachers but by officers from the Ministry of People’s Safety.”

“The thing is that at the beginning of May some boys and girls from a senior middle school in Pyongsung City went en masse to a local sauna where they engaged in some disgraceful sexual behaviour; that is where the crackdown began. They questioned the students, and found that they had been copying something they saw in a Chinese movie,” the source explained.

In response to this and other cases, schools have been told to instruct students not to watch Chinese films and dramas, the source revealed. However, this has not achieved much, so the Ministry of People’s Safety has begun to search and question students as well.

“In another even more serious case, someone copied a film scene featuring a revenge stabbing,” the source said. “The authorities say that foreign films are goading young people into criminal acts, and so they issued the crackdown order.”

In reality, copycat acts inspired by foreign films and dramas have been a source of concern for the authorities for some years. Back in 2008, for example, the drunk father of a 16-year old female student from the Wiyeon district of Hyesan was murdered with a hatchet by his daughter after trying to stop her engaging in lewd behaviour with a male student. Under questioning, the couple admitted they had been copying acts they had seen in foreign films.