Daily NK is the first news outlet to have obtained the full text of North Korea’s “Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act.” The law stipulates a maximum penalty of execution for North Korean citizens who use or spread South Korean-style language, even calling for efforts to arouse alarm among the country’s people by conducting “public executions” of violators of the law.
MAXIMUM PENALTY FOR USING OR SPREADING SOUTH KOREAN LANGUAGE IS EXECUTION
Article 6 of the law (The Principles of Legal Punishment Toward People Who Spread the Puppet Language) sets forth that “the State shall treat anyone who imitates or spreads the puppet language [a term referring to the South Korean language] as garbage contaminated with puppet culture and as criminals. Anyone, regardless of the seriousness of the matter, shall face serious legal sanctions, including the death penalty.”
The legal punishments handed down to violators of the law are detailed in Chapter 5 (articles 58 – 65).
Article 58 of the law (The Crime of Using the Puppet Language) states that “any person found to be speaking, writing, sending messages, or exchanging emails in the puppet language or creating printed materials, video recordings, compilations, pictures, photographs, or scrolls using the puppet language’s writing style shall be sentenced to six years or more of reform through labor.” The article goes on to stipulate that “if the severity of the crime is deemed high, the offender shall be sentenced to a lifetime sentence of reform through labor or the death penalty.”
In Article 59 (The Crime of Propagating the Puppet Language), it states that “any persons found to be teaching the puppet language to others or circulating printed materials, video recordings, compilations, pictures, photographs or scrolls using the puppet language writing style shall be sentenced to ten years or more of reform through labor. If the severity of the crime is deemed high, the offender shall be sentenced to a lifetime sentence of reform through labor or the death penalty.”
The most serious crime in North Korea’s criminal code is the act of plotting to overthrow the government, which carries a punishment of more than five years of reform through labor and, in particularly serious cases, a lifetime sentence of reform through labor or execution and the confiscation of assets. People accused of using or spreading South Korean style language face similar punishments, including the death penalty. This exemplifies the degree in which the North Korean regime perceives the act of using or spreading South Korean-style language: it is akin to an act of treason against the state.
In fact, Article 31 (Strengthening Education and Control to Eliminate the Puppet Language Style) states, “Institutions, enterprises, and organizations shall strengthen education and controls over their employees and students to ensure they clearly understand that supporting the schemes of the enemies to distort our style of socialism from within is a traitorous act.”
The law also stipulates that the authorities should actively use public execution to increase a sense of alarm among the population.
Article 35 (Education Through Public Struggle) of the law states that “legal institutions, including social safety institutions, shall conduct public struggles in various formats and sizes, including revelations through documentation, mass struggle meetings, public arrests, public trials, and public executions to break the spirits of those contaminated by rotten puppet culture and to awaken the masses at large.”
It is extraordinarily rare for North Korea to explicitly mention public executions in a legal document.
During the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) held by the UN Human Rights Council in 2019, North Korea partially acknowledged that the country conducts public executions. In response to a UPR recommendation to repeal the death penalty and ban public executions, the North Korean government refused to do this, saying that “public executions are not made known to the general public and are only applied in exceptional cases that are particularly serious.”
That being said, the reality in North Korea is that the regime actively uses public executions to create an atmosphere of fear and raise alarm among its population.
LAW PROHIBITS USE OF VARIOUS SOUTH KOREAN PHRASES
The law’s second chapter (articles 7 – 38), which is entitled “The Nationwide Struggle to Eliminate the Remnants of the Puppet Language,” is divided into two sections and covers a wide range of information, taking up almost half of the entire law.
Articles 19 – 29, which are in Section 2 of the second chapter, set forth various bans on the use and spread of South Korean style language.
Article 19 (Ban on Imitating Puppet Style Titles) states that “citizens shall not imitate the use of titles in the puppet style such as young people calling non-relatives oppa [elder brother] or adding nim [an honorific attached to the end of titles or names] at the end of a professional title.” The article goes on to state that “citizens can use the title oppa until the end of their time in the Korean Children’s Union, but starting from their time in the Socialist Patriotic Youth League, they must use the titles dongji and dongmu [both can be translated as “comrade” in English].”
Given that the law mentions specific words and expressions, it appears that many North Koreans frequently use words and expressions in their daily lives taken from South Korean dramas and movies.
In addition, Article 22 (Ban on Imitating Puppet Style Intonation) sets forth that “citizens shall not imitate puppet style intonation by raising and lengthening their intonation at the end of a phrase in an obsequious, lilting and nauseating way.”
Section 1 (articles 7 – 17) of the second chapter of the law, meanwhile, call on the authorities to mount exhaustive searches with a view to strengthen monitoring and control over various mediums and spaces that allow the spread of South Korean style language. The section also calls on the authorities to be alert about the entry of South Korean visual content through the border, in the air, in rivers and streams, through trade, and through people travelling for business or other reasons.
The full text of the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act obtained by Daily NK was adopted by Decree No. 19 of the Supreme People’s Assembly on January 18, 2023. The law is made up of five chapters and 65 articles.
In Article 2, Clause 2 of the law, North Korea defines the South Korean language as “a jumbled together language that has completely lost the essentials of the Korean language due to its vocabulary, grammar and intonation becoming Westernized, Japanized and Sinocized. It is a lowly and disgusting garbage language that exists nowhere else in the world.” Article 5 of the law also claims that “the struggle to eliminate the remnants of the puppet language is a serious political and class struggle that affects the very fate of our socialist system and the very existence of our people and future generations.”
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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The full text of the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act in English and Korean can be found in the .pdf file below. Special thanks to Rose Adams for assistance translating the law into English.
Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act_English and Korean Versions_Daily NK
