A public struggle session was held earlier this month in Mundok county, South Pyongan province, targeting a person caught with South Korean video material.
“A farm worker in his 50s at Oryong Farm in Mundok county was arrested during an Aug. 2 raid of his home for possessing South Korean video material,” a Daily NK source in South Pyongan province said recently. “They held a roughly two-hour public struggle session in front of all the farm workers in the yard outside the farm’s management committee office.”
The farm worker was immediately arrested when the raid turned up a storage device containing South Korean films and music. He was then handed over to local police.
County police also searched the mobile devices of the suspect’s family members and found several files on their children’s devices. However, the children said their father had saved the files on their phones, and since they were minors, the investigation into their involvement wrapped up relatively quickly.
Public Humiliation
Later, county police organized a public struggle session at the farm before the entire workforce.
A police official revealed the farm worker’s actions and declared, “South Korea isn’t just a foreign country, but an enemy trying to plunder our nation. The cultural materials they’re trying to spread are ideological poison, and this reactionary act of poisoning even one’s own children can never be tolerated.”
The farm workers then took turns condemning their colleague. Throughout the entire struggle session, the farm worker just stood with his head down and remained silent.
Interestingly, the arrested farm worker also had several banned Chinese videos in his possession, but this wasn’t mentioned during the struggle session, which focused only on the South Korean content.
Some people complained that the enforcement standards and how authorities handled the matter differed from before. Several noted that police had previously punished their relatives for having forbidden Chinese video material.
“Mundok residents criticized the county police for conducting surprise raids when farmers were working hard in the fields during the rainy season,” the source said. “They said that inspections were even more frightening than the monsoon rains and that they needed to be extremely careful.”
County police have intensified their crackdowns, and some frightened residents are now hiding or destroying their storage devices, according to the source.
