North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un

NORTH KOREA: EIGHTY PEOPLE EXECUTED 'FOR WATCHING FOREIGN FILMS'

November 11, 2013: South Korea’s Joong Ang Ilbo newspaper reported that co-ordinated public executions took place in North Korea, in seven separate cities, earlier this month.
In one case, the local authorities rounded up 10,000 people, including children, and forced them to watch, it reported.
Those put to death were found guilty by the state of minor misdemeanors, including watching videos of South Korean television programmes or possessing a Bible.
Sources told the paper that witnesses saw eight people tied to stakes in the Shinpoong Stadium, in Kangwon Province, before having sacks placed over their heads and being executed by soldiers firing machineguns.
“I heard from the residents that they watched in terror as the corpses were so riddled by machinegun fire that they were hard to identify afterwards,” the source said.
Relatives and friends of the victims were reportedly sent to prison camps, a tactic that North Korea frequently uses to dissuade anyone from breaking the law.
“Reports on public executions across the country would be certain to have a chilling effect on the rest of the people,” Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea analyst with The International Crisis Group in Seoul, said. “All these people want to do is to survive and for their families to survive. The incentives for not breaking the law are very clear now.” (Sources: telegraph.co.uk, 11/11/2013)