Due to its dystopian setting involving poverty-stricken contestants playing children’s games to the death, Squid Game has reportedly found a receptive audience in North Korea, where the show has to be literally smuggled in by USB flash drives. Unfortunately, such an act violates the government’s newly passed Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture law, which has already reportedly doomed a man to death by firing squad for selling copies of the Netflix series to high school students, who are also facing severe punishments.
Even their teachers are feeling the brunt of it. Via Radio Free Asia:
“The government is taking this incident very seriously, saying that the students’ education was being neglected. The Central Committee dismissed the school principal, their youth secretary, and their homeroom teacher,” the source said.
“They were also expelled from the party. It is certain that they will be sent to toil in coal mines or exiled to rural parts of the country, so other school teachers are all worrying that it could happen to them too if one of their students is also caught up in the investigation,” said the source.
According to sources, the government is relentlessly pursuing how the copies of Squid Game were abled to be smuggled in despite border restrictions, and from the sound of things, the process won’t be pretty.
“It means that the bloody winds of investigation and punishment will soon blow,” a source told Radio Free Asia, which also reports that at least one of the students’ wealthy parents have been able to bribe officials and spare their child punishment. It’s almost like a scenario straight out of Squid Game, so no wonder the show is hitting so hard with anyone who’s willing to risk watching it in North Korea.