Lee Ji-ha: Man who Smuggled ‘Squid Game’ into North Korea Sentenced to Death, and Leather Coats are banned to stop citizens from copping leader’s iconic look

Man Who Smuggled ‘Squid Game’ into North Korea Sentenced to Death — Report

Students who watched the Netflix series in high school are reportedly facing prison sentences. But Locals say rich parents were able to bribe authorities to spare a student from punishment.

A man has reportedly been sentenced to death in North Korea for smuggling copies of Netflix’s blockbuster series “Squid Game” into the country. According to Radio Free Asia, authorities were led to the man after they caught high school students watching the series. The report states that “Squid Game” was smuggled into the country from China through the use of a USB flash drive. “Squid Game” is not available in China but remains popular thanks to piracy websites. The smuggler faces death by firing squad, while the students involved in bringing “Squid Game” in to school are facing prison sentences.

Radio Free Asia reports: “A student who bought a drive received a life sentence, while six others who watched the show have been sentenced to five years hard labor, and teachers and school administrators have been fired and face banishment to work in remote mines.”

Created by Hwang Dong-hyuk, “Squid Game” is a South Korean survival thriller that follows a group of contestants who agree to participate in a mysterious survival game with a grand prize total of nearly $40 million. The game includes hundreds of contestants who play traditional children’s games with deadly twists. Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, and Wi Ha-joon star. All nine episodes of the show’s first season debuted in September, and the show became a word-of-mouth sensation. “Squid Game” amassed 1.6 billion hours viewed in its first 28 days of release, making it the biggest Netflix original TV series in history and the single biggest piece of original Netflix content.

NOTE: “In December 2020, North Korea passed the ‘Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture’ act, which prohibits the entry and dissemination of cultural material like films, plays, music and books in the country. The act is mainly aimed at preventing the spread of media from South Korea and the U.S. and those found distributing or consuming these are liable to be punished…According to widespread reports, in April this year a man was publicly executed for selling drives and CDs containing South Korean material.”

At the same time,

North Korea bans leather coats to stop citizens from copping leader’s iconic look

Literal fashion police confiscate pleather trench coats from citizens who dare wear them in public.

Authorities in North Korea are cracking down on residents wearing leather trench coats, saying that it is disrespectful to emulate the fashion choices of the country’s leader Kim Jong Un, sources in the country told RFA.

Leather trench coats became popular in 2019 after Kim appeared on TV wearing one. At first, real leather coats imported from China were snapped up by rich people who could afford them, but soon garment makers began to import fake leather to make them domestically.

Soon almost every North Korean marketplace was selling them and many young men could be seen sporting faux leather slickers of their own.

To put a stop to the cheap imitations, and the cheap imitators who wear them, literal fashion police patrol the streets to confiscate the jackets from sellers and citizens sporting the look.

But another TV appearance by Kim and his cohort this year popularized the look with a new demographic, a resident of the city of Pyongsong in South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, told RFA’s Korean Service Nov. 21 on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“During the military parade at the 8th Party Congress in January of this year, the Highest Dignity and all the high-ranking officials were shown wearing leather coats also,” said the source, using an honorific term to refer to Kim… More

Meanwhile,