Today, North Korea sentenced four South Korean
journalists to death for book reviews that insulted the administration.
Two newspapers
(Chosun Ilbo and the Dong-A Ilbo) reviewed the new
Korean edition of “North Korea Confidential”, a book by two Seoul-based British
journalists first published in 2015. The work details the growing role of the
market in daily lives in the North, where South Korean television dramas are
circulated on the black market, and fashion items and hairstyles from the
South are copied.
According to the North’s Central Court, by reviewing the
book, newspapers “committed a hideous crime of seriously insulting the dignity
of the DPRK” as part of a “sordid smear campaign. They have reached the state
of slandering and insulting even the inviolable name of our country and its
national emblem,” it said.
One journalist from each newspaper and the presidents of both
publications were sentenced to capital punishment, it said. “The
criminals hold no right to appeal and the execution will be carried out any
moment and at any place without going through any additional procedures,” it
added.
It is not the first time Pyongyang has declared a death
sentence on South Korean citizens. In June it said it was imposing the
death penalty on the South’s former president Park Geun-Hye and her former spy
agency head Lee Byung-Ho, claiming its state security authorities had foiled a
plot by US and South Korean spy agencies to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.
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