A North Korean nan is to be executed for bringing back a copy of Netflix's Squid Game into the country.
The smuggler is said to have returned from China with a digital version of the hit South Korean series stored on a hidden USB flash drive.
But after selling copies to several people including young students he was caught out by the country's surveillance services.
It is understood he will now be executed by firing squad - one of the grim methods by which characters in the series are also killed.
An English council has urged parents not to allow their children to watch the hit Netflix show Squid Game because it is 'violent' and 'graphic'
Radio Free Asia reported that one student who bought a copy of the drive has received a life sentence, while six others who watched the show have been sentenced to five years hard labor.
North Korea has a strict ban on material from the West and South Korea being allowed into the country and officials are now carrying out searches at the students' school to find anymore foreign media.
Some teachers are said to have been fired or could face being banished to work in remote mines as punishment.
RFA reported last week that copies of the violent drama had arrived in the reclusive country despite the best efforts of authorities to keep out foreign media. They began spreading among the people on flash drives and SD cards.
Sources in that report said that the show's dystopian world - in which marginalized people are pitted against one another in traditional children's games for huge cash prizes and losing players are put to death - resonates with North Koreans in risky occupations and insecure positions.
'This all started last week when a high school student secretly bought a USB flash drive containing the South Korean drama Squid Game and watched it with one of his best friends in class,' a source in law enforcement in North Hamgyong province told RFA's Korean Service Monday.
'The friend told several other students, who became interested, and they shared the flash drive with them. They were caught by the censors in 109 Sangmu, who had received a tipoff,' said the source, referring to the government strike force that specializes in catching illegal video watchers, known officially as
