Man executed by firing squad for smuggling copies of Squid Game into North Korea

A North Korean man has been sentenced to death in North Korea for smuggling and selling copies of Netflix's hit series Squid Game.

The smuggler, a student, 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 fellow students he was caught out by the country's surveillance services.

It is understood he has been executed by firing squad - one of the grim methods by which characters in the series are also killed.

It is believed that the arrests took place in the country's North Hamgyong province which borders with China over the last week.

As Netflix isn't available in North Korea, professional contraband smugglers had turned to pirating the series onto USBs or DVDs and bringing it into the country.

Radio Free Asia reported that one student who bought a copy of the drive has since 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 any more foreign media.

Some teachers are said to have been fired or could face being banished to work in remote mines as punishment.

'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 law enforcement source told the publication.

The source said the pair discussed the series with friends who became interested and bought copies from him.

Squid Game's dystopian world in which heavily indebted people are pitted against each other in Korean children's games with losing players being put to death clearly resonates with North Koreans living under dictatorship.

But the students were then caught by the government's surveillance service - 109 Sangmu - who had 'received a tipoff' that they were watching a Western TV show. 

The arrest of the seven students marks the first time that the government is applying the newly passed law on the 'Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture,' in a case involving minors, according to the source.

The law carries a maximum penalty of death for watching, keeping, or distributing media from capitalist countries, particularly from South Korea and the US.

The South Korean series, which is currently the most streamed show in the US and in the UK, centres around a fictional game show in which poverty-stricken characters compete in a series of death games to win a £27million cash prize.