Killed for watching TV: North Korea executes 80 people in public 'for viewing South Korean movies and owning Bibles' 
 
 
 
 In one, people including women and children were herded into a stadium and forced to watch eight people die from machine gun fire 
 
 The executions are reported to have taken place in several cities 
 
 
 
 By Ted Thornhill 
 
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 Several large-scale public executions of around 80 people have taken place in North Korea, according to a South Korean newspaper. The daily JoongAng Ilbo attributed the mass executions to a single, unidentified source, but at least one other news agency, run by North Korean defectors, reported hearing rumors of the killings in seven cities across the reclusive country. Authorities in Wonsan, a port on North Korea's eastern coast that is being transformed into a resort in hopes of attracting foreign investment to the impoverished country, gathered more than 10,000 residents in a stadium and forced them to watch the firing-squad executions, the newspaper reported. A South Korean soldier mans the border with North Korea, where reports have emerged of 80 people being publicly executed 
 
 JoongAng Ilbo could not confirm the deaths, but said its source is familiar with the internal affairs of North Korea and had recently visited the country. Its source said: ‘I heard from the residents that they watched in terror as the corpses were riddled by machine-gun fire that they were hard to identify afterwards.’ 
 
 Other executions took place in Chongjin in North Hamgyong Province, Sariwon in North Hwanghae Province and Pyongsong in South Pyongan. "The regime is obviously afraid of potential changes in people's mind-sets and is preemptively trying to scare people off," said an official of the defector-run North Korea Intellectual Solidarity website, Agence France-Presse reported.
– North Korea has publicly executed some 80 people this month, a source tells a South Korean newspaper. In the city of Wonsan, hooded victims were tied to poles in front of a stadium of 10,000 people, where they were shot with machine guns, the source says. Crimes reportedly included possessing a Bible, watching smuggled South Korean TV shows, and distributing pornography, the Los Angeles Times and AFP report. "I heard from the residents that ... the corpses were so riddled by machine-gun fire that they were hard to identify afterwards," the source told JoongAng Ilbo, one of the South's top newspapers, which wasn't able to confirm the executions, the Daily Mail notes. The punishments may have been intended to shut down dissent and pro-capitalist sentiment, the JoongAng Ilbo suggests. "The regime is obviously afraid of potential changes in people's mind-sets and is preemptively trying to scare people off," an official at a defectors' website tells AFP. The alleged executions follow a report in August claiming Kim Jong Un's ex-girlfriend was put to death.