I believe the logic is simple, the same as with advertising illegal drugs: lies can be seductive and do harm. HK officials make people consider any outer information as lies-filled propaganda, and thus justify the prohibition.
Not about to defend NK regime, but to make it fair, and not to play "they are bad guys, thus we're good guys".
First, doubts of people not right away believing any news about NK are justified, given how many lies about NK, like executing by feeding to dogs, were spread. So don't take them as NK defenders, it may be just a healthy skepticism.
Second, note that NK kills their citizens for what is illegal in their country, which is gross, but in 2019 Americans killed North Koreans for what was pretty legal, and got away with it [1].
Third, it looks hypocritic to read how horrible is that people got prosecuted for just watching videos. We all know that in so called civilized democracies, people's life can be ruined (luckily not taken) for possessing illegal video materials, it's just legality differs by jurisdictions.
West's true advantage is that we're much more shy in capital punishments, however we're still far from humanistic ideals, and I believe concentrating only on NK regime crimes lets the mindset "they being so bad, then we're not so bad after all".
hahaha. Good point. But seriously, a quick browse of the comments below is full of absurdities: Claims that the BBC is a shill of imperialism (It may very well be to an extent, but that doesn't mean it isn't laying out deep reporting with plenty of real information about well documented barbarities by the Kim regime), claims that the majority of NK defectors are mainly liars (thousands of them, all coordinating their lies across multiple decades well enough to mostly match in their details, really?) and what-aboutist nonsense implying that no country with its own border controls or occasional attempts to stifle free expression is much different from what NK does; Degrees of difference do exist, and can eventually mount enough until a difference becomes fundamentally qualitative. North Korea is well beyond the pale for mounting degrees of repression.
Then there's the idea that it's just too unbelievable to conceive that the regime would execute people simply for watching foreign movies. The Stalin regime executed or GULAG-starved many hundreds of thousands for the 1930s versions of the same thing, or for having any contact and even just suspected contact with foreigners. The Nazi regime killed millions simply for existing under a certain invented category of threat, the Cambodian Khmer Rouge would mass execute hundreds of thousands for being "bourgeoisie" because they.... had university educations, or maybe wore glasses, or spoke a second language (yes, the condemnations were really that murderously banal and never mind that many Khmer leaders themselves could tick off these same classifications for their own lives). I see nothing at all unbelievable about a youthful dictator in a closed country protected by its nuclear arsenal further absolutizing his own power by showing ever more of his already well-demonstrated indifference to human life whenever it suits him.
https://github.com/mullvad/mullvad-browser/
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