According to Daily NK, factory officials in Hamhung, North Korea’s second largest city, publicly condemned a love letter which was discovered in a young worker’s bag during a routine inspection.

The letter was said to include phrases like “I love you” and “the only thing I think of is you”.

It was condemned by the deputy head of the factory’s Socialist Patriotic Youth League committee as indicating a “decadent lifestyle imbued with capitalist views of love”.

The author of the letter was forced to apologise in front of other young factory workers.

The incident has been linked to the growing consumption of foreign media among North Koreans — including melodramatic South Korean TV dramas.