NEW YORK, Sept 13: North Korea has sharply increased executions for offenses including watching or sharing foreign TV dramas and films, the BBC reported, citing a new UN human rights investigation.
According to the BBC, the report describes a decade-long tightening of state control, calling life in the country “one of the most restricted on Earth.”
The BBC said the UN interviewed more than 300 escapees who described public executions by firing squad meant to terrify citizens.
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One woman told the BBC that three of her friends were executed after being caught with South Korean entertainment content. She attended the trial of one 23-year-old friend who was sentenced to death alongside drug offenders, saying that since 2020 people had grown far more fearful.
BBC stated that hopes raised when Kim Jong Un took power in 2011 have largely faded. The report says living conditions worsened after Kim abandoned diplomacy with the West in 2019 and prioritized his weapons program. Nearly every escapee told the UN they often went hungry, and that three meals a day had become a “luxury.”
According to the BBC, the government also cracked down on informal markets and made escape nearly impossible by tightening border controls and ordering troops to shoot would-be defectors.
The BBC summarized the UN’s finding that North Korea has expanded forced labor programs, including recruiting poor citizens, orphans, and street children into “shock brigades” for dangerous work such as mining and construction, where deaths are common. Rather than address the risks, the government glorifies those who die as martyrs for Kim Jong Un.
This investigation builds on a landmark 2014 UN inquiry that found crimes against humanity were being committed, including in political prison camps where detainees are tortured and “disappeared.” The new report says at least four such camps still operate and that torture and deaths from overwork remain common, though there has been a slight reduction in guard violence, the BBC added.
