Executions for consuming banned media rise in North Korea: UN
The United Nations Human Rights Office has reported a rising number of executions in North Korea, particularly targeting civilians found consuming banned foreign media. Over the past decade, the North Korean government has intensified its control over its population through stricter restrictions on freedoms, harsher punishments, and advanced surveillance technologies.Since around 2018, crackdowns on unauthorized media consumption have escalated, with public trials and executions used as tools to instill fear and deter dissent. The government has also expanded the scope of the death penalty to include offenses that violate international law standards. Interviews with over 300 defectors reveal systemic repression aimed at silencing any form of dissatisfaction. Despite some fluctuations, executions for crimes such as distributing unauthorized media, drug offenses, and human trafficking have increased since 2020. The U.N. warns that if these trends continue, the North Korean population will face continued severe human rights abuses and suffering.
Executions for consuming banned foreign media rise in North Korea, UN finds
The North Korean government is increasingly executing civilians, including people found to be consuming unapproved foreign media, according to a report from the United Nations Human Rights Office.
Pyongyang has continued to exercise significant control over the population and severely restrict the rights and freedoms of its population, and that has only gotten more intense over the last decade. The North Korean government has benefited from evolving surveillance technologies, while punishments have also become more severe, according to the report.
At least six new laws have been passed in the last decade that expand the eligibility of a death penalty sentence, the report found, which include offenses that do not meet the threshold requirements under international law.
Crackdowns on foreign media intensified around 2018 and became even harsher in 2020, though people could still bribe authorities to avoid punishments for consuming banned media, according to the report. But, with emerging surveillance technologies and increased emphasis on it, the government began cracking down “more rigorously,” and has “organized public trials and public executions to instill fear in the population and as a deterrent.”
The population remains largely cut off from the rest of the world.
“What we have witnessed is a lost decade,” U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said. “And it pains me to say that if [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] continues on its current trajectory, the population will be subjected to more of the suffering, brutal repression and fear that they have endured for so long.”
Several senior officials were reportedly executed for “anti-State acts” in 2014 and 2015. While that decreased in frequency, escapees reported that from 2020 on, executions increased for crimes related to the distribution of unauthorized media, drug-related and economic-related crimes, prostitution, pornography, human trafficking, and murder.
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The report is based on interviews with over 300 people who escaped the country. One of those escapees told the U.N. Refugee Agency, “To block the people’s eyes and ears, they strengthened the crackdowns. It was a form of control aimed at eliminating even the smallest signs of dissatisfaction or complaint.”
This report comes more than a decade after a landmark report from the U.N. found that North Korea had committed crimes against humanity.
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