North Korea executing extra individuals for watching overseas movies and TV, UN finds

[ad_1] Jean Mackenzie Seoul correspondent

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/7cfc/live/433fdf00-8f8f-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/7cfc/live/433fdf00-8f8f-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/7cfc/live/433fdf00-8f8f-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/7cfc/live/433fdf00-8f8f-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/7cfc/live/433fdf00-8f8f-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/7cfc/live/433fdf00-8f8f-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/7cfc/live/433fdf00-8f8f-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/7cfc/live/433fdf00-8f8f-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp" loading="eager" alt="KCNA via EPA North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arriving to attend a ceremony in Pyongyang. He is wearing a black suit and walking down a red carpet, between two rows of guards holding rifles, dressed in formal uniforms. Above him are big white chandeliers. " class="sc-86c96223-0 fHZDyi"/> KCNA through EPA Life below Kim Jong Un's rule has grow to be more durable and individuals are extra afraid, the report claims

The North Korean authorities is more and more implementing the loss of life penalty, together with for individuals caught watching and sharing overseas movies and TV dramas, a significant UN report has discovered.

The dictatorship, which stays largely reduce off from the world, can also be subjecting its individuals to extra compelled labour whereas additional proscribing their freedoms, the report added.

The UN Human Rights Workplace discovered that over the previous decade the North Korean state had tightened management over "all elements of residents' lives".

"No different inhabitants is below such restrictions in as we speak's world," it concluded, including that surveillance had grow to be "extra pervasive", helped partially by advances in know-how.

The UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, mentioned that if this example continued, North Koreans "will probably be subjected to extra of the struggling, brutal repression and concern that they've endured for therefore lengthy".

The report, which is predicated on greater than 300 interviews with individuals who escaped from North Korea previously 10 years, discovered that the loss of life penalty is getting used extra usually.

At the least six new legal guidelines have been launched since 2015 that permit for the penalty to be handed out. One crime which might now be punished by loss of life is the watching and sharing of overseas media content material resembling movies and TV dramas, as Kim Jong Un works to efficiently restrict individuals's entry to info.

Escapees instructed UN researchers that from 2020 onwards there had been extra executions for distributing overseas content material. They described how these executions are carried out by firing squads in public to instil concern in individuals and discourage them from breaking the regulation.

Kang Gyuri, who escaped in 2023, instructed the BBC that three of her associates have been executed after being caught with South Korean content material. She was on the trial of 1 23-year-old buddy who was sentenced to loss of life.

"He was tried together with drug criminals. These crimes are handled the identical now," she mentioned, including that since 2020 individuals had grow to be extra afraid.

Watch: Uncommon footage exhibits teenagers sentenced to onerous labour over Okay-drama

Such experiences run counter to what North Korean individuals had anticipated from the previous decade.

When the present chief Kim Jong Un got here to energy in 2011, the escapees who have been interviewed mentioned that they had hoped their lives would enhance, as Kim had promised they might now not have to "tighten their belts" – which means they might have sufficient to eat. He promised to develop the economic system, whereas additionally defending the nation by additional growing its nuclear weapons.

However the report discovered that since Kim shunned diplomacy with the West and the US in 2019, as a substitute specializing in his weapons programme, individuals's residing conditions and human rights had "degraded".

Virtually everybody interviewed mentioned they didn't have sufficient to eat, and having three meals a day was a "luxurious". In the course of the Covid pandemic, many escapees mentioned there had been a extreme lack of meals, and folks throughout the nation died of starvation.

On the identical time, the federal government cracked down on the casual marketplaces the place households would commerce, making it tougher for them to make a residing. It additionally made it almost unattainable to flee from the nation, by tightening controls alongside the border with China and ordering troops to shoot these making an attempt to cross.

"Within the early days of Kim Jong Un, we had some hope, however that hope didn't final lengthy," mentioned one younger lady who escaped in 2018 on the age of 17.

"The federal government step by step blocked individuals from making a residing independently, and the very act of residing grew to become a day by day torment," she testified to researchers.

The UN report mentioned that "Over the previous 10 years the federal government has exercised close to complete management over individuals, leaving them unable to make their very own choices" - be they financial, social or political. The report added that enhancements in surveillance know-how had helped make this doable.

One escapee instructed researchers these authorities crackdowns have been meant "to dam individuals's eyes and ears".

"It's a type of management geared toward eliminating even the smallest indicators of dissatisfaction or grievance," they mentioned, talking anonymously.

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/9a95/live/97f175b0-8f8d-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/9a95/live/97f175b0-8f8d-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/9a95/live/97f175b0-8f8d-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/9a95/live/97f175b0-8f8d-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/9a95/live/97f175b0-8f8d-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/9a95/live/97f175b0-8f8d-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/9a95/live/97f175b0-8f8d-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/9a95/live/97f175b0-8f8d-11f0-965e-3d9a26f202e5.jpg.webp" loading="lazy" alt="AFP via Getty Images A group of women standing in two-three rows bow in front of a mosaic in Pyongyang. The mosaic shows Kim Jong Un's father and grandfather smiling as they are surrounded by beaming children in a garden, flanked by pink flower bushes. On their the side of mosaic, which sits on a stone square, are large bouquets of red and white flowers in gold-coloured urns. The photo was taken on the 77th founding anniversary of the Kim family's regime." class="sc-86c96223-0 fHZDyi"/> AFP through Getty Pictures Individuals bow in entrance of a mosaic in Pyongyang that includes Kim's father and grandfather on this picture taken on 9 September

The report additionally discovered the federal government is utilizing extra compelled labour than it was a decade in the past. Individuals from poor households are recruited into "shock brigades" to finish bodily demanding duties, resembling building or mining initiatives.

The employees hope it will enhance their social standing, however the work is hazardous, and deaths are widespread. Moderately than enhance staff' security, nevertheless, the federal government glorifies deaths, labelling them as a sacrifice to Kim Jong Un. In recent times it has even recruited hundreds of orphans and avenue kids, the report claims.

This newest analysis follows a groundbreaking UN fee of inquiry report in 2014, which discovered, for the primary time, that the North Korean authorities was committing crimes in opposition to humanity. Among the most extreme human rights violations have been found to be going down on the nation's infamous political jail camps, the place individuals might be locked up for all times and "disappeared".

This 2025 report finds that at the least 4 of those camps are nonetheless working, whereas detainees in common prisons are nonetheless being tortured and abused.

Many escapees mentioned that they had witnessed prisoners die from unwell therapy, overwork and malnutrition, although the UN did hear of "some restricted enhancements" on the services, together with "a slight lower in violence by guards".

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/e6f2/live/a6b81280-8f8c-11f0-b008-390d65b3559b.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/e6f2/live/a6b81280-8f8c-11f0-b008-390d65b3559b.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/e6f2/live/a6b81280-8f8c-11f0-b008-390d65b3559b.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/e6f2/live/a6b81280-8f8c-11f0-b008-390d65b3559b.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/e6f2/live/a6b81280-8f8c-11f0-b008-390d65b3559b.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/e6f2/live/a6b81280-8f8c-11f0-b008-390d65b3559b.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/e6f2/live/a6b81280-8f8c-11f0-b008-390d65b3559b.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/e6f2/live/a6b81280-8f8c-11f0-b008-390d65b3559b.jpg.webp" loading="lazy" alt="KCNA via Reuters (L-R) Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un standing in a line as they clap during a a military parade in Beijing on September 3, 2025. They are standing above the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square. Behind them are tall, red ornate doors and a podium with mics. In front of them is the railing for the balcony they are on - it's gold-coloured with orange bricks. " class="sc-86c96223-0 fHZDyi"/> KCNA through Reuters Russia's Putin, China's Xi and North Korea's Kim met in Beijing earlier this month

The UN is looking for the state of affairs to be handed to the Worldwide Prison Court docket within the Hague.

Nonetheless, for this to occur, it will have to be referred by the UN Safety Council. Since 2019, two of its everlasting members, China and Russia, have repeatedly blocked makes an attempt to impose new sanctions on North Korea.

Final week, Kim Jong Un joined the Chinese language chief Xi Jinping and the Russian President Vladimir Putin at a navy parade in Beijing, signalling these international locations' tacit acceptance of North Korea's nuclear weapons programme and therapy of its residents.

In addition to urging the worldwide neighborhood to behave, the UN is asking the North Korean authorities to abolish its political jail camps, finish using the loss of life penalty and train its residents about human rights.

"Our reporting exhibits a transparent and robust want for change, notably amongst (North Korea's) younger individuals," mentioned the UN human rights chief, Mr Türk.