(Adnkronos) – In North Korea, there is reportedly an increase in executions for those who watch foreign films and television programs. This is reported by a United Nations report, according to which the country is increasingly subjecting the population to an increase in forced labor, further limiting its freedoms. In the last ten years, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has announced, the North Korean government has strengthened control over “all aspects of citizens’ lives”. The report states that “no other population is subject to such restrictions in today’s world” and surveillance has become “more pervasive”, aided in part by advances in technology.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said that if this situation continues, North Koreans “will be subjected to further suffering, brutal repression and fears they have endured for so long”. The report, compiled based on over 300 interviews with people who have fled North Korea in the last 10 years, found that the death penalty is being imposed more and more often. Since 2015, at least six new laws have been introduced that provide for the death penalty. One crime that can now be punished by death is the viewing and sharing of foreign media content, such as films and TV series.
People who have fled North Korea told UN researchers that executions for distributing foreign content have increased since 2020. Death sentences, they explained, are carried out by firing squads in public to instill fear in people and discourage them from breaking the law. Kang Gyuri, who fled in 2023, told the BBC that three of her friends were executed after being caught posting South Korean content and that another 23-year-old was sentenced to death. ”She was tried along with drug criminals. These crimes are treated the same way,” she said.
The UN report explains that in North Korea “in the last 10 years the government has exercised almost total control over people, leaving them unable to make their own” economic, social or political decisions. Improvements in surveillance technologies have contributed to increased government controls. Repressive measures which, as one fugitive told UN researchers, are intended to “close people’s eyes and ears”. Others, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that “it is a form of control aimed at eliminating even the smallest signs of dissatisfaction or complaint”. With the same objective, the government is resorting to forced labor to a greater extent than a decade ago, with people from poor families recruited to perform physically demanding tasks, such as construction or mining projects.
