The North Korean government has intensified repression inside the isolated, nuclear-armed state, expanding electronic surveillance and publicly executing people for sharing foreign media, the United Nations said in a major new report.
“No other population is under such restrictions in today’s world,” said the report, which was released Friday by the U.N. Human Rights Office.
The 16-page report examined the state of human rights in North Korea since 2014 and came to grim conclusions, describing a totalitarian state that under leader Kim Jong Un has effectively cut off its population of about 26 million from the rest of the world.
“Today, the death penalty is more widely allowed by law and implemented in practice,” the U.N. said in a statement on the report, which was based on interviews with 314 victims and witnesses who have left the country since 2014.
The North Korean diplomatic mission in Geneva and its embassy in London did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment outside of business hours.
Aided by advances in technology, surveillance of the population has become even more pervasive in North Korea, a communist state where all media is controlled by the government and there are no independent civil society organizations.
The report said every person is also required to participate in weekly self-criticism sessions that are “primarily aimed at collective surveillance and indoctrination.”
“Enjoyment of freedom of expression and access to information have significantly regressed, with the implementation of severe new punishments, including the death penalty, for a range of acts including the sharing of foreign media” such as popular South Korean dramas, the U.N. said.
Crackdowns on access to foreign information are believed to have intensified starting in 2018 and become even harsher since 2020, the U.N. said, and the government has held public trials and executions “to instill fear in the population and as a deterrent.”
A government task force has increasingly carried out inspections of computers, radios and televisions and house searches without advance notice or warrants, citing the need to curb “anti-socialist” behavior and protect national security, the report said.
One escapee told researchers that the tightened surveillance was intended “to block the people’s eyes and ears.”
“It was a form of control aimed at eliminating even the smallest signs of dissatisfaction or complaint,” the person said.
The public has almost no access to the internet, the report said, adding that the government operates “a tightly controlled national intranet” that is used mainly by research institutions and government officials.
According to the U.N. report, new laws “criminalize access to unauthorized foreign information and prohibit the consumption or dissemination of information (through, for example, publications, music and movies) from ‘hostile’ nations and the use of linguistic expressions that do not conform with prescribed socialist ideology and culture.”
The laws, which provide for severe punishments up to and including the death penalty, “raise serious concerns” about restrictions on the right to free expression, the report said.
It said reports suggest that North Koreans continue to consume prohibited information despite the growing risks.
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