N. Korea Is Executing People for Watching Foreign Films

A new United Nations report finds North Korea is increasingly using the death penalty for ordinary citizens, including those caught watching or distributing foreign films and TV shows. The investigation, which drew on interviews with more than 300 people who escaped the country in recent years, says Kim Jong Un's dictatorship has sharply tightened its grip over daily life in the past decade, expanding surveillance with new technology and imposing new laws that enable capital punishment for offenses such as consuming outside media, the BBC reports. Public executions, described by escapees, serve as warnings to the population.

When Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011, there was public hope for economic improvement. Instead, the report finds living standards and basic rights have further deteriorated, especially since Kim halted diplomacy with Western nations in 2019. Interviewees recount worsening food shortages, the collapse of informal markets, and severe crackdowns along the border to prevent escape. Most say they regularly struggle to eat, with adequate meals now deemed a rarity. The report also highlights a rise in forced labor, with people from poor families, orphans, and street children recruited into "shock brigades" to carry out difficult and dangerous work.

"In the early days of Kim Jong Un, we had some hope, but that hope did not last long," said one woman who fled the country in 2018, when she was 17 years old. Another escapee said three friends had been executed after they were caught with South Korean media. Kang Gyuri, who escaped in 2023, said one friend who was executed "was tried along with drug criminals. These crimes are treated the same now." Escapees said executions for possessing or distributing foreign media have been stepped up since 2020.

story continues below

According to the UN report, over the last decade, "the government has exercised near total control over people, leaving them unable to make their own decisions." The report concludes: "No other population is under such restrictions in today's world." UN rights chief Volker Turk warned that if North Korea "continues on its current trajectory, the population will be subjected to more suffering, brutal repression and fear," AFP reports.