A new United Nations report has indicated North Korea has executed citizens for accessing and sharing foreign films and television programmes, including South Korean dramas. The report’s findings are based on more than 300 interviews with defectors and reveal the regime’s growing reliance on terror and punishment to exercise absolute control over the people’s lives.
Apparently, North Koreans have long been subjected to intense surveillance. Punishments for “cultural non-conformity” have become increasingly draconian since 2015, including access to foreign media now being criminalized, with distribution, punishable by death. The authorities justify their actions by citing the need to protect the North Korean people from “reactionary ideology and culture”.
The report describes the widespread use (and exploitation) of forced labour, particularly among children from economically disadvantaged families. Many face genuine danger in their work, especially in mining and construction, and they do so under atrocious conditions.
Overall, the UN acknowledged very modest improvements though, including minimally improved conditions in some detention centres and very minor legal reforms that increase formal protections, but which, in light of the report’s findings, pale in comparison to the scale of ongoing violations of fundamental human rights.
North Korea has labelled the report absurd and illegitimate and stated that it is a politically motivated, blatantly biased document. Its representatives however did not directly respond to the allegations.
According to human rights organisations, the report adds to a long and established record of extreme oppression in the country. They said that the use of execution for the consumption of media illustrates the authority’s commitment on behalf of the regime to block outside forces, and in order to at the very least maintain ideological control of the people.
The findings have generated renewed international attention. Analysts have warned this potentially poses grave risks for the North Korean people, and that increasing restrictions will only facilitate more isolation.
International observers have also maintained that it will take sustained attention and pressure over time to hold North Korea accountable for the abuses described.
Finally, the UN report contained a comprehensive series of reports on life for ordinary North Koreans, some of which are tragic highlights of life under one of the world’s most closed regimes, where self-cultivation punishes with extreme consequence for watching a television drama.
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