A United Nations report has uncovered that the government of North Korea has increased its death penalty implementation on its citizens, including people caught watching and sharing foreign films and TV dramas.
The report noted the authoritarian style of leadership, which largely remains cut off from the world, is subjecting its people to more forced labor and further restricting their freedom.
The United Nations Human Rights Office discovered that over the past decade the North Korean state had strengthened control over “all aspects of citizens’ lives.”
The report further stated that “no other population is under such restrictions in today’s world,” adding that surveillance had become “more pervasive,” helped in part by advances in technology.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said if this situation continued, North Koreans “will be subjected to more of the suffering, brutal repression and fear that they have endured for so long.”
The report, based on more than 300 interviews with North Korean escapees over the past 10 years, revealed a growing frequency in the use of the death penalty on the people.
Since 2015 there has been the introduction of at least six new laws that permit for the penalty to be given out.
A crime that can now be punished by death is the watching and sharing of foreign media content such as films and TV dramas, as Kim Jong Un works to successfully limit people’s access to information.
The UN report noted that “Over the past 10 years the government has exercised near total control over people, leaving them unable to make their own decisions,” be they economic, social or political. Adding that improvements in surveillance technology had helped make this possible.
One escapee told researchers these government crackdowns were intended “to block people’s eyes and ears.”
They said anonymously that “it is a form of control aimed at eliminating even the smallest signs of dissatisfaction or complaint.”
The report also revealed that the government is relying more heavily on forced labor than it did ten years ago. Individuals from impoverished backgrounds are being recruited into “shock brigades” to carry out physically demanding work, such as construction and mining.
The workers hope this will improve their social status, but the work is hazardous, and deaths are common. Rather than improve workers’ safety, however, the government glorifies deaths, labelling them as a sacrifice to Kim Jong Un. In recent years it has even recruited thousands of orphans and street children, the report claims.
This latest research follows a groundbreaking UN commission of inquiry report in 2014, which found, for the first time, that the North Korean government was committing crimes against humanity. Some of the most severe human rights violations were discovered to be taking place at the country’s notorious political prison camps, where people can be locked up for life and “disappear.”
This 2025 report finds that at least four of these camps are still operating, while detainees in regular prisons are still being tortured and abused.
As well as urging the international community to act, the UN is asking the North Korean government to abolish its political prison camps, end the use of the death penalty, and teach its citizens about human rights.
“Our reporting shows a clear and strong desire for change, particularly among (North Korea’s) young people,” said the UN human rights chief, Mr. Türk.