North Korea Executing More People For Watching Foreign Films and TV

The North Korean government is still implementing the death penalty, including for people caught watching and sharing foreign films and TV dramas, a major UN report has found.

The dictatorship, which remains largely cut off from the world, is also subjecting its people to more forced labour while further restricting their freedoms, the report added.

The UN Human Rights Office found that over the past decade the North Korean state had tightened control over “all aspects of citizens’ lives”.

“No other population is under such restrictions in today’s world,” it concluded, adding that surveillance had become “more pervasive”, helped in part by advances in technology.

According to Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, North Koreans “will be subjected to more of the suffering, brutal repression, and fear that they have endured for so long” if this condition persists.

The death penalty is being applied more frequently, according to the report, which is based on more than 300 interviews with individuals who have fled North Korea in the last ten years.

Since 2015, at least six additional legislation that permit the imposition of the punishment have been introduced. As part of Kim Jong Un’s efforts to effectively restrict people’s access to information, viewing and disseminating foreign media content, including as movies and TV dramas, is now punishable by death.

According to escapees who spoke to UN researchers, more people were executed for disseminating foreign content starting in 2020. They explained how fire squads carry out these killings in public to terrorize people and deter them from disobeying the law.

Kang Gyuri, who escaped in 2023, told the BBC that three of her friends were executed after being caught with South Korean content. She was at the trial of one 23-year-old friend who was sentenced to death.

“He was tried along with drug criminals. These crimes are treated the same now,” she said, adding that since 2020 people had become more afraid.

Such experiences run counter to what North Korean people had expected from the past decade.

When the current leader Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011, the escapees who were interviewed said they had hoped their lives would improve, as Kim had promised they would no longer need to “tighten their belts” – meaning they would have enough to eat. He promised to grow the economy, while also protecting the country by further developing its nuclear weapons.

But the report found that since Kim shunned diplomacy with the West and the US in 2019, instead focusing on his weapons programme, people’s living situations and human rights had “degraded”.

Almost everyone interviewed said they did not have enough to eat, and having three meals a day was a “luxury”. During the Covid pandemic, many escapees said there had been a severe lack of food, and people across the country died of hunger.

At the same time, the government cracked down on the informal marketplaces where families would trade, making it harder for them to make a living. It also made it nearly impossible to escape from the country, by tightening controls along the border with China and ordering troops to shoot those trying to cross.

“In the early days of Kim Jong Un, we had some hope, but that hope did not last long,” said one young woman who escaped in 2018 at the age of 17.

“The government gradually blocked people from making a living independently, and the very act of living became a daily torment,” she testified to researchers.

The UN report said 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. The report added 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”.

“It is a form of control aimed at eliminating even the smallest signs of dissatisfaction or complaint,” they said, speaking anonymously.

The report also found the government is using more forced labour than it was a decade ago. People from poor families are recruited into “shock brigades” to complete physically demanding tasks, such as construction or mining projects.

Although the labor is dangerous and fatalities are frequent, the employees expect that this will raise their social standing. But instead of enhancing worker safety, the administration celebrates fatalities by calling them a sacrifice to Kim Jong Un. According to the article, it has even recruited thousands of street kids and orphans in recent years.

This most recent study comes after the UN commission of inquiry’s historic 2014 findings, which for the first time discovered that the North Korean regime was engaging in crimes against humanity. People can be “disappeared” and imprisoned for life in the nation’s infamous political prison camps, which have been shown to be the sites of some of the worst human rights abuses.

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.

Many escapees said they had witnessed prisoners die from ill treatment, overwork and malnutrition, though the UN did hear of “some limited improvements” at the facilities, including “a slight decrease in violence by guards”.

The UN is calling for the situation to be passed to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

However, the UN Security Council would have to refer it in order for this to occur. China and Russia, two of its permanent members, have consistently thwarted efforts to apply more sanctions on North Korea since 2019.

Kim Jong Un participated in a military parade in Beijing last week alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, indicating that both nations implicitly support North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and treatment of its people.

The UN is requesting that the North Korean government eliminate its political prison camps, stop using the death sentence, and educate its populace about human rights in addition to calling on the international community to take action.

“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.

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