North Korean Executions and Torture Alleged in New Report
By Dasl Yoon, March 30, 2023, WSJ

SEOUL—South Korea released a new report detailing allegations of executions and torture in North Korea as President Yoon Suk Yeol attempts to put more pressure on Pyongyang over its human-rights record.

The accounts in the report released Thursday include allegations that six teenagers were executed by firing squad in 2015 for watching South Korean videos and using opium; a pregnant woman was executed in 2017 for pointing her finger at a portrait of the
country’s founder, Kim Il Sung; and the leaders of an underground church were executed in 2019.

The South Korean government has been drafting an annual report on North Korea’s human-rights record since 2018, but the former Moon Jae-in administration had classified the reports, citing the need to protect the privacy of the defectors who were
interviewed to assemble them.

“The reality of the appalling human-rights violations against the North Korean people must be fully revealed to the international community,” Mr. Yoon said at a cabinet meeting Tuesday, according to a presidential spokesman.

North Korea didn’t immediately comment on the report. The regime has denied that it is committing rights abuses and has lashed out at critics, saying they are attempting to challenge the country’s sovereignty.

The 450-page report included interviews with more than 500 North Korean defectors who escaped the country between 2017-2022 and detailed widespread violations, including public executions and incidents of torture, in one of the world’s most repressive
and isolated regimes. The defectors weren’t identified in the report.

While many of the violations covered in the report have been previously documented in U.N. reports and elsewhere, it contained new and extreme examples of those violations and presented a fuller picture of the systematic abuses North Korea has carried
out for decades. International organizations have been largely powerless to prevent the abuses within North Korea because of the regime’s tight controls over outside intervention.

“Things have only become worse and the report helps defectors realize they can be heard,” said Seo Jae-pyong, a North Korean defector who heads an activist group based in Seoul.

Kim Jong Un has used the pandemic as an excuse to further isolate the population by increasing surveillance at the border and monitoring family members of defectors, said Mr. Seo. He said even movement between cities has been restricted in the past few
years.

Defections dropped during the pandemic. Just 67 defectors arrived in South Korea last year. Before the pandemic, more than 1,000 defectors crossed the border and made it to South Korea every year. Since 2020, North Korea has ordered border guards to
shoot people trying to cross the border, the report said. Most of the defectors interviewed for the report escaped from 2017 through to 2019. Of the defectors interviewed, just nine had fled last year.

The report described 11 camps, including five currently operating, where it said political prisoners have been subjected to forced labor, beatings, sexual violence and starvation. Prisoners are sometimes tortured by being put into fixed positions or
forced to watch executions, with the aim of instilling fear, the report said. Defectors interviewed for the report said family members had died in the prison camps without receiving treatment for frostbite or malnutrition. Some defectors said they
witnessed mentally disabled people being subject to medical experiments at hospitals without their consent, the report said.

North Korean defectors said their houses or cellphones could be searched by authorities at any time. People are often detained or imprisoned without a fair trial. Female inmates have faced genital examinations during strip searches, while rapes and
forced abortions also took place, the report said.

Mr. Kim has intensified the regime’s suppression of foreign content and speech and expanded efforts to keep influences from South Korea from reaching people in North Korea, according to defectors interviewed by The Wall Street Journal and South Korean
officials.

In 2020, the regime imposed a new “anti-reactionary thought” law that calls for punishing and imprisoning people who get caught in possession of South Korean media. Even dressing or speaking like South Koreans, by using terms and clothing styles
common there, has been prohibited. Those distributing South Korean media can face the death penalty, Seoul’s spy agency said. North Koreans have faced severe punishment, such as being sent to prison, for possessing or distributing South Korean content,
Mr. Seo said.

Earlier this month, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry denounced the U.S. for organizing a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Pyongyang’s human-rights violations, calling it the most intensive expression of hostile policy toward Pyongyang. North
Korea said its human-rights violations were “nonexistent” and accused the U.S. of trying to bring down the regime. The U.S. and the international community’s criticism is nothing more than “politically motivated hostile means for tarnishing the
image” of North Korea, the Foreign Ministry said.

Mr. Moon, the left-leaning former South Korean president who favored engagement with Pyongyang and met with Mr. Kim three times, largely refrained from condemning North Korea’s human-rights violations. But Mr. Yoon, who took office last May, has taken
a more confrontational approach to Pyongyang. He has challenged the North on human rights and vowed to punish the regime for its provocative weapons testing. On Tuesday, Mr. Yoon said not a single penny should be given to North Korea as long as it
continues to develop nuclear weapons.

Mr. Yoon said he hopes North Korea’s human-rights violations are widely publicized during the Summit for Democracy hosted by the U.S. and during the continuing U.N. Human Rights Council session.

“Disclosing the reality of North Korea’s human-rights situation is important to national security as well because it shows where the legitimacy of a state can be found,” Mr. Yoon said at the Tuesday cabinet meeting.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-korean-executions-and-torture-alleged-in-new-report-d5e94c98

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