18 September 2024 :

North Korea has executed two women who had been forcibly repatriated from China for helping other North Koreans in China escape to South Korea, a human rights organization told Radio Free Asia.  
Charged with human trafficking, a 39-year-old woman surnamed Ri and a 43-year-old surnamed Kang were executed Aug. 31, 2024 after a public trial in the northeastern port city of Chongjin, according to Jang Se-yul, head of Gyeore’eol Unification Solidarity, based in Seoul.
Nine other women were sentenced to life in prison on the same charges.
All 11 women were among a group of around 500 North Koreans which China forcibly repatriated in October 2023.
“These two women were executed because they had sent North Korean escapees from China to their enemy country, South Korea,” Jang told RFA Korean. 
“When they first escaped, they were sold to a Chinese adult entertainment business,” he said. “When other North Korean women working there said they wanted to go to South Korea, they made arrangements to send them there.”
This is the first report of executions since the resumption of forced repatriation of North Korean escapees in China in October. 
Escapees in South Korea and elsewhere have urged China not to send North Koreans back, saying they would face severe punishments. China says it has an obligation to repatriate them under bilateral agreements it has with Pyongyang.
Women make up the majority of North Korean escapees in China. While there, they are often at the mercy of Chinese handlers who can sell them into servitude, either to work in prostitution, or to be the “wives” of Chinese men. 
Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, more than 34,000 North Koreans have escaped to South Korea. Of these, around 72% were women.  
Jang said that he learned of the trial and execution through Freedom Chosun an online media outlet run by North Korean escapees. 
Residents in North Korea confirmed that the trial and execution occurred.
A resident of the Chinese border city of Hoeryong told RFA that he witnessed the trial while visiting Chongjin, about 44 miles (70 kilometers) away. He said it started at 11 a.m. Aug. 31 and lasted an hour, and hundreds of residents and merchants at the marketplace were in attendance.
The trial concluded when the Social Security Bureau of North Hamgyong Province decided to execute the women on the same day, and put the 11 women in a convoy to send them away, he said.
The family of a South Korea-based North Korean escapee also confirmed to that escapee that two people were executed in Chongjin. 
Suzanne Scholte, chairwoman of the Virginia-based North Korea Freedom Coalition, confirmed to RFA Sept 11, that the trial and executions were discussed at a recent meeting of the organization.
Jang said he had spoken with the younger sister of one of the executed women, who told him that she was able to escape to South Korea with her sister’s help.
She said that her sister was caught by a Chinese broker while she was trying to escape to the South herself, Jang explained. She had been helping North Korean women escape by running a business with her Chinese husband in Longjing, Jilin province, China.
“She cried a lot,” said Jang. “It seems like her sister had rescued a lot of North Korean escapees and sent them to South Korea.”

05 September 2024 :

North Korea is suspected of executing a number of officials held responsible for devastating floods this year and South Korea’s spy agency said it was “monitoring signs” to try to determine what had happened, Radio Free Asia reported on September 4, 2024.
The agency’s announcement came a day after a South Korean broadcaster reported that up to 30 officials in flood-hit regions of North Korea had been shot to death. 
Heavy rains in July flooded large areas along the Amnok River in North Korea’s North Pyongan, Jagang and Ryanggang provinces with some South Korean media outlets reporting that more than 1,000 people were killed or were missing. 
At that time, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that he would punish officials for the damage, which a South Korean government ministry said appeared to be an attempt by Kim’s to dodge blame for the disaster.
Since then, Kang Pong Hun, the chief secretary of the Jagang Provincial Committee of the North’s ruling party, and other senior officials, including Public Security Minister Ri Thae Sop, were dismissed from their posts over the flood damage, according to North Korea’s state-media.
The South’s National Intelligence Service, or NIS, said Kang was possibly among the executed officials.
NIS’s announcement came a day after South Korea’s TV Chosun cited an unidentified South Korean government source as saying North Korean officials deemed responsible for the flood disaster had likely been executed.
“We understand late last month, 20 to 30 officials in the affected region were shot to death, including Kang Pong Hun” TV Chosun quoted the official as saying.
Since the disaster, the North’s state media have featured Kim leading flood relief efforts, emphasizing his concern for the victims, but it has given no details of casualties.  
South Korea said that there was a high possibility of casualties given that North Korea was reporting the rescue effort in such detail.
A resident of the northwestern province of North Pyongan told Radio Free Asia Korean, on condition of anonymity for security reasons, that residents affected by the flood were forced to watch propaganda videos that portrayed Kim as a hero and were told they must avoid showing even a hint of sadness on their faces. 
Another resident told RFA Korean that soldiers mobilized to rebuild flood-hit towns were stealing food and other supplies because they have been given none by the government, upsetting residents.
North Korea reportedly declined a rescue offer from China, and did not respond to a South Korean offer of aid. 
But the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported in August that Russian President Vladimir Putin offered humanitarian assistance to help North Korea cope with flood damage in another sign of expanding relations between the two nations.
Russia’s state-run Tass news agency carried a similar report, saying that Putin told Kim in a message: “You can always count on our assistance and support.”

15 July 2024 :

A 22-year-old North Korean was publicly executed in 2022 for watching and sharing South Korean films and music, a new report claims, highlighting Pyongyang’s desperate attempts to stem the flow of outside information and culture.
The case, detailed in the 2024 Report on North Korean Human Rights released by South Korea’s unification ministry on June 27, 2024, compiles testimonies from 649 North Korean defectors.
According to an unnamed defector’s testimony, the young man from South Hwanghae province was publicly executed in 2022 for listening to 70 South Korean songs, watching three films, and distributing the media, falling foul of a North Korean law adopted in 2020 that bans “reactionary ideology and culture”.

21 January 2024 :

Rare footage obtained by BBC Korean shows North Korea publicly sentencing two teenage boys to 12 years of hard labour for watching K-dramas.
The footage, which appears to have been filmed in 2022, shows two 16-year-old boys handcuffed in front of hundreds of students at an outdoor stadium.
It also shows uniformed officers reprimanding the boys for not "deeply reflecting on their mistakes".
South Korean entertainment, including TV, is banned in the North.
Despite that, some are prepared to risk severe punishment to access K-dramas, which have a huge global audience.
Footage such as this is rare, because North Korea forbids photos, videos and other evidence of life in the country from being leaked to the outside world.
This video was provided to the BBC by the South and North Development (Sand), a research institute that works with defectors from the North.
It suggests authorities are coming down harder on such incidents. The clip has reportedly been distributed in North Korea for ideology education and to warn citizens not to watch "decadent recordings".
The video includes a narrator who is repeating state propaganda. "The rotten puppet regime's culture has spread even to teenagers," says the voice, in an apparent reference to South Korea. "They are just 16 years old, but they ruined their own future," it adds.
The boys were also named by officers and had their addresses revealed.
In the past, minors who broke the law in this way would be sent to youth labour camps rather than put behind bars, and the punishment was usually less than five years.
In 2020, however, Pyongyang enacted a law to make watching or distributing South Korean entertainment punishable by death.
A defector previously told the BBC that he was forced to watch a 22-year-old man shot to death. He said the man was accused of listening to South Korean music and had shared films from the South with his friend.
Sand CEO Choi Kyong-hui said Pyongyang sees the spread of K-dramas and K-pop as a danger to its ideology.
"Admiration for South Korean society can soon lead to a weakening of the system... This goes against the monolithic ideology that makes North Koreans revere the Kim family," she said.
North Koreans started getting a taste of South Korean entertainment in the 2000s, during the years of the South's "sunshine policy" which saw it offering unconditional economic and humanitarian aid to the North.
Seoul ended the policy in 2010, saying it found the aid did not reach the ordinary North Koreans it was intended for, and that it had not resulted in any "positive changes" to Pyongyang's behaviour.
But South Korean entertainment continued to reach North Korea through China.
"If you get caught watching an American drama, you can get away with a bribe, but if you watch a Korean drama, you get shot," a North Korean defector told BBC Korean on January 18, 2024.
"For North Korean people, Korean dramas are a 'drug' that helps them forget their difficult reality," the defector said.
"In North Korea, we learn that South Korea lives much worse than us, but when you watch South Korean dramas, it's a completely different world.