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The North Korean government is increasingly implementing the death penalty for people caught watching and distributing foreign films and television dramas, according to a major UN report.
The dictatorship, which remains largely isolated from the world, is subjecting its people to forced labor 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 the world today," the report concluded, adding that surveillance had become "more widespread," helped in part by advances in technology.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said that if this situation continues, North Koreans "will be subjected to more of the suffering, brutal oppression and fear they have endured for so long."
The report, which is based on more than 300 interviews with people who have escaped from North Korea in the past 10 years, found that the death penalty is being used more frequently. At least six new laws have been introduced since 2015 that allow for the death penalty. One crime that can now be punished with death is viewing and sharing foreign media content, such as films and television dramas, as Kim Jong Un works to successfully restrict people's access to information.
The fugitives told UN researchers that there has been an increase in executions for distributing foreign content since 2020. They described how these executions are carried out by firing squads in public to instill fear in people and discourage them from breaking 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 a 23-year-old friend who was sentenced to death.
"He was tried alongside drug criminals. These crimes are treated the same now," she said, adding that since 2020 people had become more afraid.
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