North Korea turns to executions, surveillance to block outside culture

North Korea has ramped up public executions of its people who watched or distributed South Korean movies and music, South Korea's Unification Ministry said Thursday, underscoring Pyongyang's attempt to block the inflow of outside culture that it views as a threat.

North Korea has been stepping up surveillance and punishment of its people, in particular, youths, by implementing three so-called evil laws to prevent North Koreans from accessing outside information, the ministry said in a report on the North's human rights situation.

The ministry made public a report on the North's human rights situation for the second straight year in 2024, with this year's documents mainly based on additional testimonies from 141 North Korean defectors in 2023.

For the first time, the report included an example of a public execution for violating the law adopted in 2020 on the rejection of "the reactionary ideology and culture."

The law calls for a sentence of up to 10 years of hard labor for people who bring and spread outside culture and information. Punishment is known to be tougher in the case of those watching and disseminating South Korean dramas, movies and music. The North views such behaviors as anti-socialist acts that could threaten the very existence of the regime.

A defector who fled North Korea last year said he witnessed the public execution of a 22-year-old in South Hwanghae Province in 2022 for listening to 70 South Korean songs, watching three South Korean movies, and distributing them.

"Since the law took effect, a person could be sent to a prison camp just because of watching (South Korean movies). The person who initially brought them in will face the most severe punishment — being shot by a firing squad," the defector was quoted as saying by the report.

The two other repressive laws aimed at strengthening internal control are the act adopted in 2021 on education of young people and that enacted in 2023 on the protection of Pyongyang dialect and culture.

North Korea has frequently inspected mobile phones of its people in a bid to crack down on whether there are any South Korean expressions in text messages or address books. In 2021-2023, North Korea ramped up house searches to hunt down those accessing outside culture and information.

Wearing a white wedding dress as a bride, a groom carrying the bride on his back, and wearing sunglasses are also stated as examples of violating the anti-reactionary ideology law, it said.

The report also shed light on the harsh lives of North Korean workers dispatched abroad, describing them as living under "slave"-like conditions.

North Korea sent its workers abroad, including Russia, Mongolia and Africa, to earn hard currency in violation of UN Security Council resolutions against Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.

North Korean workers had to toil for long hours without being allowed proper rest. Despite long hours of labor, they received little wages and even had to repatriate the bulk of their money back to the North Korean regime.

A North Korean defector who was sent to Russia in 2019 said he worked for 16-17 hours daily, with only two days of holidays permitted per year, the report said. Around 40 workers dispatched to Russia in 2019 lived in containers at a construction site, barely washing their faces once a month and not bathing for six months.

The report said North Koreans' right to life was infringed on during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the authorities took a firmer grip on people, citing the need for quarantine measures. In early 2020, North Korea shut down its border with China due to the pandemic before partially reopening it last year.

Electricity ran on barbed wires along the border and patrol guards at border areas were provided with 60 rounds of live ammunition and ordered to immediately kill anyone if there was an attempt to enter the pandemic-induced sealed areas.

In 2021, two party officials were publicly shot to death in a summary execution in violation of the emergency quarantine law, as they permitted people detained in a quarantine facility to bathe.

Meanwhile, North Korea is believed to have 10 political prisoner camps across the nation so far, with four currently under operation, the report said. The ministry said the North appears to have shut down the Yodok concentration camp, known for its notorious brutality.

North Korea has long bristled at the international community's criticism of its human rights abuses, calling it a U.S.-led attempt to topple its regime.

The North's human rights issue has gained renewed attention as this year marked the 10th anniversary of the release of a landmark U.N. Commission of Inquiry report that accused North Korean officials of "systematic, widespread and gross" human rights violations.

Yonhap