‘No justice in North Korea’: Defectors at UN hearing testify about executions, mounting abuses by regime
Published: 27 Jun. 2025, 07:00
Updated: 29 Jun. 2025, 18:57
-
- MICHAEL LEE
- [email protected]
Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI
![Defector Maeng Hyo-shim speaks about her experience living and escaping North Korea during a public hearing hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/06/29/b143a227-0123-482d-9311-bddbc0fb1ded.jpg)
Defector Maeng Hyo-shim speaks about her experience living and escaping North Korea during a public hearing hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]
As a teenager growing up in the foothills of Mount Paektu, defector Maeng Hyo-shim believed without question that she lived in “the best country in the world.”
Born to small-time shopkeepers in the years following the devastating famine of the late 1990s — known as the Arduous March — Maeng was raised in a society where survival often depended more on market savvy than government rations. Still, she complied with the demands of the regime.
“I thought it was my duty to obey,” she said, recalling how she and her classmates were forced to forage for wild grains to meet government-imposed quotas.
Her loyalty went further than most. As deputy secretary of her high school’s youth league, Maeng rose at 5 a.m. to clean the statues of the country’s late leaders, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong-il. “I was one of the regime’s most steadfast followers,” she said.
That allegiance came to an abrupt end in 2018, after a violent assault on her mother — and the North Korean justice system’s failure to hold the perpetrator accountable — shattered her trust in the regime.
“She was beaten with an iron rod by a customer after she asked him when he would settle his unpaid bill,” Maeng said. “My parents reported him to the police, but he paid the officers off with a bribe. The courts wouldn’t take our side, either. That’s when we realized there was no justice in North Korea, and that we had to flee to the South.”
Maeng was among several North Korean escapees who testified this week at a public hearing in Seoul hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office. Over two days, they described a society increasingly defined by fear, repression and corruption — particularly under the rule of Kim Jong-un and the heightened restrictions of the pandemic years.
The hearings, attended by diplomats, rights groups and members of the press, are part of the UN’s effort to update its landmark 2014 Commission of Inquiry (COI) report on human rights in North Korea. A revised report is expected to be presented at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in September 2025.
War on ‘reactionary thought’
For some defectors, disillusionment with the regime came earlier. Kim Il-hyuk, who fled the North with his family by boat under the cover of rain and darkness in May 2023, said he never subscribed to Pyongyang’s propaganda that its people had “nothing to envy.”
“My father always told us not to marry in North Korea because having a family would make it that much harder to escape,” he testified. “He urged us over and over to make our way to the South.”
![Defector Kim Il-hyuk, who escaped the North by boat in 2023, speaks during a public hearing hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/06/29/bc2b3560-67e0-4318-85e5-db5b46d1760a.jpg)
Defector Kim Il-hyuk, who escaped the North by boat in 2023, speaks during a public hearing hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]
Kim and his family were not alone in harboring thoughts of escape.
“By watching South Korean series before falling asleep, I could believe, if only for a short moment, that I, too, lived in the South,” said one woman, who testified anonymously. “Even people who have downloaded a whole show watch just one episode a day, if only to make sure they have another to look forward to.”
But such activities became increasingly dangerous after 2020, when the regime enacted the Act to Eliminate Reactionary Thought and Culture, which North Korean authorities have used to execute people for distributing or consuming South Korean media.
“A 22-year-old I knew was publicly executed for distributing three South Korean dramas and about 70 K-pop songs,” Kim said. “Public executions occurred roughly every six weeks. Sometimes, as many as a dozen people would be killed at once.”
Another defector described a climate of pervasive surveillance, in which phones were inspected not only for videos but for language or symbols suggesting outside influence.
“If you wrote oppa — a South Korean term of affection — after a man’s name on your phone’s contact list, authorities would demand you change it to ‘comrade,’” she said. “Even using heart emojis could draw attention. I loved South Korean dramas, too, but I lived in fear that I might one day be executed for it.”
Pandemic as pretext for control
Defectors also described how the government used the Covid-19 pandemic to expand its grip over daily life. Domestic travel was suspended, medicine vanished from pharmacies, and the state promoted unscientific remedies in place of healthcare.
“People were told to drink water boiled with willow bark,” Kim said. “Many got ill from following this advice. Even more died from hunger, but the government continued to lie shamelessly.”
![A video made by North Korean state media to criticize people who attempt to assert their legal rights is shown at a public hearing hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/06/29/337b5769-af2d-4089-8520-9e792bded17c.jpg)
A video made by North Korean state media to criticize people who attempt to assert their legal rights is shown at a public hearing hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]
Witnesses spoke of a breakdown in the country’s social fabric during the Covid years. One woman said that kotjebi — orphaned children who had become a rare sight after the famine passed — appeared in greater numbers in the aftermath of the pandemic.
“As the struggles of daily life mounted, women became afraid of childbirth and having more mouths to feed,” she said. “A trend of not having children spread, and more women began to seek divorces from husbands unable to support their families. In response, the regime introduced a law in 2023 imposing a one-year prison sentence for divorce or [unauthorized] abortion.”
Reproductive violence and ethnic ‘purity’
While abortion is ostensibly banned in North Korea for family planning, it is reportedly used as a punitive tool by the regime against women caught fleeing the country.
Kim Jeong-ah, a defector and advocate for North Korean women’s rights, testified about a woman who was five months pregnant when she was imprisoned in a labor camp upon her repatriation from China.
“She was forced to carry out manual labor even when she was close to delivering,” Kim said. “After she gave birth, the prison camp officers buried the child alive because they weren’t sure if the woman conceived the baby with a Chinese or North Korean man.”
Such stories, Kim said, reflect the regime’s obsession with maintaining the “purity” of its population.
UN officials have also noted that China’s practice of forcibly returning defectors to North Korea violates the international principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits states from returning individuals to countries where they face a credible risk of torture or abuse.
Caste, disability and disposability
Maeng, whose mother was left disabled after contracting polio as a child, noted that discrimination against disabled people is not just rife, but also institutionalized under the regime.
![Defector Maeng Hyo-shim speaks about her experience living and escaping North Korea during a public hearing hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/06/29/714a4377-06a0-4f4b-8cae-0e1744bf7a4f.jpg)
Defector Maeng Hyo-shim speaks about her experience living and escaping North Korea during a public hearing hosted by the United Nations Human Rights Office in Seoul on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]
Discrimination in the North, she and others said, is systemic — and heavily influenced by songbun, the regime’s opaque caste system. Farmers and their children, considered the lowest stratum, are barred from pursuing different professions. Attempts to change one’s social status are often met with stiff penalties.
“Farming is a hereditary occupation,” said one man in a prerecorded testimony. “A person cannot find other work if they reveal they are from the farming class, as their employer would be punished.”
Others, such as descendants of South Korean prisoners of war, endure a similar fate. According to the UN, tens of thousands of South Korean POWs were never returned after the Korean War and forced by the regime to toil in mines far from the border. Only a fraction have escaped since.
Son Myung-hwa, whose organization supports families of unrepatriated POWs, criticized successive administrations in Seoul for failing to raise their plight in talks with Pyongyang.
“Surviving POWs in the North have now seen three South Korean presidents meet North Korea’s leaders and say nothing. They must think that their country has abandoned them.”
Seeking justice, one testimony at a time
![James Heenan, head of the UN Human Rights Office in Seoul, speaks at the opening of the public hearing hosted by his agency on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/06/29/0fa6697b-242d-4455-961b-47fa74bc44fe.jpg)
James Heenan, head of the UN Human Rights Office in Seoul, speaks at the opening of the public hearing hosted by his agency on Wednesday. [PARK SANG-MOON]
“Confidential interviews with victims and witnesses are key to understanding the human rights situation in the DPRK,” Heenan said, referring to the North by the acronym of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “But it is equally important to promote victims’ voices, including giving them the opportunity to testify publicly.”
The Seoul office has interviewed around 400 defectors.
Their testimonies, combined with evidence from advocacy groups and governments, will be compiled into a repository to support the UN’s follow-up to the 2014 COI report, which concluded that North Korea’s abuses may amount to crimes against humanity and called for referral to the International Criminal Court.
BY MICHAEL LEE [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.
Standards Board Policy (0/250자)