UN says rights deteriorated in North Korea in last decade

A soldier stands at a North Korean military guard post flying a national flag, seen from Paju, South Korea, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)

The human rights situation in North Korea has deteriorated, the UN warned on Friday in a report describing a decade of “suffering, repression, and increased fear”.

The UN first published a scathing report against North Korea in 2014 detailing a wide array of crimes against humanity, likened by the inquiry chairman to those of the Nazis, South African apartheid, and the Khmer Rouge.

Information gathered since then by the UN human rights commissioner’s office shows that the situation has not improved and “in many instances has degraded,” with increased government overreach.

“No other population is under such restrictions in today’s world,” concluded the report, which is based on hundreds of interviews.

North Korea, ruled with an iron fist for seven decades by the Kim dynasty, maintains very tight control over its population.

“If the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) continues on its current trajectory, the population will be subjected to more suffering, brutal repression and fear,” warned UN rights chief Volker Türk in a statement.

The report points to an increase in the use of the death penalty, major steps backward in freedom of expression and access to information, and the expansion of “mass surveillance” systems through technological advances.

The UN also reports a rise in forced labour. Last year, it indicated that, in some cases, this could amount to slavery –- a crime against humanity.

The 2014 report had already documented forced labour among other widespread human rights abuses in North Korea, including executions, rapes, torture, deliberate starvation, and the detention of between 80,000 and 120,000 people in prison camps.

“The fate of the hundreds of thousands of disappeared persons, including abducted foreign nationals, remains unknown,” the report adds.

Information about prison camps is limited, but UN rights monitoring and satellite imagery suggest there are at least four such camps.