Death Penalty News

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

In an effort to counter rising political dissent, North Korea has toughened its criminal code and imposed the death penalty for crimes against the state, according to South Korean intelligence sources.  Following revisions to the country's criminal code introduced in April, those found guilty of participating in armed uprisings now face life imprisonment or execution. Previously, they faced 10 years in a labour camp. 

Yang Youlin, the former executive deputy director of the administrative committee of the Nanjing Development Zone in East China's Jiangsu province, was sentenced to death on Monday by the Changzhou Intermediate People's Court for multiple crimes. Yang was convicted of accepting bribes totaling over 2.2 billion yuan ($324 million). He was also deprived of political rights for life, and all his personal assets were confiscated.

Youth crackdown follows arrest, but young North Koreans say South Korean songs understand them better than the state does When a Ministry of State Security agent stopped a young man in a Hyesan alley in mid-February 2026 and demanded to know why he was listening to “rotten South Korean music,” he likely expected contrition. He did not get it. The man cited the lyrics back at him, word for word, and explained precisely why they resonated. The agent filed a report. The case went to the city party committee. A citywide ideological lecture followed.

People in North Korea, including schoolchildren, are being publicly executed, sent to labour camps or subjected to brutal public humiliation for watching South Korean television shows or listening to K-pop, according to new testimonies gathered by Amnesty International. North Koreans who fled the country told Amnesty that watching globally popular South Korean dramas – including Crash Landing on You, Descendants of the Sun and Squid Game – or listening to South Korean pop music can lead to the most extreme punishments, including death. Those without money or connections face the harshest consequences.

North Korea's citizens face death penalty by firing squads for failed escape attempts A North Korean interpreter reportedly defected to the South Korean Embassy in Ulaanbaatar during an official delegation visit to Mongolia in late August, marking a rare and significant blow to Kim Jong-un’s regime , according to diplomatic sources. The delegation was led by Tae Hyung-cheol, president of the Academy of Social Sciences, one of Pyongyang ’s leading policy institutes. The interpreter’s escape was kept secret for weeks before being confirmed by media outlets in Seoul . Officials in South Korea have declined to comment, citing security concerns. However, Kyodo News reported that Pyongyang has already ordered the replacement of its ambassador to Mongolia. It remains unclear whether the ambassador was directly involved in the incident, but sources say he is now under investigation.

China’s former minister of agriculture and rural affairs Tang Renjian was on Sunday sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for accepting bribes amounting to USD 38 million. Tang, also a former secretary of the agricultural ministry’s leading ruling Communist Party members’ group, has been deprived of his political rights for life, the Intermediate People’s Court of Changchun in northeast China’s Jilin Province said in its judgment. All of Tang’s personal property will be confiscated and his illegal gains from bribery recovered and turned over to the national treasury, the court said.

Kim Jong-un has erased a top military commander and another senior official from state photos after the North Korean leader was reportedly left fuming over a failed warship launch.  Navy Commander Admiral Kim Myong Sil and and shipyard boss Hong Kil Ho were airbrushed from images showing them with their leader back in March, sparking speculation that they may have been executed. Original snaps showed Admiral King and the shipyard boss gathered next to the North Korean leader as he inspected the ship.  But now, in a move reminiscent of Joseph Stalin's tactics to erase his enemies from Soviet history, the officials have seemingly disappeared from the photos that were originally broadcast on state television. 

China on Monday executed a man who killed 35 people in a car rampage in the southern city of Zhuhai in November, in the country's deadliest mass attack in years. On November 11, Fan Weiqiu, 62, deliberately drove a small SUV through crowds of people exercising outside a sports complex, also injuring 45 in China's worst such crime since 2014. He was sentenced to death last month , with a court saying his motives "were extremely vile, (and) the nature of the crime extremely egregious". State broadcaster CCTV said Monday a Zhuhai court "executed Fan Weiqiu in accordance with the execution order issued by the Supreme People's Court".

A court in Vietnam sentenced 27 people to death on Friday after finding them guilty of trafficking more than 600 kilos of narcotics including heroin, ketamine and methamphetamine, state media reported A court in Vietnam sentenced 27 people to death on Friday after finding them guilty of trafficking more than 600 kilos of narcotics including heroin, ketamine and methamphetamine, state media reported. Gang leader and notorious female crime boss Vu Hoang Anh, alias Oanh Ha, was among those condemned to death, the Tuoi Tre newspaper reported.

China on Tuesday executed a former official for corruption, a court in the northern region of Inner Mongolia said, the latest development in Beijing’s sweeping campaign against graft. Li Jianping, former secretary of the Communist Party working committee of the Hohhot economic and technological development zone, had previously been sentenced to death for crimes including bribery and misappropriation of public funds.

Vietnamese courts said that property developer Truong My Lan's sentence could be reduced to life imprisonment if she pays back three quarters of the assets she is accused of stealing from Saigon Commercial Bank. A Vietnamese court upheld the death penalty Tuesday for a property tycoon in a multi-billion dollar fraud case -- but said her life could still be spared if she paid back three quarters of the assets she embezzled.

Vietnamese prosecutors have told property tycoon Truong My Lan she must repay an estimated US$11 billion if she wants to avoid execution by lethal injection. Lan, 68, is appealing her death sentence after being convicted in April of embezzling US$12.3 billion from Saigon Commercial Bank. She was also found guilty of bribing government officials and violating bank lending rules. Prosecutors have so far argued against leniency at her hearing in Ho Chi Minh City unless she finds a way to return a significant chunk of the 415.7 trillion dong (US$16.4 billion) she was found guilty of embezzling in two separate trials, according to her lawyer.

According to a posting on the Vietnam government’s website, Nguyen Hoang, a former chief accountant with the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, was found guilty of committing theft between March 2009 and February 2023 In Vietnam, a former government employee, who worked as chief accountant with the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, has been sentenced to death for stealing more than 152 billion dong ($6.2 million).

HO CHI MINH CITY: A Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death for fraud totalling $27 billion went on trial Thursday in a linked case accused of money laundering. Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, was found guilty in April of swindling cash from the Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade in one of the biggest corruption cases in history.

Cuba's one-party legislature Sunday passed a new Penal Code, which was considered to be “modern” and adjusted to the country's socialist “reality,” it was announced in Havana. Although the new legal instrument was designed in tune with international criteria on human rights according to local authorities, the death penalty was not entirely removed and may still be applied. “The norm is of extraordinary relevance in the robustness of Cuba as a socialist state of law, a modern criminal law, adjusted to the socioeconomic realities and updated with the Constitution and other legal provisions,” Ruben Remigio Ferro, president of the People's Supreme Court, told the National Assembly of People's Power, the national parliamentary body. The new code provides for penalties that range from life imprisonment to 30-year prison sentences for the most serious crimes. It also maintains the death penalty for 23 extremely serious offenses , it was reported. Offenders are accountable sinc...

North Korean state media has urged its young people against using slang from South Korea and told them to speak North Korea's standard language. There were also fresh warnings in North Korea's official newspaper against adopting the fashions, hairstyles and music of South Korea. It is part of a sweeping new law which seeks to stamp out any kind of foreign influence, with harsh penalties. Those found in breach of the law can face jail or even execution. Rodong Sinmun newspaper warned millennials of the dangers of following South Korean pop culture. "The ideological and cultural penetration under the colourful coloured signboard of the bourgeoisie is even more dangerous than enemies who are taking guns," the article read. It stressed that Korean based on the Pyongyang dialect is superior, and that young people should use it correctly. The North has recently sought to stamp out South Korean slang, for example a woman calling her husband "oppa" - which means ...

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sent to the electric chair for being Soviet spies, but their sons have spent decades trying to clear their mother’s name. Are they close to a breakthrough? “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs…… ” So goes the opening sentence of Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel The Bell Jar , referring to the Jewish American couple, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and sent to the electric chair exactly 68 years ago today. Their execution casts a morbid shadow over Plath’s book, just as it did over the United States, and it is seen by many as the nadir of America’s engagement with the cold war. The Rosenbergs are still the only Americans ever put to death in peacetime for espionage, and Ethel is the only American woman killed by the US government for a crime other than murder. During their trial, Ethel in particular was vilified for prioritising communism over her children, and the prosecutio...

4 North Koreans were publicly executed in Pyongyang recently on charges of distributing “illegal video materials,” Daily NK has learned. A source in the country told Daily NK on 11 March 2021 that the execution took place on 2 March at the Daewon-ri Firing Range in Pyongyang’s Sadong District. The 4 people, including three men and one woman, were executed by firing squad in front of local city residents and the heads of all Pyongyang’s inminban (neighborhood watch-like organizations). All those executed were residents of Hadang-dong, an area of Pyongyang’s Hyongjae District. Led by a man in his early 50s along with his wife, who was in her late 40s, the group was accused of placing South Korean movies, entertainment and music programs on SD cards and distributing them throughout the country. There are a large number of people in Hadang-dong who make counterfeit cigarettes called gadaegidambae. The couple had long worked as counterfeit cigarette-makers who bought cigarette components fr...

In 2018, India was among top seven countries to award death penalty. The lower courts awarded death penalty to 162 convicts, according to Project 39 of the National Law University, Delhi In three milestone judgments - Bachan Singh vs State of Punjab of 1980 being the last of the series - the Supreme Court laid the principle of "rarest of rare" for awarding death penalty to convicts found guilty of murder. Three years later, the Supreme Court struck down Section 303 of the Indian Penal Code that made it mandatory to award death penalty to a person already convicted of some offence if she commits murder. This establishes that the Supreme Court considers death penalty an avoidable sentence to the maximum extent possible. Yet, in 2018, India was among top seven countries to award death penalty. The lower courts awarded death penalty to 162 convicts, according to Project 39 of the National Law University, Delhi. This is the figure quoted by the Amnesty Internati...