Death Penalty News

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.

Defectors from the Pyongyang regime describe the growing repression and deterioration of human rights denounced by the UN Article 1 of North Korea ’s Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act, passed in 2020, outlines why Pyongyang believes the legislation is necessary: The law “contributes to the strengthening of our sense of ideology, revolution, and social class by launching a powerful battle to obstruct the inflow and distribution of reactionary ideology and culture and anti-socialist ideology and culture.” Article 7 adds that strict punishments, including the death penalty, will be applied to any citizen “bringing in, viewing, and distributing reactionary ideology and culture, depending on the severity, regardless of the reason and the offender’s social class.”

Programme on state television discloses new details and punishments from espionage cases as part of a campaign marking National Security Education Day Authorities in Beijing have revealed that a Chinese scientist who was convicted in 2015 of selling state secrets to foreign spy agencies was executed in 2016, one of several “shocking” spy cases.

North Korea executes people for drugs, sharing South Korean media, and religious activities as it stifles its citizens' human rights and freedom, according to a report by South Korea. Key points: The 450-page report was based on more than 500 North Koreans who fled their homeland. The report states deaths and torture regularly occur in detention. South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, based the 450-page report on testimony collected from 2017 to 2022 from more than 500 North Koreans who fled from their homeland. "North Korean citizens' right to life appears to be greatly threatened," the ministry said in the report.

North Korea has tried to stop leaks to the outside world about its public executions in recent years, suggesting Pyongyang may be responding to international scrutiny of its human rights record, a Seoul-based research group has said. The Transitional Justice Working Group analysed satellite imagery and collected testimonies of 23 public executions during the era of Kim Jong Un, who took power a decade ago following the death of his father in December 2011. North Korean escapees said executions were carried out at closely monitored sites with authorities keeping a close eye to ensure no information gets out, the TJWG said in a report released Wednesday. "In recent years, North Korea appears to be strategically selecting places away from the border area to carry out these killings," said the NGO, which has a stated non-partisan mission of documenting human rights abuses and seeking justice for victims. "Monitoring and control of the assembled audience at these events is ti...

Officials in North Korea carried out murder, torture, and acts that could constitute genocide against certain groups of people, including Christians, a report released last week revealed. Evidence has been found that suggests government brass killed residents of the country, tortured political prisoners, engaged in sex trafficking, and conducted forced abortions as well as infanticide from 2014 to 2021, the United Kingdom's All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea wrote in a 91-page document.  It was further found that rape, in addition to modern-day slavery, was commonplace, and much of the human rights abuses were focused on Christians and those whose descent was half Chinese. North Korea assigns the death penalty to crimes of premeditated murder, drug trafficking, and terrorism, though respondents interviewed by U.K. authorities alleged that government authorities would carry out public executions for offenses most would consider far less severe. In 2014, a defector said he ...

The Supreme Leader of North Korea plans to brutally execute many of the refugees who were sent back by Chinese authorities after fleeing the authoritarian state, according to reports Kim Jong-un is reportedly planning a mass execution of defectors who had fled to China but were then discovered and returned. So far China has already returned roughly 50 refugees, including North Korean soldiers and air force pilots, according to the US-backed news network Radio Free Asia. All of the escapees will face the death penalty in North Korea. It has become increasingly difficult for those fleeing to China to move to a third country, which is why most refugees from North Korea are now being sent back into their own country, the Express reports. Speaking at the time the insider, a Chinese citizen of Korean descent, said: 'The Dandong customs office was opened just for today and they sent about 50 North Korean escapees back to North Korea on two buses. 'This morning dozens of police officer...

China has repatriated about 50 North Korean escapees, including air force pilots and others who could face severe punishment including the death penalty, sources on the Chinese side of the border told RFA. The first such repatriations since Beijing and Pyongyang closed their borders in January 2020 at the start of the pandemic took place on July 14 at the northwestern border city of Sinuiju, across the Yalu River border from China’s Dandong, a source in the city told RFA. Most North Korean escapees have a goal of reaching South Korea, but arrivals in the South are at an all-time low due to the pandemic. Not only is it difficult for North Koreans to cross over into China, once there, making their way to a third country has also gotten more difficult. The inability to find a way out of China has resulted in effectively stranding the North Korean escapees in a country that routinely repatriates them to North Korea. The group of escapees sent back to North Korea last week had been awaiting...

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 ...

North Korea has recently introduced a sweeping new law which seeks to stamp out any kind of foreign influence - harshly punishing anyone caught with foreign films, clothing or even using slang. But why? Yoon Mi-so says she was 11 when she first saw a man executed for being caught with a South Korean drama. His entire neighbourhood was ordered to watch. "If you didn't, it would be classed as treason," she told the BBC from her home in Seoul. The North Korean guards were making sure everyone knew the penalty for smuggling illicit videos was death. "I have a strong memory of the man who was blindfolded, I can still see his tears flow down. That was traumatic for me. The blindfold was completely drenched in his tears. "They put him on a stake and bound him, then shot him." 'A war without weapons' Imagine being in a constant state of lockdown with no internet, no social media and only a few state controlled television channels designed to tell you what t...

The South Korean government handed them over to the North Korean authorities without taking legal action of any kind. 2 North Koreans who crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL) into South Korea in November of 2019 have reportedly appeared in educational materials published by North Korea’s Ministry of State Security.  The 2 men were forcibly returned to the North by the South Korean government for being “heinous criminals.” On May 14, a Daily NK source in North Korea described recently-published ideological education materials targeted at North Korean laborers overseas.  The materials listed instances where North Korean defectors attempted to escape and then were forcibly repatriated.  One of the examples listed in the materials was that of 2 octopus fishermen who took a wooden boat into South Korean waters, only to be repatriated by the South Korean government to the North. A Ministry of State Security (MSS) “education officer” explained the two fishermen’s ordeal by sayi...

May 11 (UPI) -- Capital punishment is still widespread in North Korea, but public executions and other forms of severe punishment could be receding, according to a South Korean report. State-owned think tank Korea Institute for National Unification said Monday in its annual white paper on North Korea human rights there is no evidence the right to life is guaranteed in the Kim Jong Un regime, Yonhap reported. The 2020 white paper, based on testimonies of defectors resettled in the South, cited cases of public executions for North Koreans accused of drug trafficking, murder and even watching South Korean videos. The South Korean research found the cases of the death penalty for drug trafficking as well as watching or disseminating South Korean media has been "increasing in recent years." The paper said political prison camps continue to flourish in the North. These facilities are separate from officially registered prisons in the regime and inflict "arbi...

North Korea continues to carry out state killings as a way of intimidating its citizens, campaigners said Tuesday, although the number of executions may be declining in the face of mounting international pressure. Pyongyang has long been accused of using state killings to instill fear among its population, and leader Kim Jong Un has executed top aides in the past -- including his powerful uncle, Jang Song Thaek, in 2013. A new report by the Transitional Justice Working Group documented hundreds of public executions over several decades -- the most recent in 2015 -- for charges as trivial as stealing copper or a cow. "The rules on public execution demand that 3 shooters fire 3 rounds each into the body of the condemned person, for a total of 9 bullets," said Seoul-based group, which seeks to highlight what is says are grievous human rights abuses by the North. This was a widely used tactic, especially against the elites, it added, "designed to maximise ...