North Korea performing more people to watch foreign films and television, the UN finds

The North Korean government is increasingly applying the death penalty, including people caught watching and sharing foreign films and television dramas, a major UN report is being established.

The dictatorship, which remains largely cut off from the world, also submits to its people to more inappropriate labor, while limiting its freedoms, is added to the report.

The UN Human Rights Service has found that over the last decade, the North Korean state has strengthened control over “all aspects of citizens’ lives.”

“No other population is under such restrictions in today’s world,” he concluded, adding that observation has become “wider widespread,” aided partly in technology.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said that if this situation continued, the North Koreans “would be subjected to more than suffering, brutal repression and fear that they had last so long.”

The report, based on more than 300 interviews with people who have fled from North Korea over the last 10 years, found that the death penalty was used more frequently.

At least six new laws have been introduced since 2015, which allow the sentence to be handed over. A crime that can already be punished with death is watching and sharing foreign media content such as films and television dramas, as Kim Jong Un works to successfully restrict people’s access to information.

The escapes told the UN researchers that since 2020 there have been more executions for the spread of foreign content. They described how these executions are carried out by dismissing units in public to inspire fear of people and discourage them to violate the law.

Kang Guri, who fled in 2023, told the BBC that three of her friends were executed after being caught with South Korean content. She was in the process of a 23-year-old friend who was sentenced to death.

“He was tried with drug criminals. These crimes are being treated at the same time,” she said, adding that after 2020, people were more frightened.

Such experiences are contrary to what North Korean people have been expecting from the last decade.

When current leader Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011, the escapes, who were interviewed, said they hoped that their lives would improve, as Kim promised that they would no longer need to “tighten their belts” – which means they would have enough to eat. He promised to grow the economy, while protecting the country through the further development of its nuclear weapons.

However, the report found that after Kim had deviated from diplomacy with the West and the United States in 2019, he instead focused on his weapons program, living situations of humans and human rights had “degraded”.

Almost all interviewees said they didn’t have enough to eat, and three meals a day was a “luxury”. During the Covid pandemic, many escaped said there was a major lack of food and people across the country were starving.

At the same time, the government collapsed into the informal markets where families would trade, which made it difficult to make a living. He also made it almost impossible to escape from the country by tightening the border controls with China and ordered the troops to shoot those trying to cross.

“In the first days of Kim Jong Un, we had some hope, but this hope did not last long,” said a young woman who fled in 2018 at the age of 17.

“The government is gradually blocking people to make their livelihood independently, and the act of life itself has become a daily grief,” she testifies to the researchers.

The UN report says that “in the last 10 years, the government has exercised close to complete control over people, leaving them unable to make their own decisions” – whether they are economically, social or political. The report adds that the improvements to the observation technology have helped to do this possible.

An escape told the researchers that these government repression was intended “to block people’s eyes and ears.”

“This is a form of control aimed at eliminating even the smallest signs of dissatisfaction or complaints,” they said, saying anonymously.

The report also found that the government used more forced labor than a decade ago. People from poor families are recruited into “shock brigades” to perform physical demanding tasks such as construction or mining projects.

Workers hope this will improve their social status, but work is dangerous and deaths are common. Instead of improving the safety of workers, the government glorifies death by referring to them as a victim of Kim Jong Un. In recent years, he has even gained thousands of orphans and street children, according to the report.

This latest study follows an innovative UN investigation report in 2014, which for the first time found that the North Korean government is committing crimes against humanity. Some of the most serious human rights violations have been found to be held in the notorious political prison camps of the country where people can be closed for life and “disappeared”.

This 2025 report found that at least four of these camps were still working, while detainees in regular prisons still were tortured and abused.

Many escaped they said they were witnessing prisoners to die of poor treatment, fatigue and malnutrition, although the UN heard of “some limited improvements” in facilities, including “a slight reduction in security violence”.

The UN calls on the situation to be handed over to the International Hague Criminal Court.

However, in order for this to happen, it will have to be indicated by the UN Security Council. Since 2019, two of its permanent members, China and Russia, have repeatedly blocked attempts to impose new sanctions on North Korea.

Last week, Kim Jong Un joined Chinese leader Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin a military parade in Beijing, signaling the tacit adoption of these countries in the North Korea nuclear weapons program and the treatment of its citizens.

In addition to calling on the international community to act, the UN asks the North Korean government to eliminate its political prison camps, to end the use of the death penalty and to teach its citizens about human rights.

“Our reporting shows a clear and strong desire for change, especially among young people (of North Korea),” said the head of the UN Human Rights, the Turk.