South Korean Report Reveals ‘Gruesome’ Human Rights Abuse in North Korea

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South Korea has released a report detailing “gruesome” human rights abuses in North Korea, including executions of people caught watching South Korean videos and human experiments on disabled people.

The 445-page report, published by the South Korean Unification Ministry on March 30, was based on the testimony of 508 North Korean defectors between 2017 and 2022.

“The right to life of North Korean citizens has been greatly threatened. Cases proving arbitrary deprivation of life by state power have been collected,” the report reads, according to The Korea Herald.

Six teenagers were shot dead by North Korean authorities in 2015 after being caught watching South Korean videos and smoking opium, and in 2020, North Korea publicly executed a man for distributing South Korean videos, according to the report.

In 2018, North Korea arrested individuals accused of selling products made in South Korea, such as high heels and cosmetics. They were shot and killed following the arrest, according to the report.

Another case involved a woman who was six months pregnant and was publicly executed after a video of her dancing while pointing at a portrait of the late founder of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, went viral.

The report also details the unethical human experiments carried out by North Korean authorities on people with physical disabilities or psychiatric conditions who were incapable of giving consent.

Defectors allege that officials at the North Korean Ministry of Social Security blackmailed families into allowing their family members to become human test subjects or face detention at prison camps if they refused to comply.

The report also includes testimonies from defectors alleging that in 2015, North Korean nurses were forced into creating a list of people with dwarfism, who were then subjected to forced sterilization.

First Report in 7 Years

This is the first time South Korea has disclosed its annual report on North Korea since the North Korea Human Rights Act was passed in 2016, marking a shift from the former Moon Jae-in administration, which kept such reports confidential in a bid to appease North Korea.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said his administration aims to “fully expose” North Korea’s human rights violations to the international community, Yonhap News Agency reported.

“The reality of North Korean people’s gruesome human rights violations must be fully exposed to the international community,” Yoon said on March 28, according to The Korea Herald.

He urged the implementation of the North Korean Human Rights Act.

“Seven years have passed since the North Korean Human Rights Act was enacted, but the North Korean human rights foundation has still not been launched, and the North Korean human rights report is only now being published,” Yoon said, according to Yonhap News Agency.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un allegedly observes the firing of missiles in this image released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on March 22, 2020. (KCNA/via Reuters)

Kim Jong Un rules the totalitarian state of North Korea, which people must seek his permission to enter or exit. Basic liberties are withheld from the state’s 24 million people, with more than half living in extreme poverty and suffering abuse in the forms of execution, wrongful imprisonment, enforced disappearance, and forced labor.

In August 2022, Yoon offered North Korea economic benefits in exchange for denuclearization steps, but the offer was rejected by the North Korean regime.

North Korea fired more than 70 missiles last year, one of which reportedly flew over Japan. South Korea and Japan have strongly condemned North Korea’s missile launches and urged the regime to stop its provocative acts.

North Korean Defector’s ‘Journey to Freedom’

Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector who fled the country in 2007, wrote about the state propaganda she was subjected to as a child in her 2016 book, “In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom.”

“In school, we sang a song about Kim Jong Il and how he worked so hard to give our laborers on-the-spot instruction as he traveled around the country, sleeping in his car and eating only small meals of rice balls,” she wrote. “‘Please, please, Dear Leader, take a good rest for us!’ we sang through our tears. ‘We are all crying for you.’”

Park would eventually come to know that everything she was taught in school about equity, communism, and North Korea’s “Dear Leader” was a lie.

In 2007, Park fled to China, where she was sold into slavery but was able to escape again, this time to Mongolia. She eventually made her way to South Korea and then—in 2014—to the United States.

She also described how living in the United States has given her a new appreciation of the virtues of freedom and capitalism.

“Only in Capitalism, is my story possible,” Park wrote in a tweet. “America is truly a land of opportunity for anyone who is willing to work hard and persevere. I came out of North Korea not speaking a word of English, penniless, and here I am an author of two bestselling books.”

Jonathan Miltimore contributed to this report.