North Korea has for decades been known as one of the world’s most oppressive regimes, regularly torturing, forcibly disappearing, starving, and executing citizens for a variety of perceived transgressions. Freedom of expression is non-existent in the country, and the Kim family dynasty mandates that its citizens worship them as gods. Human rights experts have documented evidence of North Koreans being forced into labor camps or executed for “crimes” such as watching South Korean television or owning Bibles. Under the strict songbun caste system, generations of families are punished for perceived insufficient enthusiasm for the Kim family and the communist regime.
U.N. human rights investigators have published multiple reports documenting the abuses North Korea commits against its citizens and accusing it of crimes against humanity. Reuters reported on Friday that an update to one of its latest reports, published in 2014, will include findings of abuse following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
“James Heenan, who represents the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Seoul, said he is still surprised by the continued prevalence of executions, forced labour and reports of starvation in the authoritarian country,” Reuters reported. The human rights agency found evidence that North Korea has not lifted coronavirus restrictions over two years after the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) declared that the public health emergency caused by the pathogen had ended.
“The post-COVID period for DPRK means a period of much greater government control over people’s lives and restrictions on their freedoms,” Heenan told Reuters. He did not offer many details, but noted that North Koreans speaking to the United Nations are so despondent that some “sort of hope a war breaks out, because that might change things.”
Prior to the pandemic, the United Nations estimated that North Korea was imprisoning “hundreds of thousands” of people in labor camps, many of them for “crimes” their parents or grandparents were accused of committing. Pyongyang also forces its disabled population into “special camps” to erase them from society and claim, falsely, that no disabilities exist in the communist utopia, according to a 2012 U.N. report.
Pyongyang also hosted mass public executions of people caught watching South Korean or American media, identified as Christians, or otherwise defying the dogma of the Kim family cult. The country mandates all citizens watch the gruesome killings, reporters documented, without any exemptions.
Reuters reported that the updated United Nations report will be published “later this year” and had not yet been completed, but that Heenan anticipated it would reveal new abuses in the post-pandemic era.
The regime of dictator Kim Jong-un for years refused to confirm a single case of Wuhan coronavirus infection within its borders and completely locked down its borders. While Pyongyang typically does not let its citizens leave the country for any reason, it had for many years tolerated illicit international trade between its citizens and China’s along the porous Yalu River border. General Robert B. Abrams, then-commander of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), revealed in 2020 that the U.S. military believed that North Korea issued “shoot-to-kill” orders on the border, commanding soldiers to kill smugglers willing to defy the lockdown.
“They’ve got North Korean SOF [special operation forces] manning these things, strike forces, they’ve got shoot-to-kill orders in place, and this is fundamentally about preventing COVID from getting into North Korea,” Abrams said in an interview at the time.
On July 17, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a report on the horrors of the secret coronavirus epidemic within North Korea during the first years of the pandemic, when Pyongyang refused to publicly acknowledge a single case. Based on surveys with 100 North Koreans, the study found evidence of North Korean hospitals essentially failing large numbers of patients by refusing to offering them necessary care. As detailed by the independent North Korean site NK News, the CSIS report found reports of hospitals with no ability to test for the virus and “nursing homes running out of coffins as death tolls mounted.”
While refusing to admit to documented cases of coronavirus within the country, dictator Kim Jong-un made multiple public statements indicating a serious public health crisis had befallen the nation between 2020 and 2023. In July 2020, for example, Kim announced that he was firing multiple top officials for “serious problems” with the incomplete construction of the much-needed Pyongyang General Hospital.
“After hearing a detailed report on the overall situation of the construction from the construction coordination commission on the spot, he pointed out serious problems in economic organization for the construction,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported at the time. “He said that the construction coordination commission is organizing economy in a careless manner with no budget for the construction properly set up, yet.”
By October, Kim was appearing on television crying and offering vague apologies for the unspecified errors of his country.
“Our people have placed trust, as high as sky and as deep as sea, on me, but I have failed to always live up to it satisfactorily. I am really sorry for that,” Kim said in a national address.
The pandemic also corresponded with North Korea distancing itself diplomatically from its longtime top patron, the Chinese Communist Party. The pandemic began with the spread of the virus in Wuhan, central China, though Beijing has repeatedly denied that the virus originated in the country despite the evidence. Kim has instead turned to the government of Russia, signing a mutual defense agreement a year ago that resulted in Kim sending North Korean troops to fight in Ukraine.
North Korean officials celebrated the anniversary of the mutual defense agreement on Friday, championing the “invincible alliance” between Pyongyang and Moscow.
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