From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   North Korean Executions and Torture Alleged in New Report   
   By Dasl Yoon, March 30, 2023, WSJ   
      
   SEOUL—South Korea released a new report detailing allegations of executions   
   and torture in North Korea as President Yoon Suk Yeol attempts to put more   
   pressure on Pyongyang over its human-rights record.   
      
   The accounts in the report released Thursday include allegations that six   
   teenagers were executed by firing squad in 2015 for watching South Korean   
   videos and using opium; a pregnant woman was executed in 2017 for pointing her   
   finger at a portrait of the    
   country’s founder, Kim Il Sung; and the leaders of an underground church   
   were executed in 2019.   
      
   The South Korean government has been drafting an annual report on North   
   Korea’s human-rights record since 2018, but the former Moon Jae-in   
   administration had classified the reports, citing the need to protect the   
   privacy of the defectors who were    
   interviewed to assemble them.   
      
   “The reality of the appalling human-rights violations against the North   
   Korean people must be fully revealed to the international community,” Mr.   
   Yoon said at a cabinet meeting Tuesday, according to a presidential spokesman.   
      
   North Korea didn’t immediately comment on the report. The regime has denied   
   that it is committing rights abuses and has lashed out at critics, saying they   
   are attempting to challenge the country’s sovereignty.   
      
   The 450-page report included interviews with more than 500 North Korean   
   defectors who escaped the country between 2017-2022 and detailed widespread   
   violations, including public executions and incidents of torture, in one of   
   the world’s most repressive    
   and isolated regimes. The defectors weren’t identified in the report.   
      
   While many of the violations covered in the report have been previously   
   documented in U.N. reports and elsewhere, it contained new and extreme   
   examples of those violations and presented a fuller picture of the systematic   
   abuses North Korea has carried    
   out for decades. International organizations have been largely powerless to   
   prevent the abuses within North Korea because of the regime’s tight controls   
   over outside intervention.   
      
   “Things have only become worse and the report helps defectors realize they   
   can be heard,” said Seo Jae-pyong, a North Korean defector who heads an   
   activist group based in Seoul.   
      
   Kim Jong Un has used the pandemic as an excuse to further isolate the   
   population by increasing surveillance at the border and monitoring family   
   members of defectors, said Mr. Seo. He said even movement between cities has   
   been restricted in the past few    
   years.   
      
   Defections dropped during the pandemic. Just 67 defectors arrived in South   
   Korea last year. Before the pandemic, more than 1,000 defectors crossed the   
   border and made it to South Korea every year. Since 2020, North Korea has   
   ordered border guards to    
   shoot people trying to cross the border, the report said. Most of the   
   defectors interviewed for the report escaped from 2017 through to 2019. Of the   
   defectors interviewed, just nine had fled last year.   
      
   The report described 11 camps, including five currently operating, where it   
   said political prisoners have been subjected to forced labor, beatings, sexual   
   violence and starvation. Prisoners are sometimes tortured by being put into   
   fixed positions or    
   forced to watch executions, with the aim of instilling fear, the report said.   
   Defectors interviewed for the report said family members had died in the   
   prison camps without receiving treatment for frostbite or malnutrition. Some   
   defectors said they    
   witnessed mentally disabled people being subject to medical experiments at   
   hospitals without their consent, the report said.   
      
   North Korean defectors said their houses or cellphones could be searched by   
   authorities at any time. People are often detained or imprisoned without a   
   fair trial. Female inmates have faced genital examinations during strip   
   searches, while rapes and    
   forced abortions also took place, the report said.   
      
   Mr. Kim has intensified the regime’s suppression of foreign content and   
   speech and expanded efforts to keep influences from South Korea from reaching   
   people in North Korea, according to defectors interviewed by The Wall Street   
   Journal and South Korean    
   officials.   
      
   In 2020, the regime imposed a new “anti-reactionary thought” law that   
   calls for punishing and imprisoning people who get caught in possession of   
   South Korean media. Even dressing or speaking like South Koreans, by using   
   terms and clothing styles    
   common there, has been prohibited. Those distributing South Korean media can   
   face the death penalty, Seoul’s spy agency said. North Koreans have faced   
   severe punishment, such as being sent to prison, for possessing or   
   distributing South Korean content,    
   Mr. Seo said.   
      
   Earlier this month, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry denounced the U.S. for   
   organizing a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Pyongyang’s   
   human-rights violations, calling it the most intensive expression of hostile   
   policy toward Pyongyang. North    
   Korea said its human-rights violations were “nonexistent” and accused the   
   U.S. of trying to bring down the regime. The U.S. and the international   
   community’s criticism is nothing more than “politically motivated hostile   
   means for tarnishing the    
   image” of North Korea, the Foreign Ministry said.   
      
   Mr. Moon, the left-leaning former South Korean president who favored   
   engagement with Pyongyang and met with Mr. Kim three times, largely refrained   
   from condemning North Korea’s human-rights violations. But Mr. Yoon, who   
   took office last May, has taken    
   a more confrontational approach to Pyongyang. He has challenged the North on   
   human rights and vowed to punish the regime for its provocative weapons   
   testing. On Tuesday, Mr. Yoon said not a single penny should be given to North   
   Korea as long as it    
   continues to develop nuclear weapons.   
      
   Mr. Yoon said he hopes North Korea’s human-rights violations are widely   
   publicized during the Summit for Democracy hosted by the U.S. and during the   
   continuing U.N. Human Rights Council session.   
      
   “Disclosing the reality of North Korea’s human-rights situation is   
   important to national security as well because it shows where the legitimacy   
   of a state can be found,” Mr. Yoon said at the Tuesday cabinet meeting.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-korean-executions-and-torture   
   alleged-in-new-report-d5e94c98   
      
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