North Korea is the most restrictive country in the world, with the government tightening control over its citizens, intensifying surveillance and unleashing torrents of propaganda, according to a sweeping United Nations report released on Friday.
The 14-page report, published by the U.N.’s Human Rights Office, covers developments in the country since 2014 and draws detail from interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had left the country.
Interviewees said that government control had seeped into “all parts of life,” the report said.
“To block the people’s eyes and ears, they strengthened the crackdowns. It was a form of control aimed at eliminating even the smallest signs of dissatisfaction or complaint,” one escapee said, according to the report.
The death penalty is “more widely allowed by law and implemented in practice,” the report said. State policies have exacerbated food scarcity. Access to information is more restricted than it was a decade ago, with severe new punishments including the death penalty for acts including the sharing of foreign media. Forced labor has increased, and people are less able to bribe their way out of arbitrary punishments.
The report also listed a few improvements, including a strengthening of fair-trial guarantees and increased engagement with international human rights bodies.
The North Korean government told investigators that it rejected the U.N. Human Rights Council resolution that authorized the report.
Reports from RFA Korean earlier this year detailed some of the circumstances described in the report. In May, sources told RFA that North Korean authorities had distributed high-performance handheld radio signal detectors to border security agents in an effort to block residents from making phone calls to South Korea.
Supply shortages and surging inflation caused some residents to need to carry a backpack full of cash just to go shopping, RFA Korean reported in April. In March, residents said that North Korean soldiers were so cash-strapped that they were selling their gear to buy food.
In May, two North Korean escapees described for the U.N. General Assembly experiences like watching family members die from starvation or seeing friends publicly executed for watching and sharing South Korean TV dramas.
Increased government controls were believed to be behind a sharp decline in defections last year, according to a U.N. report in March.
Includes reporting from Reuters.
