North Korea’s use of executions is nothing new. Public executions have lengthy been one of many regime’s signature instruments for instilling concern within the inhabitants. What deserves consideration shouldn’t be the existence of executions, however the truth that the explanations for them are altering.
A latest report by the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a Seoul-based human rights group that paperwork and maps human rights violations in North Korea, exhibits how patterns of execution underneath Kim Jong Un’s rule have shifted across the COVID-19 border closure. The report analyzed 144 circumstances of execution or demise sentences through the Kim Jong Un period and located that not less than 358 folks had been executed throughout 136 confirmed circumstances. Because the report emphasizes, these figures symbolize a confirmed minimal; the true scale is probably going bigger.
The vital discovering is that this: since COVID-19, the grounds for execution have been shifting away from odd violent crime and towards outdoors data, South Korean tradition, faith, and political dissent. In different phrases, what the Kim Jong Un regime now fears shouldn’t be easy criminality. It’s the course of by which North Korean folks come to know the surface world, make comparisons, and start to think about a special life.
By way of the Ninth Celebration Congress, held February 19-25, 2026, North Korea projected a picture of exterior power: nuclear weapons, missiles, navy cooperation with Russia, and anti-American solidarity. But internally, the regime is imposing excessive punishment for watching a South Korean drama, listening to a international track, getting concerned with faith, or voicing even minor political discontent. This contradiction reveals the character of the Kim Jong Un system. North Korea presents itself as robust, however it fears its folks figuring out an excessive amount of.
The COVID-19 Border Closure: A Turning Level
COVID-19 was not merely a well being disaster for North Korea. The authorities sealed the border in January 2020 and concurrently lower off the circulate of individuals, items, and data. Formally framed as an epidemic management measure, the closure is now understood to have served as a possibility to reorganize and intensify the system of inhabitants management.
The TJWG report divided the durations earlier than and after the border closure into equal home windows of 1,783 days every for comparability. The outcomes are hanging. Instances of execution or demise sentence rose from 30 earlier than the closure to 65 afterward, a rise of 116.7 p.c. The variety of people executed or sentenced to demise climbed from 44 to 153, an increase of 247.7 p.c.
This implies that the intensification of state violence after COVID-19 was not momentary. The governance construction itself was reorganized alongside extra coercive strains. The border closure was not merely a barrier towards a virus. It was a multipurpose barrier towards outdoors data, inhabitants motion, market exercise, and social discontent.
The Kim Jong Un regime used the distinctive circumstances of COVID-19 as a automobile to increase its administration of day by day life and thought deeper into the inhabitants. Epidemic management was the justification; the sensible impact was an growth of management. The border closure finally shifted from a bodily seal to an ideological one.
The Grounds for Execution Have Modified
Probably the most important discovering within the report is the shift within the said grounds for execution. Earlier than the border closure, homicide was essentially the most generally cited foundation for a demise sentence. After the closure, outdoors tradition and data, together with South Korean movies, dramas, and music, together with faith and so-called “superstition,” rose to change into the main grounds.
In response to the report, circumstances of execution or demise sentence associated to outdoors tradition, data, faith, and superstition elevated from 4 earlier than the border closure to 14 afterward, an increase of 250 p.c. The variety of people concerned grew from seven to 38, a rise of 442.9 p.c. Against this, execution circumstances associated to homicide fell from 9 to 5.
This shift issues enormously. It means the North Korean authorities not deal with South Korean dramas or international music as merely prohibited content material. They deal with them as a political risk able to destabilizing the loyalty buildings on which the regime relies upon. As soon as North Korean folks encounter the surface world, the worldview the authorities have constructed turns into tough to maintain.
North Korea’s crackdown on outdoors tradition is due to this fact not a cultural matter. It’s about data management, ideological management, and regime safety. What the Kim Jong Un regime fears shouldn’t be the act of watching a South Korean drama in itself, however the second that drama prompts a viewer to check their very own life with the world past.
One other notable post-COVID development is the rise in politically motivated executions. The report finds a pointy rise because the border closure in circumstances of execution or demise sentence involving violations of Kim Jong Un’s directives and criticism of Kim, the get together, or the State Data Bureau (previously referred to as the Ministry of State Safety), North Korea’s major political safety company.
Particularly, circumstances of execution or demise sentence with a political character elevated from 4 earlier than the closure to 13 afterward, an increase of 225 p.c. The variety of people concerned grew from 4 to twenty-eight, a rise of 600 p.c. The report steered this may occasionally replicate both a response to rising inside discontent or a deliberate escalation of state violence designed to suppress bother earlier than it may well unfold.
This speaks to the instability underlying the Kim Jong Un system. Externally, Kim tasks the picture of a assured chief: nuclear succesful, with navy reconnaissance satellites in orbit and a brand new safety ally in Russia. Internally, the regime is imposing excessive penalties for phrases, ideas, expressions of dissatisfaction, and violations of directives.
A genuinely robust system doesn’t concern criticism to this diploma. North Korea, nonetheless, treats even minor discontent and careless remarks as threats to the regime. This tells us that the management believes standard grievance may translate into political fracture at any time.
Public and Secret Executions Serve a Twin Technique
Executions in North Korea will not be merely acts of elimination. They’re additionally acts of governance carried out for an viewers. Public executions drive the inhabitants to witness state violence immediately. The aim doesn’t finish with punishing one individual. By making a public spectacle of the execution, all witnesses are given a transparent sense of the road that should not be crossed.
Public execution stays an essential instrument of fear-based governance, however it’s now used alongside secret and abstract executions. The report labeled 129 executions by kind. Mass public executions accounted for 66 circumstances, or 51.1 p.c. Executions performed earlier than a focused group accounted for 28 circumstances, or 21.7 p.c. Secret executions accounted for 29 circumstances, or 22.5 p.c. Abstract executions accounted for six circumstances, or 4.7 p.c.
Public and secret executions serve totally different features. Public executions are designed to unfold concern. Secret executions are used to take away people in delicate circumstances with out exposing these circumstances to the surface. Politically charged incidents and people involving the safety equipment usually tend to be dealt with by strategies that restrict data leakage.
State violence underneath the Kim Jong Un system operates concurrently by visibility and concealment. It exhibits the inhabitants as a lot as is beneficial and hides what can not afford to be uncovered to worldwide scrutiny or outdoors data networks. North Korea’s use of executions is each the politics of terror and the politics of concealment.
A Nationwide Ideological Crackdown
Previously, North Korea’s executions and enforcement campaigns tended to pay attention in border areas, smuggling corridors, defection routes, and the channels by which outdoors data entered the nation. Ryanggang Province and North Hamgyong Province alongside the border with China had been specific targets, given their comparatively larger publicity to outdoors items and data.
The post-COVID shift is geographically important as effectively. In response to the report, the variety of areas the place executions had been documented expanded from eight within the interval earlier than the border closure to 19 within the interval after. On the provincial stage, the focus was beforehand in Pyongyang and the northeastern provinces of North Hamgyong, South Hamgyong, and Ryanggang. After the closure, documented executions unfold to all 4 of North Korea’s immediately administered and particular cities, together with Pyongyang, Nampo, Kaesong, and Rason, in addition to all eight provinces.
This implies the authorities not deal with the specter of outdoors data as a border drawback. South Korean dramas, international data, faith, and political discontent are actually understood as nationwide threats to the system somewhat than localized considerations. Executions and crackdowns have expanded accordingly.
The post-COVID intensification of management in North Korea didn’t cease at sealing the border. It unfold to embody the administration of inhabitants motion, data entry, cultural consumption, and ideological situation throughout all the nation. Border management turned nationwide thought management.
The Method Ahead
The intense punishment North Korea inflicts for publicity to outdoors data is itself proof that data poses a real risk to the regime. The second North Korean folks come to know the surface world, evaluate it with their very own lives, and acknowledge the hole between the propaganda they’ve been fed and the truth they inhabit, the regime’s maintain on them begins to loosen. Data circulate is due to this fact not merely cultural change or psychological operations directed on the North. It’s a core situation of North Korean human rights and a central driver of long-term change.
First, we have to strengthen the documentation of human rights abuses. Because the border stays sealed and the variety of folks leaving North Korea has fallen, verifying human rights violations contained in the nation has change into more and more tough. For precisely that purpose, multilayered documentation combining the testimony of people that have left North Korea, inside sources, satellite tv for pc knowledge, open-source intelligence, and media reporting turns into extra essential than ever. These efforts should observe not solely the variety of executions but additionally their places, strategies, and the companies concerned.
Second, we have to develop data entry for North Koreans. North Koreans’ proper to know concerning the outdoors world is a human rights situation, and one linked in the long term to safety effectively past the Korean Peninsula. If what the Kim regime fears most is a shift in what its folks know and imagine, then the worldwide group should assume severely about the right way to shield and lengthen the channels by which that shift can occur.
Third, we want to ensure the North Korean regime is held extra accountable for its actions. Executions don’t finish as remoted incidents. They’re structural crimes ordered, carried out, and hid by state establishments. The worldwide group should strategy North Korea’s executions not as events for one-time condemnation however from the angle of future accountability and proof preservation.
To grasp the place the Kim Jong Un system is headed, it’s not sufficient to observe nuclear weapons and missiles. We should additionally watch what the system prohibits its folks from doing, what it fears, and the way it enforces silence.
