Report tells of public executions

SEOUL: North Korea carries out public executions on river banks and at school grounds and marketplaces for charges such as stealing copper from factory machines, distributing media from South Korea and prostitution, a report issued yesterday said.

The report, by a Seoul-based nongovernmental group, said the often extrajudicial decisions for public executions are frequently influenced by a “bad” family background or a government campaign to discourage certain behaviour.

The Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) said its report was based on interviews with 375 North Korean defectors from the isolated state over a period of two years.

Reuters could not independently verify the testimony of defectors in the report. The TJWG is made up of human rights activists and researchers and is led by Lee Younghwan, who has worked as an advocate for human rights in North Korea.

The TJWG report aims to document the locations of public killings and mass burials, which it says had not been done previously, to support an international push to hold to account those who commit what it describes as crimes against humanity.

“The maps and the accompanying testimonies create a picture of the scale of the abuses across the decades,” the group said.

North Korea rejects charges of human rights abuses, saying its citizens enjoy protection under the constitution.

TJWG said executions are carried out in prison camps to intimidate potential escapees, and public executions are carried out for seemingly minor crimes, including the theft of farm produce.

Stealing electric cables and other commodities from factories to sell them and distribution of South Korean media are also subject to executions, it said.

Testimonies also showed people can be beaten to death, with one interviewee saying: “Some crimes were considered not worth wasting bullets on.”