On September 12, 2025, the United Nations Human Rights Office released a damning report detailing a decade of escalating repression in North Korea, where the regime has intensified its grip on citizens’ lives through executions, forced labor, and a sweeping technological surveillance apparatus. Drawing on more than 300 interviews with escapees and witnesses who fled the country over the past ten years, the UN’s findings paint a harrowing picture of daily life under Kim Jong Un—a world where even watching a foreign TV drama can be a death sentence.
"No other population is under such restrictions in today's world," the UN report concluded, as cited by The Telegraph and BBC. Since Kim Jong Un assumed power in 2011 after his father's death, North Koreans had hoped for a brighter future. Many believed Kim’s early promises meant they would no longer need to "tighten their belts," and that the economy would improve. Instead, as the UN report makes clear, the decade has brought only "suffering, brutal repression and fear," in the words of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, reported by Euro News.
Central to the UN’s findings is the regime’s use of the death penalty for what the outside world would consider minor offenses. Since 2015, North Korea has enacted at least six new laws that allow for capital punishment, including for the watching and sharing of foreign media—especially South Korean films and television shows. "It was a form of control aimed at eliminating even the smallest signs of dissatisfaction or complaint," an anonymous escapee told the UN, as reported by BBC. The crackdown has only accelerated in recent years, with public executions by firing squad becoming more frequent since 2020.
One particularly chilling account comes from Kang Gyuri, who escaped North Korea in 2023. She told BBC that three of her friends were executed after being caught with South Korean content. One, a 23-year-old man, was tried alongside drug offenders—a sign of how the regime equates consumption of foreign culture with the gravest crimes. "He was tried along with drug criminals. These crimes are treated the same now," Kang recounted. Such stories, echoed throughout the UN’s interviews, reveal a society where fear and suspicion are ever-present, and where even the act of being curious about the outside world can be fatal.
The UN report also documents how technological advances have allowed the regime to expand its surveillance and control. "Technological advances have expanded mass surveillance systems controlling all parts of citizens' lives over the past 10 years," said James Heenan, head of the UN Human Rights Office for North Korea, during a Geneva briefing. The government’s ability to monitor its population has never been greater, making it increasingly difficult for North Koreans to access outside information or even communicate freely with one another.
But the repression doesn’t stop with executions and surveillance. The report details the widespread use of forced labor, including among children from poorer backgrounds. These children, unable to "bribe their way out of it," as Heenan put it, are conscripted into hazardous "shock brigades" for backbreaking work in coal mines and construction. Last year, the UN warned that such forced labor could amount to slavery—a crime against humanity. In some cases, even orphans and street children have been recruited for these dangerous tasks, with the regime glorifying their deaths as sacrifices to Kim Jong Un, according to BBC.
The UN’s 2025 report follows a landmark 2014 commission of inquiry that first exposed the North Korean government’s crimes against humanity, including executions, torture, rape, and the detention of between 80,000 and 120,000 people in political prison camps. The latest findings indicate that at least four of these camps remain operational, and torture, overwork, and malnutrition are still commonplace. While there have been "some limited improvements"—such as a slight decrease in violence by guards—the overall picture remains bleak, with many prisoners dying from ill treatment.
Hunger and deprivation have also worsened since Kim Jong Un shifted focus back to weapons development in 2019, after rebuffing diplomatic overtures from the United States and other Western nations. The COVID-19 pandemic only deepened the crisis: informal markets were shut down, border controls were tightened to the point of ordering troops to shoot escapees, and food shortages became so severe that having three meals a day was described as a "luxury" by many escapees interviewed by the UN.
Despite the mounting evidence and international outcry, North Korea’s diplomatic missions in Geneva and London have yet to comment on the report. The regime’s closest allies, China and Russia, continue to shield it from further UN sanctions—most recently blocking attempts to refer North Korea’s human rights situation to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Last week, Kim Jong Un’s appearance alongside Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a military parade in Beijing was widely interpreted as tacit approval of his government’s nuclear ambitions and internal policies.
For ordinary North Koreans, the hope that accompanied Kim’s rise to power has long since evaporated. "In the early days of Kim Jong Un, we had some hope, but that hope did not last long," one young woman told UN researchers, recalling her escape in 2018 at age 17. "The government gradually blocked people from making a living independently, and the very act of living became a daily torment." The regime’s relentless propaganda and crackdown on informal economic activity have left people "unable to make their own decisions—be they economic, social or political," the report found.
In response to these findings, the UN is urging the international community to act. It has called on North Korea to abolish its political prison camps, end the use of the death penalty, and begin teaching its citizens about human rights. "Our reporting shows a clear and strong desire for change, particularly among (North Korea's) young people," said UN rights chief Volker Türk. However, with the regime’s grip tighter than ever and outside pressure stymied by geopolitical realities, meaningful change remains elusive for now.
The UN’s latest report leaves little doubt: North Korea’s government has built a society defined by fear, deprivation, and repression, where the simple act of watching a TV show can end a life—and where hope, for many, is just a memory.