Just another day in North Korea, nothing to see here:

North Korea has apparently stepped up public executions this year. The Stalinist country had carried out fewer public executions since 2000, but according to Seoul-based relief agency Good Friends, they increased this year.

An official with the NGO said public executions are still used as a means to punish people who fail to follow the Workers’ Party’s orders and to teach North Koreans a lesson and several people accused of human trafficking and murder were recently executed in public. Those who violate party orders or try to earn foreign currency are executed in particularly draconian ways. One was allegedly hit by 90 bullets as 150,000 residents and party officials watched in Sunchun, South Pyongan Province in October.

Meanwhile, the jails are overflowing with prisoners since people who committed crimes as a way to survive amid food shortages are punished. In some cases, prisoners are sent back home because there is no room in the jails.

The families of North Korean defectors are exiled to remote mountainous regions. Noh Ok-jae, a director at Good Friends, said extensive farm lands were lost to floods last summer and there are signs of a new food crisis given that many people live on porridge and few can afford to buy the rice on sale in the farmers’ markets. [Chosun Ilbo]

I’m baffled, Lee Jae-joung said there was no evidence of human rights violations in the north. How could you not believe the word of a South Korean anti-Unification Minister.

Popularity: 7%