When the North Korean authorities are not busy shooting repatriated defectors, they are busy shooting people who had the nerve to make a phone call:

A new report says the head of a state-run firm in North Korea was executed last year for making an international call without permission from authorities.

Reporters Without Borders said in its annual report that the number of such execution cases is sharply increasing.

The international organization added that a magazine secretly designed by North Korean journalists was published for the first time last November. The magazine, entitled “Im-jin River,” seeks to relate real stories from the reclusive state in close cooperation with Japanese wire services. [KBS Global]

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