South Korea’s Unification Ministry has unveiled the commission of a spectrum of atrocities at the hands of North Korean authorities, from arbitrary and mass executions to torture, human experimentation and even sterilization policies to total more than 1,600 cases of Human Rights violations between 2017 and 2022, according to a report compiled from the testimonies of more than 500 defectors.
This is the first time that the ministry, in charge of the supervision of the relations between the two Koreas, makes public a document under the Human Rights Law for North Korea adopted in 2016 and after the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, declared this week his intention to present to the international community »the reality of the appalling violations of Human Rights committed against the North Korean people».
The 450-page report, officially released Friday, denounces, among other atrocities, executions of homosexuals or for religious or drug-related reasons. These public and summary executions are frequently carried out and there are cases of minors under 18 years of age and pregnant women among them,» according to the report, reported by the official South Korean news agency Yonhap.
Specifically, the report cites the case of a pregnant woman who was executed in public after appearing to dance in a video while pointing her finger at a portrait of the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung. In 2015, again according to the document, six teenagers aged between 16 and 17 were executed in Wonsan for watching South Korean videos and using opium.
In this regard, the document also denounces that the North Korean authorities enacted in 2020 a law that criminalizes with up to ten years of hard labor the dissemination of foreign culture and information, with aggravating circumstances for content from South Korea.
According to the testimonies of the defectors, torture, sexual violence and other forms of inhuman treatment are the order of the day, such as human experimentation on «bodies of mentally handicapped people who had not given their consent» to the procedure or the practice of hysterectomies on women with dwarfism, in what would be a sterilization policy.
The report also documents the existence of at least eleven detention camps for political prisoners throughout the country, of which five remain active, according to testimonies.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
