Summary

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 until present, the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea, has sealed the country’s borders using expanded fences, guard posts, strict enforcement, and new rules, including a standing order for border guards to “shoot on sight.” The crackdown, combined with the effects of trade restrictions China and North Korea imposed between 2017 and 2023, has effectively closed off North Korea from the rest of the world and stopped almost all cross-border movement of people, formal and informal commercial trade, and humanitarian aid.

North Korea is one of the most repressive countries in the world. Ruled by third-generation hereditary totalitarian leader Kim Jong Un, the North Korean government for decades has controlled its population with violence and fear, using arbitrary detention, torture, executions after unfair trials, enforced disappearance, and other serious violations of human rights, to obtain unquestioned obedience.

In February 2o14, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights in the DPRK issued a comprehensive report outlining the government’s long record of human rights abuses constituting crimes against humanity. It described systematic, widespread, and gross violations in detention and in prisons, routine brutality against anyone considered to pose a threat to North Korea’s political system or leadership, widespread use of forced labor, abductions of foreign nationals, and chronic but avoidable malnutrition, stunting, illness, and starvation caused in part by diversions of essential resources to military programs and the preservation of the government’s top leadership.

Repression has increased under Kim Jong Un. After he assumed power in 2011, the government enhanced controls of its northern border with China and Russia—decreasing the number of people crossing without authorization to escape—and tightened restrictions on basic freedoms.

Ostensibly to address the Covid-19 pandemic, North Korean authorities instituted strict border and regional lockdowns, issued a shoot-on-sight order to guards—still in effect in January 2024—for any person or wild animal approaching the northern border, fortified or built new border fences and security facilities, imposed strict limitations on foreign trade and domestic travel and distribution of food and essential products, strengthened implementation of rules and regulations, cracked down on critical informal trade, and implemented excessive and abusive restrictions on freedom of movement and quarantine measures.

To enforce these actions, the authorities also clamped down on bribery and other forms of corruption, which was widespread and had become an everyday feature throughout North Korean life since the 1990s. This enabled people some room to maneuver around the strict control structure of the North Korean system, with government officials accepting bribes in exchange for access to free time without punishment to be absent from unpaid mandatory state jobs, travel domestically without permits, preempt or reduce punishments for crimes, and for gaining permission to engage in informal or unsanctioned market activity – all of which are basic means for survival in North Korea. The government also further tightened already strict restrictions on communication with the outside world and access to information, while intensifying other ideological controls to prevent unrest.

The government imposed these new Covid-19 related restrictions after North Korea’s cross-border trade with China had already begun to decrease since late 2017 in the wake of new UN Security Council sanctions in 2016 and 2017, which targeted the North Korean government’s imports, exports, and foreign currency revenues. The Security Council imposed these sanctions in response to North Korea’s multiple missile and nuclear weapons tests during the same period. China’s enforcement of the new UN sanctions disrupted general cross-border trade and people’s movement, leading to impacts far beyond the economic sectors for which the sanctions were intended. After the collapse in 2019 of US-North Korea diplomatic talks, the North Korean government began centralizing its control over cross-border movement and commerce, to better control economic activities still taking place.

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This report documents the devasting consequences for the North Korean people of the government’s intensifying repression and worsening isolation from 2019 until late 2023. It shows how the closure of borders and drastically reduced cross-border movement and trade have violated human rights and increased the suffering of North Koreans.

Our findings are based on numerous interviews with former North Korean traders with connections to trade with China, North Koreans escapees who have regular contact with relatives inside North Korea via unsanctioned Chinese cell phones, escaped former North Korean government officials, and journalists and activists who have sources and other contacts inside the country and in China.

The report contains extensive and in-depth analysis of satellite images of hundreds of square kilometers of North Korea’s northern border – one fourth of the entire northern border. This analysis maps key trade and crossing points and compares fencing and other security infrastructure before and after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The satellite images show the scale, efforts, and resources that the North Korean government has invested in fortifying the border through new fencing, infrastructure, and its increased deployment of security personnel. Human Rights Watch additionally cross-referenced and verified the authenticity of 83 photos and 8 videos taken before and after the increase of border security infrastructure, obtained from social media posts and news and media outlets. This content helped verify the observations visible from satellite imagery, clarifying the type of security infrastructure that existed before the pandemic and the new features built along the border after early 2020.

The report describes the numerous restrictive measures that the North Korean government has adopted since 2020, presumably to address the Covid-19 pandemic, and the devastating effects these measures have had on the lives of many North Koreans. It documents how the government’s use of overbroad, excessive, and unnecessary restrictions—some of which remained in place as of January 2024—have severely impacted food security and the availability of essential products needed by North Koreans to survive, products that used to enter the country via formal or informal trade routes. The report also outlines the economic consequences of new border restrictions that China adopted after new UN sanctions were imposed on North Korea in 2016 and 2017, including its effect on the trade of unsanctioned food and necessities.

The report shows the real-world human rights and humanitarian impacts of North Korea’s intensified repression and isolation in terms of the shrinking availability of food and medicine. It demonstrates that the North Koreans most affected by these changes have been women (who are the main earners in many families), as well as children and more at-risk people in rural areas or far from the national capital, Pyongyang city, and those of lower standing in the songbun system – North Korea’s discriminatory socio-political caste system that divides the population into groups based on their perceived loyalty to the government.

The report shows that the government has sought to reimpose its control in areas in which its dominance had weakened over the past two and half decades: in particular, control over the border, market activity, unsanctioned travel, and access to information.

An appendix to the report outlines the history and design of the North Korean government’s unique system of repression and control over its population.

Since North Korea remains closed to outside observers, media, and nongovernmental organizations (NGO), and information and communications with its population is tightly controlled, it is difficult to gauge the full scope of the human rights and humanitarian impacts of the new restrictions and closures documented in this report.

Even this limited picture demonstrates, however, how severe the consequences have been.

The government’s persistent drive to control its population, overbroad and prolonged responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, and expanded nuclear weapons capabilities, have combined with the intensifying external pressures of UN Security Council sanctions to turn North Korea—already effectively a country-wide prison—into an even more repressive and isolated state. The people of North Korea are now almost entirely cut off from the rest of the world, enduring horrific abuses and a calamitous humanitarian situation, with no end in sight.

North Korea’s International Human Rights Obligations

The DPRK is a member state of the United Nations and has ratified five core international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

By adopting these treaties, the DPRK has assumed legally binding obligations to respect, protect and fulfill the rights they set out.

North Korea needs to ensure respect for civil and political rights, including equality before the law; freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and association; freedom of thought, expression, and religion; freedom of movement and right to leave one’s country; freedom from torture, ill-treatment, and arbitrary detention; gender equality; the right to a fair trial; right to family life and family unity; and minority rights.

The DPRK is also obligated to provide economic and social rights, including an adequate standard of living, food and nutrition, health, water and sanitation, and social security.

The North Korean government systematically violates all of these rights. It also denies equal access to these rights by discriminating on the basis of gender, race or ethnicity, religion, age, and disability. Moreover, it has never meaningfully engaged with the UN human rights treaty bodies that monitor state compliance with the treaties.

Impacts on Rights to Freedom of Movement

The right of any person to leave a country, including their own, is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 13(2): “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” The declaration sets out the right to leave in absolute terms; there is no list of exceptions. The ICCPR in article 12 gives legal force to this right: “Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own.”

The North Korean government has always tightly restricted exit and return to the country. Passports or exit visas are extraordinarily difficult to obtain, and authorities consider traveling outside the country without documentation “treachery against the nation,” punishable by death. Those who are caught leaving without permission, or who are forcibly returned, mostly by China, face severe punishment. Within the country itself, North Koreans need official permits to move between provinces or regions, which are also difficult to obtain.

Following the collapse of North Korea’s centralized economy in the 1990s, authorities cautiously began allowing cross-border economic activity with China, and informal travel and trade of food and essential goods expanded for several years. North Korea’s nascent trade with China was negatively impacted by a failed currency reform in 2009 and inflation, and stricter enforcement of border controls after Kim Jong Un assumed power in 2011 and continued into the first years of his rule. But the economy started to improve from 2014 until 2017.

Cross-border activities began to decrease, however, in late 2017, after UN Security Council sanctions in 2016 and 2017 led China to impose strict new controls on its side of the border.

Travel and trade decreased even more sharply with the Covid-19 pandemic. Starting in early 2020, the North Korean government significantly increased border controls and rules – as did most other countries. It cracked down on corruption within border security services and announced harsher enforcement measures and stricter punishments for violations.

Satellite images starkly reveal increased security enforcement on the North Korean side of the northern border after 2020, reportedly ordered by Kim Jong Un to protect the country against the Covid-19 pandemic. Human Rights Watch analysis of satellite images of border areas, comparing security infrastructure before and after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, shows that authorities expanded, heavily fortified, or improved existing fences on its northern border after early 2020. Analysis of six selected areas on North Korea’s northern border, totaling 321 kilometers, shows almost all the area was fenced in 2022 and 2023, compared to 2019, when 230 kilometers were fenced. It also shows new or upgraded primary fences in several areas, new secondary and tertiary layers of fencing (which did not exist before 2019), new or improved guard patrol paths, and new garrisons, watchtowers, and guard posts.

In the areas analyzed, we found a 20-fold increase in the number of new guard buildings or facilities since 2019, with a total of 6,820 facilities placed near new or improved fences, on average every 110 meters. We found almost 500 kilometers of new fences within the 321 kilometers we analyzed, with most of the areas analyzed having double and even a small part with triple layers of fences.

As detailed in sections below, the government’s expanded internal security at the northern border has made almost all unsanctioned domestic and international travel impossible, whether to conduct informal commercial activities, or to escape the country.

Impacts on Freedom of Expression

The North Korea government has always heavily clamped down on North Koreans’ access to information and free expression rights. For most of its 75-year existence, the DPRK has severely restricted freedom of thought, opinion, expression, religion, and access to information. All media is strictly controlled. Authorities do not permit access to the internet except to a very small number of high-ranking party officials and tightly control the use of computers, televisions, and radios, and viewing or accessing of media without permission. The government has also regularly jammed unsanctioned Chinese mobile phone services at the border. Authorities prosecute anyone communicating with people outside of the country without permission.

Since 2019, the authorities have acted out of apparent concern for possible unrest by a population suffering from the government’s Covid-19 related measures and the impact of new UN economic sanctions on top of existing restrictions. They ramped-up ideological campaigns and imposed new laws to restrict access to unsanctioned information and media content and devices, and the way people speak and express themselves within North Korea.

The government enacted the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law in December 2020, which bans people from smuggling, viewing, and distributing “reactionary” and “anti-socialist ideology and culture”; the Youth Education Guarantee Law in September 2021, which bans young people from copying foreign culture and reorients them to a “socialist lifestyle”; and the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Law in January 2023, which permits the authorities to punish people for using South Korean intonations or slang. Public executions of offenders are permitted, evidently to increase a sense of fear and alarm among the population. Some of the punishments in these new laws are more severe than those the government has previously stipulated for the most serious “crimes against the nation,” including conspiracy to overthrow the government, terrorism, or treason.

Impacts on Right to an Adequate Standard of Living

North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world and the government has persistently struggled to ensure food security, adequate childhood nutrition, and access to medicine. Insufficient domestic food production and the government’s prioritization of military and security programs meant that, until 2019, many North Koreans obtained food and other necessities via formal and informal trade with China and private market activity, some of which was conducted without government permission.

After the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government imposed strict limitations on official cross-border trade, cracked down on informal or unsanctioned trade, and substantially curtailed unsanctioned private commercial activity inside the country. These measures, falling on top of China’s increased restrictions on the border after new UN economic sanctions in 2016 and 2017, had grave impacts on North Korea’s economic and humanitarian situation.

The restrictions blocked most sources of income for a large majority of the population and reduced their ability to buy already-limited food, medicines, and necessities. The steps adversely impacted the ability of ordinary North Koreans to conduct basic economic activities and make money in markets, worsening in general their rights to food, health, and to an adequate standard of living.

The renewed restrictions on economic activities have disproportionately affected married women, who are often the main earners in North Korean families. Since the government forces men and unmarried women to work in state-assigned jobs, typically for little or no compensation, in many families, only married women have had the necessary time to engage in commercial activities.

In July 2023, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, Elizabeth Salmon, joined by several other UN human rights officials, issued a statement that said:

Due to a prolonged Covid-19 related border shutdown, most people who relied on jangmadang [markets] to make a living have lost sources of income. An increasing number of people are running out of cash and [are] unable to buy food. Some are starving. Authorities are strengthening control over commercial activities by labelling them “anti-socialistic behaviour.” They are tightening control of access to information. … Further isolation of the country will only add a further burden on the North Korean people who are struggling to find food for their families.

Diversion of Economic Resources, Weapons Development, and Sanctions

The consequences of the expanded restrictions have exacerbated problems North Koreans were already facing due to the government’s longstanding failure to undertake political, economic, and social policies that would improve the human rights of the population. Massive budgetary deprivations have prioritized the further development of nuclear weapons and missile programs. North Korea tested several nuclear devices in 2006, 2009, and 2013, and numerous missile tests during the same period and after.

The government’s nuclear and missile programs, undertaken in defiance of multiple UN Security Council resolutions, have diverted billions of dollars of revenues that could have been spent on social and public services and infrastructure to spur economic growth and promote economic and social rights.

Between January 2016 and September 2017, the government escalated its missile tests and test-detonated three additional nuclear devices, including its first hydrogen bomb. The Security Council responded between November 2016 and December 2017 by imposing tougher and more expansive sanctions than previously. These sanctions targeted 90 percent of North Korea’s official exports, including coal, iron, seafood, food, agricultural products, and textiles, imports of certain items into North Korea like fuel and raw industrial materials, and much of the government’s foreign currency earnings, including sending workers overseas.

UN sanctions are enforced by UN member states and regional organizations, and China’s enforcement of these sanctions had consequences far beyond sanctioned exports and imports. China’s clampdown on the border impacted almost every other type of informal cross-border trade and movement, and the imports of many items not sanctioned by the Security Council, including food items, essential goods, and vital medical supplies. Steps taken by China to enforce the sanctions also affected North Korea’s broader economy, which had depended on trade with China not only to supply food and basic goods but to provide income from their imports and sales and other economic activity. These broad impacts on economic activity also hurt North Korea’s humanitarian aid and health sectors.

None of these consequences, however, appear to have affected the conduct of the North Korean government. In 2019, following a hiatus during negotiations with the administration of then-US President Donald Trump, the North Korean government resumed its pace of weapons development, with a spike in 2022, during which it conducted 69 missile tests, and at least 36 missile tests in 2023.

Previous Security Council sanctions remain in effect as of January 2024. The council has repeatedly renewed the mandate of the Panel of Experts that supports the committee monitoring sanctions enforcement.

At the same time, since 2014, North Korea’s human rights situation has remained on the formal agenda of the Security Council. In August 2023, the council held an official public debate on North Korea’s human rights situation—its first on the topic since 2017—and received briefings from senior UN human rights officials who noted interlinkages and connections between North Korea’s continuing weapons proliferation programs and ongoing pattern of rights abuses. A majority of the council’s members have stated in debates or public statements that North Korea’s pattern of human rights violations, including forced labor in its weapons programs and illicit revenue production to support them, amount to threats to international peace and security.

There has been far less discussion, however, of the human rights impacts of North Korea’s intensifying isolation and repression of basic freedoms. The Security Council and other UN bodies have not explored in detail how the tighter restrictions have contributed to worsening humanitarian and economic conditions or discussed whether and how enforcement actions taken after the more recent sanctions contributed to the situation.

Tomás Ojea Quintana, the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said at the end of his mandate in March 2022 that he was “gravely concerned about the deteriorating human rights situation under further isolation of the country, in particular the aggravation of the food crisis and stricter control of people’s freedoms.”

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The increasingly grave human rights crisis and humanitarian and economic situation in North Korea calls for greater scrutiny of the government’s near absolute control of the population and society, including international and domestic movement, public expression, association, and assembly, and almost all aspects of the economy. UN member states need to urgently consider steps to address North Korea’s isolation and its impact on the population. Key recommendations are below, and full recommendations are at the end of the report.

Key Recommendations

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea should:

• Reopen North Korea’s borders and allow for the movement of people consistent with international human rights law, as well as for trade and economic activity.
• Facilitate imports of essential food, goods, and medicine, as well as travel and movement of food and goods within North Korea, by relaxing overbroad restrictions on border transit, internal movement within the country, and commercial activities.
• Review all Covid-19 related measures, ensure they are aligned with scientific data and international law, and lift all excessive and unnecessary measures.
• Allow UN and other international organizations access to North Korea to provide humanitarian and development assistance without unnecessary regulations.

UN member states involved in current or previous diplomatic dialogues
with North Korea should:

• Reengage in diplomatic efforts, including offers of direct talks with North Korea, to encourage the government to scale back or repeal excessive and unnecessary Covid-19 related measures implemented since 2020.
• Allow emergency health and humanitarian assistance with international monitoring.

UN member states should:

• Increase support, including sustainable and diverse funding sources, for civil society organizations working to promote human rights in North Korea.
• Support a review of UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea to evaluate impacts on human rights and delivery of humanitarian aid and other forms of assistance.

The UN Human Rights Council should:

• Adopt a resolution that requests the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare a comprehensive report, with the support of a senior expert, that provides an update on the most serious human rights violations in North Korea since the landmark 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report, including the severe impacts on human rights resulting from the North Korea government’s prolonged border closures, travel restrictions, and increasing international isolation.

The People’s Republic of China should:

• Tailor border control measures with North Korea to mitigate the negative humanitarian impacts of UN sanctions enforcement by making it easier for traders to engage in non-sanctioned cross-border trade of essential goods and food.

The United States should:

• Take active steps to counteract sanctions “overcompliance” by financial institutions and other actors, blocking legitimate and non-sanctioned transactions and humanitarian operations.
• Publicly clarify to commercial institutions worldwide that banks or companies will face no legal or financial risks in supporting humanitarian operations or exporting or financing exempted or unsanctioned and legitimate goods, foods, or necessities to North Korea.

(For more detailed recommendations, see Section VII. Recommendations)

Methodology

North Korea rarely publishes statistical data on any aspect of life in the country. When it does, it is often limited, inconsistent, or otherwise of questionable utility. North Korea strictly limits foreigners’ access to the country and contact between residents and foreigners and does not allow independent human rights research of any kind in the country. Human Rights Watch did not conduct any interviews in North Korea for this report.

This report is based on interviews and research conducted by Human Rights Watch between January 2015 and September 2023, focusing on the human rights situation in North Korea before and after the Covid-19 pandemic. It is also based on extensive review and analysis of satellite imagery, available economic indicators, relevant media reports, academic studies, and other written documents and visual materials.

Interviews

This report utilizes information from interviews over a multi-year period with a total of 147 North Koreans outside the country, in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and other countries. It is based in particular on interviews with 32 escapees from North Korea with particular knowledge or experience of relevant conditions in recent years, including 6 former government officials, 10 North Koreans living in South Korea in contact with relatives inside North Korea, and 12 former traders familiar with cross-border trade. These 32 interviews were conducted between May 2021 and March 2023, with follow-up discussions until October 2023.

All interviewees were advised of the purpose of the research and how the information would be used. They were advised of the voluntary nature of the interview and that they could refuse to be interviewed or answer any question and terminate the interview at any point. Over half of the interviews were recorded, with the interviewees’ consent, for later reference. All interviewees were given the choice to refuse to record the interview.

For some interviewees who missed their workday to make time for the interview, Human Rights Watch provided minimum wage compensation for their lost time. For those living far away from the venue of the interviews, Human Rights Watch covered transportation costs.

All participants orally agreed to participate in the interviews before setting up the meetings and again at the start, and, as needed, during the interview. In all cases, interviews were conducted in surroundings chosen to enable interviewees to feel comfortable, relatively private, and secure.

Almost all the North Koreans with relatives in North Korea interviewed for this report expressed concern about possible repercussions for themselves or their family members and asked to remain anonymous. To protect these individuals and families, almost all names of North Korean interviewees used in this report are pseudonyms. Human Rights Watch also did not include in the report any personal details that could help identify victims and witnesses quoted in the report.

Human Rights Watch found the interviewees through connections from civil society partners, Christian organizations, consultants, and referral from other interviewees.

North Koreans who flee the country are almost always called “defectors” by South Koreans, foreign experts and observers, researchers, journalists, nongovernmental organization (NGO) workers, government officials, and so on. The word “defector” presupposes a political motivation for leaving that may or may not be present. North Koreans leave their country for many reasons, including for economic reasons. This report refers to them simply as “North Koreans” or as “escapees.”

In addition, Human Rights Watch conducted interviews with over 20 experts familiar with the human rights situation in North Korea following new United Nations Security Council economic sanctions imposed in 2016 and 2017 and the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, including experts on North Korea, health, food, trade, and the economy, activists, NGO workers, legal experts, academics, and journalists, including those with contacts inside North Korea.

Human Rights Watch also obtained and reviewed relevant documents available in the public domain from UN agencies, local NGOs, think tanks, and government bodies in South Korea, North Korean government agencies, researchers, and international analysts. These documents helped provide important insight into the context and background of the impact of UN economic sanctions imposed in 2016 and 2017 and the measures North Korea implemented on the pretext of Covid-19. Human Rights Watch also consulted media articles based on accounts from contacts inside North Korea. For such cases, we only made references to such articles when we had heard similar stories from different sources, or the accounts aligned with our big picture analysis of the human rights situation in North Korea.

Satellite Imagery Analysis

Human Rights Watch conducted in-depth satellite imagery analysis of 321 kilometers of North Korea’s northern border, covering one-quarter of its entire length of approximately 1,370 kilometers, comparing security infrastructure after the Covid-19 pandemic was declared with images from before.

We selected six areas as representative of the whole border, choosing four areas that were previously used for transit, trade, or escape, along with two other more remote, mountainous, and sparsely populated areas. Some parts of North Korea’s northern border, due to geographical features, are not suitable for cross-border trade or clandestine transit, such as extensive portions of the border along the Yalu River west of Chagang province, where mountainous terrain and the Yalu River’s width, breadth, and current—and lack of any bridges or roads—make cross-border movement nearly impossible.

Five of the areas are located along the border with China and one along the border with China and Russia. (In November 2022, Human Rights Watch published the findings of one of the six areas, covering 7.4 kilometers around Hoeryong city, North Hamgyong province.)

In conducting the analysis, Human Rights Watch compared security infrastructure visible in the six areas in 2019 with how these areas later appeared in 2022 or 2023, recording new fences, watchtowers, guard posts, garrisons, and other evidence of increased security.

The images used in our assessment included images from between March and November 2019 (before) and from February 2022 to April 2023 (after). The latter images included publicly available high-resolution satellite imagery from 2022 and commercial images obtained by Human Rights Watch from January and April 2023.

Human Rights Watch additionally analyzed, cross-referenced, and verified the authenticity of 83 photos and 8 videos from the border areas, obtained from social media posts and news, and media outlets taken before and after the increase of border security infrastructure. This content helped verify the observations visible from satellite imagery, increasing our understanding of the type of security infrastructure that existed before the pandemic and the new features built along the border after early 2020.

In addition, Human Rights Watch also obtained additional information and images from other areas outside of the six selected areas analyzed in detail on the northern border, that showed similar increases in security infrastructure and broadly corroborating our findings in the six areas selected.

Quantitative Analysis

Human Rights Watch conducted quantitative analysis of trade data between 2011 and 2022 downloaded from the UN Comtrade database, the most recently available data accessed in October 2023. The UN Statistics Division compiles trade data by aggregating statistics by product and trading partner on a yearly basis. All data on official trade with North Korea is as reported to the UN by the trading partner as North Korea does not report trade data to the database. Analysis of the value of goods traded was adjusted for inflation. Trade values for overall trade was adjusted using the total Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) consumer price index (CPI) while trade with China used the China CPI, both downloaded from the World Bank.

I. Background

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) is a totalitarian state ruled by the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK, or “the party”), with Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un holding the top position of head of state.1 The government maintains fearful obedience in the population through brutality and coercion, employing the threat or use of arrest and detention for “crimes” against the party or state, forced labor, torture or other mistreatment, execution after unfair trials, enforced disappearances, and collective punishment of families or communities.

The government does not respect or uphold the rights to freedom of expression, thought, opinion, or information. All media is owned by the government and strictly controlled. The government monitors telephones, computers, and correspondence. The internet is inaccessible except to a very small number of high-ranking party officials. North Korean-sanctioned radios and televisions receive only government-authorized stations; all media content is heavily censored. All unsanctioned media devices and content are banned and considered “anti-socialist behavior” or “counterrevolutionary” to be severely punished.2 There is no freedom of association, religion, and assembly. It is illegal to move from one province to another or to travel abroad without prior approval.3

In 2014, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights in the DPRK established that North Korea’s government committed systematic, widespread, and gross human rights violations, constituting crimes against humanity. Such violations were committed against North Koreans in political prison camps (ijumin kwanliso, in Korean “resettler control center”) and forced labor prison camps for ordinary and minor political crimes (rodong kyohwaso, literally “reform through labor centers”), those trying to flee the country, religious believers, foreigners through international abductions, and those considered to introduce subversive influences.4 Crimes documented by the commission included mass starvation, murder, extermination, torture, imprisonment, sexual violence, subjection to extremely inhumane detention conditions, enslavement, persecution, enforced disappearances, and forcible transfer of a population.5

The UN COI determined that these abuses were systematic and widespread attacks against anyone considered to pose a threat to the political system and leadership of North Korea and amounted to crimes against humanity.6

In 2021, the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights found that North Korean authorities in subsequent years had continued to use torture, wrongful imprisonment, and forced labor under exceptionally harsh conditions with detainees in its short-term detention facilities and its long-term forced labor prison camps for ordinary crimes and minor political crimes (kyohwaso), noting that the abuses were widespread, systematic, and gross abuses that could amount to crimes against humanity.7

For more comprehensive details and discussion of the North Korean government’s systems of repression and control, see the Appendix.

II. North Korea’s Responses during the Covid-19 Pandemic

The North Korean government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic employed measures that were in most cases overbroad, excessive, unnecessary, and unscientific.8 Since 2020, authorities instituted essentially a zero Covid-19 policy, which entailed border and regional lockdowns, issued a shoot-on-sight order still standing as of January 2024 for unauthorized persons on northern borders, fortified or built new border barriers, imposed strict limits on foreign travel and trade, restricted domestic travel and distribution of food and other products, strengthened rules and regulations across all sectors of government, and promulgated overbroad and excessive quarantine and prevention measures. It also intensified restrictions on contact with the outside world and access to information, including on Covid-19, while rejecting offers from other countries for vaccines and other healthcare supplies. It also deepened ideological controls to prevent unrest.

In 2020, the government claimed that Covid-19 could spread through surfaces of trade products, migratory birds and animals, snow, and “yellow dust” blowing into the country from China. The government continued to back these claims long after the international community rebutted them with the over three-year-long standing shoot-on-sight order in the northern border or by establishing long quarantines for some imports when it first accepted freight trade in January 2022, which appeared not to have been totally lifted in June 2023.9

It is impossible with publicly available information to gauge the impact of the government’s actions on the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Through May 2022, the government claimed there were no recorded Covid-19 infections, although North Korean people did not have access to Covid-19 tests and many experts did not find the claim credible.10

Media outlets with sources inside North Korea had reported accounts of Covid-19-like symptoms and deaths among soldiers around the northern border in early 2020, and possible outbreaks in the northern cities of Chongjin, North Hamgyong province, in February and March 2020 and Manpo, Chagang province, in October 2020, and across the country in October and November 2021.11

In May 2022, North Korean officials announced the country’s first Covid-19 case, alongside news that an unspecified “fever” was spreading “explosively” in the country, which started in April 2022.12 Between May and August 2022, state media said 4.7 million people had fevers, although how many were due to Covid-19 was unclear as North Korea lacked tests and testing facilities. The official death toll stood at 74 although the government did not disclose how it classified cases or how data was collected.13

In July 2022, the North Korean government called on the public to be vigilant against “alien things,” referring to South Korean balloons and leaflets sent across the border to North Korea, which could transmit the virus.14

In August 2022, Kim Jong Un declared “victory” over the Covid-19 outbreak, a spurious claim given North Korea’s weak health system, lack of vaccines, lack of Covid-19 tests, and lack of scientific information regarding Covid-19 among the public.15 He also highlighted the importance of political obedience and maintenance of quarantine measures to ensure ongoing stability.16

In 2020, international health institutions around the world established that prevention of the spread of Covid-19 included vaccines, social distancing, wearing of masks, and adequate ventilation in crowded closed spaces. North Korea implemented social distancing and masking, but instead of focusing on obtaining and distributing vaccines, the government focused on its strict border controls, area-by-area quarantines, and severe restrictions on movement and trade.

Since 2021, North Korea has rejected several offers of millions of vaccines, including from South Korea and Russia, according to the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX), a worldwide initiative to provide equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines.17

While public health exigencies in some instances can justify limited restrictions on human rights, many of North Korea’s Covid 19 measures were excessive and unnecessary, and permitted grave abuses.18 Some of these measures, like the shoot-on-sight order on the northern border and possible death penalty for breaking quarantine rules during health emergencies, are still in place as of January 2024.

As shown below, the restrictions severely aggravated an existing food crisis, and exacerbated the country’s chronic lack of access to medicines, medical supplies, and other necessities. The measures hurt the economy, market activities the population relied on to survive, and severely undermined people’s ability to make a living.

To implement these Covid-19 related measures, the government actively clamped down on corruption, which is a consequence of the nonexistent or extremely low pay of North Korean officials and their incentives to bend or ignore rules for bribes, as they depended on them to survive since the 1990s.19 The crackdown on bribery, which is a fundamental means of survival in North Korea, hurt people’s ability to move around the strict governmental control structure to engage in informal or unsanctioned market activity to make a living, get free time to trade and not be punished for not attending unpaid mandatory state jobs, and preempt, avoid, or get lighter punishment for crimes. At the same time, the measures enabled the government to strengthen its systems and control over the population, the northern border, markets, and basic information available to the population, restoring powers the government had previously utilized before North Korea’s economic crises in the 1990s.20

Restrictions on Movement

In January 2020, North Korea was the first country in the world to fully close its borders to the outside world following the emergence of Covid-19, restricting all entry of people, goods, vehicles, and vessels. North Korea reportedly suspended all commercial international flights in and out of North Korea in February 2020, apart from one evacuation flight by Air Koryo, North Korea’s official airline, the following month, and a limited set of freight flights to China in May 2022 to collect Covid-19-related supplies.21 Following the entry of one cargo train in August 2020, limited freight trade on trains partially restarted in January 2022, with a temporary reduction between May and June 2022.22 Official trade with China expanded throughout, but as of September 2023, it remained lower than before the Covid-19 pandemic.23

North Korean officials, laborers, and other nationals were almost entirely unable to enter the country for over three years. A small number of North Koreans who were able to enter in early 2020 through northern border cities were reportedly quarantined in government-designated facilities with little food (three meals a day consisting of a bowl of boiled rice and crushed corn and some soup), inadequate medical treatment, and lack of basic services like electricity, some for up to 40 or 50 days.24 In August 2023, the government announced the reopening of its borders to North Koreans residing abroad.25

The government also imposed extreme measures on resident diplomats and international organization workers. It prohibited traveling outside Pyongyang city.26 These measures led all international UN and nongovernmental organization (NGO) aid workers to leave the country by March 2021, as well as almost all diplomats.27 As a result, there has been no independent monitoring or observation of the situation on the ground regarding Covid-19 response, basic humanitarian needs, and ongoing rights abuses against the North Korean people. In March 2023, North Korean authorities allowed the first known foreign person, the new Chinese ambassador, and other Chinese diplomats to enter the country.28

In August 2023, North Korean state media announced the reopening of its borders to citizens residing abroad. North Korea’s airline restarted international flights, and the former North Korean ambassador to China returned to the country. It remained unclear as of January 2024 whether these announcements resulted in any significant changes in cross-border travel. As of January 2024, humanitarian organizations and most diplomats remained unable to return to North Korea.

Shoot-on-Sight Order

In August 2020, the government created buffer zones, still in effect as of January 2024, one to two kilometers from the northern border. They ordered border guards to “unconditionally shoot” on sight any person or wild animal entering the zones without permission, as “the [Covid-19] pandemic is being spread through air and items.”29

Following the announcement of the shoot-on-sight order and other border restriction measures, the North Korean government reportedly dispatched over 2,000 members of an elite special operations force of the Korean People’s Army, part of the 11^th Corps, also known as “Storm Corps,” from inland to some parts of the northern North Korean border, according to activists, North Korean former traders, and former government officials with contacts inside North Korea.30

The authorities reportedly deployed units to various cities and counties in Ryanggang province, North Hamgyong province, and the Rason Special Economic Zone.31 They sent Storm Corps to border areas to strengthen these draconian disease control measures, including reining in corruption of border guards who were accepting bribes from traders, and preventing movement to and from the country, by patrolling the borders, monitoring border guards, and following orders to shoot-on-sight any person or animal approaching the border. Journalists with sources in North Korea have reported that border guards and the Storm Corps shot people—and animals—at border areas since September 2020, including 14 people killed between September 2020 and July 2022, apparently while trying to move products or escape the country from North Hamgyong, Ryanggang, and Chagang provinces.32

According to reporters, activists, North Korean former traders, and former government officials with contacts in North Korea, most people living in border areas fear even approaching the border since the shoot-on-sight order was implemented.33 Stephen K., an underground missionary with connections in North Korea, asked some of the people he is in contact with for photos of wire fences built inside the country during the Covid-19 pandemic between May 2021 and September 2022, but could not get any photos. He said:

Accessing the border without permission has become extremely dangerous. Nobody can access the buffer zones, only those extremely desperate would even consider getting close to the border and risk their lives (…) Only those living right next to the border can see those new wire fences, but even for them taking photos can be too dangerous, if caught.34

L. Young Mi, a former herbal medicine trader in her 30s from Ryanggang province living overseas, said a relative in North Korea told her in November 2022 that nobody could get close to the border:

My [relative] said there were no words to describe how hard life was. There was no [informal] trade with China, not even to get some rice or a bag of wheat. If [authorities] heard of a soldier allowing that, that person would just disappear ... Soldiers are very scared… My [relative] said people in [her area] said there is not even an ant crossing the border.35

In February 2020, North Korean authorities reportedly sent a communique to Chinese authorities across the border saying they would shoot Chinese people who go to the Yalu River to throw potentially “virus-spreading trash” or otherwise commit “hostile acts.”36 In May 2020, there were also reports of a Chinese man shot and killed while engaged in informal trade across the river.37 After the incident, the two governments signed an agreement under which North Korea agreed to stop shooting at Chinese nationals or face increased Chinese taxes and victim compensation payments.38 The shoot-on-sight order was still in effect for North Korean people, as of January 2024.

Under the pretext of Covid-19 prevention, in September 2020 North Korean navy personnel shot to death and then burned a 47-year-old South Korean fisheries official on a boat adrift on the North Korean side of its western sea border.39

Young Mi, the former herbal medicine trader in contact with a relative inside North Korea, said:

It is not about fear of a [feeble] wire fence or electricity, which may or may not run through it. It is more the emotional environment and fear more [than the actual physical barriers] … [My relative] is scared to leave because of the creation of a social environment, a general sense of terror much stronger than a bullet or a wire fence.40

P. Si Eun, a former factory worker in her 30s from a remote area near the northern border in Ryanggang province, who left North Korea in late 2010s, said:

We already lived in constant fear…. The authorities created a sense of terror that made us feel scared. More than the fences, the pressure [the authorities put] all around us [pressing everyone to constantly monitor each other] created a sense of terror that prevented us from escaping, because of the thought that if anyone tried to leave, we would always be caught ... I was so scared whenever I saw the fences.41

Increased Security in North Korea’s Northern Border

While strict border controls are not new, and Kim Jong Un increased security measures on the northern border soon after assuming power in 2011, North Korean authorities almost completely sealed the border with China and Russia during the Covid-19 pandemic.42

In February 2021, Kim Jong Un at the Second Plenary Session of the Eight Central Committee reportedly ordered authorities to increase border security and build concrete walls and high voltage wire fences along the whole northern border to deal with “the global Covid-19 pandemic” to “prevent infiltration of the virus and impede the efforts of internal and external enemies to cause trouble within North Korea.”43

The party’s Central Committee reportedly issued an order to the Ministry of State Security (in Korean, kukga bowiseong, often referred to as secret police), the Ministry of Defense, the General Staff Department of the Korean People’s Army, and the General Political Bureau to guarantee the allocation of cement, copper, and other materials needed for the project within the first quarter of the year.44

Authorities reportedly dispatched over 2,000 construction workers from paramilitary forced labor brigades (dolgyeokdae) to northern border areas in June 2021 to ensure that border patrol duties were not impeded, according to the media and Stephen, the missionary with contacts inside North Korea.45

Reportedly, authorities ordered the Storm Corps to finish construction along the whole border by October 10, 2021, a deadline later extended to December 2021, due to lack of materials, of which the central government was supposed to provide 80 percent and local governments 20 percent.46

Previously, border patrols in each area worked independently on constructing barriers for the part of the border they were responsible for guarding, according to two former North Korean soldiers based on the northern border and four North Koreans living in South Korea in contact with relatives in bordering areas.47

Since late 2021, there have been unconfirmed reports about mines buried along the Tumen and Yalu Rivers to prevent border crossing to China. Media with contacts in North Korea reported that authorities started laying landmines around the northern border since August 2023, and six people died when land mines went off trying to cross the border near Musan county, North Hamgyong province, in September and October 2023.48 A different outlet reported that in August 2023, a contact in Hoeryong city, North Hamgyong province, said that according to a border guard, there were mines buried in the border in a secret location. Another person said many mines were carried down by the Tumer River during the summer monsoon, and soldiers and workers were mobilized to recover them. Still, this media outlet said they were unable to confirm whether landmines were actually buried in the border area.49

In-Depth Analysis of Satellite Images of Six Areas along North Korea’s Northern Border

Human Rights Watch conducted an in-depth analysis of 321 kilometers of linear border, one-quarter of North Korea’s northern border that extends over 1,370 kilometers, comparing security infrastructure visible on satellite imagery before and after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in January 2020.50

The analyzed areas were selected based on their economic importance, population concentration, and their association with formal and informal trade.51 The areas chosen are near Sinuiju city (Sinuiju-si) in North Pyongan province; Chunggang county (Chunggang-gun) in Chagang province; Hyesan city (Hyesan-si) and Taehongdan county (Taehongdan-gun) in Ryanggang province; Hoeryong city (Hoeryong-si) in North Hamgyong province; and Sonbong district (Sonbong-guyok) in Rason special city.52

Based on the latest satellite imagery collected between February 2022 and April 2023, Human Rights Watch confirmed that within the 321 kilometers of linear border area assessed almost the entire linear border was covered by fences. Areas with no fencing were typically in or around military bases or industrial areas or compounds with their own fencing or walls, and which, with their own tight security protocols, serve as de facto border barriers.

Prior to 2020, 230 kilometers, around 71 percent, of the 321 kilometers of linear border were fenced. Since early 2020, the authorities have constructed new primary fences in several areas, set up secondary and tertiary layers of fencing (which did not exist until 2019), upgraded preexisting primary fences, built, improved, or widened patrol paths, and built new garrisons, watchtowers, and guard posts.

Because primary, secondary, and tertiary fencing run alongside each other and some areas of fencing curve to account for natural barriers or preexisting structures, the overall length of fencing is far longer than the linear length of the areas analyzed. Within the 321 kilometers of linear border in the six areas analyzed, we found a total of 743 kilometers of fencing, of which 474 kilometers are “primary fences”—main border fences, 267 kilometers are “secondary fences,” and 1.9 kilometers are “tertiary fences” (see definitions of the latter terms below).

The secondary and tertiary lines of fences run behind the primary fence and do not cover any extra linear border beyond what the primary fence covers except in minor, negligible situations. The secondary fences are built alongside primary fences, creating de facto buffer zones that can range in width from approximately 10 meters to several kilometers. Some of these areas were previously used for agriculture.

Our analysis found that between 2020 and 2023 North Korean authorities built a total 482 kilometers of new fencing in the areas we investigated and enhanced another 260 kilometers of primary fencing that had existed before. Satellite images from April 2023 showed some fencing still under construction.

Human Rights Watch identified 6,820 border guard facilities or border security sites along the 321 kilometers of linear border analyzed, including guard posts, watchtowers, and garrisons. A guard post is a small observation hut from which one to two guards watch an area. A watchtower is a larger elevated structure where guards have a wider vision of the surroundings. A garrison is a site for a larger group of guards responsible for a particular portion of the border, and includes a barracks structure, and may have training/practice facilities, and equipment storage. Garrisons can range in size but share many features.

These are representative images of existing security infrastructures until 2019.

See border security infrastructures built after 2020.

Border garrisons and watchtowers were mostly constructed prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. A few guard posts existed at that time. Prior to 2020, in the areas analyzed we found 325 border guard facilities, including 93 garrisons, 194 watchtowers, and 38 guard posts.

Due to the speed with which construction orders were expected to be completed and the lack of resources, local personnel may have simply faked or simplified the construction of portions of the new walls. P. Hyun Joon, a former soldier from North Hamgyong province in his 40s, explained he was stationed on the border when he was in the military before the Covid-19 pandemic, and that border guards were responsible for building fences in the areas they covered. His team lacked the necessary money and the resources and so took shortcuts. He said that once authorities asked for a cement wall, but there was no cement:

So, soldiers cut thick pieces of tree trunks with a knife, and when nobody was watching, maybe during the daytime, maybe at night, they put the pieces up and painted them with watered down cement and reported they had finished the job. This happened there often.53

Young Mi, who lived near the border until the late 2010s said:

[Until the late 2010s] the soldiers or border guards built the wire fences…. We used to touch the fences with gloves to check if they were electrified, but they never were… later, people would just touch them with their bare hands… Sometimes they would paint them. They were all made of metal and were wired like a net. But truth is they were so weak, if I pushed on them, they could just fall over.54

Throughout the period and areas analyzed, Human Rights Watch found that authorities destroyed some existing watchtowers and guard posts, reconstructed new ones a few meters away, and moved fences as they built new structures. Many structures, especially the guard posts, are also vulnerable to floods or landslides. The overall number of border security facilities in the areas analyzed increased 20-fold since 2019. There was a massive increase in the number of guard posts, which mushroomed from 38 before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, to 6,506.

In 2019, border guard posts largely existed only in urban areas. Watchtowers were the main type of facility along the border and were built every 1 to 3 kilometers on average.

Our analysis revealed that by early 2023, the authorities had built on average one border facility (guard post, watchtower, or garrison) for every 110 meters of fence line on the border area we analyzed. Along primary fences, guard posts were usually built every 50 to 100 meters. Along secondary fences, guard posts were observed every 150 meters to a few hundred meters. Some segments of secondary fences did not have guard posts on them at the time of the analysis.

Increased security measures were not limited to the areas analyzed. Though we did not analyze in detail the full scope of new border fences and security infrastructure construction in other areas, we observed similar trends in several other areas and in videos and photos obtained from online media.55

Sinuiju City (Sinuiju-si) in North Pyongan Province

Sinuiju city (Sinuiju-si) is the capital of North Pyongan province, located in the northwestern corner of the country. It has two border crossings. One of North Korea’s most important border crossings is the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, which connects Sinuiju with Dandong city in Liaoning province, China, over the Yalu River, which is mostly wide and deep and with strong currents. The New Yalu River Bridge, which was started in the early 2010s to replace the former was still not open as of September 2023.56

Sinuiju city and its surroundings are one of North Korea’s most important economic hubs. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, half of North Korea’s official trade with China was estimated to enter the country through Sinuiju city, as well as a substantial portion of North Korea’s unofficial, informal trade.57 It was the largest hub for informal trade on the northern border. Kim Jong Un’s crackdown and increased border security hurt local informal trade soon after he rose to power in 2011.58 And such trade became ever more contingent on government approval after trade was further restricted due to new UN Security Council economic sanctions imposed in 2016 and 2017.59

North Korean authorities already tightly patrolled and heavily secured Sinuiju city, its islands, and some of its surrounding areas before October 2019, given the city’s active trading activities. Chinese authorities had also started fencing some areas around the city as early as 2005 and 2006.60

Parts of Uiju county, outside Sinuiju city, are also of concern to authorities, as informal trading via small boats was quite common until 2017, but less common since China began enforcing new UN sanctions, according to several journalists and activists with contacts inside North Korea.61

In early 2021, North Korean authorities repurposed the Uiju military-civilian airport (the northeastern side of the area analyzed) into what appears to be a new large-scale disinfection and quarantine center for imported goods.62

Human Rights Watch analyzed 84 kilometers of linear border in Sinuiju city (Sinuiju-si), Sindo county (Sindo-gun), and parts of Ryongchon county (Ryongchon-gun), Yomju county (Yomju-gun), and Uiju county (Uiju-gun) using satellite images recorded before and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2019, the area had primary fencing already established in the islands in the Yalu River and urban areas in Sinuiju city while 124 border security sites were sparsely distributed along the border analyzed. Images from April 2022 to April 2023 show that authorities subsequently built another 2,307 border guard facilities, 108 kilometers of new primary fencing, and 65 kilometers of secondary fencing. Sections of tertiary fencing are visible on Ryucho island (Ryucho-do) in the river.

In some places, primary fences and outposts built in 2020-2021 were destroyed and rebuilt in 2022 on top of new berms that may have been constructed for flood prevention.

After 2019, the number of border security facilities in this area increased 19-fold, with a 64-fold increase for guard posts, and fortifications of both primary and secondary fences. On some sections of the Yalu riverbank, authorities constructed guard posts every 50 meters along the primary fence. In some instances, guard posts are not adjacent to any visible fence. A secondary fence in this area that was barely visible in 2019 was fortified or extended after 2020. It can now be seen running alongside the primary fence along the Yalu riverbank and also on islands within the river, creating a buffer zone with a width fluctuating between 15 meters to over 700 meters.

Chunggang County (Chunggang-gun) in Chagang Province

Chunggang county (Chunggang-gun) in the northeastern corner of Chagang province is considered to be one of the coldest parts of the country.63 Remote and mountainous, this county does not have any border crossing. Its sparse population lives in small villages, working in forestry and farming potatoes.64 It looks across at a remote and thinly populated area in China across the Yalu River. It is less than 40 kilometers from Baishan city, Liaoning province, China, a transitory destination city for North Koreans trying to escape their country.65

The March 5 Youth Mine, located in the Hoha workers’ district (Hoha rodongjagu), produces molybdenum, a silvery-gray metal used in metallurgy, the production of strong magnets, and a wide range of electronics, including those with ballistic missile applications.66 In 2015, this was the country’s largest molybdenum mine, and its ore was traded with China and other countries to earn foreign capital both formally and informally.67 It is likely this trade was severely impacted by the tougher new sanctions the UN imposed in 2016 and 2017 and by the border restrictions imposed by North Korea in 2020.

Chagang province is known for having a regular supply of electricity for military factories and infrastructure.68

Human Rights Watch analyzed 42 kilometers of linear border in Chunggang county (Chunggang-gun). The analyzed area covers one of the few areas along the Yalu River that is narrow and completely freezes in the winter. When it does, North Koreans can cross absent fences or other security measures.

Until June 2020, less than a quarter of the border in this area had been fenced, mainly sections of the border near to towns, and there were 26 border facilities, mostly distributed in rural areas. Since then, authorities have constructed an additional 34 kilometers of primary fencing along the Yalu River, fortifying the full extent of the border area analyzed.

Images from September 2022 to March 2023 show 772 additional new guard posts built since 2019. Of these, 75 percent are equally distributed along the primary fence and the rest along the secondary fence. Some areas with rugged relief or heavy tree cover, where satellite imagery is more difficult to interpret, are not included in this counting.

Secondary fences in this area, which were not visible before the Covid-19 pandemic, run alongside the primary fence for 32 kilometers, near villages and the March 5 Youth Mine site. In some places, this secondary fence was built, destroyed, and rebuilt a few meters away, likely a sign of pressure on soldiers to work quickly to fix poorly resourced efforts the first time.

Hyesan City (Hyesan-si) in Ryanggang Province

The area around Hyesan city (Hyesan-si), the capital of Ryanggang province, has traditionally been a point through which many North Koreans cross or escape into China across the Yalu River. It is the second largest informal trade hub after Sinuiju city, North Pyongan province.69 Hyesan city is connected to Changbai county, Changbai Korean Autonomous County, through the Hyesan-Changbai border crossing.

Kim Jong Un’s crackdown on illicit trade and efforts to secure the border after his rise to power left many small-scale informal traders unable to operate by 2013 to 2015.70 Informal traders with more money and connections to influential government officials were able to continue operating in the area, but were severely curtailed by 2018 when border security on the Chinese side increased after the UN Security Council’s new economic sanctions in 2016 and 2017, according to four North Korean former traders with connections in Hyesan city who left North Korea after 2017.71 The situation became even harder starting in 2020 when border security on the North Korean side sharply tightened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hyesan city is the primary transit site to and from the Mount Paektu and the Samjiyon tourist region, which has undergone major construction projects since Kim Jong Un announced its redevelopment in 2013 and it became a national priority.72

According to more than 30 North Koreans with connections with Hyesan city who escaped the country after 2011, people in Hyesan city regularly say that almost everyone has at least one relative who escaped and is currently in South Korea.73 “There are no honest people left in Hyesan city,” said P. Su Ryun, a former trader in her 40s with extensive contacts in Hyesan city. She said everybody she knew in the city had been involved in activities considered illegal in North Korea, including engaging in informal trading, accessing banned information or media content, talking with people living outside North Korea, and watching South Korean videos and television dramas.74

Human Rights Watch analyzed 37 kilometers of linear border around Hyesan city, Samsu county (Samsu-gun), and Pochon county (Pochon-gun) and found most of the area had border fencing before 2019, with 62 border security sites, reflecting long-standing security efforts of the government to limit North Koreans’ ability to escape, and communicate and conduct informal trade with China.

An additional 31 kilometers of secondary fencing, not visible before the Covid-19 pandemic, now run alongside the primary fence. The distance between the primary and secondary fences varies between 10 meters in urban areas to 300 meters in rural areas in part due to mountain ridges.

Images from September 2022 to December 2022 show constructions of 758 additional new guard posts that have been built since 2019 along the primary fence and some sections of the new secondary fence. Several guard posts and watchtowers built before 2019 along the primary fence have been destroyed and replaced by smaller guard posts, with posts situated roughly every 50 meters.

Taehongdan County (Taehongdan-gun) in Ryanggang Province

The area around Taehongdan county (Taehongdan-gun) in the northeastern corner of Ryanggang province, is connected to a sparsely inhabited and rural area in Jilin province, China, across the Tumen River through the Samjang border crossing. Taehongdan county is located close to the Mount Paektu and Samjiyon tourist regions of North Korea. It is remote and mountainous, focused on logging and potato farming. The Tumen River has many parts around the area that are narrow, shallow, and easily navigable by North Koreans into China throughout the year. Until the Covid-19 pandemic started, some local residents picked blueberries, pine nuts, pine mushrooms, or medicinal herbs and sold them to Chinese traders or North Korean traders who sold to China.75

Human Rights Watch analyzed images of 74 kilometers of border in Taehongdan county, and parts of Samjiyon city (Samjiyon-si) and Musan county (Musan-gun), and found the area already partially secured, with 56 kilometers of primary fence and 51 border guard facilities built by October 2019.

Later images of areas around Taehongdan county show new security measures progressively appearing after October 2019. Fourteen kilometers of new primary fencing, 66 kilometers of new secondary fencing, and 1,087 new guard posts had been built by October 2022.

Authorities built a secondary fence, not visible before the Covid-19 pandemic, at a distance from the primary fence fluctuating between 20 meters in urban areas to over 2 kilometers in rural areas. The space between the primary and secondary fences created a de facto buffer zone, which in some instances includes agricultural fields on the banks of the Tumen River.

Hoeryong City (Hoeryong-si) in North Hamgyong Province

Hoeryong is a city in North Hamgyong province, opposite Jilin province, China, with the Tumen River in between. The city’s economy is based on formal and informal trade with China. It has an official crossing with customs facilities.

Hoeryong city is the third largest informal trade hub on the northern border. The Tumen River is shallow around the area and some parts can be crossed on foot when the water is low, so Hoeryong city played a key role in facilitating illegal crossing, connections with the outside world, and informal trade activities, particularly following the collapse of the state-run economy in the 1990s.76

However, security increased with Kim Jong Un’s crackdown on informal trade and on escapes after 2011. After 2013, only traders with powerful connections with government officials, police or secret police officers, or border guards could still engage in informal trade, especially after the UN Security Council imposed tougher new economic sanctions in 2016 and 2017, according to several former North Korean traders from Hoeryong city and two former government officials who left the country after 2013.77 Restrictions were tightened further once the Covid-19 pandemic started.

Human Rights Watch analyzed 7 kilometers of the linear border in Hoeryong city on the Tumen River, which had tight security even before the pandemic started, built along the reconstructed riverbank following heavy floods in the summer of 2016.78 In 2019, the area was almost fully fenced and had 10 border security sites. Satellite images taken in April 2022 show that authorities had built another 168 guard posts, 9 kilometers of new secondary fencing, and nearly 10 kilometers of improved primary fencing.

In February 2020, North Korean authorities in the area started work to increase border security. Satellite images of areas around Hoeryong city show new security measures progressively appearing after November 2020 until April 2022, the date of the most recent publicly available satellite image analyzed by Human Rights Watch as of April 2023.

The primary fencing that existed before the Covid-19 pandemic, following the bank of the Tumen River, was fortified with new guard posts every 50 meters, adding to preexisting watchtowers that were spaced about 1.5 kilometers apart. The patrol road was renovated and widened. In some sections, significant infrastructure was added to create new berms and bridges. Authorities built a secondary fence that was not visible before November 2020, creating a buffer zone between the primary and secondary fences with a width fluctuating from between 15 to over 600 meters. There are guard posts all along this secondary fence, though separated more sparsely.

Sonbong District (Sonbong-guyok) in Rason Special City

Sonbong district (Sonbong-guyok), bordering China and Russia, is in Rason special city, which originally housed the Rason Special Economic Zone (SEZ), established in the early 1990s to provide a space for the government to experiment with more liberal economic policies and increase foreign investment in the country.

When the special economic zone started, authorities moved people with low (“hostile,” choktae in Korean) status in North Korea's songbun socio-political classification system to other areas.79 They brought in party members and left those considered “loyal” in the area, as those living in the Rason SEZ would have access to economic opportunities due to regular electricity, working factories, and exposure to Chinese and other foreign traders.

Rason special city was largely fenced off from the rest of the country since its inception, but new initiatives and construction projects under Kim Jong Un resulted in a population boom and subsequent tightening of security on travel into and out of the region.80 Sonbong district has the Wonjong-Quanhe border crossing to China and the Russia friendship bridge to Russia.

Right in the north of the Sonbong district is Kyonghung county (Kyonghung-gun), formerly known as Undok county (Undok-gun), in North Hamgyong province, which is considered a harsh living environment with an important coal mining and chemical industry center, where many of lowest levels of the “hostile” classes were sent.

This analyzed area covers 77 kilometers of linear border in Songbong district (Sonbong-guyok) and parts of the Kyonghung county (Kyonghung-gun) and includes 18 kilometers of North Korea’s shared border with Russia. The border fence at Undok town (Undok-eup) directly connects to the Rason SEZ perimeter fencing. In October 2019, almost the entire border was fenced, with 63 kilometers of primary fencing, and 52 guard border sites.

After October 2019, authorities built an additional 45 kilometers of primary fence and another 65 kilometers of secondary fencing. The area is almost double fenced along the entire stretch; only a few gaps along the mountain ridge are not fully visible on satellite images. Images from February 2022 to December 2022, the most recently available as of April 2023, show 1,416 additional new guard posts built since 2019 every 50 meters along the primary and every 100 to 150 meters along the secondary fence.

In some areas, the former primary fence is being rebuilt and improved in addition to the construction of secondary fences and guard posts. Agricultural lands on the path of the new fences are often destroyed or reduced in size. On the border with China, the secondary fence runs alongside the primary fence creating a buffer zone with a width between 30 meters to over 5 kilometers (around Hunchun Nature Reserve).

On the border with Russia, the distance of the secondary fence from the primary fence fluctuates between 70 meters to over 2 kilometers. In both cases, the de facto buffer zone encloses areas of agricultural fields.

Limitations on Movement Domestically

Since early 2020, the North Korean government has strengthened restrictions on travel domestically by making the permit-process more complicated, issuing fewer official travel permits, and increasing road checkpoints and required documentation, according to sources with contacts inside North Korea and North Korean escapees in contact with relatives inside the country.81

By administrative policies and laws, all North Koreans always need official travel permits to travel domestically outside of their area of permanent residence to abide with “public order in traveling.”82 There are “business trip certificates” for work-related travel provided by one’s workplace or the People’s Committee, or “travel certificates” to visit family members for funerals or weddings issued by the head of the People’s Unit (inminban, literally “people’s unit/groups,” also often called neighborhood units or watches).83 After arriving at their destination, travelers must report to the pertinent city or county level People’s Committee.84

According to a 2017 Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) report on freedom of movement in North Korea, “business trip certificates” required permission from the workplace’s accounting officers, local officers of the Ministry of Social Security (in Korean sahoe anjeonseong, or police) and secret police officers (bowiseong), enterprise administration officers, and final approval from the provincial People’s Committee (inmin wiwonhoe).85

For “travel certificates,” travelers had to receive stamps from the head of the neighborhood watch (inminbanjang), local government director, local police and the secret police officer, and provincial People’s Committee. Issuing “travel certificates” could take from 10 days to one to three months or more, depending on the scope and use of bribes and connections. Travel permits for restricted areas, including Pyongyang city, special economic zones, the northern border area, and the southern border area near the demilitarized zone, required more complex issuing processes.

The travel permits, theoretically free of charge or with minimal administrative costs, became relatively easy to get in the 2000s for those with money and connections. It was also possible to travel domestically without such permits by paying bribes on the way. P. Sol Dan, a North Korea former trader in her 50s from Ryanggang province who left the country in 2014 said:

For ordinary people, getting a travel permit was too expensive and complicated, but I traveled often by train without it.... When inspectors came to check our documents, I gave them my identification card with some money, or some packs of cigarettes hidden underneath.86

She said she always tried to sit quietly in a corner, hoping not to draw the attention of inspectors or authorities, which could mean getting into trouble or needing to pay higher bribes.

Increased Restrictions Under the Covid-19 Pandemic

According to a missionary and journalists with contacts, in early 2020, to get a travel permit to move between provinces in Hoeryong city, North Hamgyong province, a new procedure required residents to provide a specific reason for the travel and extra approvals from the district office, and a relevant police officer, a Ministry of State Security (secret police) officer, and a lead official at the local People’s Committee , as well as other relevant police and secret police branches.87 Residents in Hoeryong city reportedly needed a “checkup verification” that states the resident is disease-free, although North Koreans have not been able to access Covid-19 tests.88

This “checkup verification” was still available as of mid-2021 if one was willing and able to pay bribes to relevant officials. However, since January 2022, the process reportedly tightened and required additional approvals, including from the deputy chiefs of the relevant branches of the police and the secret police, the head and deputy head of the political department, and the director of the local emergency anti-epidemic division—each of whom reportedly require bribes.89 This process was lifted in September 2022 after the government announced its “victory” over Covid-19.90

Lee Sang-yong, director of research at Daily NK, a Seoul-based online media outlet with contacts inside North Korea and China, told Human Rights Watch in late 2021:

[M]any traders who have products and the capacity to get permits to travel are not doing so because the time and costs in bribes to get the permit and pass through the road checkpoints have increased so much the trips have become too costly for the potential profit they could bring…. A trip by truck that used to take three hours before the pandemic would take more than seven or eight hours because of the new checkpoints on the roads.91

In August 2020, the police decree giving the shoot on sight order in the northern border and setting up a “buffer zone” also established nighttime curfew hours from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. from April to September, and from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. from October to March.92 Media and an activist with contacts inside the country said this curfew remained in place in many areas long after Kim Jong Un’s declaration of “victory” over Covid-19 in August 2022, and the buffer zone was still in place in the northern border area as of January 2024.93 On April 1, 2023, authorities reportedly reduced the curfew hours from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. in Ryanggang province.94 Punishment for breaking the curfew reportedly includes being sent to short-term forced labor training facilities (rodong dallyeondae), and public criticism sessions for parents if children are caught.95

In Hyesan city, Ryganggang province, authorities limited market activity to three hours between 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the winter and four hours in the summer through March 2023 and expanded market operation hours to six hours on April 1, 2023.96 “My [relative] said [in November 2022] market opening hours were limited,” said Young Mi. “Not only there are fewer products and less food in the markets, but nobody was able to make enough to survive [with the restrictions].”97

Blocked Escape and Informal Trade Routes

A dozen North Koreans living in South Korea in contact with relatives inside North Korea and four North Koreans in contact with brokers or smuggling networks inside the country in 2022 and 2023 told Human Rights Watch that, since mid-2020, almost all private informal trading activities had stopped and it was almost impossible to help North Koreans escape to China, as of September 2023.98

North Koreans and activists in contact with informal trading networks between 2022 and 2023 said that since 2020 even the few people who have the right contacts to be able to continue to informally move products have only been able to move small packages or just enough for personal consumption.99 “Informal traders can only get small packages that they can carry easily in their hands or hide in their body,” said Lee Kwang Baek, director at the Unification Media Group, a media consortium that sent and receives media outlets and information to and from North Korea throughout the pandemic.100

Even before the pandemic, North Korean law prohibited leaving the country without permission as “treachery against the nation,” punishable by death.101 The 2014 UN COI found that the North Korean government committed crimes against humanity against those forcibly returned by China to North Korea.102

Very few North Koreans have been able to escape the country since 2020. Definitive numbers are unavailable, but arrivals of North Korean escapees in South Korea can give a sense of the trend. In 2021, 2022, and 2023, only 63, 67, and 196 North Korean escapees arrived in South Korea—a significant decrease from the 229 arrivals in 2020, the 1,047 arrivals in 2019, and the 2,706 in 2011. These numbers suggest that North Korean escapees have faced significantly increased difficulties in reaching South Korea during the pandemic. Most of the recent arrivals had stayed in a third country for a considerable period, some for several years, before being able to travel to South Korea due to Covid-19 restrictions and the difficulty of regional travel as an escapee.103

Ensuring Obedience to Quarantine Orders

In August 2020, the North Korean government enacted the DPRK Emergency Quarantine Law, which it amended three times by October 2021. The Emergency Quarantine Law sets forth new criminal offenses and punishments for anyone who obstructs or neglects to execute orders related to emergency quarantine measures, or fails to seal national, land, sea, and air borders. Penalties include the death penalty and criminal punishments of unpaid forced labor for life (mugi rodong kyohwahyeong) at forced labor prison camps for ordinary and minor political crimes (kyohwaso).104 “Crimes” include fishing, washing, or doing laundry in rivers, lakes, or the sea, distributing imported products that don’t have official trading certificates, conducting economic activity in streets or places without permits, increasing product prices, or buying products in large scale.105

In August 2020, North Korean authorities reportedly executed an official who violated the rules on epidemic prevention by entering goods without authorization through customs in Sinuiju city, North Pyongan province.106 The North Korean government enforced laws that instilling fear and imposing excessive punishments on any person violating quarantine rules.

Media also reported dozens of executions, party removals, and dismissals of government officials for corruption or failing to follow quarantine orders. A border guard in Hyesan city, Ryanggang province, reportedly was sentenced to three years of forced labor in June 2020 for conspiring with an informal trader to transfer two boxes (600 packs) of cigarettes to a Chinese trader.107 In January 2021, authorities reportedly put Hyesan city and Samjiyon city in Ryanggang province under lockdown due to smuggling activities.108 In February 2021, North Korean authorities reportedly also put Chasong county and Manpo county in Chagang province under lockdown for over a month because of informal trading and an incident in which a soldier and his girlfriend were shot and killed while trying to escape to China.109

Controlling Expression, Ideological Campaigns

North Korean government concerns over possible unrest and public criticism intensified after the Chinese government began to enforce tougher new economic sanctions that the UN imposed in 2016 and 2017, and the failure of the US and North Korea to reach agreements during negotiations over Security Council sanctions in 2019.110 Authorities responded by strengthening systems, rules, and regulations; designating corruption and informal trade operations as “anti-socialist” and “enemy” behavior; and deepening control through intimidation and enforced cultural uniformity.

Since 2020, the authorities further ramped-up ideological campaigns and passed laws and implemented policies to further control expression, strengthen information controls, including information about Covid-19, particularly targeting the flow and spread of information from abroad and the dissemination of information about conditions or developments inside North Korea to people outside the country.

In April 2021, Kim Jong Un published a letter about “dangerous poisons,” setting out his policy to stop young North Koreans from adopting foreign speech, hairstyles, and clothes.111 In August 2021, Kim Jong Un started a campaign targeted at youth to prevent them from abandoning their worksites, calling them to “volunteer” to do hard labor to compensate for “lagging behind” or to cleanse “cultural infiltration.”112

Laws to Control Thoughts and Expression

In December 2020, the government enacted the DPRK Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law. It bans people from smuggling, viewing, and distributing “reactionary” and “anti-socialist ideology and culture.” This includes materials said to transmit “a rotten ideology and culture of hostile forces, including South Korean publications, that paralyze the people’s revolutionary sense of ideology and social class, and degrade and spread depravity in our society, as well as all types of impure and absurd ideology and culture that are not in our own style.”113

These include South Korean news, movies, television series, video recordings, books, songs, drawings, photographs, and other unsanctioned foreign content. It sets out punishments up to the death penalty.114 Simply watching such media content can result in a sentence of forced labor of over 10 years in a forced labor prison camp for ordinary and minor political crimes (kyohwaso).115

The DPRK Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law also:

• Criminalizes use of unsanctioned televisions, radios, or computers with up to five years of hard labor in ordinary crimes prison camp (kyohwaso) in undefined severe cases;
• Bans possession of unsanctioned foreign mobile phones, illegally producing video recordings or publications, and illegally installing operating systems programs that circumvent censorship on other people’s North Korean cell phones, with penalties of three months or more of forced labor in short-term hard labor detention centers (rodong dalleyeondae);
• Stipulates short-term hard labor sentences for any person failing to report any anti-socialist ideology and culture crimes;
• Fines parents for crimes by their children related to reactionary ideology and culture due to parental failure to properly educate and discipline their children;
• Punishes speaking, writing, or singing in South Korean style with two years of hard labor in prison camps for ordinary and minor political crimes (kyohwaso) for undefined severe crimes.116

In September 2021, the North Korean government enacted the DPRK Youth Education Guarantee Law to further prevent what it calls ideological laxity, reinforce bans on young people from copying foreign culture, and reorient young people to a socialist lifestyle, so they become “reliable successors of the Juche revolution and contribute to consolidating a youth powerhouse.”117

The law states that youth, families, individuals, organizations, educational institutions, and enterprises should ensure everyone is “fully engaged with their responsibility and role in the business of revolutionizing youth” so “youth can be full of pride and believe that our culture and lifestyle is the best, thoroughly establish a socialist lifestyle, and society can be truly filled with a sound and revolutionary ethos.”118

The law bans youth from committing serious crimes like murder, theft, or sexual violence, but also forbids religion, “receiving, producing, copying, storing, keeping, distributing, and viewing impure publications,” singing distorted North Korean songs, dancing in an un-Korean way, and talking, writing, dressing, or grooming in an “exotic way.”119

Citizens, institutions, organizations, and companies are prohibited to receive, smuggle, or traffic “exotic” (South Korean or foreign) products, have or participate in an exotic (South Korean-style) marriage ceremony; or make and sell clothes or hairstyle in a non-North Korean manner.120 The law provides that depending on the unspecified severity of the violation, the responsible individual, institution, or corporation could be subject to unspecified criminal liability.121

In September 2022, Kim Jong Un submitted instructions to the 7th National Conference of Judicial Officials, the first in five years, ordering thousands of judicial officers to use North Korea’s laws “as a powerful sword to protect the party, the revolution, the country, and the people, and as a political weapon to ensure the development of socialism.”122 Choe Ryong Hae, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly, North Korea’s top law-making body, called on attendees to “wage a law-based struggle to wipe out anti-socialism and non-socialist acts.”123

Media with contacts inside the country reported that in November 2021 a man who smuggled and sold copies of the Netflix series “Squid Game” was reportedly sentenced to death.124 Authorities reportedly caught him while investigating seven high school students who watched the series. One student received a life sentence, while the six others were reportedly sentenced to five years of hard labor in a forced labor prison camp for ordinary and minor political crimes (kyohwaso). In October 2022, authorities in Hyesan city, Ryanggang province, publicly executed two teenagers for watching and distributing South Korean movies, according to K. Ha-na, a North Korean escapee in contact with relatives in Hyesan city, and media with contacts inside the country.125

They also reported:

• Heightened inspection of Chinese cell phones of North Korean personnel dispatched to China in December 2020;
• Detention of a member of a paramilitary forced labor brigade (dolgyeokdae) for watching a music video by South Korean boy band BTS in Kimjongsuk county, Ryanggang province, in June 2021;
• A propaganda campaign in Sinuiju city, North Pyongan province, in June 2021 depicting foreign phone users as “evil” state enemies who must be reported to authorities;
• Mass arrests of users of foreign cell phones for smuggling, contacting people in South Korea or China, or transferring money or human trafficking, including in Hyesan city and Kimjongsuk county, Ryanggang province, and Hoeryong city, North Hamgyong province in 2021;
• Implementation of “tip-off rewards”—cash for reporting “anti-socialist behavior”—in September 2021;
• Tightened grip on unauthorized use of North Korean-sanctioned cell phones and computers, including crackdowns on authorized North Korean cell phones in Hyesan city, Ryanggang province, in July and September 2022;

• · Increased efforts by authorities to discover the identities of people providing information to the outside world in South Pyongan province in October 2022 (the last revealed when authorities announced an amnesty for those leaking government propaganda to South Korea if they turned themselves in within a month).126

In January 2023, the government enacted the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act to protect and revive “the Pyongyang Cultural Language by completely eliminating the use of puppet language, referring to language with South Korean influence, denouncing abnormal language elements, and establishing a socialist language lifestyle throughout the entire society.”127

The law states that “the struggle to eliminate the remnants of the puppet language is a serious political and class struggle that affects the very fate of our socialist system and the very existence of our people and future generations.”128 The law bans specific words and expressions, including young people calling non-relatives oppa (literally a girl’s or woman’s older brother, but used in South Korea by many girls and women to refer to older boys or men, or older male partners) or adding nim (an honorific attached to the end of titles or names), and other styles of language associated with South Korea, including “raising and lengthening intonation at the end of a phrase in an obsequious, lilting and nauseating way.”129

The law states that North Koreans who use or spread South Korean-style language, referred to as “puppet culture,” could be sentenced to six years or more of hard labor, or “if the severity of the crime is deemed high,” the death penalty.130

The punishments outlined minimum punishments more severe than those of crimes against the nation in North Korea’s Criminal Code, including conspiracy to overthrow the government, terrorism, treason against the state, or sabotage, which are considered the most serious crimes in the country.131 The law also stipulates that authorities should “conduct public struggles” to enforce the law—essentially use law enforcement as theater—and use “public arrests, public trials, and public executions to break the spirits of those contaminated by rotten puppet culture and to awaken the masses at large.”132

In March 2023, authorities reportedly conducted a “public struggle meeting” targeting 17 young people in Hyesan city, Ryanggang province, for watching unsanctioned videos or using South Korean language. One leader of the group was sentenced to 10 years of forced labor.133 In April 2023, journalists with contacts inside North Korea reported crackdowns and social campaigns in North Hamgyong province and Ryanggang province targeting South Korean style expression and words from Japanese. Those accused faced investigation into where and from whom they learned the speech.134 In April 2023, media with contacts inside North Korea reported that about 20 aspiring North Korean winter athletes were “publicly disgraced” in Hyesan city and sentenced to three to five years of forced labor after police found a video of the athletes, during a random inspection, in which some of them were using South Korean vocabulary or slang.135

Limited Contact with Outside World

North Korea’s border lockdown, stricter enforcement of laws to curtail informal trade, communication, and transit, and crackdowns on corruption among security personnel responsible for enforcement, made it extremely difficult for North Koreans to communicate with the outside world, including through unsanctioned Chinese cell phones, the most commonly used means of doing so.

Many North Korean escapees and others with relatives or contacts inside the country told Human Rights Watch it had become more difficult to speak to people inside the country since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and especially with people living in areas distant from trading or transit hubs on the northern border, where some people still can use unsanctioned cell phones that utilize Chinese mobile networks.136

Lee Sang-yong from Daily NK said the organization’s number of calls with sources inside North Korea between 2020 and 2022 had only 30 percent as many entries as in December 2019, but they increased from 50 to 60 percent between January and September 2023, following the government’s “victory” declaration over Covid-19 in August 2022.137 Jiro Ishimaru, director at Asia Press, told Human Rights Watch that by November 2021, he was only in contact with 5 out of 10 “citizen journalists” he had previously worked with inside the country, and was able to contact with one more contact in July 2023.138

Several people with contacts inside the country said that they estimated that only two out of every 10 money brokers in South Korea were able to still send money by late 2021.139 They estimated that by late 2022 and early 2023, only one out of every 10 was still able to do so. They explained that commissions for sending money went from 30 percent in 2019 to 50 percent in 2021.

Si Eun, the former factory worker from a remote area in Ryanggang province who left North Korea in late 2010s, explained that since 2015 she had been able to go to an urban city three times a year and find brokers who would call her mother, who was already living in South Korea, and was usually able to talk to her for 15 or 20 minutes. Si Eun, who is now reunited with her mother in South Korea, told Human Rights Watch that since early 2020 it had become more difficult for people to go to travel domestically to make such calls. She noted that between February 2020 and March 2023, a relative was only able to go twice to an urban area to call them, once in late 2021, and once in late 2022.140

P. Hyun Jun, a former secret police officer who left North Korea several years ago but maintains contact with relatives there, told Human Rights Watch that he spoke with them in 2017, and then twice a year until January 2020. Between then and December 2022, he had only been able to speak with a relative once, in January 2022, because of domestic travel restrictions she had not been able to travel to the border area to find a broker with a Chinese phone. Hyun Jun said:

Life has become harder and harder every day because of Covid-19. … The transportation situation was already bad, but with the Covid-19 pandemic, people are not allowed to move around, and it has become harder to talk on [unsanctioned] phones. … There, there is constant surveillance of calls, so for the safety of the family we would only speak for five minutes. I would only ask questions like “How are you?” [because it is dangerous] ... My [relative] said it was very difficult to survive, she kept on repeating similar things, but that the family was ok…. We didn’t exchange information. ... The situation there is challenging. Things there don’t change every day like [outside of North Korea]. Life was hard when I left and remains difficult, if anything life is getting tougher and tougher, much more dreadful with the Covid-19 pandemic.141

Young Mi, the former herbal medicine trader, said that she used to speak with her relatives once a week or two or three times a month until 2019. After 2020, she was only able to communicate once every two months until June 2022, and somewhat more often since then until January 2023, but still irregularly. She said:

I asked [my relative] how she is doing. … She said life wasn’t life. She repeated that twice. We were seeing each other’s faces and we all cried …it was dangerous, and we turned off the video… [she didn’t say,] but we knew. ... We were seeing each other’s faces and we all just cried…it was dangerous, and we turned off the video… [she didn’t say,] but we knew ... It was not just about the economic difficulties, it was about the nostalgia, the fear of repression … of not seeing each other again before dying, and the repression, the hopelessness, and the fear.142

III. Blocked Trade, New Controls of the Economy

Since the early 2000s, increased foreign trade was a pillar of North Korean economic reforms, which allowed the government to address foreign currency shortages and pressing needs for food, medicine, essential goods, fuel, and industrial and agricultural inputs.143 In 2013, the government established a parallel “development line” (pyongjin roson) policy, which prioritized developing the economy and national defense.144 This was accompanied by the reassertion of tight state control of the Chinese-Korean border area to better prevent North Koreans from escaping the country or communicating with the outside world.

In 2014 and 2015, Kim Jong Un introduced far-reaching legal reforms that promoted entrepreneurship and gave more independence to state-owned trading companies and wealthy individuals (donju, capitalist, literally “money master”).145 In 2016, he announced a market-oriented “five-year strategy for the state economic development” that seemingly sought to strengthen central power and industries under central domination while supporting reforms for more flexibility within the state-led economy.146

At the same time, between 2013 and 2017, Kim Jong Un’s government conducted increasing numbers of missile and nuclear detonation tests, which led the UN Security Council to impose tougher new economic sanctions in 2016 and 2017.147

Official trade with North Korea has fluctuated over the years. The total reported value of North Korean exports, relatively flat between 2011 and 2016, plummeted after the UN’s new economic sanctions in 2016 and 2017.148 By 2018, North Korea officially exported about 10 percent of the total value of what was exported in 2011. Exports remained at similar levels in 2019 and through the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.149 Some exports resumed in 2022 and 2023—including coal exports to China— but overall remained below levels in 2017.150 (It is likely that, due to sanctions and reputational issues for importers, North Korea sells exports at a steep discount—especially those made in defiance of sanctions.)

Imports into North Korea followed a different trend. Between 2014 and 2019, there was a gradual decrease in the value of goods imported, with 2019 imports being 30 percent lower than what was imported in 2011.151 With Covid-19 restrictions, official trade almost ceased. By 2021, North Korea imported only 6 percent of what it had been importing in 2011. Imports increased slightly in 2022, though they were only a fraction of what they previously were.152

China, North Korea’s Key Trading Partner

China is by far North Korea’s largest trading partner. China’s share of official exports to North Korea grew from 83 percent of North Korea’s total imports in 2011 to 99 percent in 2022.153

Between 2011 and 2022, China was the source of over 87 percent of all of North Korea’s recorded/official imports, exporting over $29 billion worth of goods to the country. China was also the top importer of North Korea’s exports, receiving 80 percent of its exports over these same years.154

Between 2011 and 2018, Chinese exports to North Korea increased, including of food items like dairy, eggs, fruits, and nuts, and hygiene products like sanitary pads, tampons, and diapers, which are considered almost luxuries among ordinary North Koreans. During the same period, North Korea also became an exporter to China of cheaper vegetables, like onions and potatoes.155

UN trade data indicates that approximately 90 percent of all imported goods come from China. However, quantitative data does not exist on the proportion of goods sold within the country that are produced domestically or imported from China. Human Rights Watch asked three dozen traders, former government officials, and other experts with knowledge about the domestic market to estimate the proportion of local market items, especially food and basic necessities, that are domestically produced versus imported from China. Every expert estimated that until the mid to late 2010s, 80 to 90 percent of goods sold in the markets in North Korea, such as powdered detergent, socks, underwear, and toothpicks, were from China.156

Two former traders involved in official trade said in southern areas like Pyongyang city or South Pyongan province, there were also some daily necessities from Southeast Asia, which entered the country through official trade in Nampo port.157

The ratio of Chinese and local food could vary between southern and northern provinces and urban and rural areas, depending on local production of food and connectivity to roads and trading routes.

Several former traders from Ryanggang province who left North Korea after 2018 said that around 2018, they saw that rice and cooking oil sold in three different markets in Ryanggang province and in two markets in North Hamgyong province they visited were about 80 percent Chinese.158 However, other former traders from the southern provinces said in two locations they visited in South Pyongan province and Hwanghae province, over 90 percent of rice was North Korean and cooking oil was locally pressed in 2018.159

Belt Tightening after UN Security Council Economic Sanctions

The North Korean government carried out four nuclear tests in February 2013, January and September 2016, and September 2017. Between January and August 2017, North Korea launched 13 missiles, including long-range missiles using ballistics technology, surpassing the total number of tests carried out under Kim Jong Un’s father and grandfather combined.160

In the new set of resolutions in 2016 and 2017, the UN Security Council imposed new economic sanctions targeting North Korea’s licit exports and some of its imports.161 While previously sanctions had targeted certain industries, like luxury products, or individuals’ ability to travel or access international banking systems, the new sanctions imposed broader sectorial sanctions on exports like coal, iron, other minerals, textiles, seafood, food, and agricultural products, the hiring of overseas workers, and imports of petroleum and other key products.162

Between 2011 and 2022, North Korea had exported nearly $22.9 billion worth of goods, with over a third of the value coming from exporting coal, mostly to China.163 During those same years, the country imported more than $33.3 billion worth of goods.

After the new UN economic sanctions, China stopped importing North Korea’s coal exports, and stopped imports and exports of a range of other goods. To implement the new UN sanctions, China imposed strict restrictions on cross-border economic activities and movement, which—as outlined in more detail below—led to major decreases in trade with North Korea in general. China’s active enforcement of sanctions was a departure from its previous policies of prioritizing maintenance of status quo and prevention of social instability in North Korea. For a time, China appeared to consider North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and missiles and the threat they posed to regional peace and security a bigger risk than that of a possible economic collapse in North Korea.

According to the Bank of Korea, North Korea’s real annual gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by 4.1 percent in 2018, its worst performance since 1997.164 Bank of Korea estimated GDP increased by 0.4 percent in 2019, although some observers considered this estimate too optimistic and exaggerated.165

The UN Security Council said its sanctions were “not intended to have adverse humanitarian consequences for the civilian population of the DPRK or to affect negatively or restrict those activities, including economic activities and cooperation, food aid and humanitarian assistance, that are not prohibited by resolutions.”166 But by imposing broad-based sanctions on the North Korean economy, including formal and informal market activities, their enforcement exacted a toll on the population at large by undermining people’s rights to an adequate standard of living, and thus to food and health.167 This had an especially hard impact on women, the main breadwinners in most households, by reducing the activities in the markets in which they traded.168

K. Myung Chul, a former fisherman from Rason special city who left the country in the late 2010s, said that he used to catch fish and clams and sell them to traders for export. He said that with the UN sanctions, he wasn’t able to sell them for export anymore. He sold for domestic consumption, but demand was less and prices lower.169

Impact on Informal Trade, Escape, and Communications with the Outside World

Increased border security in China to enforce the UN Security Council’s new sanctions impacted cross-border travel, including of escapees, unsanctioned communication between people in China and North Korea, and informal trade of food and basic necessities.170

Two former traders from Ryanggang province estimated that from 2010-2015, about 80 percent of rice they saw sold in two markets they visited in Hyesan city was Chinese and 20 percent was local. However, since 2018, because of the UN sanctions, they believed over 80 percent of rice in those markets was North Korean and 20 percent was Chinese. They said Chinese rice was cheaper and mostly went to restaurants.171 “After informal trades was blocked [with the UN sanctions since 2018], there was no more rice coming [from China],” said L. Myung Suk, a former informal trader with China in her 50s who left North Korea in the late 2010s. “When there was informal trade with China, we all ate Chinese rice, but everybody needs to eat rice, so [traders] brought them from the south. There is no local rice in Ryanggang province.”172

Only traders with money and powerful connections with high-ranking government officials, like police, secret police, and soldiers, were able to engage in informal trade in the border since 2013 and 2014, according to several former North Korean traders connected to Hoeryong city and two former government officials who left the country after 2014.173 These connections and access became even more important since late 2017 when border security on the Chinese side dramatically increased following China’s increased enforcement of new UN sanctions.

The Chinese government’s increased border security measures also made it more difficult for North Koreans to cross the border without permits, move around in the Chinese border area without being discovered, or develop connections with Chinese officials to enable trade and transit activities. They made it hard for North Koreans trying to escape the country to transit into China and reach a safe third country. The enhanced new security measures also made it more complicated for North Koreans to communicate with the outside world.174

Kim Jong Un’s Failed International Outreach

Following China’s strict implementation of the UN sanctions in late 2017, Kim Jong Un appeared to have decided temporarily to improve relations with the outside world, to have new sanctions relaxed.175

In 2018, the North Korean leadership stepped more visibly onto the international stage. In February 2018, Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s sister, attended the opening of the Winter Olympics in South Korea, marking the first time since the Korean War that a member of the ruling Kim family went to the south.

Between March 2018 and June 2019, Kim Jong Un met repeatedly with several world leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, then US-President Donald Trump, Vietnamese General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Meetings in 2018 acknowledged Kim Jong Un as an international leader, and he had high hopes for negotiations to continue and to lift the Security Council’s broad economic sanctions. In his new year speech in 2019, Kim Jong Un said events in 2018 left an “indelible imprint on history” and 2019 would be a year “full of hope.176

However, negotiations between Kim Jong Un and Trump at the Hanoi Summit in February and the DMZ Summit in June 2019 did not reach a deal regarding the Security Council economic sanctions and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Without agreements to relax the UN sanctions meant that Kim Jong Un could not ensure significant economic growth or deliver the rising standards of living that he had been promising to North Koreans since he rose to power.

In 2019, the government resumed missile testing, following a hiatus between November 2017 and May 2019. Between May and November 2019, North Korea tested 20 missiles. Around the same time, the government started reversing liberalizing reforms, increasing domestic controls, recentralizing foreign trade and commerce, and calling for domestic resilience.177 Rumors began that the government had scrapped its five-year economic strategy. The government confirmed this in 2020, saying the plan failed to improve the lives of citizens or meet long-term economic goals due to recent “unexpected and inevitable challenges,” possibly referring to the UN sanctions of 2016 and 2017.178

Covid-19 Measures Impact on Imports to North Korea, Informal Trade

The measures that the North Korean government adopted in connection with the Covid-19 pandemic restricted economic activity even more than the 2016 and 2017 UN Security Council sanctions. The government’s new restrictions led to greater control and recentralizing of economic power and the weakening of economic clout of entrepreneurs, state-owned companies, and private actors.

In early February 2020, North Korea closed cross-border train services to China and Russia, except for occasional cargo deliveries.179 Based on assumptions that Covid-19 could spread through surfaces of trade products, authorities only allowed a trickle of government-sanctioned official trade and unofficial trade—known as milmuyeok, literally secret, underground or smuggled trade—and blocked all unsanctioned informal trade, which was heavily linked to the income security of ordinary North Koreans.180

Official trade by land partially restarted in January 2022, with a temporary reduction in May and June 2022 due to the official Covid-19 outbreak across the country.181 Although official trade with China increased through 2022 and 2023, as of September 2023, it remained lower than before the Covid-19 pandemic.182

The Uiju quarantine center started accepting limited train shipments from China in January 2022. Freight cargo steadily piled up at the Uiju center as part of an apparent three-month quarantine, which was still being implemented in August 2022.183 Some products could be quarantined for shorter periods, like a few days or three weeks, depending on government priorities, according to a journalist and a charity worker with contacts inside the country.184 The three-month quarantine for some products appeared to be lifted around March 2023.185 Yet, there were still some goods along the runway in June 2023.186 Informal trade remains almost completely blocked as of January 2024.187

In 2020, media and activists with contacts inside the country documented crackdowns on foreign currency exchanges, increased control over “illegal” market activities, and new attempts to control market prices.188 In August 2020, North Korea announced a new five-year plan (2021-2025) prioritizing a recentralization of the government’s economic power.189

During the pandemic, the North Korean government continued to develop capacities for online criminal activity, including cyber-scamming and hacking, to supplement its revenues. According to the UN Panel of Experts tasked with monitoring implementation of the UN sanctions, North Korean hackers in 2022 stole assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars.190 The National Intelligence Service, South Korea’s intelligence agency, said North Korea focused more on stealing virtual assets since 2017, after the new UN sanctions, with the total value of stolen assets reaching US$1.2 billion over five years, $626 million in 2022 alone.191

Reduced Official Trade During Covid-19 Pandemic

As noted above, Chinese official imports from North Korea had significantly dropped due to China’s adherence to the UN economic sanctions since 2017. They remained essentially flat through the pandemic. Official imports into North Korea, already reduced due to UN economic sanctions, then almost ceased after Covid-19 restrictions were imposed.

There was an 81 percent decrease in the total value of Chinese goods exported to North Korea in 2020 compared with the previous year.192

Until 2019, North Korea had relied on imports for basic necessities, including many food goods, fertilizers for agriculture, and healthcare items including soap and medicines. Covid-19 restrictions greatly reduced the volume of these imports. Imports of some items nearly ceased in 2020 and have remained low for the following two years.193

Imports Comparison Before and After the Covid-19 Pandemic Began

The following chart compares the three years before the pandemic began to the first three pandemic years by examining imports of certain goods.194

Imports of cereals, mainly rice and corn, and fish and seafood nearly ceased in 2020 and 2021. Medicines and other healthcare supplies dropped by 48 percent, pads/tampons/diapers by 51 percent, fertilizers by 82 percent, and soap by 22 percent.195

Decimated Informal Trade

To understand the full picture regarding trade in North Korea, it is necessary to look into informal trade as well as official trade. Former North Korean traders involved in official trade and former government officials stressed to Human Rights Watch that official trade is only focused on the government’s needs and priorities, more specifically that of the leadership and elites in Pyongyang city, the military, government institutions, and profit-making institutions.196

Former North Korean traders said that there was a large but unmeasurable gap between what official trade numbers show and the quantities of products ordinary North Koreans need in their daily lives. This gap, previously narrowed by informal trade, became huge when informal trade and economic activity was almost completely choked off starting in 2020. 197]

The amount of products that entered North Korea informally before 2020 is unknown. Many former traders who left the country after 2014 and former government officials said that those buying products wholesale for distribution or buying from the markets (jangmadang) have had no way of knowing whether products enter the country through official or informal trade.198

Informal trade, which does not go through officially reported customs channels, requires resourcefulness, flexibility, connections, and the ability to pay bribes. In past years, use of bribes was crucial for informal trade, as non-existent or extremely low salaries have meant North Korean government officials—including border guards, police, secret police, and soldiers—depended on bribes to survive.

Informally Traded Products Sold in Markets (Jangmadang) before 2020

North Korean former informal cross-border traders who left North Korea after 2014 and former government officials told Human Rights Watch that before 2020, some informally traded products from China included the following:

• Chinese shelved foods : rice, beans, sausages (galpass in Korean), cooking soybean oil, soy sauce, soybean, eggs boiled in soy sauce, smoked pork feet, cooked chicken feet, dried pollack, instant noodles, MSG, seasoning powder, baking powder, yeast powder, saccharine, wheat flour, sugar, garlic, red chili powder, noodles, buckwheat noodle, udon noodles, candy, candy powder, cookies, chewing gum, individually wrapped bread, ice-cream in the winters, juice, beer, peanuts.
• Chinese fresh products, which would go mostly to Pyongyang city and vicinities, and few to urban areas near the border: eggs, fruits like apples, pears, bananas, tangerines, nectarines, watermelons, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes.
• Fresh vegetables: spinach, mugwort.
• Chinese medicines: glucose, general amino acids, antibiotics (mycine, penicillin, minocin), saline, painkillers (phenobarbital based Chinese medicine Qutongpian, aspirin), liquorice acid, disinfectant, strophanthin.
• Chinese medical supplies: syringe, injection ampoule, intravenous drip bottle, gauze, cotton swaps.
• Chinese clothes: shoes, high-heel shoes, socks, underwear, bras, panties, shirts, t-shirts, pants, coats, sweaters, South Korean clothes without brands, second-hand clothes.
• Chinese home supplies: lighting (light bulb, electric lamps, oil lamps, fluorescent light, candles), rechargeable big batteries, AA batteries, televisions, DVD players, USBs, SD cards, computers, rice cookers, electric wires, home appliances, tools (like hammers, nails, rubber hoses), bowls, plates and cups, kitchen utensils, bottles, 10-liter and 50-liter water containers, toilet paper, cotton for blankets, blanket covers.
• South Korean products: food, cosmetics, rice cookers, Dasida cooking spice, shoes and sandals, clothes.
• Other Chinese products: gasoline, diesel, pesticides, fertilizers, powdered soap detergent, soap bars, shampoo, conditioner and body wash, toothpaste, toothbrush, toothpicks, cosmetics, sanitary pads, gasoline, bicycle and motorbike components, doorknobs, handles, pencils, pens, writing paper, notebooks, paper for newspapers, paper for schoolbooks, electric rechargeable batteries, machinery components, solar panels.207

The former traders said people bringing large amounts of such Chinese products into North Korea through informal channels had enough money to invest in large-scale low-profit economic activities, had good connections that enabled them to distribute goods, and were aware of domestic demand.

The former informal traders said selling North Korean products to China usually yielded the most profit, especially illegal products like methamphetamines, rare earth metals, or antiques. Other popular but less profitable products in China included wood, pine nuts, perilla and sesame seeds, mushrooms, and medicines, as well as scrap metal and even animals including dogs or sheep.208 Traders with money, connections, and information got paid with products that they would sell inside North Korea, but those without them were paid in cash in Chinese renminbi.

Former traders, journalists, activists, and North Koreans in contact with relatives and trading networks said that almost all informal unsanctioned trading activities ended after early 2020. The border closures, new fences and enhanced security, the standing shoot-on-sight order, the strengthened rules and systems and use of executions and harsh punishments to ensure obedience, and the crackdown on corruption, smuggling, and use of Chinese cellphones, essentially made unsanctioned cross-border commercial activity impossible.

Loss of Livelihood

With the collapse of informal trade, barriers to official trade, tightened domestic travel restrictions, and shortened market hours in an economy already strapped by UN economic sanctions, the North Korean people faced decreased access to cash, fewer products available to buy or sell in the markets, reduced economic opportunities, and a dramatic decrease in market activity.209

“The prolonged border closures and restrictions on movement in-country have decimated the market activity that has become essential for the general population to access basic necessities,” said Tomas Ojea-Quintana, then special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK in March 2022.210

In February 2023, Elizabeth Salmon, Ojea-Quintana's successor as special rapporteur, raised concerns over the disproportionate impact of the restrictions on women and girls, the declining economic participation for women due to Covid-19 restrictions, and the effect on families’ livelihoods since women in North Korea are mostly the main breadwinners.211 She also flagged a possible increase in domestic violence that could be linked to the pandemic and the resulting economic pressures.212

Two North Koreans living in South Korea in contact with relatives in North Korea, two reporters, and a missionary with contacts inside North Korea said that starting in early 2020, authorities began cracking down on forbidden economic activities that until then had been ignored by the authorities, like unregistered businesses or illegal hires.213 Banned economic activities included:

• Small convenience stores operated out of homes, selling non-perishable daily necessities like toothbrushes, toothpaste, salt, sugar, cooking oil, packaged foods, or batteries;
• Small restaurants operated out of private homes;
• Private individuals hiring other private individuals to work for a day or project fee, as cooks, porters, drivers, cleaners, shop workers, and so on.

Jiro Ishimaru, director at Asia Press, a media outlet with contacts inside North Korea, said that:

The key problem is not lack of food inside the country, the biggest problem is that people are not able to make money. They have no income, so they can’t buy food, even if it is available in the markets. Since early 2020, authorities are cracking down on people who hire others. Traders can make bread at home and sell it at the market, but cannot hire people to make the bread or sell it, private restaurants at home are now [as of July 2023] forbidden, traders can’t hire porters to push handcarts or carry bags…. [T]his has affected the most at-risk groups. In 2021, there were reports of people with disabilities and older people dying of starvation... after over three years of extreme difficulties, in April and May, there was a spike in reports of whole families and ordinary people dying of starvation in urban areas near the northern border.214

Accounts of relatives’ lives in North Korea during Covid-19 Pandemic

Many North Koreans living in South Korea said that they were worried they did not know what their relatives in North Korea were doing to make a living due to the Covid-19 related restrictions. Young Mi, the former herbal medicine trader, said:

My [relative] traded medicinal herbs, like I did... she didn’t have contact with Chinese traders, but I and my family did… we used to get them in the mountains or buy them... and sell them to traders [who sold them to China] … but all that is blocked now.215

These and other North Koreans living in South Korea and former traders who left North Korea between 2014 and 2019 said that they worried about how ordinary people in northern border areas could survive with informal trade blocked since large portions of the population depend on informal or unregulated trade.216 P. Yeon Hwa, a former trader from North Hamgyong province who had been in contact with relatives in North Korea, said:

My [relative] catches squid and crabs in the winter. He can eat and live off that, but in North Korea all squid used to be informally sold to China. But that’s all blocked [because of the sanctions and the Covid-19 pandemic], so I don’t know how his situation must be like. When the smuggling to China was blocked, they had to sell all the squid for domestic consumption. Domestic consumption is obviously cheaper. Because the value was lower, even if he caught a lot of squid, it became hard to survive. … With the border blockade, many jobs disappeared, so it was harder for people to survive, informal trade was important for distribution, which stop, which also reduced jobs.217

Myung Suk, a former trader from Ryanggang province, said:

Smuggling is dangerous and people put their lives at risk… but how can people in Hyesan city survive if smuggling gets blocked? ... There we say that one smuggler feeds 11 people... If smuggling stops, all stops for people who made money [connected to smuggling] ... If smuggling stops, the authorities who got our money also cannot… They all made money from the smuggled goods… If smuggling stops all market activity stops.218

Former traders involved in informal trade who left North Korea between 2014 and 2019 described the different people possibly connected with informal and official trade:

• Smugglers (milsugun)
• Chinese traders selling or buying products
• Government officials including border guards, military, police (anjeonwon) or secret police (bowiwon) officers
• Porters who carry products to smugglers’ homes from the border (jimkun in Korean)
• Carriers (nareugae in Korean) who take products from smugglers’ homes to wholesalers
• Drivers who move products by truck
• Wholesaler (domejang in Korean)
• Sellers in market stores in official markets (jangmadang)
• Peddlers (toari jangsakun in Korean) who buy wholesale products and sell products in the streets or door-to-door in different provinces
• Medium-large scale traders distributing to other provinces (dalligi, a runner)
• Truck drivers who distribute products countrywide (seobicha, literally “service cars”)
• Small home-based convenience store operators (maedae, literally counter or stand).219

K. Yong Il, a former trader in his 40s who left North Korea in the late 2010s, recalled earlier crackdowns on informal trade and said he did not want to imagine how life was now in North Korea.220 He said:

Smuggling became very hard under Kim Jong Un’s rule. Informal trade became vibrant during Kim Jong Il’s time. Since 2013 and 2014, [smuggling] became difficult. To get products from China [through informal trade], we needed the support of soldiers covering the border [by paying them bribes to look the other way], but [many] border guards could not [accept bribes] anymore [because of the crack downs on corruption]… the authorities started ideological education for the soldiers… and even if we tried, the soldiers rejected the attempts… at the time, people who tried to do smuggling got caught and were executed. Then prices of products went up… when prices increased, those who used to eat white rice, ate rice mixed with corn… those who used to eat rice mixed with corn, ate just corn. Prices of corn went up. Then people made noodles with corn powder, then potato prices increased. Prices of all products rose. People went hungry. Aside from being hungry, many people didn’t have money to spend, so they could not buy clothes or necessities. You could easily see that on the streets. More people who stopped doing laundry, with raggedy clothes, and dirty hair…. I saw that in 2013 and 2014. The situation must be unimaginably worse by now.221

C. Set Byul, a former informal trader from Ryanggang province who left North Korea in the late 2010s, said:

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say people in Hyesan city would die if smuggling was blocked. Chinese products are essential for the survival of North Korean people. Domestic products are not enough to cover the country’s needs.... Almost everybody in Hyesan city lives off in connection with smuggling or official trade... I cannot think about it.222

IV. Impacts on Availability of Food and Health Care

North Korea’s domestic production of food and essential items is inadequate for the country’s population, and in previous years the country depended on exports from China for almost all medicines, medical supplies, and basic necessities.

Since mid-2020 until late 2022 and mid-2023, according to North Korean former traders and activists, journalists, and escaped North Koreans in contact with relatives in North Korea, prices of food and products have risen substantially, medicines were difficult to find, and many necessities, like soap, toothpaste, underwear and batteries, were in short supply.223 Many North Korean also have less income, because economic activity has been so severely curtailed.

Following Kim Jong Un’s “victory” declaration over Covid-19 in August 2022, North Korea’s official trade expanded through 2022 and 2023, but as of September 2023 it remained lower than before the Covid-19 pandemic.224 New imports may have helped alleviate some food and medicine shortages but cannot compensate for the larger losses since 2020.

Food Security

North Koreans living in South Korea in contact with relatives inside the country said that since the start of the pandemic, the biggest worries were food and medicine.225 K. Ha Na, who spoke with a relative in North Korea in November 2022, said:

My [relative] said now people are more worried of starving to death than of dying of Covid-19. They are all worried of dying from simple diseases. … Because all trade is blocked since the Covid-19 pandemic, prices have gone up a lot... cold medicines has gone up to 30 times… only people with a lot money can buy.226

K. Yun Mi, a former trader in her 30s from Ryanggang province who left in 2013 and is in contact with relatives in the country, said:

My [relative] said [in March 2022] the biggest concern is eating and living. … Smuggling and farming are hard to do, prices are high, they are all worried about food. … We are worried people may starve… the [northern] border doesn’t have a lot of flat land, just small areas that are farmable… it must be difficult to survive just with that.227

North Korean escapees and media reports raised concerns over sharp spikes in food prices compared to before the pandemic.228 In Ryanggang province, Yun Mi heard that a 5-liter bottle of cooking oil cost 50 to 100 RMB (around US$7 to US$14) in 2019, but in February 2022 it was 500 RMB (US$70). In 2019, a 20 kilogram bag of rice cost 100 RMB (US$14), and in 2022, it was 300 RMB (US$41).229 She explained her family used to send around 4,000 to 5,ooo RMB (US$560 to 700) whenever they sent money, but her relative said that was not enough and they had barely any way to make money.

Yeon Hwa, the former trader from North Hamgyong province who left North Korea in late 2010s, said:

[In May 2021] my [relative in North Korea] said prices had gone up a lot. A bottle of cooking oil that used to cost 50 RMB [US$7] in 2018… had gone up 10 times to 500 RMB [US$70]. … The border with China is blocked, so all Chinese products [necessities] are not going into the country… People can’t make money. … He said it was very hard for people to eat and live.230

Media reports, citing sources in North Korea, indicate that in 2021 even some of the country’s elites, prioritized by the government for food deliveries, were suffering food insecurity. There were reports of soldiers in the northern border in Chagang province, an area with a big military presence and prioritized by the government, going hungr in April 2021, with some units in North Hamgyong province sending more financially securesoldiers home to bring back food for their units in June 2021.231 Some ordinary Pyongyang residents reportedly stopped receiving government rations in mid-April 2021, amid major price hikes for fuel and foods, even in Pyongyang city where the central government prioritizes price stability and product availability.232

Food insecurity in North Korea is typically highest from March to July, the lean months of spring and early summer, known as the “barley hump,” after the autumn food harvest has been consumed and before the first potato, rice and maize harvest in July and August. In March 2022, media with contacts inside the country reported people from poor households starving to death in the outskirts of Sinuiju city, North Pyongan province; growing numbers of families going hungry due to food shortages in Ryanggang province; and one family starving to death and another one dying by suicide facing starvation in Hoeryong city, North Hamgyong province.233

There were also reports of homeless or older people dying during cold spells in North Hamgyong province in January 2023.234 The food situation appears to have deteriorated in certain areas since April 2023. Media have reported:

• Four people extremely weakened from hunger who died from preexisting conditions in Musan county, North Hamgyong province, in April 2023;
• Weakened miners unable to work in Musan county, North Hamgyong province, in April and May 2023;
• An increased number of beggars going to farming areas searching for food in North Hamgyong province in May 2023;
• Four people who died of prolonged malnutrition in Hyesan city, Ryanggang province in May 2023;
• Only 20 percent of a People’s Unit (inminban) in Hyesan city, Ryanggang province, in May 2023, forced to participate in mobilizations for collective farming were strong enough to participate, because people were too weak to engage in labor.235

The government has publicly acknowledged the challenges it faces in ensuring availability of adequate food. In April 2021, Kim Jong Un called on the country to “wage another more difficult ‘Arduous March’” (referring to the massive famine of the 1990s), followed by warnings of the situation “getting tense” in June 2021.236 In a letter in January 2022, Kim Jong Un spoke to farmers about the country’s “critical food problems.”237

However, none of the public acknowledgments addressed how to deal with the food shortages. They said North Korea would maintain its “perfect anti-epidemic state” and called for farmers to show loyalty, patriotism and creative wisdom, “increase production” in the fields, stop “selling state-provided farm supplies on the black market,” and tackle “deep-rooted” anti-socialist behavior.238

Media have repeatedly reported that central government authorities have ordered local government officials, party officials, and heads of People’s Units (inminban) to take steps to ensure nobody dies of starvation within their districts, warning of severe punishments for those who fail.239 For example, following the report of a family dying of starvation and another committing suicide due to prolonged hunger in “Hoeryong city in March 2022, central government authorities reportedly convened a meeting and admonished local officials, organizations, and companies for failing to prevent the deaths.240 Party officials noted that more than 30 percent of the people were facing extremely dire conditions and that local officials should “be on the lookout for people not attending work or school due to starvation and to write up daily reports on such cases.” Local party officials then reportedly blamed the deaths on “irresponsible officials,” who failed to act even though they knew people “could not go outside because they had nothing to eat.”241

In April 2023, several companies in Hyesan city, Ryanggnag province, reportedly distributed some military rations to members of the public, though only three to five kilograms per person. They also reduced penalties on people not showing up to work in May because of the food situation.242 In May 2023, there was a report of party organizations ordering measures to help the poor in Musan county, North Hamgyong province, but they did not have food to distribute.243

Despite the acknowledged economic difficulties in North Korea, in February 2023 the North Korean state newspaper Rodong Sinmun likened foreign aid to “poisoned candy” and stressed the need for self-reliance.244

Impacts of Chronic Food Insecurity

Chronic food insecurity, early childhood malnutrition, and undernutrition have been constant concerns in North Korea, a country classified as lacking general access to food and in need of external food aid by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) since the mid-late 2000s.245 According to UNICEF’s most recently available data, from December 2017, when Kim Jong Un’s North Korea was at a peak of economic growth, an estimated 10 million people out of the official population of 25 million experienced food insecurity, while 200,000 children were acutely malnourished. One in three children under 5, and almost half of the children between 12 and 23 months, were anemic.246

Since 2017 until 2021, the UN has been consistently estimating that over 10 million people, more than 41 percent of the country’s official population of 25 million, have been food insecure. 247 In July 2023, the UN published a report that estimated food insecurity increased to 46 percent of the population between 2020 and 2022.248

The US Department of Agriculture’s International Food Security Assessment estimated in September 2022 that 17.8 million North Koreans, or 69 percent of the population, were food insecure, a rise from estimates of 15.3 million North Koreans, or 60 percent of the population, in August 2020.249

According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), based on its most recently available survey from 2017, one in three children aged 6 months to 23 months received the minimum acceptable diet. This contributed to one in five children suffering from stunting (chronic malnutrition) and 5 percent being severely stunted.250 Malnutrition remained a leading cause of maternal and child mortality.251

One underlying cause of the country’s chronic food insecurity is the government’s mismanagement and prioritization of military and weapons development, and its inadequate production of food domestically.

This regular domestic food deficit is influenced by North Korea’s mountainous terrain, with only 17 percent of the land arable, and recurrent destruction from natural disasters and the impacts of climate change. But it also shows lack of investment to improve outdated and deteriorating infrastructure relevant to food production, such as irrigation and drainage facilities, and aging machinery; failure to address capacity gaps in technology and skills to increase crop yields; and lack of agricultural inputs, like quality seeds and fertilizer.252

Domestic food production between 2011 and 2017 steadily grew, reaching 5.9 million tons of grain in 2016 and 5.4 million tons in 2017, according to the UN and North Korean government data.253 In 2018, food production reportedly dropped to 4.9 million tons because of floods and droughts, but the North Korean government reported a record high 6.6 million tons of grain in 2019, which some experts considered excessively optimistic.254 The FAO has not been able to update figures since 2020, and the World Food Program (WFP) has not been able to deliver food inside the country since March 2021, when the last UN workers left the country.255

The South Korean Rural Development Administration estimates grain production of 4.4 million tons in 2020, 4.69 million tons in 2021, and 4.51 million tons in 2022 based on a “comprehensive analysis of crop harvesting data” and satellite imagery.256 Reportedly, the harvest in 2022 was negatively affected by the second-worst drought in North Korea since 1981 in April and May 2022, severe floods in July and August 2022, and lack of agricultural machinery and mechanical components, and fertilizers, and disruptions to farming caused by government policies during the Covid-19 pandemic.257

According to the UN, North Korea needs an estimated minimum of 6-6.5 million tons of grain per year to meet basic food requirements.258 Extrapolating from the above figures, and accounting for the fact that these figures are conservative and bare minimums, North Korea has almost always had a significant shortfall in domestic production, which is far greater in years of severe droughts.

The Food Security Information Network’s Global Report on Food Crises 2023 excluded North Korea from its list of countries facing a food crisis because of lack of data, but emphasized the food situation may be worsening.259

Lack of Access to Health Care

The DPRK Socialist Constitution and the country’s Public Health Law provide for free medical care to all citizens.260 In reality, medical supplies and medication are unavailable to most North Koreans and only those who can afford to purchase them on the private market.261

After the Korean War (1950-1953), the North Korean government focused on building a self-reliant healthcare system. But North Korea’s economic crisis of the 1990s, its focus on national security at the expense of paying salaries, providing food and necessities, and supporting public services under its communist system, contributed to a severe deterioration of the healthcare system.

This led the North Korean government to start cooperating with international organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), and UNICEF. In 1997, WHO established an Emergency and Humanitarian Action office to deal with North Korea’s deteriorating health and humanitarian situation, and a full country office in Pyongyang city in 2001, which in early 2023 included WHO, the WFP, FAO, UNICEF, UNFPA, and UN Development Program (UNDP).262

Among the grave health problems North Korea faces is one of the highest number of incidences of tuberculosis in the region, with undernourishment being its major cause, maintaining or reducing malaria incidence, and maintaining immunizations.263

Unlike most low-income countries, where communicable diseases, such as infections and mosquito-borne illnesses, comprise a large portion of the disease burden, in North Korea the leading causes of death by 2017 were non-communicable diseases such as stroke, ischemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and injuries.264

In 2017, the country had a high ratio of physicians to population, estimated at 36.71 per 10,000, higher than countries such as South Korea with 25.08, China with 23.86 or the US with 35.55 in 2020.265 It also has big a network of 1,780 hospitals at the central, provincial (do) and county (gun) level, supplemented by 6,263 clinics at the village (li) level, according to WHO.266

But its main challenges remained, including poor infrastructure, inaccessible health services for rural communities, lack of adequate working equipment, and shortage of medicines and electricity.267

Still, according to the UN, in 2017:

• 8.4 million people, around 33 percent of the population, were estimated to have limited access to health services, including 50 percent of people in rural areas;
• Over 9.75 million people did not have access to safely managed drinking water;
• 83 percent of households did not use any water treatment method;
• 37 percent of people had contaminants in their drinking water;
• Half of all schools and health facilities lacked adequate water and sanitation facilities.268

A former North Korean doctor and former nurses who left North Korea after 2014 said most local clinics were only capable of diagnosing basic diseases and setting broken bones, and had barely any working tools, supplies, medicine, or electricity.269 They said medical workers relied on market activity and what their patients gave them to eat to survive.

C. Na Young, a former nurse from South Hamgyong province who left North Korea in 2017, used to trade with herbal medicines and visited patients’ homes for a fee. “I did not get any money from the hospital, so I had to make my own money to survive,” said Na Young. “Theoretically I was supposed to get a salary, and the hospital was supposed to give medicines for free, but that was not possible. Patients had to buy their own medicines.”270

B. Sol Hee, another former nurse who left North Korea in 2017, said:

There are many hospitals and doctors, and the law says the government provides free medical services. But we didn’t get any salary, there was only electricity limited times of the year, and there were only medicines for the very high-ranking officials. Everybody else had to buy everything that is available there. The hospitals in North Korea are not like the ones here [in South Korea].271

These former North Korean medical practitioners and several other North Koreans who received surgical medical procedures in North Korea between 2016 and 2018 said there was no national emergency number (like 119 in South Korea or 911 in the US) and most patients seeking emergency medical care must arrange their own transportation.272 They also had to buy their own medical supplies and medicines, provide fees or meals for doctors and nursing staff, and often provide electricity to be used for procedures that would need it, including surgeries.

North Koreans who left the country between 2014 and 2019 and former government officials said that most North Koreans at the time bought medicines from private homes that sold medicines.273 These medicine sellers usually had some medical background or connections to hospitals and doctors. Starting in the mid-late 2000s, official state-sanctioned pharmacies appeared, but prices were more expensive and ordinary North Koreans rarely went there.

Humanitarian Impact of the UN Security Council Sanctions

North Korea’s humanitarian aid and health sectors have also been negatively affected by enforcement of newer UN Security Council sanctions. While the Security Council in August 2018 issued guidelines on exemptions to deliver humanitarian assistance to North Korea, the sanctions continued to impact humanitarian efforts, although other factors, including decisions by North Korea, remained the primary causes of underlying needs.281

In March 2019 and in several subsequent reports, the UN Panel of Experts tasked with monitoring implementation of the Security Council’s DPRK sectorial security sanctions, recommended that the UN Secretariat assess the humanitarian impact of the sanctions, noting that sanctions implementation had undermined “international humanitarian agencies working to address chronic humanitarian needs in the country.”282

In subsequent reports to the Security Council since the Covid-19 pandemic, the Panel of Experts noted that the humanitarian situation in North Korea had worsened. They described the deteriorating situation as the result of a combination of several factors, including sanctions. In a report in September 2023, it outlined factors in “descending order” to include “the country’s socioeconomic policies prioritizing weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the resulting border closure, natural disasters, the low prioritization that the country accords to humanitarian aid, as well as the unintended effects of sanctions.”283

In reports in 2020-2023, the panel repeatedly noted that there was “little doubt” that sanctions and their implementation, in addition to other factors, had “unintentionally affected the humanitarian situation and some aspects of aid operations,” thereby “exacerbating the problems caused by the country’s economic policies.”284

Through the Covid-19 pandemic, even as they were dealing with other challenges, humanitarian organizations and UN agencies continued to face operational difficulties related to sanctions implementation, including challenges related to sanctions exemption procedures at the UN and member state level (even after the UN Security Council sanctions committee issued the 2018 exemptions guidelines) among other challenges. The perception of high risk of fines from member states (in particular the US) and reputational damage for engaging in any financial or economic activity related to North Korea have continued to dissuade banks from managing transactions involving North Korea. As a result, banks continue to refuse to process transactions for humanitarian aid organizations.285

After the new sanctions were put in place in 2016-2017, the UN country team said that the logistics for humanitarian actors became increasingly complex, costly, and time consuming, resulting in fewer available supplies for those in need, when they were needed most.286 All metal items were banned, including sterilizers for medical use, ambulances, medical appliances, X-ray machines, medical, surgical, dental, or veterinary furniture like operating tables, hospital beds, machinery for filtering or purifying water, and metal tubes, pipes, and pipe fittings.287

Tomas Ojea Quintana, former special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, had repeatedly raised concerns since 2017 about the Security Council sanctions’ possible detrimental impact on the population and vital economic sectors. He asked for a comprehensive assessment of its unintended negative impact on human rights— particularly economic, social, and cultural rights—and revision of sanction resolutions to ensure they did not affect ordinary people’s livelihoods.288

Medicine and Immunization Shortages due to Covid-19 Related Measures

The restart of official trade by rail in 2022 may have alleviated some of the reported medicine shortages, but international aid workers—who play a critical role in addressing some of North Korea’s biggest health burdens, including tuberculosis and malaria, and a leading role in immunizations—have not had access to the country since March 2021, as of January 2024.

The WHO estimated that in 2022, 134,000 people in North Korea had tuberculosis, and, without treatment, could infect another 1,340,000 to 2,010,000 people per year.289 Left untreated, tuberculosis can kill about half of those who contract it within five years and cause significant illness in others.290

As North Korea continued to maintain strict border controls banning outsiders from entering, in April 2023 the UN listed North Korea among 20 countries as priority targets of a new campaign to make up for important vaccinations missed since 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.291 In April 2023, a report from UNICEF said that North Korea had the highest percentage of “zero-dose” children in the world, with nearly 60 percent of North Korean children under the age of one having received no vaccines in 2021.292

In May 2022, as North Korea struggled with its first acknowledged Covid-19 surge in the country, police issued a decree threatening severe punishment, including the death penalty, for those “selling or stealing emergency medicines and raw materials on the black market” or producing or selling counterfeit or faulty medicines.293 In August 2022, the government enacted three laws related to securing medical supplies: the Law on Medicines, Law against Violations of Procedures, and Law on Self-Defense Security.294 Details regarding the laws are not available as of January 2023.

In 2021, North Korea rejected several offers to provide millions of doses of vaccines, including offers from COVAX, South Korea, and Russia, according to COVAX.295 In February 2022, COVAX scaled back North Korea’s Covid-19 vaccine allotment from 8.11 million in 2021 to 1.54 million, as North Korea failed to arrange any shipments.296 In August 2022, Gavi said it no longer had vaccines allocated for North Korea, but they could be reallocated if North Korea started an immunization program and met technical requirements.297

A month after Kim Jong Un declared “victory” over the Covid-19 pandemic in April 2022, Kim announced that North Korea would officially begin distributing Covid-19 vaccines. However, it was unclear whether he referred to vaccines that had received Emergency Use Authorization from the WHO.298 In June 2022, Gavi, the vaccine alliance, reported that North Korea had accepted an offer of vaccines from China.299

Media reported that in August 2022 authorities started administering Covid-19 vaccines in places with many suspected cases, such as Sinuiju city, North Pyongan province, Pyongyang city, and Nampo special city in September 2022.300 There was also a report of authorities in October 2022 administering two doses of the vaccine to people aged 17 to 65 in Hoeryong city, North Hamgyong province, in the Rason special city, and in Hyesan city, Ryanggang province, prioritizing people living in Pyongyang city and in regions bordering China.301 Authorities reportedly ensured that all participants of the 9^th Congress of the Korean Children’s Union held in December 2022 received vaccinations and PCR tests ahead of the event.302 It is unclear whether the administered vaccines were those that had received the WHO’s emergency use authorization.

Ten North Korean escapes in contact with relatives in North Korea between early 2021 and November 2022 said their relatives had no access to Covid-19 vaccines or tests.303 Two journalists and an activist with contacts in the country said that by June 2023 some North Koreans had received several rounds of unspecified Covid-19 vaccines across the country, with the top leadership and some at-risk groups receiving up to three rounds of inoculations.304

VII. Recommendations

To the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea:

General Measures

• Review all Covid-19 related measures, ensure they are aligned with scientific data and international law, lift all excessive and unnecessary measures, and ensure the ones remaining are necessary, proportionate, non-discriminatory, time-bound, and transparent.
• Reopen North Korea’s borders and allow for the movement of people consistent with international human rights law, as well as for trade and economic activity.
• Consistent with international human rights law, urgently invest the maximum available resources, including through international cooperation, to ensure that the basic needs of the population for food and medical care are met, prioritizing the most marginalized communities.

Cooperation with the United Nations and International Agencies

• Allow UN and other international organizations access to North Korea to provide humanitarian and development assistance without unnecessary regulations.
• Work with international health officials to ensure North Koreans are provided with WHO-authorized Covid-19 vaccinations.
• Accept deliveries of Covid-19 vaccines from the Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility and ensure they are distributed to the population in a timely and effective manner, giving priority to those at the greatest risk.
• Cooperate with relevant UN human rights mechanisms, including the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and other relevant thematic rapporteurs and mechanisms, notably the special rapporteurs on the right to food, freedom of opinion and expression, health, adequate housing, development, and on extreme poverty and human rights.
• Invite and grant access to UN human rights monitors to visit North Korea and provide technical assistance, including on border control measures and adequate and proportional health responses.

Health, Humanitarian Aid, and Social Protection

• Facilitate imports of essential food, goods, and medicine, as well as travel and movement of food and goods within North Korea, by relaxing overbroad restrictions on border transit, internal movement within the country, and commercial activities.
• Accept international offers of food and medical assistance, including WHO-authorized Covid-19 vaccines. Ensure regular and unrestricted access to humanitarian aid by all those at risk. Utilize systems of distribution adopting principles of universal social protection.
• Collect, publicize, and circulate scientific, accessible, and comprehensive health related information, including on Covid-19, and regular data on people’s economic well-being, including statistics on food insecurity, in line with internationally agreed standards.

Freedom of Movement, Economic Activities

• Relax excessive requirements for travel permits within the country.
• Recognize the right of citizens to leave, enter, and return to North Korea, both in law and in practice, and ensure that those who are forcibly returned are not subjected to punishment upon repatriation.
• Act to ensure that all workers are paid a living wage as part of the government’s duty to provide for the right of everyone to a decent standard of living, including adequate food, clothing, and housing.

Thought and Expression

• Ensure the rights to freedom of thought and expression.
• Repeal the Reactionary Thought and Culture Rejection Law, the Youth Education Guarantee Law, and the Pyongyang Standard Language Protection Act, and decriminalize actions that amount to the exercise of freedom of speech.

To UN Member States involved in current or previous diplomatic dialogues with North Korea:

• Re-engage in diplomatic efforts, including offers of direct talks with North Korea, to encourage the government to scale back or repeal excessive and unnecessary Covid-19 related measures implemented since 2020, especially those imposed on its northern border, including the standing shoot-on-sight order, and threats of capital punishment for violating emergency quarantine rules, and allow emergency health and humanitarian assistance with international monitoring.
• Encourage the North Korean government to engage with and allow access into North Korea by UN agencies and mechanisms, including the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea and other UN Human Rights Council mechanisms, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Refugee Agency, and other UN agencies.

To UN Member States:

• Support a new resolution on North Korea at the UN Human Rights Council, as outlined below, mandating a report that provides an update on the most serious human rights violations in North Korea since the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report.
• Address harmful humanitarian impacts and other problematic consequences of international sanctions:
• Support a review of UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea to evaluate impacts on human rights and delivery of humanitarian aid and other forms of assistance.
• Reaffirm publicly that enforcement of UN sanctions should not be permitted to impact humanitarian aid services or delivery of non-sanctioned economic activity with North Korea.
• Publicly clarify to financial and commercial institutions that banks or companies will not face legal or financial risk by engaging in genuinely humanitarian transactions, such as services involving humanitarian aid and operations in North Korea, or trade and transport of food, medical supplies, or other non-sanctioned goods and services and clarify that everything not explicitly banned by the UN sanctions should be allowed.
• Support the creation of an UN-authorized humanitarian “banking channel” for international financial transactions involving international organizations, humanitarian actors, and others involved in humanitarian operations or other non-sanctioned activity in North Korea.
• Integrate human rights explicitly or implicitly into all diplomatic exchanges with North Korea.
• Increase support, including sustainable and diverse funding sources, for civil society organizations working to promote human rights in North Korea.
• Engage with civil society organizations assisting victims of abuses, their families, and others seeking redress and accountability for rights violations, developing a sustainable peace process, and obtaining access to uncensored information.
• Support and ensure adequate resources for the work of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on criminal accountability in the DPRK, in accordance with its mandate from the Human Rights Council to compile an evidence repository and have legal accountability experts assess all information and testimonies, with a view to developing strategies to be used in any future accountability process.

To UN Human Rights Bodies:

• The UN Human Rights Council should adopt a resolution that requests the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare a comprehensive report, with the support of a senior expert, that provides an update on the most serious human rights violations in North Korea since the landmark 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report, including the severe impacts on human rights resulting from the North Korean government’s prolonged border closures, travel restrictions, and increasing international isolation.
• The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights should prioritize its work on criminal accountability in the DPRK, in accordance with its mandate from the Human Rights Council to compile an evidence repository and have legal accountability experts assess all information and testimonies, with a view to developing strategies to be used in any future accountability process.

To the UN Security Council, including the 1718 Sanctions Committee:

• Follow the recommendations of the Panel of Experts regarding the worsening humanitarian conditions in North Korea that have been caused by various factors, including new border restrictions imposed by North Korea and China since 2017, as well as negative humanitarian impacts from the Security Council sanctions.
• Make full use of the humanitarian carveout created for UN sanctions regimes in Resolution 2664 (2022) for transactions related to humanitarian assistance for North Korea.
• Urge North Korea and China to relax overbroad border and travel restrictions that are impacting trade of food and essential medical supplies between the two countries.
• While considering recommendations for mitigating negative humanitarian impacts of sanctions, focus on specific recommendations to Security Council member states detailing steps they can take to:
• Provide timely responses to requests from financial institutions, humanitarian agencies, and commercial actors regarding the operations and financial transactions that are allowed involving entities in North Korea;
• Clarify publicly that food and medical supplies for import to North Korea are not prohibited by the Security Council sanctions; publicly outline examples of permitted goods;
• Support and facilitate the urgent creation of a formal humanitarian “banking channel” for international financial transactions involving UN agencies, humanitarian actors, and others involved in humanitarian operations, and other permitted commercial activity in North Korea.
• Consult, as recommended in reports by the Panel of Experts, civil society and human rights groups, and aid and development agencies on these recommendations and other human rights issues. Future consultations should include discussions of both humanitarian consequences of sanctions and links between human rights abuses and North Korea’s weapons development programs.
• Invite to future debates on weapons proliferation, sanctions, or human rights issues in North Korea, relevant UN agencies and civil society groups to provide information on the linkage between human rights abuses and the government’s weapons development programs.

To the Republic of Korea (South Korea):

• Spearhead international efforts to support and better finance civil society groups working on North Korea human rights issues.
• Improve and update the methodology and quality of evidence gathering at the Ministry of Unification’s North Korean Human Rights Records Center, so materials held by the North Korea Human Rights Archive at the Ministry of Justice can support potential future criminal prosecutions.

To the People’s Republic of China:

• Tailor border control measures with North Korea to mitigate the negative humanitarian impacts of UN sanctions enforcement by making it easier for traders to engage in non-sanctioned cross-border trade of essential goods and food, including by streamlining paperwork, creating and widely publicizing a list of generally acceptable products to support for aid and essential commercial trade in North Korea, as well as a list of commonly needed products for aid projects.
• Strictly apply the principle of non-refoulement and do not forcibly return North Koreans to North Korea. Allow North Korean escapees passage to safe third countries to claim protection.

To the United States:

• Take active steps to counteract sanctions “overcompliance” by financial institutions and other actors, blocking legitimate and non-sanctioned transactions and humanitarian operations. Publicly clarify to commercial institutions worldwide that banks or companies will face no legal or financial risks in supporting humanitarian operations or exporting or financing exempted or unsanctioned and legitimate goods, foods, or necessities to North Korea.
• Promote UN member state-sponsored trainings for organizations, banks, and vendors to promote better understanding of the humanitarian and commercial exemptions to UN sanctions on North Korea, including “general licenses” issued by the US Treasury Department, to mitigate barriers to humanitarian aid and essential commercial activities.

Acknowledgments

This report was written and primarily researched by Lina Yoon, senior Korea researcher in the Asia Division at Human Rights Watch. Hayoung Cho, a consultant, contributed to the research and interviews and Park Daehyeon and his team at Woorion provided support with interviews. Jacob Bogle, a consultant, and Carolina Jordá Álvarez and Léo Martine, senior geospatial analysts, conducted geospatial analysis, Brian Root, senior quantitative analyst, conducted statistical data analysis, and Devon Lum, research assistant at the Digital Investigations Lab conducted open-source research.

The report was edited by Danielle Haas, senior editor in Program, and John Sifton, Asia advocacy director. Joe Saunders, deputy program director, and James Ross, legal and policy director, provided programmatic and legal reviews. Specialist reviews were provided by Julia Bleckner, senior health researcher in the Global Health Initiative, Lena Simet, senior researcher and advocate on poverty and inequality in the Economic Justice and Rights Division, Sam Dubberley, managing director of the Digital Investigations Lab, and Maya Wang, interim China director and associate director at the Asia Division. Expert reviews were also provided by Peter Ward, research fellow at the Sejong Institute, and Fyodor Tertitskiy, leading researcher at Kookmin University. Robbie Newton, senior coordinator in the Asia Division, provided editorial and production assistance. Judy Joo Hui Kwon, Asia deputy media director, provided invaluable assistance with strategy and outreach. John Emerson, a consultant, produced the graphics. The report was prepared for publication by Travis Carr, publications officer, Fitzroy Hepkins, senior administrative manager, and Jose Martinez, administrative officer.

We are particularly indebted to Kwon Eun-kyoung, director at Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, Stephen Kim, underground missionary, Lee Sang-yong, research director at Daily NK, and Jiro Ishimaru, director at Asia Press who have been crucial thought partners in the project. We are very grateful to the local NGOs, journalists, and academics supportive of our research–including Jong Hyeon Mu, board member at Unification Media Group; Cho Chung Hui, researcher at Good Farmers Research Institute; Kim Seokhyang, North Koreans studies professor at Ewha Womans University; Joanna Hosaniak, deputy director general at Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights; Yoon Yeo-sang, former director at the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights; Ahn Myung Chul, director at NK Watch; Kim Seung Chul, director at North Korea Reform Radio; and Kim Soo-Am, emeritus research fellow at KINU.

Above all, we express our sincere gratitude to all the North Korean women and men who shared their stories with us, and many others who could not be named for security reasons. We hope that this report will contribute to shedding a light on the devasting consequences for the North Korean people of the government’s intensifying repression and worsening isolation from 2018 until late 2023, and to bringing to justice those responsible for these abuses.

While Human Rights Watch benefitted from the expertise of many organizations and experts in preparing this report, Human Rights Watch is solely responsible for its contents. None of the findings, assessments, or conclusions of the report should be attributed to any of the organizations listed here.

Appendix: A History of North Korea’s Systems of Repression and Control

Underlying System

North Korea’s government is operated under a system created in 1945 by the Soviet Union and the late Supreme Leader Kim Il Sung, founder of the country and grandfather of the current leader. All powers of the state, party, and military are controlled by one unchallengeable leader, powers that in practice pass onto his chosen male heir upon his death.305

The judiciary and legal system operate to protect the leadership and its political system, severely limiting fundamental rights and freedoms and providing harsh punishment when challenges to these arise.306

Since about 1957, North Korea has been categorizing its adult population into distinct strata based on a combination of their social standing and familial backgrounds. Essential services, including job opportunities, quality and higher education, and places of residence are allocated depending on a socio-political classification system referred to in English as songbun (literally “ingredient,” “component,” or “element”) system. The government uses the songbun system to distinguish, often on a discriminatory basis, among North Korean citizens based on how hard they work at school, in their jobs, or in society more generally, and most importantly their perceived political loyalty and that of their parents and ancestors to the Kim family.307

For decades, this system divided society into three groups: “loyal,” “wavering,” or “hostile” classes.308 The songbun system changed many times, and a revised version emerged in the early 2000s, consisting of five strata (kunjung): "special" (tuksu), "nucleus" (haeksim), “basic" (gibon), "wavering" (dongyo) and "hostile" (choktae) groups. The "special" group is a rare and small category comprising descendants of Kim Il Sung's Manchurian resistance comrades, making "nucleus" the de facto highest stratum. Considered to be most loyal, those in these groups receive special treatment.309 Those at the bottom are the “hostile” classes.310 The “basic” and “wavering” occupy the middle ground.311

The precise percentage of individuals allocated to each group remains unknown, as the system undergoes relatively frequent revisions, and the criteria for inclusion are not rigidly fixed. Immediate relatives of the Supreme Leader and Kim Jong Un are excluded from this system.

People in the “hostile” class have little to no hope to move up in this social caste system, and rarely have any possibility of advancement. Even those with high songbun, while privileged, also live in fear of potential demotions if they are targeted by others for their position, caught making a mistake, or failing to pay bribes to the right person at the right time. This constant threat of demotions serves as one of the tools Kim Jong Un’s government employs to maintain power.312

All citizens are required to become members of, and participate in, the activities of mass associations that operate under party control and oversight.313

A vast surveillance apparatus helps the government maintain control over every aspect of people’s daily lives. It consists of a large network of secret informers; officials of mass organizations, like the Women’s Union, to which almost all married women belong, and that excuses them from having to forcibly attend unpaid, or nearly unpaid, work at a government-owned workplace; and the neighborhood surveillance systems or People’s Units (inminban).314

Along with his cult of personality, Kim Il Sung established a doctrine of isolation, self-reliance, nationalism, and extreme forms of leadership worship, often called juche sasang, which he promoted in conjunction with a focus on military readiness after the Korean War (1950-1953) ended in a ceasefire that remains officially unresolved.315

After Kim Il Sung’s death in 1994, his son and successor, Kim Jong Il, elevated the position of the army in the government with the “Military First” (songun) doctrine.

Using Extreme Poverty as Social Control

North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world.316 After its creation, the DPRK passed from a semi-marketized economy and transitioned into a centralized command economy in which people were largely prohibited from engaging in private economic activities. In the 1940s, the government-created Public Distribution System (PDS) operated with state supply centers that were supposed to provide wages, food, clothes, and all daily necessities. But for decades, it failed to effectively deliver sufficient food to North Korea’s population and was kept afloat by aid and food imports from the Soviet Union and China.

In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea faced financial crisis. Floods, droughts, and devastating harvests struck the already ill-equipped and mismanaged economy, triggering a famine that killed a still-unknown number of people. Estimates of deaths from starvation and associated illnesses range from several hundred thousand to three million between 1994 and 1998, the most acute phase of the crisis, which the government refers to as the “Arduous March.”317 The most cited estimates put the number of deaths at around one million people.

During the famine years, the government prioritized support for those people it considered to be crucial for maintaining the political system and its leadership, especially those in Pyongyang city, at the expense of those deemed to be expendable and with lower songbun. The UN COI found that the government committed crimes against humanity by knowingly causing prolonged, mass starvation.318 The UN COI report concluded:

[A]t the very least, hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings perished due to massive breaches of international human rights law. Moreover, the suffering is not limited to those who died, but extends to the millions who survived. The hunger and malnutrition they experienced has resulted in long-lasting physical and psychological harm.319

The government tried to use ideological indoctrination to maintain political control, but social control mechanisms still broke down. It’s near absolute control over society eroded, especially physical control of the northern border with China, the distribution and domestic movement of products and people, control of information, and arbitrary implementation of laws and regulations, influenced by corruption and bribes.

To survive, people started to pay bribes and engage in forbidden activities to get food and necessities, including moving around domestically without travel permits; illegally crossing into China; getting unsanctioned Chinese cellphones and illegally talking with people outside the country; smuggling out North Korean goods and getting Chinese products in; and informal trading avoiding customs, mostly with China.

As China took over as North Korea’s main trading partner and benefactor in the mid-1990s, the country’s economic survival became heavily linked to informal markets and trade with China. Private informal markets (jangmadang) emerged to fill the gap left by North Korea’s crumpled formal economy. The markets, led by private initiatives, grew to cover all the needs of ordinary North Koreans, including rice, corn, home goods, entertainment, and medicine. “Grasshopper traders,” who sold food or products in the streets or near the markets and could quickly pack and jump away, became common.

Although the government stopped providing regular wages and food distribution, it forced men and unmarried women to continue working state jobs at factories with broken machinery, or hospitals without medicine and electricity, where salaries, if paid at all, were worth only between one to four kilograms of rice per month.

Since many married women were not required to attend government-established workplaces, they became traders, able to make money at market rates. Many soon became the main breadwinners for their families.

By 2002, Kim Jong Il began experimenting with economic liberalization and North Korea announced economic reforms, including legalizing some existing markets, adjusting commodity prices and wages, and ending subsidies to failing state enterprises.

Yet Kim Jong Il remained concerned about its loss of control over the markets and kept cracking down on trade and market activity. In 2005, the government began to reverse the spontaneous market liberalization of the preceding decade, fueled by leaders’ concerns that they threatened political stability.320

The government banned men from selling goods at the markets, limiting such work to women 50 years old or older. Still, success depended on the willingness of local authorities to enforce the bans, traders’ ability to pay bribes, and the latest central government directives.321 Younger women who were not allowed in the official markets had to find other ways to trade; many engaged in distribution or inter-regional trade. Women soon comprised roughly 80 percent of the markets’ workforce.

Government officials seized these cracks in the marketization process to support their low or non-existent wages and make money by demanding bribes. Border guards, police, and other law enforcers got bribes from traders and smugglers, investigators and detention guards from detainees and prisoners, and doctors and nurses from patients.322 The ability to receive bribes became an important source of income for many in power. This led to the development of an informal yet enforced code of conduct related to bribes by government officials.323

Interviewees told Human Rights Watch those in positions of power were careful about taking bribes and would return or reject money or gifts in some cases if they could not deliver the promised good or service. “We [government officials] also have our morals and we only get [bribes] when we can deliver,” said a former police officer.324

A former trader said:

Government officials are very careful as to who they get bribes from, and only keep [the money] when they can give what they offered or have been asked for. They don’t want somebody blabbing around, word could get out there, threaten their reputation or future possible income, or end up triggering an investigation of the officer himself [for corrupt practices].325

According to Transparency International’s 2023 Corruption Perception Index, North Korea ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, 172 out of 180 on the list.326

A big blow to the markets came in 2009 when the government implemented a drastic de-monetization “currency reform” that triggered massive inflation and temporarily halted the functioning of the markets.327 Many families and traders who had been toiling to become part of the emerging middle class and traded in local currency, lost almost everything they had earned because the government had rendered invalid much of the existing currency in the country. This marked a turning point for how some North Korean people viewed the country’s leader, according to three dozen former North Korean traders who left North Korea after 2011 and former government officials.328

Many said that for the first time, they could see the government’s direct actions intentionally hurting them, as opposed to past hardship perceived as being related to US or enemy sanctions, military preparedness for war, or natural disasters. Members of the public reacted negatively, making it harder for the government to continue to impose strict restrictions on the markets.329

Kim Jong Un Promises No More Belt-Tightening

After Kim Jong Il’s death in December 2011, Kim Jong Un rose to power. He prioritized developing the economy and nuclear and technological capabilities, while reasserting state controls on the Sino-Korean border area to prevent people from escaping the country or communicating with the outside world.

In a speech at the 8th Conference of Ideological Workers of the Korean Worker’s Party on February 25, 2013, Kim Jong Un called for redoubling efforts to remain culturally isolated:

We must set up two or three layers of mosquito nets to prevent the poison of capitalism from being persistently spread by our enemies across the border into our territory. We must be active to block the imperialists’ plots for ideological and cultural invasion.330

During the first years of Kim Jong Un’s rule, the government increased efforts to control the border, especially between 2013 and 2015, up to 2016. It more actively monitored, tracked, and punished unauthorized phone calls, built wire fences, and set up CCTV cameras to prevent North Koreans from escaping the country. Security increased in active and well-known smuggling hubs or areas where escapes were more likely because of the terrain, like around Sinuiju city in North Pyongan province, Hyesan city in Ryanggang province, and Hoeryong city in North Hamgyong province.

China also continued to better secure its side of the border, with new fencing, cameras, and additional guards.331

Punishment became more severe for those forcibly repatriated from China to North Korea, increasing from six months to a year in short-term hard-labor detention facilities (rodong danryeondae, literally “labor training centers”) to five to seven years in long-term hard-labor prison camps for ordinary and minor political crimes (kyohwaso) for those forcibly repatriated not found trying to escape to South Korea. 332 Those found trying to escape to South Korea would be sent to political prison camps (kwanliso). The numbers of North Koreans reaching South Korea significantly reduced after Kim Jong Un rose to power.333

These efforts also reduced smuggling between China and North Korea, as domestic trading activities were already hurting at a time when many ordinary North Koreans did not have cash following the 2009 currency reform.

At the same time, Kim Jong Un repeatedly talked about the importance of raising people’s standards of living internally. In his first public speech, in April 2012, he pledged North Koreans would never again have to “tighten their belts.”334 In March 2013, during a plenary session of the Party Central Committee, Kim Jong Un revived his grandfather’s parallel development line (pyongjin roson) policy of simultaneously improving the economy and national defense, focusing on nuclear tests, military growth and technology.335 In the 2018 New Year speech, Kim Jong Un said “the central task facing socialist economic construction [that] year [was] to enhance the independence and Juche character of the national economy and improve the people's standard of living.”336

Despite border and information crackdowns, which especially hurt informal trading activities with China, North Korea attempted to enter a period of economic improvement and experimentation domestically, and allowing market activity to diversify and grow modestly. Despite the illegality of such enterprises, successful market vendors or business owners started hiring women to work in their stalls, stores, or homes. New businesses included hair dressing shops, small necessities stores, and bike repair shops.337 In February 2012, North Korea had 1 million cell phone users; by June 2015, it had 2.5 million.338

Weakened enforcement of travel restrictions, fueled by corruption, helped merchants and entrepreneurs to develop, mostly under the protection of ruling party and security officials. Some entrepreneurs set up private transportation companies, with trucks (seobicha) that distributed people and products across the whole country, mostly for regional traders, according to former traders who left North Korea after 2014.339

The private housing market sector boomed, especially in Pyongyang city, where state-owned department stores, shops, cafes, and restaurants were modernized. By 2017, there were enough cars on Pyongyang city’ s once-empty streets for some residents to make a living washing them.340 North Korean authorities significantly expanded the number of tourists visiting North Korea and workers it sent overseas to make foreign currency.341

North Korea developed a domestic light industry by producing candy, biscuits, cosmetics, cigarettes, and daily necessity products, like toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap bars, clothes, and shoes. However, several former North Korean traders, journalists, and activists told Human Rights Watch that factories all used Chinese ingredients or materials and the quality was poor.342

The development of the domestic economy also coincided with the rise of an elite entrepreneurial class, the donju (literally “money master”), traders and entrepreneurs who amassed large amounts of capital through a variety of businesses and smuggling operations. They played an especially important role in lending money to both state-owned enterprises and private businesses.

The donju were often tied to the state, either directly with government officials, state-owned enterprise managers, or party officials or indirectly, as the wife or relative of a party official, which allowed them to conduct cross-border trade and gives them easy access to foreign currency. The rise of a wealthy and politically connected class who owe their fortunes to private business activities and state connections further entrenched the role of markets in the North Korean economy.343

In 2014, Kim Jong Un introduced radical legal reforms that gave more independence to state-owned companies and collective farms and partially legalized economic activity by the donju.344 For instance, a 2014 Enterprise Act amendment allowed entrepreneurs to engage in foreign trade and joint ventures, and to accept investments or loans from banks or domestic private individuals.345

Some traders brought big flat screen televisions, washing machines, rice cookers, sofas, desks, chairs, toilets, high heel shoes, solar panels, chocolate, coffee, and luxury cosmetics from China into North Korea. Eun Sim, the former official trader, said she used to informally bring dressing tables from China into North Korea. She sold them for US$200 in the border areas; traders sold them for $400 in South Pyongan province or Pyongyang city.346

North Koreans who left the country, foreign nationals who visited North Korea regularly until 2019, and economists who study the country say these nascent market forces reshaped North Korea. Estimates of annual growth range from 1 to almost 5 percent from 2012 until 2017, and the economy grew by 3.9 percent in 2016 and 4.7 percent in 2017, according to the Bank of Korea.347 This led to the development of a middle class, with rising economic power and the highest living standard expectations in North Korea’s history.