Draconian measures undertaken by North Korea to curb the spread of Covid, including monthly public executions, caused untold suffering to its estimated 26 million people, seven defectors from the Asian country have revealed.
The defectors, who managed to flee despite "shoot at sight" orders along the borders, shared experiences of repression, rise in violent crimes due to food shortage, banishment, fear, and ideological control.
The Kim Jong Un administration rolled out severe lockdown measures after Covid appeared in 2019, cutting the country off from the rest of the world by closing the borders, halting trade with China and banning fishing, allegedly leading to mass starvation.
Human Rights Watch and Transitional Justice Working Group claimed Pyongyang implemented excessive and unnecessary measures to tackle Covid that made the "already isolated country even more repressive".
Kim Il Hyuk, a rice trader from the South Hwanghae province who fled in May 2023, claimed that he saw public executions resume in the Pyoksong region in 2020. "North Korea was not a place where people could live as human beings," he said.
North Korea is accused of carrying out public executions in villages and prison camps. Pyongyang denies allegations of such systematic violations.
Mr Kim said he saw people shot every two months in 2020 and in "2022 and 2023, there were three executions by firing squad every two months".
The country witnessed severe food scarcity after 2022 as the government tightly controlled businesses and blocked the distribution of goods. “I was afraid,” the defector said, adding that he stopped “selling food such as rice and corn at the time”.
“After the state prevented private grain sales in the market, food prices skyrocketed, and some people began to starve to death," he said.
In 2023, Mr Kim said that he saw an apparently dead man lying on the roadside. “Villagers said that he had been lying there for over a day,” he said. “There were many cases like that.”
A fisherman, P Young Chul, told the rights groups that the government blocked access to the sea during the pandemic, effectively cutting off livelihoods.
He claimed that the authorities wrote “traitor” on a piece of paper and nailed it to a fellow fisherman's front door after he was caught venturing into the sea in 2020.
“Do not approach,” the note allegedly read.
The fisherman was allegedly arrested and sent to a hard labour prison camp.
Mr Chul claimed that people were forced to sell household items to buy food. "I started thinking of the amount I ate and how much more I could eat without making any money, and I realised we didn’t have that much. I thought that soon, we would also need to start selling our possessions," he said.
The defectors claimed rising prices and a shortage of medicine forced people to use traditional treatments. “Finding medicine was like picking a star from the sky,” said Hye Kyung, a fruit trader.
"In 2021 and 2022, many people in my area could not eat because they could not even buy corn flour," Ms Hye added, referring to the cheapest staple.
There was a sharp rise in violent crimes due to an acute shortage of food, the defectors said. An elderly person living alone was stabbed to death by those trying to steal food or money, they claimed.
“Robberies resulting in accidental deaths became more common since there was nothing to eat in North Korea."
North Korea during the pandemic lockdown also “ramped up ideological campaigns, passed laws, and implemented policies to further control expression and information, including about Covid”, Human Rights Watch said.
The defectors claimed they had no access to scientific or other information about Covid and were only told to avoid meeting in groups and sitting next to each other. There was no clarity on the number of Covid cases or deaths in the country.
Pyongyang acknowledged a Covid outbreak only in 2022 after steadfastly denying that it had recorded any cases for more than two years.
The nation’s border policy and rejection of international vaccine assistance deepened its health and economic crises, the rights groups said.
North Korea reportedly ran a Covid vaccination campaign in areas bordering China and southern cities like Pyongyang and Nampo between August and October 2022. However, none of the defectors said they had received a Covid vaccine.
The accounts of the North Korean escapees “illustrate the devastating impact of the government's oppressive Covid measures that further shrank the already limited freedoms of ordinary people”, Seungju Lee, profiler at Transitional Justice Working Group, said.
“The international community should press for accountability and strongly support organisations working to protect the rights of North Koreans,” said Lina Yoon, senior Korea researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Pyongyang this week abruptly barred international visitors from a northeastern city near the border with China, less than three weeks after opening it to tourists for the first time since the pandemic.
