North Korea’s use of executions is nothing new. Public executions have long been one of the regime’s signature tools for instilling fear in the population. What deserves attention is not the existence of executions, but the fact that the reasons for them are changing.
A recent report by the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a Seoul-based human rights organization that documents and maps human rights violations in North Korea, shows how patterns of execution under Kim Jong Un’s rule have shifted around the COVID-19 border closure. The report analyzed 144 cases of execution or death sentences during the Kim Jong Un era and found that at least 358 people were executed across 136 confirmed cases. As the report emphasizes, these figures represent a confirmed minimum; the true scale is likely larger.
The critical finding is this: since COVID-19, the grounds for execution have been shifting away from ordinary violent crime and toward outside information, South Korean culture, religion, and political dissent. In other words, what the Kim Jong Un regime now fears is not simple criminality. It is the process by which North Korean people come to know the outside world, make comparisons, and begin to imagine a different life.
Through the Ninth Party Congress, held February 19-25, 2026, North Korea projected an image of external strength: nuclear weapons, missiles, military cooperation with Russia, and anti-American solidarity. Yet internally, the regime is imposing extreme punishment for watching a South Korean drama, listening to a foreign song, getting involved with religion, or voicing even minor political discontent. This contradiction reveals the nature of the Kim Jong Un system. North Korea presents itself as strong, but it fears its people knowing too much.
The COVID-19 Border Closure: A Turning Point
COVID-19 was not merely a health crisis for North Korea. The authorities sealed the border in January 2020 and simultaneously cut off the flow of people, goods, and information. Officially framed as an epidemic control measure, the closure is now understood to have served as an opportunity to reorganize and intensify the system of population control.
The TJWG report divided the periods before and after the border closure into equal windows of 1,783 days each for comparison. The results are striking. Cases of execution or death sentence rose from 30 before the closure to 65 afterward, an increase of 116.7 percent. The number of individuals executed or sentenced to death climbed from 44 to 153, a rise of 247.7 percent.
This suggests that the intensification of state violence after COVID-19 was not temporary. The governance structure itself was reorganized along more coercive lines. The border closure was not simply a barrier against a virus. It was a multipurpose barrier against outside information, population movement, market activity, and social discontent.
The Kim Jong Un regime used the exceptional circumstances of COVID-19 as a vehicle to extend its management of daily life and thought deeper into the population. Epidemic control was the justification; the practical effect was an expansion of control. The border closure ultimately shifted from a physical seal to an ideological one.
The Grounds for Execution Have Changed
The most significant finding in the report is the shift in the stated grounds for execution. Before the border closure, murder was the most commonly cited basis for a death sentence. After the closure, outside culture and information, including South Korean films, dramas, and music, along with religion and so-called “superstition,” rose to become the leading grounds.
According to the report, cases of execution or death sentence related to outside culture, information, religion, and superstition increased from four before the border closure to 14 afterward, a rise of 250 percent. The number of individuals involved grew from seven to 38, an increase of 442.9 percent. By contrast, execution cases related to murder fell from nine to five.
This shift matters enormously. It means the North Korean authorities no longer treat South Korean dramas or foreign music as merely prohibited content. They treat them as a political threat capable of destabilizing the loyalty structures on which the regime depends. Once North Korean people encounter the outside world, the worldview the authorities have constructed becomes difficult to sustain.
North Korea’s crackdown on outside culture is therefore not a cultural matter. It is about information control, ideological control, and regime security. What the Kim Jong Un regime fears is not the act of watching a South Korean drama in itself, but the moment that drama prompts a viewer to compare their own life with the world beyond.
Another notable post-COVID trend is the increase in politically motivated executions. The report finds a sharp rise since the border closure in cases of execution or death sentence involving violations of Kim Jong Un’s directives and criticism of Kim, the party, or the State Information Bureau (formerly called the Ministry of State Security), North Korea’s primary political security agency.
Specifically, cases of execution or death sentence with a political character increased from four before the closure to 13 afterward, a rise of 225 percent. The number of individuals involved grew from four to 28, an increase of 600 percent. The report suggested this may reflect either a response to rising internal discontent or a deliberate escalation of state violence designed to suppress trouble before it can spread.
This speaks to the instability underlying the Kim Jong Un system. Externally, Kim projects the image of a confident leader: nuclear capable, with military reconnaissance satellites in orbit and a new security ally in Russia. Internally, the regime is imposing extreme penalties for words, thoughts, expressions of dissatisfaction, and violations of directives.
A genuinely strong system does not fear criticism to this degree. North Korea, however, treats even minor discontent and careless remarks as threats to the regime. This tells us that the leadership believes popular grievance could translate into political fracture at any time.
Public and Secret Executions Serve a Dual Strategy
Executions in North Korea are not simply acts of elimination. They are also acts of governance performed for an audience. Public executions force the population to witness state violence directly. The purpose does not end with punishing one person. By making a public spectacle of the execution, all witnesses are given a clear sense of the line that must not be crossed.
Public execution remains an important instrument of fear-based governance, but it is now used alongside secret and summary executions. The report classified 129 executions by type. Mass public executions accounted for 66 cases, or 51.1 percent. Executions conducted before a targeted group accounted for 28 cases, or 21.7 percent. Secret executions accounted for 29 cases, or 22.5 percent. Summary executions accounted for six cases, or 4.7 percent.
Public and secret executions serve different functions. Public executions are designed to spread fear. Secret executions are used to remove individuals in sensitive cases without exposing those cases to the outside. Politically charged incidents and those involving the security apparatus are more likely to be handled through methods that limit information leakage.
State violence under the Kim Jong Un system operates simultaneously through visibility and concealment. It shows the population as much as is useful and hides what cannot afford to be exposed to international scrutiny or outside information networks. North Korea’s use of executions is both the politics of terror and the politics of concealment.
A Nationwide Ideological Crackdown
In the past, North Korea’s executions and enforcement campaigns tended to concentrate in border areas, smuggling corridors, defection routes, and the channels through which outside information entered the country. Ryanggang Province and North Hamgyong Province along the border with China were particular targets, given their relatively higher exposure to outside goods and information.
The post-COVID shift is geographically significant as well. According to the report, the number of regions where executions were documented expanded from eight in the period before the border closure to 19 in the period after. At the provincial level, the concentration was previously in Pyongyang and the northeastern provinces of North Hamgyong, South Hamgyong, and Ryanggang. After the closure, documented executions spread to all four of North Korea’s directly administered and special cities, including Pyongyang, Nampo, Kaesong, and Rason, as well as all eight provinces.
This means the authorities no longer treat the threat of outside information as a border problem. South Korean dramas, foreign information, religion, and political discontent are now understood as nationwide threats to the system rather than localized concerns. Executions and crackdowns have expanded accordingly.
The post-COVID intensification of control in North Korea did not stop at sealing the border. It spread to encompass the management of population movement, information access, cultural consumption, and ideological condition across the entire country. Border control became nationwide thought control.
The Way Forward
The extreme punishment North Korea inflicts for exposure to outside information is itself evidence that information poses a genuine threat to the regime. The moment North Korean people come to know the outside world, compare it with their own lives, and recognize the gap between the propaganda they have been fed and the reality they inhabit, the regime’s hold on them begins to loosen. Information flow is therefore not merely cultural exchange or psychological operations directed at the North. It is a core issue of North Korean human rights and a central driver of long-term change.
First, we need to strengthen the documentation of human rights abuses. As the border remains sealed and the number of people leaving North Korea has fallen, verifying human rights violations inside the country has become increasingly difficult. For exactly that reason, multilayered documentation combining the testimony of people who have left North Korea, internal sources, satellite data, open-source intelligence, and media reporting becomes more important than ever. These efforts must track not only the number of executions but also their locations, methods, and the agencies involved.
Second, we need to expand information access for North Koreans. North Koreans’ right to know about the outside world is a human rights issue, and one connected in the long run to security well beyond the Korean Peninsula. If what the Kim regime fears most is a shift in what its people know and believe, then the international community must think seriously about how to protect and extend the channels through which that shift can happen.
Third, we need to make sure the North Korean regime is held more accountable for its actions. Executions do not end as isolated incidents. They are structural crimes ordered, carried out, and concealed by state institutions. The international community must approach North Korea’s executions not as occasions for one-time condemnation but from the perspective of future accountability and evidence preservation.
To understand where the Kim Jong Un system is headed, it is not enough to watch nuclear weapons and missiles. We must also watch what the system prohibits its people from doing, what it fears, and how it enforces silence.
