Rights abuses continue in North Korea a decade after probe says UN investigator

SEOUL - A decade after a landmark UN report concluded that North Korea committed crimes against humanity, a UN official investigating rights in the isolated state told Reuters many abuses continue, exacerbated by Covid-era controls that have yet to be lifted.

Mr James Heenan, who represents the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Seoul, said he is still surprised by the continued prevalence of executions, forced labour and reports of starvation in the authoritarian country.

Later in 2025, Mr Heenan’s team will release a follow-up report to the 2014 findings by the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). It said the government had committed “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations” that constituted crimes against humanity. DPRK is North Korea’s official name.

While the conclusions of this year’s report are still being finalised, Mr Heenan told Reuters in an interview that the last 10 years have seen mixed results, with North Korea’s government engaging more with some international institutions, but doubling down on control at home.

“The post-Covid period for DPRK means a period of much greater government control over people’s lives and restrictions on their freedoms,” he said in the interview.

North Korea’s embassy in London did not answer phone calls seeking comment. The government has in the past denied abuses and accused the UN and foreign countries of trying to use human rights as a political weapon to attack North Korea.

A Reuters investigation in 2023 found leader Kim Jong Un had spent much of the Covid-19 pandemic building a massive string of walls and fences along the previously porous border with China, and later built fences around the capital of Pyongyang.

A report this week by the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies said the Covid-19 pandemic