North Korea

North Korea remains one of the world’s most repressive states despite recent diplomatic openings with South Korea, the United States, and other countries. Human Rights Watch is urging the world to demand improvements instead of ignoring the dire human rights situation facing 25 million people.

North Korea’s central court has passed a death sentence in absentia on four South Korean journalists for writing positive reviews of an “insulting” book about North Korea’s growing market economy.

Authorities are cracking down on people fleeing the country, and on those who share information with the outside world.

Birthday celebrations planned on 8 January 2015 for North Korea’s dynastic supreme leader Kim Jong-Un contrast sharply with severe human rights violations throughout the country, Human Rights Watch said.

The United Nations Security Council should act on a historic General Assembly resolution by referring the situation in North Korea to the International Criminal Court, Human Rights Watch said.

North Korea seeks to monopolise all information flows and uses incredible psychological and emotional force to ensure its citizens’ loyalty, explains a high-ranking defector.

An inside look into the often forgotten struggles of those who have escaped the brutal regime of North Korea and what one non-governmental group is doing to help them.

North Korea is one of the most opaque countries in the world. The assaults on freedom of expression are vast and varied in the military state, ranging from censorship of the media to suppression of assembly and outright defamation of the foreign press.

A new UN report has found that crimes against humanity are occurring in North Korea, noting in particular “a systematic and widespread attack against all populations that are considered to pose a threat to the political system and leadership.”

North Korea has expanded its deletion of a few hundred online articles mentioning Jang Song Thaek, the executed uncle of Kim Jong Un, to all articles on state media up to October 2013, numbering in the tens of thousands.

North Koreans are arrested and punished for ordinary actions that would be considered within anyone’s rights in a democratic society, among them using mobile phones to call overseas, and selling or even watching DVDs and CDs containing unauthorized content such as music and drama shows from China and South Korea.

CPJ has found that cracks in the North’s information wall are beginning to appear.

The death of Kim Jong-il turns attention to his declared successor, Kim Jong-un, whose policies on basic freedoms remain unknown.

Foreign radio stations continue to be the main source of independent information for the population.