North Korea Publicly Executes Eleven in Hoeryong

Daily NK has images, captured from a video to be played on Japanese TV, that it claims show political prisoners being brought before a firing squad in Hoeryong, which is emerging as a focal point of resistance. The pictures are very blurry and the usual cautions about authenticity apply, but Daily NK quotes defectors as confirming the location and suggesting that the tape is authentic. The video allegedly shows the “trials,” judgement, and of course, execution. The entire town was ordered to go to the scene and watch it happen. Even the kids.

Usually in North Korea, when public executions take place, the criminals are tied to a pillar and executors stand 10-15 m in front of him for a total of nine rounds of gun shot, three shots each to head, chest, and abdomen. When the criminal is shot, the rope breaks and the dead body falls forward. All of such scenes are contained in this video. Currently, North Korea is known to be the only country where public executions take place, with the public informed (and attends to), including children. Until now, North Korea has bluntly denied such public executions of shooting takes places in the country, which the accusations made by the international human rights organizations who reported and condemned of it.

It’s nothing we don’t already know, of course, but it sickens you to wonder whether these people were dissidents or part of the religious underground, or just ordinary people doing what they could to survive. More footage has been getting out of North Korea recently, but few media outlets outside Japan have played them. These people are gone and we can’t bring them back to life, but we can hope that their deaths will have some meaning for those who are moved by witnessing them.

All our prayers to their families.

UPDATE: Video link here. Hat tip: Mutant Frog