Domestic State Terrorism: North Korea Expands Use of Public Executions

[Updated below]

A few weeks ago, the Chosun Ilbo, quoting NGO’s that in turn cite interviews with recent defectors, reported that North Korea carried out 901 public executions in 2007.  This figure, of course, does not include summary executions or those carried out in secrecy, or the ordinary toll of starvation, disease, and torture in the North Korea’s vast concentration camp system.When a society is as opaque as North Korea’s, I originally thought it strained to suggest, as some newspapers subsequently did, that this represented an increase over past years.  With North Korea’s control over its northern border well into a protracted dystrophy, it could also be that we’re more likely to hear of such things when they do happen.

New reports from the Daily NK have since added much to the totality of the available information, and suggest the North Korean regime has indeed stepped up the use of mass executions over previous years.  The purpose for this is to keep the population in terror.  The regime doesn’t want latent discontent over the worsening food situation to break out in the open, and it’s especially anxious to suppress rumors of Kim Jong Il’s ill health or death, rumors that might not have circulated widely in the North ten years ago but are spreading like wildfire now.  The regime has responded with a terror campaign against its own people:

An inside source from North Hamkyung Province relayed in a phone conversation with the Daily NK on the 17th, “The public executions in Hoiryeong resulted from the recent decree from the General (Kim Jong Il) regarding the state of domestic affairs. The decree was relayed at a meeting of the directors of the People’s Safety Agency from each province urgently mobilized in Pyongyang around September 22nd.”  [….]

The goal of the decree was first and foremost to strengthen national regulations coping with the current situation and a measure to battle anti-socialist elements and hard-core criminals. In particular, the decree is supposed to emphasize the strong punishment of drug offenses, human trafficking, smuggling, illicit sales, religion, and other superstitious acts.

The source said, “The decree contained the General’s comments such as, ‘We need the sound of gunfire,’ and ‘we need to make an example of those trying to destroy our system of law and order and show what will happen to them.'” The decree is the backdrop for the recent public executions that took place in Shinuiju and Hoiryeong.

The source also relayed, “In addition, the decree also toughened inspections of all kinds of digital equipment like cameras, mobile phones, recorders and others in order to root out secrets and, using close contact with civilian management and legal organizations, to punish the sources of gossip.”

In particular, regarding the punishment for the spreading of gossip, the decree apparently stressed, “Report those who start questionable rumors and reveal the circumstances under which one heard the rumor. The decree and the executions seem to be nothing more than a ploy to prevent the spread of rumors related to the General’s health.”  [Daily NK]

Some significance is attributed to the use of the Peoples’ Safety Agency, rather than the rival National Security Agency, to lead this purge.

Examples were duly made:

After publicly executing four people on the 29th of September, five women were executed in Hoiryeong, North Hamkyung Province on the 7th. Executions are also expected to take place in Musan and Onsung, raising speculations that the North is attempting to regulate its citizens.

An inside source in North Hamkyung Province said in a phone conversation with the Daily NK on the 9th, “In Hoiryeong’s Public Stadium at 3 in the afternoon on the 7th, each organization, enterprise office, and those in the People’s Units were mobilized and after a public trial, five women were shot.”  [Daily NK]

If I’m reading the Daily NK’s translation correctly, the official charge was apparently prostitution, which is now the tag the regime applies to what we’d call “helping other people escape from North Korea.”  I guess it’s become customary to add the ultimate insult to the ultimate injury.  In the past, this had been punishable by 3-5 years in the gulag, which can’t be much better than a slower way to die, given the food situation nationwide.

The Daily NK reports that after video of public executions was smuggled out of Hoeryong in 2005, the use of public executions fell into temporary disfavor because of the international criticism it attracted.  But with the United States determined to appease Kim Jong Il and remain silent about his atrocities foreign and domestic, stadiums across North Korea are again safe places for the sound of gunfine.

The regime still prefers quieter methods in Pyongyang, where mass expulsions of least-favored citizens to countryside continue.  This month’s selectees have (or had, anyway) relatives in concentration camps.

[T]he recent forced relocation, which seems to have been carried out as a measure to control civilians rather than to salvage Pyongyang’s image or for political or religious reasons, has been observed as highly unusual.

The source anticipated that the next round of relocations could affect thousands of households, “The citizens are extremely tense because of rumors that even the family members of those who have been caught stealing, watching prohibited media, or those already released from reeducation camps will also be forcibly relocated.”

He said, “At least in Pyongyang, there are provisions and it is easier to live, but in the countryside, people have to live the life of a farmer for no pay. They still have to think about the future of their children, so to be forcibly relocated from Pyongyang all of sudden can only elicit bitter feelings.”  [Daily NK]

Previous reports from Good Friends had associated these expulsions with the regime’s inability to feed the entire population of the capital.  That means that the privations are reaching the privileged.  With food supplies almost non-existent in so many parts of North Korea, banishment to the countryside can be a death sentence, particularly for people unaccustomed to lean diets and hard labor.

Amid all this, regime officials wonder why they see so few spontaneous expressions of concern for His Porcine Majesty:

He added that, “I drank with agents of the People’s Safety Agency a few days ago. They worry about this societal trend that nobody feels concern for the General’s condition. When the Supreme Leader (Kim Il Sung) died, everybody wept loudly. Next time, I am not sure if there will be anyone to cry for him.   [Daily NK]

There’s grisly comfort in knowing that the metastastis of the North Korean system is now so advanced that its terminal phase can only be delayed, almost regardless of what the next American president does.  Things cannot go on like this forever.  If the regime can’t or won’t reform, what other possibilities exist?

Update 10/25:   In a rare exception to the usual trend, big market media and even the U.N. — an almost unfailingly worthless institution — appear to take notice:

North Korea is using public executions to intimidate its citizens and has imposed restrictions on long distance calls to block the spread of news about rising shortages, the U.N. investigator on human rights in the reclusive nation said Thursday.

Vitit Muntarbhorn told the General Assembly’s human rights committee that North Korea has also imposed more severe sanctions on people seeking to leave the country and those forcibly returned, and still detains “very large numbers” of people in camps.

“The human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea remains grave in a number of key areas,” Muntarbhorn said. “Particularly disconcerting is the use of public executions to intimidate the public. … This is despite various law reforms in 2004 and 2005, which claim to have improved the criminal law framework and related sanctions.”  [AP, Edith Lederer]

North Korea’s descent into an even deeper layer of hell follows efforts by the U.S. State Department to airbrush away the gravity of the slaughter in the North, to exclude it from the agenda of our talks with the North, and to remove it as a barrier even to the establishment of diplomatic relations with the North Korean regime.  Defenders of this approach would no doubt offer up the self-serving justification that it’s really all about coaxing the regime out of its shell rather than isolating it with pressure.  The defense is so predictable because we’ve spent the last decade watching North Korea’s behavior prove this to be a disingenuous falsehood.
To the extent the advocates of appeasing this regime really give their own facile arguments a moment’s reconsideration, I pose this question to them:  Is North Korea less brutal, or more brutal, to its people when we choose to be silent about it?