In January 2025, the UN Office of the High Commissioner issued a report documenting North Korea’s ongoing and deteriorating human rights crisis. The report, composed of interviews with North Korean escapees and former officeholders and precise accounts of human rights problems developed from talks with human rights organisations. It documents the violations of human rights and alarming living situations that North Koreans face.
The report analysed the period from November 1, 2022 to October 31, 2024 and found that human rights violations were consistent and intense during this time.
In particular, there were several forms of human rights violations. In captivity, “the most frequently reported violations … were forced labour, torture, inhumane conditions … and a lack of adequate food.” Other standard cases of human rights violation discovered commonly in North Korea were “enforced disappearances, including abductions,” “extreme restrictions on access to information and the suppression of freedom of expression,” “invasive surveillance and arbitrary arrests,” and “violations of the right to food [that] are strikingly consistent.”
Access to food has been disregarded increasingly since the COVID-19 pandemic, as the administration has introduced procedures making it more challenging to purchase food.
The High Commissioner suggested specific measures for North Korea to acknowledge its breaches of human rights and aid internal justice, to let human rights organisations help, to provide victims with compensation, and to facilitate the use of surveillance and the death penalty.
The High Commissioner also firmly notified the UN’s Security Council that it should refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for an inquiry into North Korea, which would mean that Kim Jong Un would no extended have international immunity against his detention and prosecution in the ICC.
The UN Security Council has only ever referred two cases to the ICC for investigation, those being for Sudan and Libya. There have been debates within the UN about referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court since 2014, but none of these requests from the general assembly have been implemented. The ICC prosecutor previously independently conducted an investigation into North Korea in the past, but the investigation did not proceed, and sanctions have been imposed on multiple events by the Security Council against North Korea.
Even though North Korea somewhat re-opened its boundaries after the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020, the nation has since consistently “further fortified the border and authorised border guards to use lethal force against anyone attempting to cross it.” North Korea has a track record of consistently breaking human rights, and human rights institutions have long pushed for greater accountability internationally and locally in North Korea for the state’s human rights violations.