While most of us spent 2020 and 2021 obsessing over masks and vaccine rollouts, the North Korean regime was busy turning the pandemic into a perfect excuse for a killing spree. It’s easy to think of the Kim Jong Un era as a monolith of repression, but a recent report from the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) shows that the border closure changed the math for the regime. They didn't just maintain control; they escalated it.
According to the report released on April 27, 2026, the number of documented executions and death sentences in North Korea spiked by 117% in the five years following the January 2020 border closure compared to the five years before. Think about that. While the rest of the world was trying to save lives, Pyongyang was using the total isolation of COVID-19 to liquidate its "enemies" with zero international eyes on the ground.
The pivot from crime to culture
Before the pandemic, if you were executed in North Korea, it was usually for something like murder. It's a brutal system, sure, but there was a certain internal logic to it. That logic shifted during the lockdown. The TJWG data, based on interviews with nearly 900 defectors and satellite imagery, shows that the most frequent "crime" leading to death now is "external culture."
Basically, watching a South Korean drama or listening to K-pop isn't just a rebellious phase anymore. It's a capital offense.
- The Numbers: The number of people sentenced to death or executed more than tripled after the border sealed.
- The Charges: Executions for "foreign culture, religion, or superstition" jumped by a staggering 250%.
- Political Purges: Executions for political crimes—like criticizing Kim Jong Un—rose from four cases to 13, a 3.25-fold increase.
This isn't about public health. It’s about a regime that realized its people were getting too comfortable with the outside world. The 2020 Anti-Reactionary Thought and Culture Act was the legal hammer they used to smash that curiosity.
Firing squads and public spectacles
The report doesn't just give us dry stats; it maps 46 execution sites. Around 70% of these killings were carried out in public. The regime wants people to watch. They want the trauma of seeing a firing squad to act as a permanent barrier against the temptation of a smuggled SD card.
There's a specific, chilling detail in the testimonies: the use of firing squads. In about 96% of the documented cases where the method was known, the state used rifles or machine guns. Sometimes, they even put substances in the victims' mouths to keep them from shouting slogans or protesting as they were dragged to the stake.
Why the sudden surge?
It’s not just about the movies. The border closure meant that the "gray market" trade—the lifeblood of the North Korean people—effectively died. When people are hungry and the economy is in the trash, they start to grumble. The spike in executions for "political crimes" suggests that internal dissatisfaction reached a boiling point. Kim Jong Un didn't have food to give them, so he gave them a "reign of terror" instead.
The bribery gap
If you're rich in North Korea, you might survive a "culture" violation. Amnesty International recently highlighted that the system is incredibly corrupt. If you have the cash or the right connections, you can bribe your way out of a labor camp or a death sentence.
This means the people being executed are almost always the ones at the bottom of the ladder. They’re the ones who couldn't afford to pay off the Ministry of State Security. It’s a double tragedy: they’re killed for wanting a glimpse of the outside world, and they're killed because they’re too poor to buy their lives back.
What this means for the rest of us
We can't keep looking at North Korea through the lens of missile tests and nuclear posturing. While we track their ICBMs, they’re conducting a slow-motion massacre of their own citizens for the "crime" of being human.
The "shoot-on-sight" order at the northern border, originally justified as a COVID-19 measure, is still reportedly in place as of early 2026. The country is opening up slightly—Russian tourists are visiting and some diplomats are back—but for the average person in Hyesan or Pyongyang, the walls are higher than ever.
What you should track next
Don't let the noise of global politics drown out these reports. If you want to understand what's actually happening on the ground, follow these organizations:
- Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG): They’re the ones doing the hard work of mapping these sites using satellite data and defector testimony.
- Human Rights Watch (Asia Division): Their "World Report 2025" and 2026 updates provide the best context on how the border closure is being used as a tool of repression.
- Liberty in North Korea (LiNK): If you want to know about the actual human stories of those who manage to escape this environment.
The regime is banking on our short attention spans. They assume that as long as they don't launch a nuke, we won't care about a few hundred people in a field in Ryanggang Province. Proving them wrong starts with actually paying attention to the data.
