North Korean executioners torment condemned prisoners, mutilate them after death and force people to look at their corpses, says an investigation into capital punishment during Kim Jong-un’s decade in power.
The report by a Seoul human rights organisation says that of the public executions it has documented, the largest number are not for murder or rape, but for the crime of watching or distributing videos from South Korea.
The testimony, based on the accounts of witnesses who have defected to the south, will add to international pressure on North Korea.
Researchers for the Transitional Justice Working Group have documented 23 public executions since Kim came to power after the sudden death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in December 2011.
Two were hangings and 21 were
