Based on 183 interviews conducted between 2015 and 2023 with victims and witnesses of such labor system, UN Human Rights Office highlighted the renegade country's serious human rights violations in the report.
"The testimonies in this report give a shocking and distressing insight into the suffering inflicted through forced labor upon people, both in its scale and in the levels of violence and inhuman treatment," Volker Türk, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement. "These people are forced to work in intolerable conditions, often in dangerous sectors. They are placed under constant surveillance, regularly beaten, while women are exposed to continuing risks of sexual violence," he added.
The report also detailed the widespread use of forced labor. "If we didn't meet the daily quota, we were beaten and our food was cut," said one victim. "One of my acquaintances, who was a woman and older than me, was sexually abused by one of the heads. She suffered," another victim recalled.
"Economic prosperity should serve people, not be the reason for their enslavement," the report pointed out.
The report called for North Korea to "abolish the use of forced labor and end any forms of slavery," and urged the UN Security Council to "refer the situation to the International Criminal Court."
