North Korea Public Execution

UPDATE: The video has moved here. And here‘s a follow-up story from Japanese TV. Stay tuned for a more detailed look at the video on this site.

UPDATE 2: PHOTIOS provides some explanation for what’s happening in the video:

The video shows two consecutive days. During the first day you see a group of people brought to watch the trial and execution. It occurs out at the execution ground with the posts prepared on the other side of a van. The trial takes about twenty minutes. The crowd is then led around the van and two of the prisoners are executed, the other nine sentenced to prison terms. The crime? Crossing into North Korea from China numerous times to help North Koreans escape and being paid by a broker in China to do it. Immediately after they are shot you can here a guard ask loudly “Are they dead?”.

On the second day the “trial” is even quicker, with the execution posts being put up during the trial. One man is executed for the same crime. Following the execution a guard loudly announces to the crowd, “this is what you get if you do not respect and work for Kim Jong Il Shogun”.


Here is video footage from Japanese TV of the public execution that went on in Korea (Click here and click on the WMV for the very last entry on the bottom if that doesn’t work). Kim Jong-il previously denied reports (from a defector) that there were public executions going on, but here is undeniable proof. Thanks to the Marmot for cluing me in on the story.

10 thoughts on “North Korea Public Execution”

  1. Thank you for finding this video. People often just simply don’t believe the situation in North Korea can really be that bad, as it seems like a scene from a bad, utterly paranoid movie.

    But unfortunately, it is true.. its a real-life nightmare for its 26 million people.

    When the wall around NK falls, we will realize why they have tried so hard to hide it from the rest of the world.. Kim Jong Il’s North Korea is a killing field just like Hitler’s Germany or Pol Pot’s Cambodia were.

    Just as bad.

  2. It’s horrible. The situation must be mentally nerve racking. Pray for those people.

  3. The web site that Adamu got the execution video from has a fantastic collection of news features on North Korea and other topics. I’ve been watching a couple of others, and I plan to post some notes on some of the videos with better footage so that non Japanese speakers can try to get something out of watching them.

  4. Is there a translated version (English) posted somewhere? I accidentally ran across eyewitness accounts of the Gulags, astonishing!!!

  5. Hello,

    I work for Human Rights Project. I would greatly appreciate if I could contact Marc Simkins to hear more about his experience.

    Thank you very much.

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