North Korea has used the COVID-19 pandemic to seal up its northern border with China, new images from a leading human rights group show.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) describes a situation which has seen “intensifying repression”, with “drastically reduced” cross-border movement and trade.
In the research, North Koreans spoke of the increasingly restrictive measures.
UN member states should “immediately address” North Korea’s isolation and humanitarian crisis, HRW stresses.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has reinforced a crackdown on border security in recent years, coinciding with the pandemic.
The border was only reopened a few months ago, largely to improve trade with China.
The report, entitled A Sense of Terror Stronger than a Bullet: The Closing of North Korea 2018-2023, describes the “overbroad, excessive, and unnecessary measures during the Covid-19 pandemic”.
Focusing satellite images, it shows authorities in North Korea constructing 482km (299 miles) of new fencing in the areas it investigated, and enhancing another 260km of fencing which was already in place.
Taken between 2019 and 2023 and covering about a quarter of its northern border, the images also detail things like new guard posts and the creation of buffer zones – things which further restrict life in the country.
