North Koreans face a daily struggle to make ends meet due to a “vicious cycle of deprivation, corruption and repression”, a new report says.
The United Nations human rights report also accuses Kim Jong-un’s government of economic mismanagement, leaving its people fighting to get the basics.
Everyday survival is further hampered by officials demanding bribes, it adds.
North Korea has rejected the report as being “politically motivated for sinister purposes”.
The report, entitled The Price is Right, is based on interviews carried out with 214 defectors in 2017 and 2018.
It notes that the collapse of the state-run distribution system in the 1990s has forced an estimated three-quarters of the population to turn to informal markets as everyday rations are no longer enough to survive.
“If you just follow instructions coming from the state, you starve to death,” one of the defectors said.
But the markets exist in a legal grey area, which leaves people vulnerable to officials wanting bribes.
Those who try to earn money this way “face arrest and detention”, the UN report noted. Women wanting to earn money are particularly vulnerable, it adds.
Yet those with the resources “can get away with anything, including murder”, another North Korean defector told the report’s authors.
