The North Korean government is increasingly implementing the death penalty, including for people caught watching and sharing foreign films and TV dramas, a major UN report has found.
The dictatorship, which remains largely cut off from the world, is also subjecting its people to more forced labour while further restricting their freedoms, the report added.
The UN Human Rights Office found that over the past decade the North Korean state had tightened control over "all aspects of citizens' lives".
"No other population is under such restrictions in today's world," it concluded, adding that surveillance had become "more pervasive", helped in part by advances in technology.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said that if this situation continued, North Koreans "will be subjected to more of the suffering, brutal repression and fear that they have endured for so long".
