‘We were punch bags’: North Korean prison beatings form of torture, says UN

Reports of forced labour and severe punishments for detainees add to growing evidence of abuses worsening during the pandemic

Detainees in North Korea are forced into gruelling manual labour and beaten so severely it may be a form of torture, the UN has said, as it warned that Covid-19 had exacerbated human rights concerns in the notoriously oppressive country.

In a report to be presented at the UN general assembly in September, the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, said fresh accounts given to the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) had added to a growing body of information confirming consistent patterns of human rights violations".