(Bangkok) -In 2025, the North Korean government increased surveillance, information controls, and restrictions on market activity despite deepening food insecurity and inequality, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2026.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's totalitarian government, among the world's most repressive, was implicated in human rights abuses abroad, including abductions, enforced disappearances, and overseas deployment of North Korean workers under abusive conditions.

"Over the past year, while ordinary North Koreans struggled to obtain food and other necessities, Pyongyang expanded censorship and surveillance, cracked down on border crossings, and limited market activity," said Lina Yoon, senior Koreas researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Governments engaged with North Korea should focus on human rights, including with regard to international security, food shortages, and support for groups abroad defending North Koreans' rights."

In the 529-page World Report 2026, its 36th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices inmore than100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Philippe Bolopion writes that breaking the authoritarian wave sweeping the world is the challenge of a generation. With the human rights system under unprecedented threat from the Trump administration and other global powers, Bolopion calls on rights-respecting democracies and civil society to build a strategic alliance to defend fundamental freedoms.

The North Korean government should end collective punishment, forced labor, and "unconditional" shoot on sight orders at the border; ensure that people have adequate access to food, health care, and employment; and allow independent monitoring, including by UN human rights mechanisms, Human Rights Watch said.

Source: Human Rights Watch