In November 2019, on a fishing boat full of North Korean men attempting to defect to the South, two fishermen were found guilty of killing 16 of their crew members.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry released photos of two men in their 20s struggling while being forcibly moved by South Korean military men toward North Korean soldiers waiting on the other side of the demarcation line at the border village of Panmunjom in November 2019.

According to police accounts, the men were blindfolded and bound with ropes.

The former President Moon Jae-in’s administration described the fishermen as “heinous criminals” who did not “clearly express” a “sincere” desire to remain in South Korea, thus they did not receive the usual treatment of North Korean defectors, including being investigated and debriefed by intelligence officials during their stay.

President Yoon Suk-yeol’s office reopened the case and called the repatriation decision “a crime against humanity that violated both international law and the constitution.”

On the claims that the fishermen were repatriated for the crimes they committed, Jang Se-yul, the president of the National Association of North Korean Defectors, said in a forum that “North Korea is not a normal country. … I know people back home who stole and broke laws to survive and feed their family on their ways to eventual escape.”

Meanwhile, Moon’s former situation room chief Yoon Kun-young accused Yoon’s administration of undermining the opposition party, “are you saying we should have let the grotesque murderers get away with their crime and protect them with our own people’s tax money?”

It is suspected that the two fishermen were publicly executed in Pyongyang.

The Unification Ministry told NK News that 23 defectors currently in South Korea are not under government protection due to their criminal records. According to the Act on the Protection and Settlement Support of North Korean Refugees, such protection extends to assistance with education, employment, housing and healthcare.

North Korean authorities have long used the intranet network as a surveillance tool. All smartphone users have been required to install an application called “Red Flag” that keeps a log of visited web pages and take screenshots of their phones at random intervals.

Recently, all smartphone users are mandated to install a new application, Kwangmyong, in order to get their quarterly communication license cards. This application allows the government to remotely track users’ locations and monitor their devices in real time.

With Kwangmyong installed, the authorities are now able to track users’ offline activities, including cell phone activities, file sharing and viewing of illicit material via physical media like USB flash drives and SD cards.

It is reported that citizens are unhappy about the invasion of privacy by the Ministry of State Security and other law enforcement agencies.

A resident of Pukchang country, north of Pyongyang, told Radio Free Asia that “At the post office these days, residents are lining up to pay the fee to get their quarterly [license] card. … but some have refused to install the app and have been able to buy the quarterly card on the black market.”

Japan’s longest-serving former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe died after he was shot while giving a public speech in support of Liberal Democratic Party candidates in Nara city.

Despite little progress being made towards resolving issues concerning North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens during his tenure as prime minister, Abe repeatedly called for the North to return the abductees home and “The Abe administration was successful in raising concerns and interests over the abduction issues domestically and internationally,” according to Sachio Nakato, a professor of International Politics at Ritsumeikan University.

During the 2002 summit, North Korea admitted to abducting 13 Japanese nationals and have returned five in total. However, Abe’s government claimed that there are more Japanese abductees than those claimed by the North.

Akin to Yoon’s administration, Abe leaned towards imposing sanctions against North Korea and did not agree with Moon’s policy towards reunification.

A source in North Hamgong Province told Daily NK that during a trip to visit his wife, an inmate serving her sentence at Hamhung Correctional Labor Camp in South Hamgyong Province for human trafficking, the authorities informed him that she had died without providing any information regarding her death, including when she died, the cause of death or what happened to the body.

The woman in her 40s smuggled North Koreans to China from 2012 to September 2015. She was captured by the Ministry of State Security after one of the defectors was repatriated back to the North after being caught by Chinese security agents.

Her husband was unable to see his wife for a year due to Covid-19 restrictions until this visit, where he brought some cornmeal mixed with sugar and innerwear for her, only to be scolded by camp officials for asking questions concerning his wife’s death, telling him he “should be grateful that they even told him she was dead.”

The source also said that “Since COVID-19, even ordinary people have been having a hellish time trying to make ends meet, let alone people in prison for crimes. … Many prisoners surely must have died unnatural deaths, unable to eat or dress properly and under surveillance from guards. … they are simply dying.”