'I was only 9': N. Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside.

The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea.

“I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times.

“But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling.

It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since.

Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

For Kim, that memory is not just trauma but a key to understanding of how Pyongyang uses death itself to intimidate and control its people.

“The regime uses the executions to numb the feelings and ideas of human compassion and respect for life.

That cruelty is indoctrinated and framed as something necessary, ...