(New York) – North Korea’s ninth Party Congress started on February 20, 2026, amid escalating repression of young people, strict control of information, and widespread forced labor, Human Rights Watch said today.
The Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea is the country’s most important political meeting. Party Congresses have historically occurred irregularly: the last three were in 1980, 2016, and 2021. Past Party Congresses have set ideological direction, reset policy, and consolidated political power. North Korea has no competitive political parties, and the Workers’ Party of Korea controls all state institutions.
“North Korea’s leadership claims the Party Congress will shape the country’s future, but this is most likely a message of fear, coercion, and deprivation,” said Lina Yoon, senior Korea researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The government should address economic hardship, lack of opportunity, and barriers to health care, instead of silencing youth and extracting labor through coercion.”
Since the last Party Congress, in 2021, the government has increased repression, with ideological and information controls focusing on young people. The authorities have also tightened market restrictions that deepened economic inequality between rural and Pyongyang residents, continued the widespread use of unpaid forced labor, and deployed about 11,000 soldiers to Russia for combat under abusive conditions.
Official statements support the tighter control over youth. In January, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un praised young people who subordinated their “precious dreams” to state demands, including their involuntary deployment to “difficult and labor-consuming” overseas worksites and military operations, a reference to the war in Ukraine. He framed obedience and sacrifice as core civic virtues, while condemning the “moral depravity” of young people abroad.
Since 2021, the government has aggressively enforced legislation that criminalizes access to foreign information and cultural expression, including the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Law, the Youth Education Guarantee Law, and the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Law. These laws ban watching or sharing foreign media, using South Korean expressions or accents, and “non-socialist” styles of singing, dressing, or getting married, with punishments ranging from forced labor to long prison sentences or including execution.
People who have fled the country have reported a sharp escalation in punishments for information-related offenses, particularly affecting young people. Kim Il-hyuk, a rice trader from South Hwanghae province who left North Korea in 2023, told Human Rights Watch that “[relatively] tech-savvy young people were especially targeted for surveillance” in his hometown. He described witnessing the public execution of a 22-year-old man in 2022 for listening to South Korean songs and sharing foreign media.
Foreign-based media with contacts in North Korea have similarly documented intensified crackdowns on youth language, cultural expression, and access to foreign media, through government propaganda at schools, workplaces, and Workers’ Party youth league organizations.
Prior to previous Party Congresses, the authorities intensified mass mobilization campaigns to demonstrate loyalty and produce visible achievements. In late January, state media reported the country was “accelerating” preparations for the meeting, as workers rushed to complete factories and infrastructure development. These preparations have relied on unpaid labor through labor quotas imposed on workers, students, and children, with punishment for failing to meet targets.
The impact of government repression is compounded by North Korea’s songbun system, a discriminatory socio-political system that, although never publicly acknowledged as a formal policy, has long been promoted by the party and embedded in ideology and governance. Songbun determines access to food, housing, education, health care, and employment. During periods of heightened political control, people the party deems politically unreliable face greater risk of deprivation, harsher punishment, and limited ability to avoid forced labor.
These abuses occur amid chronic food insecurity, malnutrition, and limited access to health care, disproportionally affecting children, people with disabilities, and older people from lower songbun categories. North Korean state media has reported that Kim Jong Un has acknowledged disparities in living standards and access to public services, promoting large-scale construction of hospitals and medical facilities in underdeveloped areas. However, these projects rely heavily on forced labor and mandatory donations from the population, and health care facilities face continued shortages of medicine, equipment, and trained staff.
In 2014, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded that North Korean authorities committed crimes against humanity based on state policy. The UN human rights office in 2025 reported that repression has worsened in North Korea over the past decade, and in 2024 it found the government’s use of forced labor was widespread and in some instances may constitute the crime against humanity of enslavement.
Kim Jong Un’s government should use the Party Congress to publicly commit to reforms that would end criminal penalties for accessing information, halt forced labor mobilizations, abolish discriminatory practices linked to songbun, and allow independent international monitoring of the country’s human rights and humanitarian situation.
Foreign governments should support accountability efforts at the UN, increase support for human rights monitoring groups abroad, assist those who have fled North Korea, and press for independent access to monitor human rights in the country.
“Concerned governments should ensure that violations of human rights, particularly the repression of young people, is central to all discussions with North Korea,” Yoon said. “The Party Congress should reinforce that need, not be a distraction from it.”
