Since the Covid-19 pandemic, North Korea’s government has largely sealed its border with China, imposing broad and unnecessary quarantines and restrictions on freedom of movement and trade.

By exacerbating an already grave humanitarian and human rights situation, these policies have made a bad situation for North Koreans – already living in one of the world’s most repressive countries – even worse.

A new 148-page report, which includes accounts from people who fled North Korea, documents how the government’s measures that were put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic have severely affected food security. These measures – which include ordering border guards to “shoot on sight” anyone approaching the border without permission – also affected the availability of products needed by North Koreans to survive, which previously entered the country via trade routes from China.

Meanwhile, UN sanctions from 2016 and 2017 had already limited most exports and some imports, harming the country’s economy as well as people’s ability to make a living and access food and essential goods. The unintended consequences of these sanctions have caused even more suffering for people in North Korea.

Apart from reviewing the costs of its sanctions, the UN Security Council and concerned governments should press Kim Jong Un to end the country’s systematic human rights abuses and begin a dialogue to reopen the country to the outside world.

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