The North Korean government is reportedly increasing the implementation of the death penalty, including for people caught watching and sharing foreign films and TV dramas.
A major UN report shared that the dictatorship is subjecting its people to more forced labour while further trampling their basic rights.
The UN Human Rights Office found that over the past decade the North Korean state had tightened control over "all aspects of citizens' lives".
"No other population is under such restrictions in today's world," it concluded, adding that surveillance had become "more pervasive", helped in part by advances in technology.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said that if this situation continued, North Koreans "will be subjected to more of the suffering, brutal repression and fear that they have endured for so long".
Based on 300 interviews with people who escaped from North Korea in the past 10 years, the report found that the death penalty is being used more often.
Since 2015, at least six new laws have been introduced that allow the carrying of the death penalty.
One of the crimes is watching and sharing foreign media content such as films and TV dramas, amid Kim Jong Un's effort to limit people's access to information.
Escapees revealed to the UN researchers that from 2020 onwards there had been more executions for distributing foreign content.
The punishments are carried out publicly by firing squads to instil fear in people and discourage them from breaking the law.
In a 2024 report, the UN discovered that human rights violations were taking place at the country's notorious political prison camps, and the latest research has shared that at least four of these camps are still operating, while detainees in regular prisons are still being tortured and abused.
Many escapees said they had witnessed prisoners die from ill treatment, overwork and malnutrition, though the UN did hear of "some limited improvements" at the facilities, including "a slight decrease in violence by guards".
The UN has called on the North Korean government to abolish its political prison camps, end the use of the death penalty and inform its citizens about their human rights.