North Korean Defectors Detail Public Executions, Mass Graves, Prison Camps

North Korea’s human rights violations are more gruesome and astounding than previously thought, a new report revealed. Three hundred and seventy-five defectors from the country detailed mass graves, public executions and other crimes against humanity in a report released Wednesday by Seoul-based human rights organization the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG).

The interviewees said North Korea frequently carried out public executions on school grounds and river banks for the smallest of crimes, like stealing rice or distributing South Korean media. They detailed the locations of mass graves and executions and just how such executions were carried out.

Read: Watch Defector Yeonmi Park Detail Life In North Korea In Viral Video

Most executions, they said, were shootings. But it was not unheard of for people to be beaten to death.

“Some crimes were considered not worth wasting bullets on,” one person said.

Oftentimes, government officials were executed while others were forced to watch as a form of “deterrence,” the report stated. The report also included detailed maps of the locations of executions and burials, the first time such maps were ever compiled, TJWG said.

“The findings may be used for future investigation and prosecution of crimes against humanity,” TJWG said in a press release. “Such evidence is important for supporting any future criminal justice proceedings against perpetrators of human rights abuses in North Korea. But it is also essential for connecting families with the remains of loved ones who may have disappeared or been killed and buried in unknown locations by agents of the state.”

The report is not the first time North Korea’s crimes against humanity have been detailed. A 400-page United Nations report issued in 2014 found that “the gravity, scale and nature” of violations in North Korea did “not have any parallel in the contemporary world.”

“These crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation,” the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights said at the time.

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Defectors have also spoken out in the past. A video of Yeonmi Park, a young defector, went viral after she shared her story with an organization for young leaders.

“North Korea is indescribable,” she said through tears. “North Koreans are desperately seeking and dying for freedom at this moment. When I was nine years old, I saw my friend’s mother executed. Her crime? Watching a Hollywood movie.”