The North Korean state continues to persecute tens of thousands of Christians, shamanists and other religious believers, a new U.S. government report states, warning of human rights violations tantamount to “crimes against humanity.”

The State Department’s 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom released Monday indicates that DPRK authorities have continued to “execute, torture, arrest and physically abuse individuals for their religious activities” since the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) report on human rights in the country, concluding that little has changed in the intervening years.

But the report also notes that COVID-19 border closures have made it difficult to