North Korea has increased its use of the death penalty to target those consuming foreign media, especially from South Korea, since the Covid pandemic.
The number of executions and sentencing increased by nearly 117 per cent after Pyongyang closed its borders in January 2020 compared with the five years before, according to a report by the South Korea-based Transitional Justice Working Group.
Nothing new about it. But information about it arrives incredibly slow, because reporting about it is likely also punishable by death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_North_Korea