A/HRC/25/CRP.1 been modified based on superior orders in 2010 or 2011, after DPRK agents shot and killed a number of persons on the Chinese side of the border. While DPRK agents are now ordered to take care not to harm people on the Chinese side, the basic authorization to shoot and kill those who try to flee remains in place.509 403. This shoot to kill policy cannot be justified as a legitimate border control measure since it violates international human rights law. The DPRK upholds a de facto total travel ban on ordinary citizens that violates international law and gives individuals no other option than to cross the border without authorization in order to exercise their human right to leave their own country. Furthermore, the intentional taking of life for the purposes of preventing the unauthorized crossing of a border is also grossly disproportionate and irreconcilable with article 6 of the ICCPR, which only allows the use of lethal force by state agents in self-defence or defence of others to protect life against immediate threats.510 404. The Commission also found a practice of SSD agents abducting persons who flee the DPRK from the territory of the People’s Republic of China. Former officials who flee and others who might give away sensitive information are targeted, along with humanitarian activists and others who help DPRK nationals flee.511 (d) Torture, inhuman treatment and imprisonment of persons who tried to flee the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 405. In an attempt to deter citizens from fleeing the country, the DPRK authorities subject those who were forcibly repatriated from China or were caught in the process of trying to reach China to torture, inhumane treatment and imprisonment. 406. In the 1990s, when the authorities were confronted with the first cases of citizens fleeing mass starvation, the authorities often sought to set a deterrent example to the population. • Ms Kwon Young-hee spoke to the Commission about her brother who was arrested in China in 1994 for attempting to “defect” from the DPRK. He had gone to China in search of food. As an example to others against committing similar “anti-state” offences, he was tied to the back of a truck which took him to their home town, Musan. “By the time he reached Musan, his face was covered with blood, his clothes were all torn. And when he fell, they stopped the truck and rushed him to stand up again. At the time my brother was discharged [from the army] for malnutrition, and he was diabetic. My mother tried to treat his diabetes in the hospital so he was diabetic at the time he went to China. … Even when my brother collapsed, the truck would go on and the Bowibu people, when my brother collapsed, would beat my brother up to make him stand up. Musan is a big city but they drove him around Musan city three times so that everybody could see him.”512 • In 1993, a family fled to China and was forcibly repatriated to their hometown in Onsong County, North Hamgyong Province. The whole family, including a boy of five years of age, were paraded in handcuffs around town. The mother and father were then dragged around like oxen with rings that had been rammed into their 509 510 511 512 TBG031, a former official. International human rights law only allows the use of intentional force if strictly necessary to protect life. See Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, “Study on Targeted Killings” (A/HRC/14/24/Add.6, para. 32). For more information on these abductions, see section IV.F. Seoul Public Hearing, 24 August 2013, morning (02:14:00). 113