Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report by Transitional Justice Working Group’s Mapping the Fate of the Dead: Killings and Burials in North Korea, published in June, which identified 318 public execution sites in North Korea.

The report produced by the Transitional Justice Working Group is deeply troubling. While we have no means to verify its specific claims, many North Korean defectors have told consistent stories of having witnessed summary executions and extra-judicial killings, and have described this practice as widespread. We utterly condemn the use of summary executions.

We will continue to raise with North Korea our concerns over its arbitrary use of the death penalty and the wider human rights situation in the country, in international fora and through our Embassy in Pyongyang and the North Korean Embassy in London. Our long standing policy is to oppose the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle, and we continue to be a strong supporter of the UN General Assembly Resolution for the moratorium on the use of the death penalty.