In its 2001 report submitted to the UN Human Rights Committee

In its 2001 report to the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) the government of North Korea claimed that it had reduced the number of criminal offences carrying the death penalty from 33 to 5. However, the HRC noted that 4 of the 5 offences were essentially political and “couched in terms so broad that the imposition of the death penalty may be subject to essentially subjective criteria, and not confined to the ‘most serious crimes’ only.”
The five capital offences are conspiracy against the state power, high treason, terrorism, anti-national treachery and international murder.
On March 1, 2006, North Korea issued a special decree calling for the maximum penalty of death for its citizens involved in manufacturing and trafficking drugs.
North Korea said its use of the death penalty was based on “special domestic circumstances and the need to prevent crimes”. People were reportedly condemned to death for such ‘crimes’ as “ideological divergence”, “opposing socialism”, and “counterrevolutionary crimes”. Political prisoners, peaceful opponents, deserters or repatriated defectors, those who listened to foreign radio broadcasts and those found in possession of so-called “reactionary” material have been shot.
In late 2004, Officials at Seoul's spy agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), confirmed a news report saying North Korea had revised its criminal code on April 29, 2004. Under the new code, North Koreans found guilty of organizing insurgencies against the government would be sentenced either to death or to life in one of the country's notorious labour camps. Previously, the penalty was 10 years of hard labour or the death sentence.
Defectors, defined as those "who betray the fatherland and run away to other states," were previously jailed for up to 10 years. That ceiling had been lifted and they could be jailed for life or executed, though they must be sentenced to a minimum of five years under the new law.
In recent years, thousands of North Korean refugees arrested in China whilst attempting to reach South Korea and Japan by boat, were forcibly repatriated to North Korea. Defectors said that refugees who are sent home to North Korea face detention in labour camps for 'anti-state' criminal acts, and even the death penalty.
Moreover, close to 200,000 political prisoners worked in conditions of slave labour and near-starvation in dozens of secret prison camps in the country, according to "The Hidden Gulag - Exposing North Korea's Prison Camps", a report published in October 2003 by the independent US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.
Starving people have been shot or sent to labour camps for stealing food. The famine that hit North Korea in 1995 worsened to the extent that, according to a report issued by the North Korean Refugees Relief Fund Conference, a Chinese group established in 1998, flesh from fresh corpses or kidnapped and murdered children was available in the black market.
Chinese and Japanese newspapers, that carried stories of the report on June 3, 2003, said the North Korean government, to discourage the practice, was publicly executing persons convicted of trading in human flesh.
According to a set of addendums to the “DPRK Penal Code” adopted in 2007 that leaked out of North Korea, execution is permitted for some ordinary crimes in addition to those stipulated by the full penal code itself. For instance, in cases of currency forgery, the full penal code stipulates more than 10-years of labour re-education, or indefinite re-education in serious cases, but one of the addendum articles also states, “Under extreme circumstances, one can be subject to execution.” Although these articles were adopted in 2007, they were not publicized to the outside world. Seventeen out of the 23 articles contained in the document, called the “DPRK Penal Code Additional Clauses (ordinary crimes),” legalize execution for “especially serious cases” of certain crimes, while the full penal code only stipulates execution for four crimes of a treasonous nature, not for ordinary crimes. The Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) adopted the addendum articles in the form of Ordinance No. 2483 on December 19th, 2007. The ordinance is in the form of a legal code authorized by the Supreme People’s Assembly’s (SPA) Presidium, the highest organ within the SPA, which holds legal authority during SPA recesses. Article 1 stipulates, “For extreme acts pertaining to combat resources and the intentional destruction of military facilities, execution is permissible." The existing penal code, however, only stipulates, “Under particularly heavy circumstances, a sentence of more than 10 years labour re-education or indefinite labour re-education is appropriate.” Other crimes that are deemed to be grave enough to warrant execution under the addendum articles include: plundering and theft of national assets, destruction/damage to national assets, currency fraud, intentional defamation, kidnapping, rape, theft of private assets, smuggling of metals, smuggling of the nation’s natural resources, drug smuggling, and taking bribes for sex trafficking. Importantly, Article 23 stipulates an indefinite labour re-education sentence or execution if an individual commits a number of serious crimes, or does not show acceptable signs of guilt or reform. In the mid-1990s, extra-judicial public executions took place of those found guilty of committing crimes such the theft of cows or food, crimes which were actually happening in all areas of North Korean society. After the enactment of Article 23, however, the form of punishment has become possible within the judicial process. As Article 23 makes clear, the penal code does not regard specific criminal acts with hostility, but makes execution permissible ‘under heavy circumstances’ or for ‘incorrigible persons’ in general. If this is the case, then execution sentences can in theory apply to all offenses, which is a serious violation of established legal principles, albeit that such violations are not new in North Korean legal practice.
North Korea continues to persecute Protestants, Catholics, Buddhists and members of clandestine Christian churches. Christians are imprisoned, beaten, tortured and killed for reading the Bible or preaching about God, and particularly for having ties with evangelical groups operating across the border in China.
Though public executions have declined in latter years due to strong criticism by the international community, executions continue to take place with the same frequency as before, but are now confined to prisons or camps run by the security services.
The number of executions carried out in North Korea in 2005 is indeterminate, but definitely runs into the many tens.
On February 11, 2005, North Korea executed about 70 refugees who were captured in China and sent home, the Commission to Help North Korean Refugees said citing informants in China.
In 2006 Hands Off Cain recorded 3 executions, and at least 13 in 2007.
On December 18, 2008 and December 21st, 2010, North Korea voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.