One witness described how his father had unintentionally soiled an image of Kim Jong-il printed in a used newspaper which he had used to mop up spilt drink. He was consequently sent to a political prison camp. The rest of the family was spared this fate, but was rendered as a family with ‘hostile songbun’, which is their equivalent of the lowest possible social class, and thus suffered decades of harsh official discrimination.

According to one witness, a staff member of a hospital in North Hamgyong Province was investigated by the State Security Department (SSD) for one month after accidentally breaking the glass on a portrait of Kim Il-sung whilst carrying out the mandatory weekly cleaning of it.

So from covering just these first two sections of the report we’ve already had a pretty dirty glimpse of life for the normal folk of North Korea. In part two we’ll cover media and propaganda and I promise you it only gets worse from here on in.

☛ Watch Next: VIDEO: US Rappers Make Video In North Korea