by WorldTribune Staff, October 3, 2025 Real World News
In a rare glimpse of life inside the North Korea totalitarian state, authorities reportedly held a public trial for two women accused of undergoing illegal breast augmentation. The man who performed the surgeries, described as a medical school dropout, was also reportedly put on trial.
The two women were “brought to a public trial at a cultural hall in central Sariwon” in mid-September, the Daily NK reported Thursday, citing a source in North Hwanghae Province.
The two women and the man who performed the surgeries were brought before a crowd of residents, the report said. On display at the trial were surgical tools, imported silicone implants, and bundles of cash as evidence.
The man allegedly performed the operations at private homes using silicone smuggled from China.
Local security officials reportedly launched a crackdown on illegal cosmetic procedures under central government orders, leading to the arrests after an undercover investigation, the report said.
The two women said during the public trial that they underwent the surgeries because they wanted to improve their appearance.
The prosecutor accused them of adopting “bourgeois customs and rotten capitalist behavior unfit for women living under socialism.”
The judge said they were “driven by vanity and became poisonous weeds corroding the socialist system.”
The court session reportedly included a public examination of the women’s bodies, leaving spectators shocked.
The Daily NK cited as source as saying “the women were humiliated and could not lift their heads.”
Following the trial, provincial state security officers are said to have begun medical checks on other women suspected of having cosmetic surgery.
In North Korea, public trials are designed to instill fear among residents and label targeted behaviors as “antisocialist.”
A report from the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva noted a resurgence of public trials and executions in North Korea and cited cases in which women repatriated from China were executed shortly after being tried in public.
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