Some of the 230 defectors interviewed by the Korean Institute for National Unification told of witnessing executions of people who had either eaten or sold human flesh.
There were reports of outbreaks of cannibalism in the isolated state in the late 1990s after a disastrous famine led to the deaths of an estimated 2 million people, but the new reports are more recent, according to the Yonhap news agency.
The most recent case occurred in 2011 in the town of Musan, a defector told the institute, while a father and his son were executed by a firing squad in the town of Doksong in 2006 after being found guilty of consuming human flesh.
In a third case, a man was executed in Hyesan in December 2009 for killing a girl and eating her. The man reportedly resorted to cannibalism after supplies to the city dwindled in the wake of the government’s disastrous efforts to reform the currency triggered rampant inflation and worsened already critical food shortages. 
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