The Voice of America said Thursday that Amnesty International(AI) included North Korea among eleven countries that have carried out executions for five straight years since 2011.

The nongovernmental human rights group said in an annual report on Wednesday that the executions of North Korea's People's Armed Forces chief Hyon Yong-chol and ex-vice premier Choe Yong-gon are examples.

The group added that there have been reports suggesting that the North is sentencing people to death for various types of crimes and is actually following through with the capital punishment.
 
Chiara Sangiorgio, death penalty researcher at AI, said that Pyongyang’s use of executions is excessive, particularly for crimes that do not deserve capital punishment under international law.
 
According to AI, some one-thousand-600 were executed around the world last year, up 54 percent from the previous year.
 
However, the figure did not include executions carried out in countries that have not revealed related data or that are hard to investigate, such as North Korea, China, Vietnam and Laos.