Weeks after Australian missionary John Short was deported from North Korea for “anti-state” religious acts, the state-controlled news website Uriminzokkiri (literally, “Within our nation”) released an article on March 24 that uses biblical terms and references to describe the country as a utopian paradise.

Today a United Nations commission will formally present a 372-page report to the Human Rights Council documenting abuses in North Korea. As we reported in the March 22 issue of WORLD, UN investigators have spent the past year probing eyewitness claims of atrocities committed by Kim Jong Un’s regime, interviewing former North Korean citizens, prison camp inmates, and military officials. What follows are graphic accounts given during UN hearings.

SANTA ANA, Calif.—Cat Brown, 35, sat patiently in Sid’s Tattoo Parlor, legs crossed under a poofy vintage skirt and numbing cream slathered over her back. A high school guidance counselor, Brown had flown from Tempe, Ariz., to Santa Ana, Calif., to see Sid Stankovits, her favorite tattoo artist and owner of the tiny shop in a strip mall.

Have you ever seen the face of a woman who spends her days waiting to die? You’ll see close-ups of many such faces in Veil of Tears, a new documentary that uncovers what one Indian woman calls “the darkest side of our country”: the bitter, lifelong oppression of women in India, all for the crime of being born female.

THE GUARDS WORE RUSSIAN-STYLE MILITARY BOOTS.

Timothy Kang remembers those boots because they met his face as the guards kicked and stomped on him over and over. The guards used wooden square paddles to beat him, too, after their own knuckles and palms started to bruise. He was dragged to 15 different jails and tortured in each one.

His crime? Crossing the border into North Korea during a trip to evangelize his native land. He was lucky: Since he was underage, he narrowly avoided the more severe political prison camp.

Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren is starting a new mental health ministry following the suicide of his son Matthew, who at age 27 shot himself in April after years of struggling with severe depression.