North Korea carries out public executions on riverbanks and at school grounds and marketplaces for charges such as stealing copper from factory machines, distributing media from South Korea and prostitution, a report issued Wednesday said.

The report, by a Seoul-based nongovernmental organization, said the often extrajudicial decisions for public executions are frequently influenced by "bad" family background or a government campaign to discourage certain behavior.

The Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) said its report was based on interviews with 375 North Korean defectors from the isolated state over a period of two years.