Two female fortune tellers were shot dead in a brutal public execution in North Korea.
The women had formed a collective called the Seven Star Group and claimed that two children, aged three and five, could channel a 'spirit oracle' and tell the future.
Thousands of people were brought to attend the public trial in the northern city of Chongjin back in March before the death sentences were carried out.
A source from within North Korea told Radio Free Asia the execution was designed to 'maintain social order' amid fears that fortune telling has become too widespread.
The source said: "Even high-ranking officials and the families of judicial authorities often visit fortune tellers" before arranging weddings or making business deals.
A UN report on human rights in the country in 2014 found public executions were routinely used as a method to maintain control of the population.
The report said: "As a matter of state policy, the authorities carry out executions, with or without trial, publicly or secretly, in response to political and other crimes that are often not among the most serious crimes.
"The policy of regularly carrying out public executions serves to instill fear in the general population."
The UN report said that while public executions "were most common in the 1990s," they continued up until the time of the landmark report's release in 2014, and that 2013 saw a "spike in the number of politically motivated public executions."
