Musan County, North Hamgyong Province, is home to North Korea's largest iron mine. Since mid-January, mine workers have been required to undergo reserve army (kyododae) training in addition to their regular duties. A source in Musan County told ASIAPRESS that this year's training is as grueling as that of the regular army.
"It's very hard. In the iron mines, only basic jobs such as those in the quarry and the ore concentration center are active, while the rest of the workers are mobilized in shifts for paramilitary training. The training, which begins at 8 or 9 a.m., is similar to that of the regular military, and the drills are as tough as those faced by soldiers. Exercises include repairing fortifications, assaulting enemy fortifications, and maneuvering. Soldiers are required to wear uniforms, hats, and armbands. Those who [don't] want to participate in the training have no choice but to do so, because the authorities have threatened them with a cut in their food rations and wages if they don't.”
※ Kyododae: A reserve force composed mainly of veterans and single women between the ages of 17 and 50. Each unit is similar to an army infantry division in terms of weaponry and size.
"It is cold this year, food rations are low, and many workers are suffering from the constant drills. A party cadre came to the workplace and gave a lecture, saying: 'The situation around us is serious and tense, so it wouldn't be surprising if a war broke out right now. Everyone must be vigilant and ready to mobilize. We must use our nuclear arsenal and our unity to settle [the fight against our enemies] once and for all, so we must train well.”
In neighboring North Hamgyung province, Hoeryong began its civilian-military drills in January as well. A reporting partner who lives in Hoeryong explained details regarding the civil defense training:
"Under the excellent leadership of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, our nuclear and missile forces have become the best in the world. In early January, the Central Committee of the Workers' Party issued a directive to be ready to strike back at any enemy provocation. So this year, 100% of citizens will participate in civil defense drills, and those who claim they cannot participate due to personal circumstances or illness will be strictly inspected [to find out whether they are telling the truth]. Some people are paying to get medical certificates from hospitals, but if any doctors are found to have issued fake certificates, the authorities are threatening to confiscate their licenses.”
In factories and enterprises, "combat emergency backpacks" have undergone inspections. They were checked to ensure they all have a week's worth of food, lighters, matches, medicines, blankets, solid fuel, and salt. This year, civil defense training will include drills in maneuvering, attacking enemy fortifications, and live fire training."
* Civil defense organizations refer to the kyododae as well as other civilian-military reserve organizations.
In addition to strengthening the training of civilian-military reserve organizations, the government is also pushing people to provide various kinds of support for the army.
"At a meeting of our neighborhood watch unit on January 6, officials announced that a mass support project would be conducted to ensure results in the winter drills. In addition to the tasks assigned to each household, people were asked to voluntarily donate supplies such as gloves, belts, and pork, and those who were willing to do so were asked to inform the neighborhood watch units and district offices of the quantity and items to be donated.
“The order also said that the people should make voluntary contributions to improve the defense of the country. Neighborhood watch units, as well as social organizations such as the Socialist Women’s League and the Youth League, were instructed to extend their support for the army.
“Exemplary families, businesses, social organizations, and individuals who donated supplies were to be praised and given tickets to hot springs and ski resorts as a courtesy of the Workers’ Party.”
Neighborhood watch units are North Korea’s lowest-level administrative units, with about 20 to 30 households per unit.
Meanwhile, the flu has been raging in Musan and Hoeryong since mid-January.
"Thirty percent of the people around me are sick. [As a result] the military training of the civilian armed forces is not being carried out properly," said a reporting partner in Hoeryong.
※ ASIAPRESS smuggles Chinese cell phones into North Korea to maintain communication with its reporting partners.
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North Korea's February 2023 adoption of the "Prodigy Education Law" was a government attempt to cultivate the country’s elite. The law has led to the emergence of “classes for gifted students” that aim to push students to enter elite schools, but the law has created a growing dilemma for the North Korean authorities as it encourages the spread of private education, which in turn leads to educational inequality. (KANG Ji-won / CHO Eui-sung)
In the Kim Il-sung era, gifted education was vilified as discriminatory and reactionary. Under Kim Jong-il, however, the North Korean government’s view of such education changed. Recognizing the role of talented people in national competitiveness and social development, the country has shifted toward having a system that aims to cultivate such the “gifted.”
The North Korean authorities have implemented a policy to cultivate talented people for national construction and development by promoting a “gifted” education system centered on the Pyongyang First Middle School, Keumsung Academy, and the No. 1 Middle Schools in each province.
*Pyongyang No. 1 Middle School: A mathematics education institution located in the Potonggang District of Pyongyang, the school’s mission is to train national cadres and science and technology students through selecting highly intelligent students from across the country.
*Keumseong Academy: An academy in the Mangyongdae District of Pyongyang that trains gifted students in the arts.
In February 2023, the 14th Plenary Session of the 24th Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly adopted the “Prodigy Education Law,” which establishes a system for gifted education, selects gifted students, establishes guidelines, and guarantees educational conditions. The law can be seen as laying the foundation for a more stable and sustainable effort to cultivate gifted students by codifying the tenants of gifted education policy.
However, contrary to the intentions of the North Korean authorities, educational inequality among North Koreans is growing as a side effect of the program.
In late August 2023, an ASIAPRESS reporting partner in Hyesan, a city in North Korea's Yanggang Province, said that, in recent years, North Korean schools have begun to offer entry into “gifted classrooms,” which are operated separately from regular classes and provide advanced and high-quality education.
The reporting partner said that guidelines have been established to allow students who are selected to go on to higher-level gifted schools, including the Pyongyang No. 1 Middle School. This has led to an unprecedented level of competition among North Koreans to get into the gifted education system.
"The system is designed to educate students in a different framework than other students, and students and parents are desperate to get in."
In the meantime, the phenomenon of some teachers making money from tutoring students in order to get into the gifted education system is on the rise, adding another layer of inequality and corruption to North Korea’s education system.
The issue here is that the overwhelming majority of students who fail to enter the gifted education system are worse off. The quality of general education deteriorates as limited educational resources are focused on gifted education programs. Moreover, some students are unable to attend school because their families are so poor.
"For students who can't bring lunch boxes to school, study classes and divisions are asking them to take turns bringing extra lunch boxes."
North Korean authorities seem to recognize that one of the causes of extracurricular activities outside of school is the poor treatment of teachers and are trying with whatever resources are available to improve teachers’ treatment and raise their salaries as part of efforts to support the public education system, according to another reporting partner in North Hamgyong Province.
"There was a party directive instructing officials to provide rations to teachers. The city party committee appealed to local companies to provide food for teachers, and since July, they have been providing 20 days' worth of rations, I’ve heard.”
According to the reporting partner, the living allowance for teachers has also been steadily increasing, and was already around 18,000 won a few years ago. At the end of 2023, the North Korean authorities raised wages for workers and civil servants at the same time, and teachers now earn between 38,000 and 50,000 won per month.
*1,000 North Korean won is about 0.119 dollars.
At the same time, authorities are also tightening their control over private education. The Hyesan reporting partner said that in early August, the authorities issued a directive to eliminate the practice of teachers taking bribes to provide after-school tutoring. This included a directive that instructed parents and teachers to send all school-age children to school.
Despite these efforts, the government’s dilemma is unlikely to be solved anytime soon. Many of the students receiving tutoring are the children of party cadres and the donju (the wealthy entrepreneurial class), so the reporting partners question how effective the government crackdowns will be.
※ ASIAPRESS communicates with its reporting partners through Chinese cell phones smuggled into North Korea.
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In September of last year, the new school year began with North Korean authorities inspecting students' uniforms. The quality of state-supplied uniforms is so poor that people have been making their own similar-looking uniforms, which is what the authorities decided to crack down on. There is growing dissatisfaction among parents with the government’s totalitarian move to force everyone to wear the same low-quality uniforms. (KANG Ji-won / CHO Eui-sung)
"Provide quality school uniforms to students across the country," Kim Jong-un said at the Workers' Party plenary session in late December 2023. Since then, state-run media has frequently reported that the government is responsible for producing and supplying essential goods to students, which the regime promotes as the country’s future generation. However, the government’s propaganda may be an indication of the shortage of school uniforms.
Free compulsory education, along with free medical treatment, has long been a measure of North Korea's superiority as a socialist nation. As a result, students were generally provided with free school supplies and uniforms each semester. However, since the 1990s, North Korea's economic situation has shaken up the entire education system, and uniforms are only supplied every few years.
In the spring of 2023, North Korea provided students with school uniforms, but they were shoddily designed and made of poor-quality materials, according to an ASIAPRESS reporting partner in Hyesan, Yanggang Province. As a result, the uniforms were rejected by students and parents alike.
"The clothes they supplied this spring are made of mixed fabrics, which are very wrinkled and of low quality... and they fall apart immediately. The quality of the uniforms is so pathetic that the kids look like homeless children when they wear them, so parents have to spend money to buy new ones."
According to the reporting partner, North Korean authorities conducted uniform inspections at schools in preparation for the first day of school on September 1, 2023. The inspections took issue with new, high-quality uniforms purchased by parents. The inspection found that about a third of students were not wearing the uniforms provided by their schools. The government said the reason for the crackdown rested on the need to ensure all students wore the same uniforms.
"We spent money to make similar clothes for the kids, and now the parents are worried that the crackdown will force us to make them again with inferior fabrics."
The crackdown on the availability of quality school uniforms has led to growing dissatisfaction among students and parents. In fact, there are even those who do not welcome the government distribution of school uniforms, saying that it is a waste of money for the government to supply inferior uniforms, particularly given that the government did not conduct crackdowns during periods it was unable to supply uniforms at all.
The only ones who are smiling at all of this are the makers of school uniforms. Since the beginning of the month, there has been an increase in the number of orders to school uniform makers asking them to make clothes with the same quality fabrics as those supplied by the government. The uniform makers are purposely making low-quality uniforms in order to earn a profit.
In addition, a reporting partner recently told ASIAPRESS that the cost of making a school uniform for boys in North Korea is 25,000 to 30,000 won, and 23,000 to 28,000 won for girls.
※ 1,000 North Korean won is about $0.118.
The government crackdown on school uniforms is part of an effort to return to a collectivist and egalitarian society, but has led to discontent in schools. The effort is backfiring, as students and parents are increasingly resentful of the socialist system.
※ ASIAPRESS communicates with reporting partners through Chinese cell phones smuggled into North Korea.
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Life in North Korea’s cities has taken a turn for the worse. Beginning in early spring 2023, the phrase “death by starvation” began to pop up frequently in reports sent over by our reporting partners. For example, in mid-May, a text message arrived from a reporting partner in Yanggang Province saying:
"There have been a lot of people dying in May. In my neighborhood, four people died in April, and there are two people who look like they’ll die soon. Many of the people in my neighborhood have chronic diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, and asthma, and they don't know if they will be able to eat a meal a day. Even when people die, the authorities never declare them dead. They say they died of disease. Some people complain that if they died because they couldn't eat, why do they say they died of a disease?"
I asked six reporting partners to tally the number of deaths in their neighborhood watch units (inminban) between April and July. The average number of people in a neighborhood watch unit is between 60 and 100. Unit leaders see those under their charge every day and have frequent meetings, so it's easy to keep track of their residents.
I was told the death toll in each neighborhood watch unit was between three to six. Of course, not all of those who died suffered from starvation. The general consensus of the reporting partners was that many people died due to poor nutrition, low immunity, and infectious diseases.
During this period, there were reports of children's bodies found lying on the roadside; a woman who poisoned herself and a child in desperation and committed suicide nearby; a couple who left their home to get food and never returned; an elderly woman and child who were left behind crawling out of their home and begging on the streets...These were all reports that were hard to read.
The approach to hard times is the same in every country.
"When you run out of cash, you borrow money and food from neighbors, acquaintances, and relatives. If that becomes difficult, you pawn or sell your food. It's not uncommon to see debt collectors swarming the neighborhood, taking away pots and pans. What's left is stealing or, if you're a woman, prostitution. Finally, they sell their homes or commit suicide."
Our reporting partner in North Hamgyung Province gave us the above explanation about circumstances in North Korea these days. Those who have exhausted their savings and cash income are the first to fall into hard times. However, as our research and information gathering is limited to the three northern provinces close to China, we are unable to confirm whether the crisis has spread across the country.
Incidentally, a report released in July 2023 by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that 11.8 million people in North Korea were undernourished in 2020-22, representing 45.5% of the total population. That's nearly as many as in Somalia, which has been in a state of civil war for years.
"In regards to the strict prohibition of trading goods or circulating foreign currency outside the state's control.”
In early August 2023, Kim Jong-un's regime suddenly issued a declaration ordering a strict ban on the use of foreign currency and that goods could only be distributed under state control. The declaration was issued by the Ministry of Social Security, the country’s national police agency.
Government officials traveled to neighborhood watch unit meetings around the country to explain the decree and demand compliance. "Violators of the order will be punished by death," they said. RFA reported this around the same time as we did (August 7).
On the afternoon of August 30, nine people were executed by public firing squad in Hyesan, Yanggang Province, although the connection to the declaration is unclear. The charges were that they had secretly slaughtered a cow, which is considered state property, and sold off the meat. One of our reporting partners witnessed the execution. She told us:
"That morning, the authorities told us to gather at Hyesan Airfield for a public criticism session featuring the criminals. It was raining, but we went anyway, and many people had been mobilized through the city's institutions, business offices, and people's groups. The meeting turned into a trial, and then a firing squad conducted an execution. Two of the nine people were women."
A public execution was also carried out on September 25 at the same location. A man was executed for stealing medicines from a medicine cabinet (medicines are considered “wartime supplies” in North Korea). We wrote about these two public executions (Sept. 1, Oct. 9), while RFA (Aug. 31, Sept. 29) and the Tokyo Shimbun (Oct. 11) wrote almost identical stories. Hyesan is a city in the northern part of the country on the Yalu River, and the two news organizations apparently got their information from people using Chinese cell phones.
※On December 19, another public execution took place in Hyesan. More details are in the following article.
<Interview> How was the public execution in Hyesan carried out?…In just four months, three executions have occurred in the city… “We were lined up at our places of work and marched to the execution site”
Over the past decade or so, I had not seen any reports about executions where the general population was mobilized to watch the proceedings. While there were likely "closed-door executions" conducted by the regime that involved only a limited number of witnesses, the regime may have stopped public executions for fear of deteriorating the image of the regime, as information would leak out if there were too many witnesses.
The fact that the executions were carried out in succession in August, September, and December - in public and in areas bordering China - suggests that the regime is prioritizing terrorizing the population over potential damage to its image. The executions serve as warnings that pardons will not be given to those who fail to obey government orders. The executions also give us a glimpse of the government’s aim to its "anti-market" policies by exerting firm control over private commercial activities.
The last thing I want to talk about here is the emergence of Kim Jong-un's daughter. The girl, who South Korean authorities believe is named Kim Ju-ae and is still around 10 years old, made her first public appearance on November 18, 2022. Kim accompanied her on an on-the-spot inspection of a long-range ballistic missile test.
She reappeared at a grand ceremony on February 8, 2023 that was broadcast for two hours on Korea Central Television, with camera work and editing clearly designed to highlight her presence.
Another notable part of the ceremony was the chant, "Let's defend the Baekdu bloodline." The Baekdu bloodline refers to Kim Il-sung's anti-Japanese guerrilla activities at the foot of Mount Paektu, which towers over the border of North Korea and China, and to the Kim clan, from Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un. Marching soldiers chanted the slogan and waved placards. It was an appeal to the Korean People's Army that its mission was not only to defend the Korean Revolution and the homeland, but also to defend the Kim clan with their lives.
The daughter's appearances continued. On August 29, she visited the country’s naval headquarters and met with waiting high-ranking officers. On September 9, an article reporting on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK used the honorific: "Dear Comrade Kim Jong Un brought his respected daughter..."
At this point, there is nothing to suggest that Ju-ae is a candidate to succeed her father. However, it is possible that Kim Jong-un's intention is to keep his daughter, who is barely a child, in the limelight and to make the next generation of the Kim dynasty visible at home and abroad. I believe that Kim Jong-un, who aims to perpetuate his rule by blood, has begun making the succession process visible to the public.
Looking back at the past three years and nine months, I think that the regime’s hardline measures - including the constant upgrading of missile technology, the strict closure of the Chinese border, and the attempts to restore a state-controlled economy with "anti-market" policies - were preparations for the fourth generation succession. In short, Kim Jong-un aims to establish a strong system of control and pass the country to the next generation. In all of this, people’s lives are considered by the regime to be close to worthless.
Fortunately, North Korea’s severe humanitarian crisis began to improve in late September. Potatoes and corn have been harvested, and many people have been able to breathe a sigh of relief as low-quality but low-priced food is now available on the market. We wish them well. (End of series)
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By the late 1990s, North Korea's socialist economy had largely collapsed, and markets, which had begun to spread organically, had taken over the distribution of all consumer goods, including food. The market economy continued to expand and spread despite several attempts by the regime to repressed it.
Although illegal, markets for housing, labor, and medical services emerged and became fully integrated into North Korean society. Private employment also spread, and small-scale businesses were tolerated. The majority of the general population did not receive food rations or salaries, but were able to buy food and other necessary goods in the markets with the cash they earned from their businesses and illegal labor.
Kim Jong-un's regime, which began in 2012, expanded trade with China while increasing the discretion of trading firms and businesses domestically, allowing for some degree of private economic activity. The period 2014-17 also saw an increase in the income of the common people.
At the onset of the pandemic, the Kim Jong-un regime prioritized epidemic prevention and sealed the country's borders to keep people and goods out. Imports of Chinese goods were halted, and the markets faced a brick wall.
The regime also severely restricted the movement of people and goods within the country, making it difficult to travel between counties and cities. At the same time, the regime intensified the "struggle against non-socialist and anti-socialist phenomena" that began before the pandemic, cracking down on private economic activities.
It became impossible to hire people to work in small-scale businesses, such as selling food products such as bread and rice cakes, sewing clothing, and transporting goods. Adult males were forced to report to their assigned workplaces, making it difficult for them to engage in commerce or menial labor. Those who left their jobs to pursue other livelihoods were punished as "job deserters" and the "unemployed.”
While all of this was happening, North Korea’s economy became paralyzed. In the fall of 2020, it became common to see processions of city dwellers going to the countryside to pick up leftovers from harvested crops. People begging for food at farm houses appeared everywhere.
In the summer of 2021, the number of people dying of malnutrition and disease began to increase, even in the vicinity of where our reporting partners live. Members of vulnerable groups such as families made up of mothers and children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled began to collapse in exhaustion and hunger. Urban residents who had been deprived of the opportunity to earn cash income quickly became destitute.
Soon after the start of the pandemic, the Kim regime began to intervene in the sale of food in markets. It set price ceilings, forcing vendors to stick to them, and monitored stalls and kiosks. Next, it limited the amount of food sold in markets and cracked down on the flow of grain from rural areas to markets.
The regime passed measures to ensure that food would pass through “state-run grain shops,” a network of which the regime had been trying to build up since 2019. The shops monopolized the sale and distribution of staple foods, white rice and corn, and I thought it was a temporary measure to manage food during the coronavirus pandemic. However, it turned out that the real reason for this was something else.
Based on information from our reporting partners, since 2021, state-run grain shops have shifted from a sell-when-stock-is-available system to a twice-monthly sales system, with only 5 kilograms handed out to each person in a single household. As of December 2022, market prices were typically 6,000 won for white rice and 3,000 won for corn, whereas the state-run shops sold white rice for 4,400 won and corn for 2,400 won. (All prices are 1 kilogram; 1,000 North Korean won is about 155 South Korean won.)
Ordinary people welcomed the low prices at the shops, but the problem was that the shops didn’t provide enough stock to meet demand. Workers who showed up for work were given a few kilograms a month, but those who kept missing work were excluded from the ration system.
In January 2023, white rice and corn were finally banned from the markets. I believe that what the Kim Jong-un regime was aiming for was to take control of food distribution away from the market and shift to a “state-run monopoly on food.”
The goal of this policy is to reinstate the regime’s control over people’s calories. It's like saying, "I'll feed you, but you have to listen to me," and using food as a tool of control. How will the battle between the regime and the market end? ( To 4 >> )
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The era of defections has ended.
After watching the events of the past few years, I have watched how almost the entire 1,400 kilometers of the Tumen and Yalu rivers, which form the border between North Korea and China, have been covered with multiple layers of barbed wire. Under the pretext of "stopping the invasion of the coronavirus,” North Korea has constructed barbed wire and guard posts for several years by mobilizing local residents and the military. Equipment to distribute electricity to the wires has also been added.
In August 2020, a notice from the Ministry of Social Security (the national police agency) was posted at railroad stations and public places declaring that areas near the border have become buffer zones and that anyone approaching without permission would be shot without warning. One of our reporting partners took one down, photographed it, and emailed it to me.
The notice said that people and livestock entering the buffer zone would be shot without warning.
"I should have fled to South Korea before the pandemic, but now it's impossible. I will regret my indecision for the rest of my life,” lamented the reporting partner, who is a single mother raising her middle-school daughter.
Preventing defections and smuggling isn't the only reason the Kim Jong-un regime has tightened security along the border with China. Since the mid-2000s, South Korean cultural content, such as movies and music, has become popular in North Korea, particularly dramas, and much of it comes from across the Chinese border.
At the time, the large number of Chinese cell phones smuggled into North Korea made it possible for people in South Korea and Japan to communicate with North Koreans. It also enabled North Korean defectors to send money to their families. The border with China became a conduit for people, goods, money, and information. For a regime that relies on isolation to survive, this was a situation that could not be ignored.
The high point of North Korean defectors entering South Korea was in 2009 (2,914 people). After Kim Jong-un took power in 2012, the number dropped dramatically due to intensified patrols and security along the border, but remained in the 1,000 to 2,000s until 2019. However, the number dropped dramatically to 229 in 2020, falling even further to 63 in 2021, 67 in 2022, and then jumping up a bit to around 180 as of December 2023 (all of this information is from South Korea’s Ministry of Unification).
Moreover, most of the defectors who have entered the country in the past few years have been longtime residents of China and Russia; very few among them fled North Korea after the start of the pandemic.
South Korean researchers and NGO representatives have been able to interview only one defector in 2020 and two in 2021 who left North Korea after the start of the pandemic. They said that South Korea's research on North Korea was bolstered by interviewing new arrivals to update established knowledge, but after the start of the pandemic, obtaining new information became difficult.
(In May 2023, 10 people divided between two families defected to South Korea by boat, followed by another five people who defected by boat in October 2023)
Currently, there are about 200 North Korean defectors living in the Osaka metropolitan area of Japan. During North Korea’s “repatriation program” that lasted from 1959 to 1984, more than 93,000 Koreans and their Japanese family members crossed into North Korea, and these returnees and their North Korean-born second and third generations are returning to Japan.
They have been exchanging letters with their sons, daughters, and brothers, pretending to be relatives in Japan, and sending cash and other items. In Japan, you can safely send up to 100,000 yen in cash via insured mail. You can also send luggage, although customs scrutinizes it for luxury goods due to economic sanctions on North Korea. These things, however, all stopped with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
Since late 2020, I've been getting a lot of inquiries from people asking if they can check up on their relatives, or if they can send money through non-traditional routes. I asked my reporting partners if they could call other people inside the country, but they refused.
"Calling the home of a repatriated person with no connections is like voluntarily putting yourself in the sights of the Ministry of State Security (the secret police)," they told me. In short, they believe that their domestic calls are being tapped.
Ms. A, an 80-year-old Korean-Japanese woman in a prefecture of Kansai - and whose parents and seven siblings returned to North Korea in the 60s and 70s - has been sending remittances to her relatives in North Korea for 60 years. She has lived a frugal life. But with the outbreak of the pandemic, she’s been unable to continue sending letters and money.
"My siblings may be dead. I'm preparing myself that this will be when I lose touch with them," she says.
Ms. A gave me hundreds of letters and photos from her siblings, saying, "Please use this as a resource.” In several albums, she organized photos of her siblings when they lived together in Japan and in their later years in a city in North Korea’s northern region. Ms. A's decision to give away her precious photos was a sign of how well she knew that she couldn’t contact them again. I couldn't help but wonder if the coronavirus pandemic had severed the thin threads that connected such people with their loved ones in North Korea. ( To 3 >> )
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In the three years and nine months since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in January 2020, many people have died in North Korea. When the border was closed for quarantine reasons, ASIAPRESS reporting partners in North Korea said that they were "more afraid of starvation than the pandemic" and that they had a premonition of disaster. Unfortunately, it became a reality.
The deaths were first caused by the collapse of North Korea's medical system. Trade was cut off, leading to a shortage of Chinese-made medicines, and the sick and injured, especially the elderly and infants, died without treatment. Then, as economic stagnation worsened the plight of urban residents, people began to die of malnutrition. There were also cases of people taking their own lives in despair over the future.
In May 2022, when the coronavirus pandemic hit the country, many people lost their lives, and for several months in the spring of 2023, the chaos in the provincial cities reached its peak; in some areas, there were even signs of famine. Chaos naturally breeds disorder. To combat this, the Kim regime resumed public executions in August 2023.
While not as bad as the social chaos of the late 1990s, known as the "Arduous March," the past few years have arguably been just as disastrous. Japan, South Korea, and the international community have been silent about this humanitarian crisis. I think it's because information is so scarce, and due to the "coronavirus pandemic," no one from the outside has been able to witness the disaster. Koreans in Japan who have relatives in North Korea and North Korean defectors living in Japan are becoming increasingly worried. They haven't heard from their relatives for almost four years.
As explained in more detail below, I have been working with people living in North Korea for more than 20 years to report on internal developments. The information I received from them is fragmentary, but by comparing and analyzing this accumulated information, I was able to see that the Kim Jong-un regime was using the pandemic as an excuse to impose unprecedented social control measures and a major policy shift to an "anti-market" regime. I could also see that these measures were a recipe for disaster. In this article, I will look back at the four years since the outbreak of the pandemic, focusing on the domestic situation in North Korea.
In January 2020, at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in China, the Kim Jong-un regime sealed its borders, preventing people and goods from entering and leaving the country, and very few people traveled to China, crossed the border illegally, or defected (more on this below).
International media access to North Korea has also been cut off. Major news organizations and media, including Kyodo, AP, and AFP, which had bureaus in Pyongyang, were unable to send a single reporter into the country for four years. Even the Pyongyang correspondent for Chosun Sinbo, the official newspaper of Chongryon in Japan, withdrew in March 2020, and no replacement has been named as of January 2024.
The same goes for the Russian state news agency TASS (China's Xinhua declined to confirm this to us). It has been impossible to travel to China, which has imposed a strict zero-COVID policy, making it difficult to report from the DPRK-China border. Even international mail was stopped, and not a single postcard reached Japan. I don't think there has ever been such an information blackout regarding North Korea.
I began reporting on North Korea in 1993. I went to Pyongyang in 1995 and to North Hamgyong Province in 1997 and 1998, but I realized that there is a "high wall" that can never be jumped over by outsiders, no matter how much effort or money is spent.
In 2002, I decided to work with North Koreans to report on the internal situation. I traveled to China, met with North Koreans who had left the country both legally and illegally, and sought out reporting partners. The goal was to cultivate "citizen journalists. I used a Chinese cell phone to communicate with them. The signals can reach several kilometers inside North Korea. I had 10 reporting partners with varying levels of skill and motivation. But when the pandemic began, I lost contact with four of them. They live in Pyongyang and North Pyongan Province, and I lost the means to communicate with them because they are unable to travel to the border areas, let alone China. The other six live in Yanggang and North Hamgyung Provinces, and Pyongyang and I communicate by telephone or messenger.
In Japan, Yasunobu Shirouchi of the Tokyo Shimbun (who will retire at the end of 2023) and Koichi Yonemura of the Mainichi Shimbun are the only media outlets currently reporting on the situation in North Korea from independent sources, while overseas, several journalists from RFA (Radio Free Asia) have reported with their own sources. Unfortunately, South Korean media has all but abandoned independent reporting from inside North Korea.
ASIAPRESS reporters are all ordinary people, so we can't get high-level information. We don't know much about them except where they live. The research method is simple. All North Koreans are organized into local "people's units" and social groups such as workplaces and women's associations. There, in meetings and study sessions held every one to two weeks, policies and instructions from the Workers' Party or the government are passed on.
We also conduct weekly price surveys at markets and state-owned stores, and visit nearby cooperative farms to assess rural conditions. We ask our reporting partners to use their Chinese smartphones to take pictures of the documents they find so we can review them. But we are a small organization, and our research capacity is limited. With that in mind, we hope you will read the following report.
※ People’s units (or neighborhood watch units) are the lowest level administrative unit in North Korea and each consists of about 20 to 30 households, or about 60 to 100 members. The units are responsible for delivering instructions from the government and tracking the thinking and behavior of the population. ( To 2 >> )
Late last year, Kim Jong-un's regime raised wages for workers and government officials more than tenfold from the beginning of the year. The goal was to force people to go to work and use the increased wages to buy food from the government
. The regime also began paying workers with cards instead of cash. But is this new policy sustainable? Many questions have been raised among North Koreans. (KANG Ji-won / ISHIMARU Jiro)
The Hyesan Steel Factory is located in Hyesan, the capital of Yanggang Province. A reporting partner who investigated the "wage hike" and food rations in December 2023 told ASIAPRESS the following:
"In December, the Hyesan Steel Factory provided food for 10 days (8 kilograms) and raised wages to 50,000 won. With the new wage, I can buy about 10 kilograms of food (a mixture of white rice and corn) at state-run food stores, but it's still not enough to feed my family.
“A typical family of a husband, wife and three children needs 50-60 kilograms of food per month. In the past year, the local government-run grain stores have sold only about 7-10 days' worth of food per household. Even with the rations workers receive from their workplaces, it remains impossible to meet our needs with wages alone. Life is very difficult.”
※ The North Korean won is equal to about $0.1183.
At the Hyesan Steel Factory, workers were given wage payment cards along with the "wage increase.” With these cards, they can go to local grain stores and buy a certain amount of food. The reporting partner who conducted the survey described the situation at the end of December as follows:
"Not all factories and enterprises have started paying by card - some still pay in cash - but managers explained that in the future they plan to cover all food purchases by card. In the future, they plan to eliminate the use of cash, not just for food, but for all transactions."
It is unclear whether the cards can be used to make payments or withdrawals outside the state-run grain stores. This means that workers will not be able to spend their wages freely and will have to buy food from state-run shops. What will happen to the cash of people who are full-time housewives and earn money by working in the markets?
In other words, the Kim Jong-un regime aims to: (1) centralize food distribution through a combination of rationing and monopolization; and (2) prevent people from engaging in private economic activities and ensure that they attend their assigned workplaces. Kim Jong-un's intention is to bring as many people as possible into the country's "organizational life" in order to strengthen collectivism. This is clearly part of the regime's broader anti-market policies.
But will Kim Jong-un's new policies work as intended? The biggest concern is that the amount of food rationed to those who go to work, along with the amounts sold at state-run food stores, will not be enough for the population to survive. There are also big questions about whether the regime can reliably continue to provide rations and food at state-run shops; in short, a key question is whether the state will be able to procure enough food to continue the new policy.
In North Korea, the "barley hump" - a period of lean food supplies - begins around March each year. By this time, the previous fall's harvest has already been consumed, leaving stocks low, people in rural areas hungry, and malnutrition rampant in the barracks due to the lack of food to feed the soldiers. This period repeats itself every year.
Presently, the regime faces the question of whether it can continue to pay the significantly increased wages. While the situation varies from company to company, many factories and businesses in North Korea are currently inoperable due to aging facilities and equipment and lack of raw materials and fuel. There are many reports of workers being sent to non-work related construction sites to make up for the lack of work.
The concept of "reigning over calories," in which a regime seeks to control and subjugate the population by centralizing food distribution, may not be sustainable in the North Korean case when viewed through the lens of economic rationality and profitability. The Kim Jong-un regime's new food management system will likely be tested in early spring, when the "barley hump" begins. (End of series)
<Inside N. Korea> Government implements wage hike of more than 10 times (1) Wages increase for employees of state-run enterprises and government agencies
<Inside N. Korea> Government implements wage hike of more than 10 times (2) What are the intentions and goals of the KJU regime? People’s incomes have risen, but discontent is still deep…Wage hike part of the regime’s “rule over calories”
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From November to December 2023, the North Korean government raised the wages of workers and government employees by more than 10 times compared to the beginning of 2023. "The government is saying that the money should be used for living expenses apart from rations," a reporting partner told ASIAPRESS. However, many people are uneasy. What is Kim Jong-un's goal in raising wages? This is the second article in a three-part series on this issue. (KANG Ji-won / ISHIMARU Jiro)
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the lives of North Korean urban residents have deteriorated significantly. This is because their cash income has plummeted after authorities closed the borders and severely restricted private economic activities, including crackdowns on commerce and day labor. This explains the high number of deaths from malnutrition and disease among vulnerable groups such as families made up of just mothers and children, and elderly households.
A significant increase in wages (monthly salaries) should be good news. But North Koreans aren't reacting well to the wage hike. As a source in North Hamgyong province told ASIAPRESS:
"They're trying to make it so that if you don't go to work, you can't buy food. The people are becoming slaves to the state."
The "wage hike" is linked to the "food monopoly system" that Kim Jong-un's regime has been pushing for the past three years. To understand how this works, ASIAPRESS has continued to survey the situation in North Hamgyong province, Yanggang province, and North Pyongan province. This article will interpret the results of the survey.
Since the late 1990s, markets have been the center of food distribution in North Korea. After the pandemic, the government gradually increased its involvement in the buying and selling of food in the markets, reviving state-run grain shops to sell rice and corn at 10 to 20% below market prices.
At the same time, the regime has been aggressively enforcing workplace attendance. Those who went AWOL, those who left their jobs, and those who earned income through other means were punished and criticized. On the other hand, those who went to work were given food rations. It was a classic use of carrots and sticks. Depending on the workplace, the amount of rations distributed to employees ranged from 3 to 10 days' worth of food per month. In addition, teachers, civil servants, police officers, and members of the secret police, were given 70 to 100% of their needs, including rations for their families.
Market food sales increasingly faced restrictions, and were finally banned in January 2023. Sales of food now occur mainly in state-run grain shops. Recently, 5-10 days' worth of food has been sold twice a month, depending on the number of households or families (the market also sells grains other than rice and corn, such as barley, beans, multigrain, and potatoes, as well as processed foods such as cornmeal, noodles, bread, and rice cakes).
In addition, in the first half of December last year, the sales volume at state-run food shop in Hyesan, Yanggang Province, was 4,700 KPW per kilogram and limited to just 4 kilograms of white rice per household, while corn was 2,100 KPW per kilogram and limited to 3 kilograms of corn per household (prices are per kilogram).
To buy all of this would cost 25,100 won, or about 50,000 won per month. Before the pandemic, the wives of laborers who went to work would earn hundreds of thousands to even millions of won a month by doing business activities, but this is now impossible due to restrictions on market activity.
※ 1,000 North Korean won is equal to about 0.1183 US dollars
As detailed in the first part of this series, at the beginning of last year, the average monthly wage for companies and government employees was generally 1,500-2,500 won for ordinary workers and 4,000-8,000 won for cadres. At the end of last year, wages for the following groups were revised to:
35,000 to 50,000 won for government employees
38,000 to 50,000 won for teachers
35,000 won for ordinary workers in state-owned enterprises
As for the Kim regime's intentions with this wage increase, reporting partners offered the following perspectives:
"A cadre explained that the increased wages are to be used for living expenses other than the rations received at work, which are about the same as the amount of money a family can buy at the 'grain market'. To put it simply, 10 kilograms of food from the worker's rations and 10 kilograms of food from the grain shops are enough to provide people with about 20 kilograms of food per month."
"The point of raising labor wages is to encourage people to work for the state, get paid, and use that money to buy food from the state, rather than buy food at markets or with their own money. But it's not going to work out that well."
"They're trying to change it to a system that prioritizes going to work. The idea is that if you don't go to work, you don't get to eat, because everyone’s earning less and less."
"They rarely let us do business. They also crack down on day labor. People who don't have money think that this wage increase will make it mandatory for them to go to work."
"In reality, there are many people who believe that the wage increase will not help them because their wages will be siphoned off to prepare supplies for support for the army and other projects.”
“Organizational life” is fundamental to North Korea’s control over its people. Through organizations such as schools, workplaces, and social organizations, North Koreans receive ideological and political learning and are mobilized for rallies and volunteer labor. The intensification of “rule over calories,” in which food is used as a tool to get people to work at state-determined locations, is the purpose of this "massive wage increase.” (to 3 >> )
※ ASIAPRESS communicates with its reporting partners through Chinese cell phones smuggled into North Korea.
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Wage increases implemented across all workplaces in northern cities from November to December 2023, North Korean authorities significantly raised the wages of workers and government officials at state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The increase is about 10 times higher than at the beginning of 2023. ASIAPRESS reporting partners in various regions confirmed the wage increase. In some cases, the workers are being paid through electronic cards. What is the aim of the Kim Jong Un regime's drastic "wage hike"? Reporting on this development will be divided into two installments. (KANG Ji-won / ISHIMARU Jiro)
What ASIAPRESS has concluded is that the regime's sudden "wage hike" appears to be aimed at covering the costs of buying rice and corn from state-run food stores. This will be dealt with in more detail later. For now, it's worth explaining the recent noim (literally, “labor wage”; North Korea doesn't call it a monthly salary) system.
In March 2023, ASIAPRESS surveyed labor wages in North Hamgyong and Yanggang provinces. At the time, monthly wages in state-owned enterprises were generally between 1,500 and 2,500 won for ordinary workers, 4,000 won for low-level officials, and 6,000 to 8,000 won for managers and deputy managers. In addition, the salaries of senior officials of People's Committees, the equivalent of local governments, ranged from 5,000 to 8,000 won.
As of March 2023, 1,000 won was equal to about 0.12 US dollars, meaning that even the highest salary of 8,000 won was only worth about 0.96 US dollars. At the same time, food prices in markets were around 6,000 for white rice and 3,000 for corn (all per kilogram), which shows that the wages people received weren't enough to cover purchases of basic necessities. However, after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, government employees did receive food rations.
Multiple ASIAPRESS reporting partners all agreed that there is no one who can rely solely on the wages they get because much of it is taken away under the pretext of supporting the military, flood recovery efforts, and other activities.
Before 2020, only some government employees and businesses received food rations. Most people relied on other sources of cash income - such as private business activities, day labor, and bribes - to buy food and other essentials in the markets. For example, before the pandemic, a person could earn as much as 10,000 won a day at temporary jobs, such as working on public works projects (such as roads, pipelines, railways).
At the time of the March 2023 survey, labor wages had only doubled since Kim Jong-il's "currency reform" in late November 2009 (which devalued the currency by 1/100s of a percent). Since 2013, companies were allowed more discretion in how they paid their workers, and some of the most profitable ones paid 300,000 to 500,000 won per month, plus other food items such as white rice, cooking oil, alcohol, and meat.
Teachers are the exception to all this. In 2019, their salaries were raised to around 15,000 to 18,000 won, and they began to receive food rations. In response to widespread requests for money by teachers to parents, Kim Jong-un personally ordered improvements in how teachers were paid.
According to information collected from ASIAPRESS reporting partners, wages were raised once between April and September 2023. For typical state-owned enterprises, employees began to be paid 12,000-15,000 won per month. These wages more than doubled in November and December 2023.
Below is an overview of the monthly wages revealed by the December survey. Note the differences in pay by company and position. The surveyed companies include copper mines, iron mines, paper mills, and shoe factories.
Government employees: 35,000 to 50,000 won
Teachers: 38,000 to 50,000 won
State-owned enterprise workers: 35,000 won
Retiree pensions: 25,000 won
※At the time, 1,000 North Korean won was equal to about 0.167 US dollars.
ASIAPRESS was not able to conduct surveys outside of North Hamgyong and Yanggang provinces at the time. While there is no confirmation that the same "wage hike" occurred in Pyongyang and other cities, it is highly possible that there has been an increase in wages in other areas given that the wage hike is taking place under the state-managed economic system.
"Initially, the wage hike was supposed to start in November with state-owned enterprises, but many companies implemented it in December because they didn't have the cash," a Yanggang Province-based reporting partner told ASIAPRESS.
Additionally, some departments within SOEs that are able to independently generate funds have managed to raise their monthly income to 120,000 to 150,000 won, although this isn't common. Essentially, departments divvy out the profits from the sale of the company's consumer goods, which typically include beer, bread, and sweets. While the system is different from the normal wage system, the profit-sharing arrangement is popular in workplaces because the more profitable the company is, the bigger the share taken home by the employees.
Why did Kim Jong-un's regime raise labor wages more than tenfold all at once? As mentioned before, employee wages are linked to the costs of purchasing food at state-run food stores. But, what was the aim of the wage hike? As the survey progressed, ASIAPRESS found that the increase in wages is aimed at exerting control over employees. The next installment in this two-part series will explore this in more detail. ( to 2 >> )
※ ASIAPRESS communicates with its reporting partners through Chinese cell phones smuggled into North Korea.
<Inside N. Korea> Government implements wage by more than 10 times (1) Wages increase for employees of state-run enterprises and government agencies]]>