N. Korea perestroika watch: “Gunfire must be made to resound”

New Focus International has published an “exclusive” report that “North Korea’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and Ministry of People’s Security (MPS)” have begun what amounts to an internal terror campaign against the people, personally ratified by Kim Jong Un in September 2013, and aimed at “the sweeping out of impure and hostile elements.” The campaign consists of a series of crackdowns, collectively known as the “9.8 measures.” According to the report, Kim Jong Un has taken personal oversight* (read: personal responsibility and culpability) for the campaign, ratifying “further instructions” for the goon squads “at the rate of two to three times a month.” The campaign emphasizes the militarization of North Korean society, enforced by what amounts to martial law.

With social command and control and mass human surveillance remaining at the heart of these new slogans and measures, acts regarded as human rights violations such as extrajudicial public executions meted out for political infringements continue to be systematically sanctioned, and are being regarded as more institutionally acceptable under Kim Jong Un than under the rule of Kim Jong Il.

The joint command issued by the Central Military Committee and Central Committee claimed that the order stemmed from a conversation that took place between the Minister of State Security Kim Won Hong and Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un in October 2013, thereby stressing the perceptible authority of these public offices.

It read, “most criminals who are forgiven are likely to commit another crime” and that “the time has come when words are not enough. The sound of gunshot must accompany the destruction of impure and hostile elements, and when necessary, public executions are to be used so that the masses come to their senses”. It also ratified the extra-judicial clause, “if an anti-regime act is uncovered, State Security soldiers are to judge and execute by gunfire of their own accord, and afterwards file a report on the person and crime to Pyongyang”.

The instructions additionally read, “gunfire must be made to resound in order to totally rip from the roots acts such as illegal border activities, flights to the south and smuggling operations” and that “those who attempted to leave during the mourning period of Kim Jong Il must be executed by firing squad and their seed thoroughly annihilated”.

It also stressed the need to prevent further escapes in order to limit international criticism, and read “State Security must take measures to ensure that the talk on ‘human trafficking’ and ‘river-crossings’ by foreigners abroad is not renewed”. [New Focus]

The focus of these efforts is on border control:

To implement this instruction, several newly formed organisations controlled by the Ministry of State Security, which in April 2012 took over the command authority of military troops stationed in the border regions near China, have established offices in Pyongyang and the border regions to seek out escapees, mount operations to bring defectors back to North Korea through coercion or persuasion, gather information and maintain files on defectors, trace their phone calls and correspondence, and maintain special oversight over defectors’ remaining family members in North Korea. [New Focus]

No doubt cognizant of the phases I described in this post, Kim Jong Un is also expelling or banishing a “sizeable numbers of soldiers” from the army, and rotating better-disciplined and more brutal units into the border zone. All of which fits with reports we’ve seen since Kim Jong Un’s coronation, about crackdowns on cross-border trade and information flows.

For example, the Daily NK reports that the MPS has deployed “Rapid Reaction Forces” in the border regions to do “invasive searches at random on passenger trains and around main railway hubs.” Many train passengers bribe local authorities to get travel passes to transport goods for sale, or to attend funerals, wedding, or other family events, and they’re terrified of the brutal MPS squads. If the squads catch people whose “papers are not in order,” as the expression goes, they can arrest them and take them to “collecting points” for up to three months of hard labor.

The regime is also deterring defections by imposing collective punishment on the family members the refugees (some of whom are only migrant workers) leave behind. The family members may be sent to work in state enterprises (in one case, a blast furnace notorious for its working conditions), exiled to remote parts of the country, or sent to prison camps. MPS agents are reportedly extorting between $1,000 and $2,000 from some wealthier family members to spare them from punishment, but as always, North Korea’s poor are out of luck.

For years, it has been common for workers to bribe their way out of showing up at (often, idled) state-owned enterprises. Some of those workers engaged in trade or farming while away from their workplaces. The regime has now cracked down by imposing heavy fines on those found to be absent without leave.

The Daily NK also reports that the regime continues its crackdown on international telephone calls, employing “state-of-the-art devices” (reportedly, made in Germany) to “increase the efficacy of mobile monitoring and detection,” and increasing punishments for making international calls to one year at hard labor for a second offense. MPS officials have announced the new rules at work units, warning that repeat offenders may be sent to prison camps. Few people now risk a cross-border call without a long hike into the mountains. Others tell the Daily NK that in time, MPS officers will start taking bribes to allow cross-border calls, but that doesn’t seem to be widespread yet. The restrictions have been highly effective in re-imposing an information blockade that had begun to leak.

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* A previous version of this post used the word “control,” but “oversight” is probably a more accurate characterization.