Fresh “anti-socialist” inspections led by the Defense Security Command of the Chosun People’s Army reportedly began earlier this month in Yangkang Province, inciting more popular complaint.
A source from Yangkang Province released the information on the 17th, saying, “Less than three months after the one month of inspections which happened last December, they’ve started again. The complaints of the people of Hyesan, who are saying spring is here and they’ve started harassing us again, are by no means small.”
Hyesan in Yangkang Province borders Changbai, China across the Yalu River. At one location the width of the river is just 1m, so it is a key escape route. In particular, drugs and other forms of smuggling are common in the area, so it is one location where official controls are at their strictest.
According to the source, five officials have been dispatched from Pyongyang to oversee the Hyesan-wide anti-socialist inspection, which also features 20~30 officials including the provincial Defense Security Command director, vice director and agents.
The aim of the inspection is to crack down on drug trafficking, smuggling and wholesaling by car, an activity known as “Chapan Jangsa,” and which is branded officially as the greedy desire for “only I to live well.”
However, the anti-socialist inspections are unlikely to go to plan. Having become an institutionalized part of border area life, inspectors mostly utilize them to satisfy their own interests.
The source commented, “Rather than conducting anti-socialist inspections, the inspectors frantically search for ways to make money. Now, they are visiting both places where Chinese people coming to visit relatives but doing business at the same time are staying and the homes of large scale smugglers.”
The source said the inspectors visit the smugglers to bluntly demand that a cut of be given to them in exchange for watching backs during the inspection period. They also do things like borrowing smuggler’s motorbikes and sometimes even hand previously seized goods (copper, medical herbs, etc.) on to other smugglers.
Of course, then, given the way inspections serve only the inspector’s own crude self-interest, local people complain about them, pointing out that the weak are dying, and that worrying over both survival and inspections is killing them.
