by Daniel Tudor
For example, someone I knew killed five people in a car accident while driving drunk, but was sentenced to only three years in prison because his father was a high-ranking police officer. He was released after serving a year in prison, free to walk the streets again.
In contrast, a group of poverty-stricken people broke into a state-owned factory to steal food, probably the most common crime in North Korea. They were caught and faced public execution. Even though they should have been charged with just robbery, they were indicted on charges of plotting a rebellion against the North Korean government. Of course, they weren’t allowed to hire an attorney, or even to appeal. Following their execution, their remaining family members were forced to move to rural towns.
This happens all over the country and all over the world: People who are starving steal food. But, since most North Korean cops are incompetent (and there’s a shortage of cops in the DPRK), most of these crimes remain unsolved. Even if they become victims of robbery, people do not report it to the police—they don’t expect the police to catch those responsible.
Most people found guilty of economic crimes receive three to ten years of prison time. But a sentence of more than five years is essentially a death sentence: Most prisoners do not survive more than three years of harsh forced labor and prison conditions.
Without family support, most prisoners would probably die in prison after one or two years. There are a number of so-called “Labor Training Centers” in North Korea. Thugs, illegal street vendors and people who travel without permission are sent to these places, where they are subject to forced labor for months. During this time, they disappear—their families aren’t notified of their whereabouts.
At times when large numberzs of refugees are deported back to North Korea, the authorities can’t imprison or execute all of them as political prisoners. Consequently, in towns near the border, many people have at least one neighbor who has previously escaped from North Korea.
This was why these Labor Training Centers were created. North Korean refugees who were sent back had to suffer forced labor at Labor Training Centers, without even knowing what they had been charged with. They only vaguely knew that it was a crime for them to escape from the North for economic reasons.
In North Korea, the law exists to protect those in power and to eliminate those opposed to them. The law is only a device to uphold the dictatorship of the Kim family. No one is entitled to protection under the law.
The deification of Kim Il Sung is more important than the constitution, and the will of the Kims superior to any law in North Korea.
Is it true that there is a real-life “fashion police” in North Korea?
DT: The state involves itself in virtually every aspect of people’s lives, so it is hardly surprising to hear that North Koreans can be subject to crackdowns on how they dress. Women shouldn’t wear “sexy” attire, or even long pants—though these days, this is slowly changing. Hair styles are also regulated. Stories in the international press about men having to wear compulsory Kim Jong Un haircuts are nonsense, though.
Je Son Lee:
Until 2010, North Korean women couldn’t imagine wearing sleeveless shirts or miniskirts. Women were not allowed to wear pants, let alone short skirts. Tops were more loosely controlled, however: A friend who left North Korea this year said the authorities are now cracking down on women clad in short skirts and sleeveless tops. In North Korea, skirts should cover women’s knees. They are allowed to wear half-sleeve shirts but not sleeveless tops. Also, women shouldn’t reveal cleavage.
Women shouldn’t wear pants at all, and aren’t allowed to ride bicycles or motorcycles, either. Government rules apply to hairstyles, as well. Women should always wear either bobbed hair or pigtails. Women in college are required to wear a uniform (yes, college students in North Korea wear uniforms, as if still in high school!). It is considered inappropriate for students to wear anything else in public. You should never wear jeans, bell-bottoms or short skirts. But when you’re told not to wear certain types of clothes, you’re more tempted to wear them. Or is it just me who feels that way?
However, the authorities don’t crack down all year round on women wearing short skirts, or those who have forgotten to wear their Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il badges. They only crack down at certain times in the year. During inspection season, officials are stationed on streets at intervals of 20 meters, checking the way passersby dress. Unless you’re dressed in accordance with government guidelines, you will not get any further than 20 meters. It is easier for men to get past these inspectors, unless they have weird hairstyles.
However, a woman can never get past an inspector if she is not wearing a skirt. It doesn’t matter how old you are. The same rule applies to grannies. Grannies heading out to the mountains to pick vegetables must wear skirts. You cannot complain or voice your opinion about what the government does in North Korea. Once I ran into an old lady I knew in my neighborhood and she was pulling her pants up as high as she could.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“I’m just trying to put my skirt on before I run into an inspector on the street,” she said.
Then, she pulled some cloth from her pocket and draped it around her waist above her pants. It could definitely pass for a skirt. I thought it was ludicrous that a woman had to wear a skirt to go up a mountain, when it is already difficult enough to climb in pants. Most of these women aren’t just out for a stroll. They’re the breadwinners and they work hard every day to feed their families. Yet they’re required to move about in uncomfortable skirts. They don’t even have freedom to wear pants.
Also, when you take a look at everyone passing by on the street, almost no one is empty-handed. They’re always carrying at least 5kg of goods, and it’s not easy moving about in long skirts while carrying such heavy goods for work. Once, I wore pants to school and got caught by school inspectors. A male teacher looked at me as if he couldn’t fathom why I would prefer pants over a skirt.
“Je Son, isn’t a skirt much cooler? Skirts are good for circulating air. Why would you wear pants instead of a skirt? Why would you not wear a skirt? I cannot understand you.”
A female who happened to pass by overheard the conversation and she snapped at him in defense of me.
“Sir, have you ever worn a skirt before?” she said. “How would you know without having worn one once in your life? Try on a skirt tomorrow and you’ll change your mind.”
I felt grateful for her brilliant response!
Whether you’re still a student enrolled at school or already working in your unit, you’ll be called upon by the nyeomaeng, an organization consisting of housewives, to work on assignments such as pulling out weeds, carrying stones, digging up sand, and so on. It would drive you nuts to do those assignments in skirts. Men have no idea how uncomfortable it is having to crouch down and stand up in skirts.
If you get caught wearing pants instead of a skirt, you’re called on by the Workers’ Party to write letters of self-reflection. Once I got caught wearing pants in public by a member of the local party office. As a punishment, I had to run around the playground 10 times singing a song entitled “Let us Sustain Socialism.” After that, I had to pull out weeds on the playground for over an hour and write three pages of self-reflection letters before I was allowed to return home. On my way back home, I was so upset that I thought to myself, I will continue to wear pants and it will be okay as long as I don’t get caught.
But I soon changed my mind. It wasn’t worth getting into trouble and dealing with such people. Before that incident, whenever I saw women obediently wearing skirts in public, I thought they were being too submissive and timid. But I changed my view. I think they were actually being smart by avoiding trouble. Yes, most of these government rules in North Korea are utter nonsense! But the smartest way to protect yourself in such a country is to abide by them.
Have you ever seen any anti-government dissent?
DT: North Korea is arguably the
most controlled state in the world. While gradual economic liberalization is taking place, political control is still total, and any transgression is handled with severity. The prospect of any “uprising” is remote then, and one would not want to imagine the outcome if such an event did take place.
Kim Yoo-sung:
Foreigners wonder why there is no anti-government movement to topple the dictatorship. Sometimes they think it’s because we North Koreans are too stupid to carry out such an uprising. But ordinary North Koreans are simply too afraid to become part of an anti-government movement, because they know the truth: they cannot bring about change by themselves.
The reality is that North Korea cannot change unless the government itself decides to change. In countries such as South Korea and the United States, people can criticize their presidents or even go to the extent of protesting in the streets, and as long as such protests and demonstrations are legal, the government or police won’t intervene. And even if the protesters happen to break the law, they are often only subject to minor legal consequences as a result.
But North Korea doesn’t work like that. If people went out into the streets and said something negative about Kim Jong Un or the government’s policies, they would be executed the moment they opened their mouths. Either that, or they’d be labeled as traitors to the entire Korean race and sent to political prison camps—a prospect that terrifies all North Koreans.
If other countries controlled their people in this way, no one in the world would be able to criticize their presidents or governments publicly.
In other words, it is simply not possible for ordinary North Koreans to topple the leadership by organizing an anti-government movement. So if you’d like to really help North Koreans, rather than sending leaflets, please help by sending donations such as medical products, medicine, and formula milk for North Korean children.
Another reason there are no anti-government protests in North Korea is the brainwashing that occurs in public schools. From kindergarten, North Koreans grow up being told about the superiority of North Korea’s leaders. It makes people acquiesce to the leadership without questioning its decisions. As such, people struggle to have any anti-regime thoughts. There is an old Korean saying: “If you tell a lie 100 times, it becomes a truth.” Since North Koreans are constantly brainwashed from birth to death, often they cannot bring themselves to think that anything the regime does could be wrong. That’s another reason why it is not easy to start an anti-regime movement within North Korea.
I sometimes heard about limited forms of opposition when I was still living in North Korea—things like graffiti on walls or in toilets protesting the government. I even heard rumors in my hometown that someone once put up a Taegukgi (the national flag of South Korea) on the school grounds at night, something that would have been pretty shocking. However, I never saw any of this with my own eyes.
Occasionally, you hear negative rumors spreading about the government. However, as I said already, there is always a serious risk that people talking ill of the government may just disappear at night. Because of this, such rumors usually die out pretty quickly.
To give you an example, when I was in college, a classmate of mine was a son of a manager at the State Security Department. He once told me that someone had written an anti-government message on a toilet wall and somehow the State Security Department had successfully tracked them down. So while limited forms of dissent can pop up from time to time, it never gets big enough to cause the large-scale political unrest some might hope for. The State Security Department ruthlessly cracks down on this sort of behavior, and those involved are executed in underground prisons without any chance of a trial.
Overall, I think that if and when dissent does occur in North Korea, incidents are likely to be very minor, and suppressed quickly without any trace left. As such, whoever organizes anti-government activities would have to be a very brave person, and if he or she got caught, they wouldn’t have much time left on this earth.
In short, the State Security Department is very good at making sure that any dissident or protest movement disappears long before it has a chance to spread to other regions, let alone ever grow to the point that it strikes a blow against the regime. I guess the State Security Department’s surveillance gathering network is even more efficient than that of the NSA [the United States National Security Agency]. Indeed, the SSD can keep track of its people to the extent of keeping tabs on their whereabouts, what they’re up to, and “even how many spoons and bowls they possess” (as one saying puts it).
How much longer can the DPRK system last?
DT: Pundits and the press love to speculate on “when” the North Korean state will collapse. But the DPRK has so far outlasted famine, war, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a transformation from socialism to a sort of feudal monarchy.
When things unravel though, they tend to catch everyone by surprise—just look at the once-mighty Soviet Union itself. We asked a group of North Korean defectors their opinion on regime change, and how long it might take.
Choi Sung-guk:
At a minimum five years, and at a maximum, ten. Why do I think this way? Because as the years pass, North Korea’s society is tending towards market economics above all else.
Back in the 1980s, the basic idea of buying and selling was limited mainly to older women who went out to markets. During the 1990s there were a few smart people involved, but their presence was not much welcomed by North Korean society. However, during the Arduous March (the economic crisis in North Korea from 1994 to 1998) people were forced to look for their own income sources. Today, it is clear that commerce has become the principal income source for smart people. This means that more than ever before, North Koreans are prioritizing their own wealth over national duty.
Why is this happening? The reason is simple: The market economy rewards people according to the amount of effort they put in. This tells us that the North Korean government’s socially planned economy is already on thin ice.
Hyun-moo Jung:
When I left North Korea, it seemed that the Kim Jong Il regime was likely to collapse at any moment. But when I came to South Korea I learned about how it was able to survive so long. Nevertheless, after I witnessed the third stage of the Kim family succession I returned to thinking that the North Korean regime would collapse any time soon.
Unlike his father, Kim Jong Un is naive and inexperienced. There’s no consistency in his policies—which is very obvious. His only goal in life is to retain power as the Supreme Leader. He tries to create fear in order to suppress the top elites. While this strategy may seem successful at first, it won’t last long.
Nayoung Koh:
It is premature to predict the collapse of the North Korean regime—because China continues to play a huge role in propping it up.
A principal reason why the North Korean regime has survived so long is due to the socialist states that once existed and supported it. But although most socialist states have now collapsed, China still backs up North Korea.
This support is critical. When North Korea experienced the Great Famine—caused by natural disasters and isolation from the international community following the death of Kim Il Sung—the North Korean regime managed to survive thanks to the humanitarian aid offered from China. I wonder if the regime would have been able to survive if all that food and clothing aid had not come from China during the famine? As such, I believe that as long as China doesn’t give up on North Korea, the regime will continue to survive.
Jinwoo Ham:
Kim Jong Il was able to rule the country for 40 years, from the 1970s until 2011, due to the fact he was seen as a divine successor, the son of Kim Il Sung. However, Kim Jong Il lost the trust of ordinary people during his time in power. There were many assassination attempts (the Ryongchon bombing), an attempted coup (the 6th Brigade Incident) and to me it seemed that approximately 70–80 percent of people were simply waiting for him to die.
Kim Jong Un’s ri
se to power came amid a backdrop of strong public frustration with Kim Jong Il. To make things worse, Kim Jong Un is lacking a strong platform and is seen as a naive, young and inexperienced brat by the majority of people in North Korea. Things will be worse for him now that Jang Song Thaek [the uncle he executed] has gone.
I believe Kim Jong Un will be assassinated within the next three years due to a power struggle, and that this will lead to the collapse of the regime.
Se-hyok Oh:
Today it is clear that the North Korean system is not only being propped up by a crawling bureaucracy, but because the leaders in Pyongyang know the vulnerabilities of their system better than anyone else. The people have not come to realize this yet—and despite an urge to see their government reform, they don’t yet have the strength to oppose the system.
Jang Seong Thaek was the only person who would have been able to simultaneously push through reforms in North Korea while also unifying the regime’s bureaucracy. And now, while it’s said that there are still those in the government who would like to see the country reform, if they can’t unite with each other, they won’t be able to show their strength. This is a shameful state of affairs.
Jihyun Park:
Although the current regime is under UN sanctions for last year’s nuclear weapons and missile tests, it is still receiving economic aid from China—especially with the opening up of Rajin and Sonbong. Also, the DPRK continues to receive aid from South Korea through the Kaesong Industrial Complex [note: Kaesong has been closed since the author wrote this]. I therefore believe that as long as the outside world continues to provide it with aid, the regime will not collapse.
North Korea is like no other country in the world. It has 1 million soldiers out of a 25 million population. Most industrial facilities in North Korea are military factories, while the factories and businesses that could have improved the lives of the people have all closed. Under these circumstances, the collapse of North Korea will be difficult: The regime will preserve total power unless there are major disagreements within the government itself, or a rebellion that sees the people overthrow the regime.