With the March military draft season in
full motion, mobilization officials in North Korea are said to be receiving
bribes from conscripts in exchange for favorable postings, Daily NK has
learned.
“When
conscription begins, the mobilization units naturally start digging for bribes.
The entire process is driven by it,” a source in Gangwon Province told Daily NK
on Wednesday. “Party cadres receive bribes from the parents of draftees and
then assign them to areas like the Pyongyang guard service, the general rear
service department, military police, and border areas, where rations are
regular and working conditions are relatively superior.”
She added, “Each year, the number of
conscripts is based on those discharged, so mobilization officials can actually
start calculating the volume of bribes that will pour in during the season. Soldiers sent to Panmunjom and the air force are
handpicked based on songbun [family political background and loyalty] and their
physique, but in the case of other places it all depends on the mobilization
unit, so up to 500 USD in bribes are passed around for the fate of just one conscript.”
When the staff officers for favored units
visit the mobilization office, those who have received bribes will single out
the files for the affiliated conscripts and secretly hand them over. The files also
contain cash gifts, and those “dollar conscripts” are assigned to those units
rather than other draftees better suited for the post, according to the source.
Officers such as majors or colonels pay
bribes to Ministry of People’s Armed Forces officials before they are discharged
so as to be assigned to the mobilization unit. Being an officer there for three
years can bring in tens of thousands of dollars in bribes, allowing them to amass
considerable wealth and build their own homes. Needless to say, such positions
are highly coveted.
Conscripts with good songbun and powerful
parents prefer the guard service in Pyongyang, Ministry of Public Security,
Panmunjom, and the air force, while those with bad songbun can use bribes to
get assigned to the military police or the rear service. In particularly auspicious instances they are permitted to commute from home.
The source noted the Ministry
of Public Security as especially popular
with Party cadres, the donjuLiterally "masters of money," donju refers to people who hav... More [the new affluent middle class], and general
members of the public; this popularity bumps the asking price to secure such positions up to more
than 500 USD.
Another sought-after position is that of a military
driver for general commanders or brigadiers. Those with neither good songbun
nor wealth, such as the children of ordinary enterprise workers, end up being
assigned to construction units in the mountains and are subjected to extreme
hardships resulting from incessant manual labor.
“Some
conscripts try to use the gift money they receive from relatives and
elders in the village ahead of their military service as bribes in a bid to evade–at the very least– the construction unit, but this often fails,” she said, adding that
some of the most self-sacrificing just hand the money over to their mothers to
use for doing business at the markets.
In the 1980s and ‘90s, bribes to
mobilization officials were usually television sets, fabrics for clothing, and
freezers; however, the 2000s saw a decided shift in these practices, with cash bribes becoming the new norm. In more recent years the cash must be presented in foreign
currency, typically USD, and the act is known as buying a “ticket for conscripts.” “People
are told to get ‘dollar tickets’ if they don’t want to languish in the
military,” the source concluded.
*The contents of this article were broadcast to the North Korean people via Unification Media Group.
