Following confirmation that North Korea’s former People’s Safety Agency, the equivalent of the National Policy Agency in South Korea, has been promoted and renamed the People’s Safety Ministry, the Chosun People’s Guards has also seen its name changed to Chosun People’s Administrative Unit.
In a television report released Tuesday evening by Chosun (North Korea) Central TV on the subject of the 100,000 homes under construction in Pyongyang, the term “Chosun People’s Administrative Unit” was used for the first time.
The change seems to be related to the promotion of the People’s Safety Ministry. Since the Chosun People’s Guards, which is similar to South Korea’s riot police in terms of hierarchical location, is instructed and controlled by the “Administrative Bureau” of the People’s Safety Ministry, so it is natural that the new name, “Chosun People’s Administrative Unit,” should follow that lead.
The Chosun People’s Administrative Unit is in charge of border guard activities along the east and west coasts and the northern border with China, and the security of important facilities including munitions factories.
The day before the Pyongyang residential construction report, interviewee Rim Seong Cheol was introduced as member of a construction brigade under the “People’s Safety Ministry” in a regular 8 P.M. news show. Rim also mentioned his affiliation as being with the “People’s Safety Ministry.”
Experts on North Korea interpret it that changing the PSA to the People’s Safety Ministry after ten years was in order to strengthen it as a tool for controlling the masses under the direct instruction of the National Defense Commission. The director of the new PSM is a relatively recent addition to the National Defense Commission, Ju Sang Sung.
In its April, 2009 constitutional review, the Supreme People’s Assembly moved to strengthen the authority of the National Defense Commission, a move which included adding Ju Sang Sung.
Cheong Seong Chang, a researcher of North-South relations at the Sejong Institute said in a telephone conversation with the Daily NK yesterday, “As an agency, the People’s Safety Agency was a department of the Cabinet, but now it is a ministry directly responsible to the National Defense Commission, and this has strengthened its power.”
“This measure was designed to strengthen state control over the people in order to cope with economic difficulties and social unrest due to the redenomination,” Cheong concluded.
Alongside the National Security Agency, which is the other major public control apparatus, the People’s Safety Ministry is charged with weeding out and eliminating socially unstable elements and also securing the succession.
On which topic, Cheong added, “In a situation where North Korea is facing Kim Jong Il’s ill health and the succession at once, this seems intended to block any possibility of elite unrest.”
