The SSD unit in North Hamkyung Province is using information obtained from remittance brokers to track down households with foreign mobile phones as the latest measure to isolate the cross-border flow of information.
“In Hoeryong City, seven families were
discovered with phones obtained from brokers; during the investigation,
household members are divided and undergo separate interrogations after which they are sent to labor-training camps,” a source in North Hamkyung Province told
Daily NK on November 13th.
Age and sex are no basis for leniency or exemption from punishment, “One of those sent to the labor training camp was a women in her
60s,” she said. “Her son in South Korea asked a broker to buy a phone and give
it to his mother, but she got caught before she could even try to use it.”
With increased directives to stamp out illegal
phone calls in border regions, including the installation of new German-manufactured radio wave detectors, the number of residents being caught in the wake is significant.
As previously reported by the Daily NK on
November 12th, areas of Yangkang Province bordering China have been labeled
“danger zones,” and security efforts to crackdown on outside calls, defections,
and remittance flows have seen a recent increase.
According to the source, the incident involving the seven families originates with two residents of Hoeryong City, who after undergoing interrogations by security agents suspicious of their involvement with illegal
remittance flows from South to North, confessed to possessing Chinese mobile phones. Under duress, they also revealed the households to which they had provided similar devices.
The families were targeted in the
investigation–and given no opportunity to refute the allegations because of the brokers’ testimony–were immediately arrested.
The provincial unit of the SSD has pieced together that residents stop using their phones when crackdowns begin, so
instead, they use smugglers and brokers to expose and arrest residents who are in possession of mobile
phones from outside of the country.
This culmination of factors has made it even more difficult for residents to make international phones calls, “At present, if you make a phone call you don’t know when you’re going to get caught, so it’s too dangerous,” the
source pointed out. “If you’re unlucky, you could take the fall for
everything smugglers or brokers have done.”
“Crackdowns on anyone making illegal phone
calls in border areas, helping others do it, involvement in remittances, or
anything else the SSD deems illegal are on the rise again,” she said, adding that most are scrambling to come up with new methods to avoid detection and develop more efficient methods of keeping such activities sufficiently hidden.
“The SSD is a place where you end up
having ‘committed’ crimes that in actuality you didn’t; there’s never a way of
not admitting to things,” she explained. “Because of the smugglers and
brokers, anyone who isn’t caught is going to be under strict surveillance, and
anyone who is caught is going to end up suffering.”
