NK doubles efforts to choke off border


A photo snapped on the Sino-NK border looking onto the outskirts of Hyesan City, Yanggang
Province in mid-August of this year. The circled area next to the guard post highlights the walls
 going up to thwart would-be defectors. Image: Daily NK

Pyongyang has issued an order to open fire
on residents who approach the Sino-North Korean border outside of designated
hours, as it steps up crackdowns on people trying to escape the country, Daily
NK has learned. 

“Earlier this month, during our inminban
[people’s unit] meeting, people were told that if they approach the Amrok River outside of permitted hours, they may face warning shots. So we were told not to
approach the river bank after hours,” a source from Yanggang Province told
Daily NK in a telephone conversation. “If people go near the Amrok River outside
of their permitted hours designated by each region, they could be shot at, so
people are feeling very anxious.”
 

Two additional sources in the same province
corroborated this news.
 

The source also learned from a border
patrol guard, whom she has known for a significant period of time, that
officials were handed orders not only to fire warning shots but to threaten
people with gun fire if they so much as dip their feet in the water. Not even
soldiers have been able to approach the river as they please, according to the
source.
 

“Facing such mounting pressure, residents
lament the reality of not even being able to dip their feet in a river that’s part of their own country,” the source said, explaining that following the continued installation
of fences along border areas, people are now further aggravated by the fact
they are unable to freely do their laundry at the river.

Added the source, “Even when people are doing their laundry
or getting water from the river within designated hours, soldiers watch them on
the river bank. The border troops are also now in the
position where they need to be accompanied by their senior ranking officials if
they want to go wade in the water or splash around to cool off.”
 

Elder residents comment on how saddened they are to live under such hostile conditions, particularly when they remember life under Japanese colonial rule and often find the current environment relatively harsher. Border patrol agents enforcing these new
rules are no happier, having lost an important source of income from
bribes smugglers hand over when passing through the border.
 

Moreover, attending the barbed wire fence stretching along the Yalu River border region to thwart would-be defectors, the North has also
been building walls to seal off the area.

“They are putting up barbed wire fences
along most parts of the border area, but in places where there’s a lot of
movement among residents, they are putting up walls to make sure people don’t
have a proper view,” the source reported.

“For those areas where they can’t do
that, they’ve taken to hammering steel poles into the ground connecting swathes of barbed wire along them to create makeshift fences to keep people in.”