Rumor mill spreads awareness of individual rights

Frequent property searches conducted by law enforcement agents in North Korea are increasingly being challenged by residents demanding warrants, suggesting a growing awareness of individual rights. South Korean TV shows and radio broadcasts reaching the North are believed to contributing to a greater understanding of constitutional rights during forced searches. 

“More people are listening to broadcasts from the South, so there’s been a stronger movement towards asserting individual rights,” a source from South Pyongan Province told Daily NK in a telephone conversation. “Until recently, most people generally complied with property searches undertaken for ‘surveillance purposes,’ but we are starting to hear that some residents are boldly asking for search warrants.”

In a recent example in Pyongsong, Ministry of People’s Security [MPS] agents searched the house of a successful wholesaler but failed to discover any smuggled goods. This prompted the vendor to lash out at the officer in charge, arguing that searching a house without a warrant is against the law and a violation of rights. Rumors of the incident are said to have spread throughout the entire neighborhood, said the source. 

Article 241 in North Korea’s criminal code states, “Law enforcement officers who use illicit means to arrest and detain people, conduct searches of individuals and their property, or confiscate and seize assets, shall be punished by up to one year of hard labor.” 

However, the Ministry of People’s Security frequently deploys such agents to search people’s homes without warrants, searching for those lodging outside their own residential district without proper registration and other illegal activities. These searches in recent years are being exploited as tools to make money as MPS agents target affluent donju (new affluent middle class) and fabricate accusations to extort bribes. 

“People are saying they’ve heard on South Korean broadcasts that searching homes without a warrant is a violation of human rights, and a similar law also exists in the North,” said an additional source in North Pyongan Province, who reported events similar to the Pyongsong incident. 

Both sources have noted that people are beginning to sit together in groups and talk about the need to demand what is stated by law. It has also been widely observed that those who have demanded search warrants and stood up to MPS agents have not been taken away by law enforcement. 

Although the rule of law ostensibly exists in North Korea, the state itself has prioritized the “teachings of Kim Il Sung” and the “Ten Principles for the Establishment of a Monolithic Ideological System” as the foundation for governance. The emphasis placed on orders from the regime, in other words, has undermined the concept of governance by law at its very foundation. 

Legal revisions to the constitution carried out in 2004, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2014, suggest a trend towards improvement in protecting the rights of the individual in North Korea. However, the addition of severe punishment for ▲ placing illegal phone calls to South Korea and other countries ▲ watching South Korean DVDs, cultural content, and listening to foreign radio broadcasts ▲aiding and abetting defections and leaking state secrets, as crimes that amount to “conspiring to overthrow the government” have added obscurity to legal principles and facilitated more widespread corruption.