North Korea took responsibility for the skyrocketing price rice by firing and detaining some of the officials of a trading company affiliated with the Army stationed in North Hamkyung Province.
A Korean source said in a phone conversation with the Daily NK on the 17th, “The Chief of the Namgang Sales Office in Chongjin will soon be executed, bearing responsibility for the rise in rice prices.”
Another source said, “The Party said to treat the Chief as a rebel. It’s not sure if he will be publicly executed, but he would likely be secretly executed because of his high position.”
The Namgang Trading Company in Chongjin, as a company under the 7th Bureau of the North Korean People’s Army has branch offices in every province and city and exports minerals, logs, and marine products and imports construction materials.
The 7th Bureau of the People’s Army is also called the “engineering bureau” and is a professional construction unit that mainly focuses on the construction of military facilities. It also is in charge of the construction of highways, including the Pyongyang railway.
According to a source, those who were detained for the rise in rice prices are the chief of the sales office Kim Hong Choon (44), the workers of the office, and officials including the Namgang Trading Company president and lowest-level party secretary.
“The possibility of an unofficial execution for the reason of the rise in rice price”
Kim Hong Choon at risk for execution is a person who has even received the 2005 “Hard-Working Hero” title for the bringing benefits to the North Korean authorities by excelling in trade. However, he was detained in early April and bore the burden of raising the rice price during the Anti-Socialist Group inspections process and was accused of being a rebel.
The sudden hike in rice prices in North Korea apparently originated from Chongjin, North Hamkyung Province with the cease in food provisions to lower grade workers of the government since the end of March.
With the cease in food provisions, the Namgang Trading Company that has had monopoly on food imports from China insisted that the price of rice had to be raised due to the rise in food prices by the Chinese authorities. The company, through the Namgang sales office, raised food prices to 2,000 won, which quickly brought about a hike in food prices in the entire country.
In particular, Kim who had led food imports through the Namyang Customs Office in China, occasionally raised food prices. He is well known to have exercised enormous power, even rejecting direct requests made by the Chief Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee Hong Suk Hyung to lower the food prices.
When the Chongjin authorities provided soybeans preserved as army rations to government workers as emergency provision, Kim gathered all soybeans from the jangmadang, sold them to China, and brought in rice and car parts instead.
Due to these acts, he was detained by the Anti-Socialist Inspection Group for the crime of disobeying national rules prohibiting exporting food and faces execution for the charge of a sudden rise in food prices.
In addition, around mid-May, the cadres of the Namgang Trading Company came under the charge of provoking dissatisfaction of residents by causing a rise in food prices and were detained or dismissed with full force.
To cast the responsibility on a scapegoat
However, many officials and traders, regarding such North Korean measures, reportedly have remarked, “sacrificing the innocent sheep.”
The North Korean authorities recently emphasized that rice merchants should lower food prices to all across the country and tried to spread the propaganda that the food prices crisis has been created by some merchants. Some say that such moves are a trickery of the authorities to divert the dissatisfaction of civilians due to the skyrocketing food price into some other targets.
The source relayed the plea by Kim Hong Choon, “The authorities said that it was a crime to hand over the soybean from the jangmadang to China, but if that is a crime, then the Trade Management Bureau of North Hamkyung Province which approved exports is the real criminals. I was able to mitigate damage by selling the soybeans at a reasonable price through border trade.”
Since last winter, soybean has illegally been exported to China on a mass-scale through smugglers. Compared to smugglers’ handing over the soybeans at a dirt-cheap price, the Namgang Trading Company apparently received a better price through the border trade.
From a certain perspective, there were some negative acts regarding the Trading Company raising the food price, but the observation can be proposed that it was an unavoidable act in the larger picture. Not only had the price of rise risen significantly in China, the cease in food sales to the North meant that rice could not come into the country without giving bribes to Chinese customs.
The North Korean currency’s weakness due to the recent strong Chinese Yuan also made the rise in food prices inevitable.
Despite this, the reason for heaping the burden of the price on Kim Hong Choon and several other officials is the North Korean authorities’ unwillingness to acknowledge its own bad policies and its intent to divert the citizens’ discontent to another place.
Previously in 1998, the North Korean regime publicly executed a Workers’ Party Agricultural Secretary Suh Gwan Hee and a director of the Sukcheon Women Committee in South Pyongan Province at the Nakrang Intersection in Pyongyang in front of several tens of thousands of people for being “American spies.”
A defector who used to be a high level official said, “At the time, the execution of Suh Gwan Hee was an inevitable countermeasure to cast the responsibility of the starvations not on Kim Jong Il, but on the high-level official in charge of the agricultural area.” Due to this incident, the offended civilian’s mentality towards Kim was assuaged in practice.
