[imText1]It is reported that an army-party-people’s combined anti-air-raid drill was staged in Hoiryeong, North Hamkyung Province, from September 25 5 P.M. to the next day’s noon.
During the drill, Hoiryeong area’s border guards, Worker and Peasant Red Guard (WPRG), local security and party organs were all mobilized. Drill included blackout, escape to air-raid shelter and anti-paratroopers exercises.
An insider in Hoiryeong, in a telephone interview on Wednesday, said that from 5 P.M. on Monday security officers and Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League’s contingent started controlling traffic and led blackout exercise until early in the mourning of Tuesday.
Early Tuesday, to prepare against enemy’s air raid, WPRG and Union of Democratic Women members conducted an escape-to-shelter drill. The insider told the DailyNK that more than 10 anti-air-raid shelters were dug near Hoiryeong since last August.
Border guards had done an anti-espionage drill and WPRG a preparation drill against enemy aircraft and paratroopers since Monday night.
Preparation status for war in each household was inspected during the drill. Party officials visited each household and checked the condition of ‘wartime emergency bag.’ A wartime emergency bag, greenish, contains rice and other emergency foods, clothes, shoes, masks, gloves, fake hand grenade and powdered pepper; the latter two are to be used as weapon by civilian residents.
The insider delivered popular attitude toward the drill; because, since missile launch in July, even women in their thirties and forties were forced to march in uniform, North Korean people, exhausted by hard lives, were openly blaming the government. Hoiryeong residents complained futility of blackout drill since there was no electricity at all, and compared the drill to a childish play.
