A young man in Chongjin was recently detained after North Korean authorities caught him selling a broken mobile phone, Daily NK has learned.
Speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons, a source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK last Wednesday that the unnamed young man took his mobile phone to a service center after it suddenly stopped working last month.
“It was too expensive to repair, so on his way home, he sold it to someone who offered USD 50 for it,” he said. “But the Unified Command on Anti-Socialist and Non-Socialist Behavior caught him and he’s been detained by the provincial branch of the Ministry of State Security since New Year’s Day.”
The Unified Command was formed after the Eighth Party Congress in 2021 to crack down on foreign information, replacing Group 109.
All the young man had done was sell his phone to another person, which is common in North Korea. However, the authorities believed that he had intentionally sold his North Korean phone to someone in South Korea or the US, which is considered a political crime, the source said.
In fact, the Ministry of State Security has arrested many housewives in Chongjin for selling their unusable cell phones to other people.
“The root of this incident was the mass arrest in late 2023 of a gang that bought broken cell phones and parts like SIM cards and sold them overseas,” the source said. “As a result, authorities everywhere have been cracking down on people who buy or sell cell phones privately.”
The Ministry of State Security’s provincial branch discovered that the gang – which sold North Korean cell phones and SIM cards to Chinese dealers – paid service center employees for broken cell phones or SIM cards, or prowled around service centers to catch people leaving the centers with their cell phones.
The service center workers and ordinary people sold their old phones or SIM cards to make money from the resale. They had no idea that the phones would be sent to a foreign country.
However, the provincial branch of the Ministry of State Security learned that the gang knew that the phones they bought from China would go to South Korea, the U.S., and other countries. That prompted the ministry to launch a campaign to stop the sale of the phones.
“The provincial branch of the Ministry of State Security has ordered neighborhood watch units and market [management offices] to be vigilant and keep an eye on each other, saying they must expose people who buy multiple locally made electronic devices – whether old or new – when they only need one,” the source said.
“The provincial office questioned why anyone would sell North Korean electronics overseas when they are internationally unknown and outdated,” he said. “The officials said that people are falling for the schemes of the [South Korean or U.S.] bastards and warned that they will be on the lookout for people who sell anything for money and will deal severely with them as fronts for the enemy.”
However, the source said that instead of focusing on the problem of North Korean equipment leaking overseas, people are whispering things like, “If [the ministry] talks like this, our nation’s equipment must be the most pathetic in the world” and “Our nation is really behind the times.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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